Privatization

Education Reform: Lessons From The U.S. On What Not To Do

June 8, 2014 Rachel Brickner, www.rabble.ca Create! Education, Inequality, Privatization, Reform, US

The Minister's Panel on Education has challenged Nova Scotians to "get involved" and help "effect change in the education system." Public schools are among our most important democratic institutions, so the call for public input is a welcome one. If the Minister's panel really wants to effect positive change in Nova Scotia's public schools, it's worth paying serious attention to what is and isn't working in other contexts. Efforts to reform education in the United States provide a number of examples of what not to do. Since the 1980s, policy-makers have looked at U.S. schools, especially those in urban areas, and seen an educational system in crisis. Although this view is contested, a coalition of education "reformers" has spent the past 25 years promoting changes to education policy that emphasize three broad pillars: choice, increased standards and accountability. First, reformers advocate giving parents more choice in where they can send their children to school. School choice policies have led to an expansion of charter schools, which are publicly funded, but privately managed, and voucher programs, which give parents a tax credit toward tuition at a private or religious school. In principle, this competition would improve public education by forcing poorly performing schools to improve or face closure, while rewarding successful schools with more students and funding.

Chicago Teachers Assess The Damage Of Massive School Closings

May 29, 2014 Bruce A. Dixon, www.blackagendareport.com Educate! Chicago, Privatization, Schools, Teachers, Unions

A couple years ago, we at Black Agenda Report wondered why the closings of 40 public schools over three years in Philly and 50 schools in Chicago were not national news. The answer of course, was that corporate media and politicians from Romney and Obama down to black mayors and state legislators agree that public education ought to be handed to business groups and charter schools even though privatization is enormously unpopular. The privatization of public schools is a public policy whose name is almost never spoken, and which is covered in the media as little as possible, and when some coverage is unavoidable, in misleading ways. “If CNN, MSNBC, or Fox News gave the school closings and privatization story a fraction of the coverage they gave deceptive and dishonest pro-privatization movies like Waiting For Superman and Won't Back Down, the outrage against the move to privatize education would be unstoppable.”

Loss Of The Post Office Will Create Lots Of Hardship

May 20, 2014 Alex Henderson, www.alternet.org Educate! Post Office, Privatization

On April 24, members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and other unions held 56 “Stop Staples” demonstrations in 27 different states. The postal workers, carrying signs that read, “The U.S. mail is NOT for sale,” were protesting against a privatization deal between the U.S. Postal Service and the office supply chain Staples. Launched in October 2013, the deal allows non-unionized employees of 82 Staples stores to help sort mail. If the program is expanded later this year, that number could increase to 1,500 stores. In a press release, APWU said of the program, “Staples employees, who work for low wages and meager benefits—and who have received minimal training—operate these unsecured postal counters.” APWU sees the Staples deal as a step toward much greater privatization of the U.S. Postal Service, and they are right to be concerned, not only because of the interests of postal workers, but also, because the privatization or dismantling of the U.S. Postal Service will be terrible for American consumers and small businesses. It’s no secret that times have been challenging for USPS. The increase in digital communications has resulted in many Americans spending much less on postage than 15 or 20 years ago.

Our Historic Post Offices Should Not Be For Sale, Period!

April 28, 2014 JP Massar, www.indybay.org Educate! Post Office, Privatization

On April 17th, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation issued its Preserving Historic Post Offices report to Congress "on compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act for the closure and disposal of its historic postal facilities." This report was requested by legislation initiated by Berkeley's United States Representative in Congress Barbara Lee. photo polb-dave-welsh_zps80493c78.jpgThe report tells us some that is new, and much that we already know from Berkeley's experience attempting to interact with Postal Service management. We are well aware that they refuse to care about the community's concerns - when they deign to listen at all (public meetings attended by hundreds of Berkeley residents in near-universal opposition to the sale of Berkeley's Post Office whose voices were totally ignored showed us that); we know that Postal Service management ignores the law when it is inconvenient to their purposes; and we know that they are hell-bent on selling Post Office assets in pursuit of immediate revenue, all as the report suggests.

School Privatization Is A Hoax, Reformers Aim To Destroy Public Schools

April 24, 2014 Diane Ravitch, www.salon.com Educate! Education, Privatization

As long as anyone can remember, critics have been saying that the schools are in decline. They used to be the best in the world, they say, but no longer. They used to have real standards, but no longer. They used to have discipline, but no longer. What the critics seldom acknowledge is that our schools have changed as our society has changed. Some who look longingly to a golden age in the past remember a time when the schools educated only a small fraction of the population. But the students in the college-bound track of fifty years ago did not get the high quality of education that is now typical in public schools with Advanced Placement courses or International Baccalaureate programs or even in the regular courses offered in our top city and suburban schools. There are more remedial classes today, but there are also more public school students with special needs, more students who don’t read English, more students from troubled families, and fewer students dropping out. As for discipline, it bears remembering a 1955 film called “Blackboard Jungle,” about an unruly, violent inner-city school where students bullied other students. The students in this school were all white. Today, public schools are often the safest places for children in tough neighborhoods.

Oppose Another Step Toward Post Office Privatization

April 17, 2014 Dave Jamieson, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Labor, Post Office, Privatization

On a recent Saturday morning, 500 protesters poured out of a parade of school buses, signs and megaphones in hand, and tried their best to shame a single Staples store just outside Chicago. Among them was Mike Suchomel, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, who traveled all the way from New Jersey for a nearby labor conference. What has infuriated Suchomel and many of his fellow postal union members is a new arrangement struck between USPS and the office supply retailer. Under the premise of a pilot program, a limited number of Staples locations are now offering most of the same services provided at post offices, to be handled by Staples employees rather than postal workers. "It's just a big step toward privatization," said Suchomel, who hopped a bus to the protest from the Labor Notes conference, a biannual gathering of labor activists held in Chicago. "I think it's a terrible thing that the postmaster general would even think about this."

