Private firms eyeing profits from public schools

[Starry Messenger]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/02/us-usa-education-investment-idUSBRE8710W220120802

The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.

Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they're as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They'll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.

<snip>

The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.

Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into -- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.

Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.

<snip>

[CrispyQ]

1. The schools will find money to purchase

"lesson plans, educational software and student assessments" from big business, but no money for teachers.

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. On the plus side.....

.... it's rare that MSM outfit like Reuters ( do they still call it a "wire service" ?) would cover the issue to this degree of detail ( the $$ reformers like to keep a lot of the uglier particulars on the down-low) and at the same time giving (almost) equal time to the "other side" ( i.e. the truth).

Maybe at last there's a little healthy skepticism stirring in elements of the media.... although DU seems to have to have... as is usually the case when this issue is brought up... remained decidedly UN-stirred.

*Comatose* even.

"Sleeeep in heavenly peace........"




>>>"I look around the world and I don't see any country doing this but us," Ravitch said. "Why is that?">>>>

[Starry Messenger]

3. Yeah, I'm not sure how this squeaked through.

Another DUer tweeted it yesterday, it's an excellent find. I was amazed at how refreshingly frank it was about the profit-motive ugly side.

(Actually India has a education-business sector. I should really update some of this, but I did a thread two years ago on this. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=219x26865)

But Diane's larger point is totally spot on. The majority of countries are not doing this--why is that?