Prepare 4 Impact

Talking Pineapples and Texas Education

sarahlee310:

Back in 2005, ALEC’s Education Task Force started pushing a concept called “virtual schools.” Unlike distance learning, where a homebound kid with a laptop can log into a real classroom from his very own hospital bed, virtual schools—also called cyberschools—exist solely online. What Facebook did to the yearbook, private virtual schools are doing to the actual school—taking the entire public school experience online.

Nationwide, more than 200,000 kids K-12 are enrolled in full-time virtual schools, and more than 2 million “attend” at least one online course. The online learning industry is expected to bring in $24.4 billion by 2015. Apparently the same kid who can’t remember to clear his juice glass is a huge business opportunity.

Virtual schools are great at making money, but they can’t seem to educate kids. Everywhere they’ve been tried—Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas most notably—they’ve failed to meet minimum standards and done worse than the real-world public schools that most kids—mine included—attend, according to a report put out recently by Progress Texas called “Invisible Schools, Invisible Success: How ALEC Promotes Virtual School Profits Over State Standards & Student Success.”

In Texas, where virtual school enrollment has grown from 254 students in 2009 to 8,136 in 2011, we’ve added insult to imbecility by throwing tax dollars at the false promise of fake schools. If there’s something in Texas state government that Rick Perry hasn’t privatized, it’s just because Governor Oops hasn’t thought of it yet. And now they are taking money out of public schools to fund private virtual schools.

When you look at ALEC’s Education Task Force, you begin to understand how this virtual corner of the public school system got privatized so quickly. Co-chairing the task force were executives for K12 Inc. and Connection Academy, two virtual school companies. Also on the task force was state Sen. Florence Shapiro, the Republican chair of the Senate Education Committee. When you have virtual school company executives writing legislation with key lawmakers, one of the efficiencies you create is eliminating the need for lobbyists.

In the 2011 session, Shapiro carried the big education bill that gutted public school funding by $5.4 billion—the first cut in school funding since the Great Depression. Shapiro’s bill also contained a requirement that virtual schools get the same amount of tax dollars per student that brick & crumbling mortar schools get, despite the fact that we didn’t have enough money to teach the kids who went to real public schools, much less fake private ones.

(via stfuconservatives)