Repeated Failures of the ALEC Educ Policy

ALEC legislators and ALEC are always pushing the privatization of public education.

ALEC legislators and ALEC are always pushing the fallacy that for-profit educational opportunities are superior to public education.

Well – time and time again this ALEC delusion is proving to be wrong.

Another example

    of how ALEC’s policies are hurting American’s children.

ALEC legislators and ALEC profit sector members are EXPERIMENTING on our children.

And the ALEC free-market experiments are failing.

Here is a public – private partnership, privatization of public service failure – policy that harms our children - pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council at their many private and secretive meetings.

But we continue to have particular concerns about the involvement of K12 Inc., the large for-profit vendor running Greenfield’s Massachusetts Virtual Academy.

A Dec. 16, 2012 investigative piece in The Republican (Springfield) and Masslive.com reported that

students in the K12-run online school

    ranked second lowest in the state on students’ progress

    in the MCAS math and English exams.

    They also post an unusually high attrition rate.

Ranked second lowest in math.

Ranked second lowest in English.
...  unusually high attrition rate
Do no harm to the children.

How long will it take for those kids to regain the skills they lost?

How long will it take for those kids to recoup the skills they never learned?

Another ALEC for profit – privatization scheme – that harms our children, that harms the future of our nation, by producing a flawed education process; based on spurious ALEC free-market arguments.

Massachusetts tax dollars being used to support for-profit failures.
Massachusetts tax dollars being used to bankrupt children's educational potential.

The Maine Sunday Telegram also ran an investigative series that detailed how K12 Inc., the Jeb Bush organization Foundation for Excellence in Education, and the corporate-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) were recently involved in crafting policies (later tabled) to create taxpayer-funded virtual schools in Maine.

Now, Greenfield’s contract with K12 is up for renewal and the Greenfield School Committee will vote on it soon.

At the same time, Massachusetts has just passed legislation to provide accountability and avoid pitfalls for future virtual school efforts. In the Dec. 16, 2012 Republican article, Massachusetts Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell Chester noted that the “performance of the Greenfield (virtual) academy ‘absolutely’ demonstrates a need for state oversight.”

“performance of the Greenfield (virtual) academy ‘absolutely’ demonstrates a need for state oversight.”

Lack of performance, you mean.

No oversight was put into place BEFORE the K12 schools were implemented?  REALLY?

Need for state oversight???? Hopefullly NOT by ALEC legislators.

Another ALEC public – private partnership, another privatization of public service failure – policy that fails our children - pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

As a whole, charter schools perform little or no better than traditional public schools in terms of educating students, test scores and other data show.

In addition, charter schools often further segregation. A 2009 study by the UCLA Civil Rights Project showed that “charter schools are more racially isolated than traditional public schools in virtually every state and large metropolitan area in the nation.”

“Across the board, in many cases, charter schools are doing worse than some schools,”

 

Some hits - some misses!!!

The ALEC educational free-market for profit educational policies are harming our children.

When are we going to stop this destruction of our educational system and stop this ALEC championed offensive attack on our children?