More Privatization Reality

The Orlando Sentinel reports on the latest failure of privatizing public services: Florida’s charter school students perform “significantly worse” than peers in traditional schools, new report says

Students in Florida’s charter schools, on average, maker fewer academic gains than kids in traditional public schools, according to a new study by Stanford University researchers released today.

The study found that Florida is one of six states where “on average the student in a charter school learns statistically and significantly less than they would have in a traditional public school,” said Margaret Raymond, the study’s lead author.

The study used eight years worth of math and reading test data and compared charter school students to their “virtual twins” in regular schools — that is students with similar demographics and starting test scores.
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Charter schools — public schools run by private groups and freed from some public school bureaucracy — need more “quality control” so that the good ones can be replicated and the bad ones weeded out, Raymond added.

So, you give public money to private groups who have no accountability and you are surprised when they provide less than the public employees they “replaced”. This is not unusual, this is the norm. This is how the privatization scam always works.

Greed has never produced quality. That is why privatization doesn’t work. The incentive is to maximize profit, not provide a better product or service. We don’t live in a world dominated by self-serve gas stations and Wal-Mart because business is trying to please its customers. Does anyone honestly believe that customer call centers in Asia was a response to people desperately wanting to talk to someone they can’t understand?