interest in place of public duty, converting its pecuniary dispensations into
bounties to favorites, or bribes to opponents, accommodating its measures to the
avidity of a part of the nation instead of the benefit of the whole in a word,
enlisting an army of interested partizans, whose tongues, whose pens, whose
intrigues, and whose active combinations, by supplying the terror of the sword,
may support a real domination of the few, under an apparent liberty of the many.
Such a government, wherever to be found, is an imposter." -- James Madison
(National Gazette, February 20, 1792)
Private companies are going after a bigger share of the billions spent on education.
Find out how educators and kids are paying the price.
Many Perform Worse than Publicly Run Schools
The federal government's General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that of the
schools it audited most privately run public schools perform no better and many
perform less well than publicly run schools. Private for profit companies have
contracts to manage public schools in about half of the states in the country.
The Charter School Experiment After 10 Years (2002) This report studied the
decade-long charter school movement and found that while some charter schools
are working, the vast majority have not lived up to their promise. The cornerstone
idea of the original charter school movement was to raise student achievement
through innovation. However, as this report shows, where data are available
charter schools generally are not more effective, and often less effective, than
comparable regular public schools.
