I was at the Arizona State Capitol yesterday as part of the Arizona School Board Association Lobby Days. In sitting in on the Senate Education Committee meeting, it was clear that for the most part, the Republican Senators are all about privatizing education and the Democratic Senators primarily supported traditional public education as the default. I felt compelled to repost this blog because it provides teeth to an assumption I’ve been making about how the privatization effort is all about profit. Please note the GSV Report notes that education is “the new civil rights issue.” I suspect this reference comes from ALEC-connected framing and it caught my eye because Senator Melvin has said many times that education is “the civil rights issue of our time.” Really? I think the real civil rights issue is the inequity in quality of education available to various segments of our society. And, the way to deal with this inequity is NOT to continue to funnel public education funding away from our traditional public schools!
UPDATE 06-20-13: Deborah McGriff is no longer a member of the NCTQ advisory board. Her NewSchools Venture Fund, however, is very much alive and well in corporate reform.
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In writing this series on NCTQ, I have read hundreds, perhaps now thousands, of pages of corporate reform documents over the past couple of weeks. It occurs to me that what permanently separates me from the reformers I write about is financial motivation. I teach chiefly because of the intrinsic rewards from doing so. Sure, money is important to life; however, money (and power, and prestige) is not life to me. Nor will it ever be. But to the corporate reformers, well, that is quite a different story. To them, the money (and power, and prestige) is all-consuming. It shows in both what they grasp and what they discard.
And now, I set aside my lofty musings and offer to you, complete with NCTQ bio, Deborah…
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Restore Reason 