How public schools are being dismantled

Richard Secrist, Mesquite

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 | 2:04 a.m.

Politicians, tax-cut advocates and others pushing privatization — those who have no interest in seeing schools succeed — are setting the education agenda.

First, taxes are cut or kept from growing with the need to fund our schools, then that is used as an excuse to cut enrichment programs like art and music that might have kept some marginal students engaged. Class sizes increase just as more students are coming to school with chaotic home lives that don’t prepare them for the discipline of school. And when educators reach the point they can’t do the job necessary with a paucity of resources, they’re called incompetent.

Next, politicians privatize public education under the euphemism “charter schools,” which skim off the students with engaged parents and oddly don’t have to follow all the same rules as regular public schools, accelerating the death spiral of public education. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that charter schools overall outperform public schools. To the extent that these private schools do work, the rewards will go to the stockholders and executives, not the teachers who are usually not unionized.

It is absolutely mind-boggling to me, that when it comes to bonuses for bankers and crooked CEOs, too many of us say that in order to keep the high caliber of talent necessary in high finance, we need to reward them with salaries and stock options that seem to be the size of some nation’s entire economies. But teachers? Not so much. Let’s slash their salaries and budgets.

It’s time parents, students and the public generally wake up to the massive dismantling of our public institutions taking place in this country under the guise of “privatization,” “free markets” and “deregulation.” Whenever you hear those code words, reach for your wallets and hang on, because someone is going to take you to the cleaners.