To the habitual public education criticalizers who discern an exotic brand of common sense in imposing entrepreneurial logic on public education: I give you, via the NY Times, the University of Phoenix, and its history for milling useless syllabi like masa in a taco factory. We cannot accuse them of mass producing diplomas since they have such an abysmal graduation rate. While Bunco U. is a private, for-profit institution, it shows us the logical extension of allowing market principles to rule any level of education.
The City Paper editors were exaggerating just the other day that the private sector would not permit the infrequency of performance evaluations that occur in Nashville Public Schools, as if the money incentives of the private sector force self-regulation or flying right. Yeah, and we're supposed to believe that so-called "free" markets (which is often code for shifting government subsidies to private interests) would inevitably lead to more honest evaluation. Editors: meet U. of Phoenix, where profit-margins rule education, where teachers don't teach and where enrollment counselors get paid for class-packing anyone and everyone into the pedagogical scam. Evaluate that.
Thank you Mike. It is definitely part of the right-wing, evangelical agenda to get vouchers in our schools (public money to churches) by discrediting public education. Unfortunately, they have made some progress.While we in TN have a ways to go regarding public education, everyone deserves to feel good about where they send their child to school. And that is mighty hard some days with the nasty and ignorant rhetoric thrown around like the 3 star letter in today's TN.
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