Dismantling Public Education

Georgia Is a Leader in School Privatization Efforts

Our state legislators are at the vanguard of a national, corporate-backed campaign to bring about a for-profit education system.

Education legislation in the Georgia General Assembly probably seems like a snooze: arcane and obscure to voters with school-age children and inconsequential to those without. But the recently concluded legislative session’s education debates made the Gold Dome a key battleground in what can be called without hyperbole a

Click here, to view a research review on student achievement in charter schools

Click here, to view the NAACP's resolution on charter schools.

Far-out ideologues want to destroy public education in Georgia
By ELLIOTT BRACK
Editor and publisher
GwinnettForum.com

OCT. 12, 2012 -- Let’s take a moment and consider what a charter school essentially is.

It is not like regular public schools. While charter school funding comes from public sources, charter schools essentially are public versions of private schools. If Amendment One passes next month, that could upend public education in Georgia.

Here’s why: public money will go to charter schools, funds that would otherwise go to the local public school. But, get this: there is no accountability

Senator Steve Henson on why he opposes amendment 1

As we approach the Nov. 6th general election, Georgians will be asked to make their voices heard on a number of important issues. From the President of the United States to local government representatives, voters will head to the polls to determine who will make governmental decisions on their behalf.

One critical issue voters will decide on doesn’t have a name or political platform; yet, it has the potential to drastically change the face of public education in Georgia for our children and grandchildren. The Charter School Constitutional

Courtesy of On the Commons Magazine

After 20 Years, Charter Schools Stray From Their Original Mission

Instead of laboratories to improve all schools, many are now for-profit enterprises with poor report cards

A charter school opens in Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo by hdes copeland under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com)

What we know after 20 years is that overall charter schools are no better than public schools. A great deal of evidence exists that, on average, they are worse.

On this, the 20th anniversary of the opening of the first charter school

Courtesy of Gwinnett Daily Post

Why isn't anyone talking about for-profit schools?, by Dick Yarbrough

As of Friday, March 16, 2012

At the risk of sounding like Johnny One-Note, let me go back over my concerns one more time about the charter school constitutional amendment bill in the State Senate that may or may not have been passed by the time this gets to you. (My deadlines and legislative deadlines don’t always coincide.)

I don’t have a problem with charter schools. In concept, charter schools are fine. My problem is that nobody seems to be talking about for-profit charter schools. That is a

News Release

Study shows charter schools still lag behind traditional public schools in test scores and are increasingly segregated by race and income

Contacts: Cynthia Huff, U of M Law School, huffx070@umn.edu, (612) 625-6691
Myron Orfield, Institute on Race and Poverty, orfield@umn.edu, (612) 625-7976
Jeff Falk, University News Service, jfalk@umn.edu, (612) 626-1720

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (02/24/2012) —New work, which both updates and supplements a 2008 study by the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School, shows that after two decades of experience, most charter

Does Money Matter in Education?

January 2012

Over the past few years, due to massive budget deficits, governors, legislators and other elected officials are having to slash education spending. As a result, incredibly, there are at least 30 states in which state funding for 2011 is actually lower than in 2008. In some cases, including California, the amounts are over 20 percent lower.

Only the tiniest slice of Americans believe that we should spend less on education, while a large majority actually supports increased funding. At the same time, however, there’s a concerted effort among some