As a member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party I have a knee jerk response to anything that the Koch Bros. support and one of those things is dissolution of public education via vouchers and privatization. Wake County, SC is a school district that is highly regarded nationally and sends a lot of graduates to college. The Koch Bros. via their front group Americans for Prosperity recently supported several candidates for school board.
Those candidates won and promptly changed the systems transportation policy to prohibit busing students in order to diversify campuses. Wake County has both very low income neighborhoods, very high income neighborhoods and everything in between. Since the low income neighborhoods are predominantly African American by stopping busing for diversity they have essentially said we don't want African American students from low income families mixing with White students from upper income families.
The board's actions inherently violated the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education. More importantly this is just a first step on the road to vouchers and privatization which is the ultimate goal of the Koch Bros. and billionaires like them who seek to profit from both educating children and keeping them under-educated in order to make them available to work at low wage, dead end jobs. The under-educated are also easier to manipulate into voting against their own interests.
My friend, AngelaJean, and others here are supporters of vouchers on the theory that such opportunities for choice are what this nation needs in order to experiment with new education models. While I can agree with the goal as I am not especially enamored with our currently accepted educational model be it public or private I don't see any reason such experimentation can't be handled within the public sector. Magnet schools are an example of the concept that not all schools must operate the same way just because they are part of the same district. I will grant that Magnet schools still generally follow the model that we all agree is imperfect but that doesn't mean that public education must be replaced in order to change the model we currently use.
I urge those of you in the alternative education movement not to do the Koch Bros. job for them. Free and appropriate education for all students whether from rich or poor families is just too important to the health of our democracy to turn over to profit driven entities with no accountability to the tax payers.
Next time I'll post on why vouchers are just a way for the religious right to get public funding for their religious schools and why that's bad for our democracy.