Spaniards Say No to Privatized Healthcare

March 22, 2014 Ann Martinez www.inthesetimes.com Educate! Health Care, Privatization

Shortly after the plan was announced in 2012, a coalition of unions called the first general strike in Madrid’s healthcare sector. The “white wave”—a reference to the medical smocks that strikers wore—quickly spread to the rest of the country as healthcare workers in 15 cities supported Madrid by staging a sympathy strike. This was followed by a popular referendum in May 2013, which resulted in more than a million people going on record to oppose privatization. In September 2013, the High Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) put the privatization plan on hold in response to a lawsuit filed by the Association of Medical Specialists in Madrid. The ruling party and the private entities involved in the plan appealed, but the high court upheld its previous decision, arguing that privatization would affect more than a million residents and cause “non-reparable damages” to 5,128 professionals.

UC Students Still Locked-In To Oust Napolitano

February 15, 2014 Doug Gilbert, www.fireworksbayarea.com Resist! Education, Finance and Economy, Privatization

UC Berkeley students and allies occupied Blum Hall at the North end of UC Berkeley on the afternoon of Thursday, February 13th after a march through the campus. Students are demanding the resignation of Janet Napolitano, who has recently become the President of the University of California (UC) system. Napolitano is a member of the Democratic Party, former Governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009, an architect of the "Secure Communities" deportation campaign, and was the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. As of this writing, the occupation is still ongoing and students remain locked inside the building.

Big Brother Coming Into New York Classrooms

January 28, 2014 Gary Stern, www.prorevnews.blogspot.com Educate! New York (NY), Privatization

"It's the same conversation as with inBloom. Why are they doing this? What's the purpose? Why do they need students’ names?" Pleasantville Superintendent Mary Fox-Alter said. "Do we need to share information about 5-year-olds with colleges? Unbelievable." Activist Leonie Haimson, who has rallied national opposition to the inBloom project, said there is no way to know how government agencies really will use such long-term data. "It adds to the suspicion that there is a surveillance state tracking kids," she said. "We’re not against research, but there have to be strict controls on who can be trusted with the information."

Water Justice Movement Tackles Life After Privatization

December 17, 2013 Meera Karunananthan, www.rabble.ca Create! Food and Agriculture, Privatization

Among the strategies, being pursued by communities promoting public operation are public-public-partnerships (PuPs) -- the public sector's response to privatization under the guise of private-public partnerships (P3s). PuPs are designed to take advantage of the innovative, groundbreaking solutions existing within the public sector. Through PuPs water operators are able to train each other, share resources and public sector know-how on a not-for-profit basis. Marcela Olivera and Adriana Marquisio of the Plataforma de Acuerdos Publico-Communitarios de las Americas shared successful models for public-community partnerships being used in Bolivia and Uruguay to enable communities to cooperate and support each other in the management of water and sanitation services.

UK Students Facing Violence, Intimidation and Arrest for Opposing Privatization of their Universities

December 11, 2013 Scriptonite Daily, www.scriptonitedaily.com Resist! Education, Privatization

The growing student movement in opposition to the marketisation of Higher Education is being confronted by the full force of the emergent British police state. Universities are using court injunctions to ban student protest, and when students oppose such measures they are faced with an overwhelming and violent response by the UK’s militarised police force. Two things have trebled under the Coalition government since 2010: university tuition fees, and long term youth unemployment. In order to pay tuition fees, accommodation, food and other expenses, the average student will leave University with personal debts of £53,300. Yet our 18-24 year olds are less likely to find employment than at any time in the last twenty years. Students and young people have every reason to protest.

Privatization: Profiting From The Poor

October 9, 2013 Nick Surgey & Katie Lorenze , www.prwatch.org Resist! Finance and the Economy, Government, Privatization

The privatization of social services has in the past resulted in some spectacular failures. The Denver Post found a shocking pattern of abuse when it conducted an in-depth investigation of the privatization of Colorado’s foster care system a decade ago. The Post reported that numerous children were molested, abused, and even died in foster home after the state started contracting with businesses that failed to ensure they were placed in safe homes. The state also paid three times as much to place a child in private foster care as it did in homes that were supervised by the counties. More recently, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels' attempt to transform the state into a privatized utopia failed spectacularly in the health and human services area. Indiana’s 2006 experiment involving a $1.16 billion contract awarded to a consortium of firms including Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS), went so badly, that the Governor cancelled the contract at an unknown cost to the state, and the state legislature evenconsidered banning privatization altogether.

Don’t Take our Post Office Away: Saving the US Postal Service with Jim Sauber

August 28, 2013 Podcast Banks, Finance, Infrastructure, Jobs, Post Office, Privatization, Voting

Economist Jim Sauber who serves as Chief of Staff to the President of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC)

Stop Theft of Public Assets: July 27, San Francisco Strike Debt Rally

July 23, 2013 Mike Wilson and Dave welsh, www.strike-debt-bay-area.tumblr.com Create! Privatization

Though thousands of Berkeley residents along with the Berkeley City Council and the Mayor have petitioned and appealed the Board’s intention to sell the Post Office, we expect those appeals to be dismissed as has been the case with similar appeals in California cities, Oregon, and New York City. Our goal in organizing this July 27 action in Berkeley is to call for attention to the closing of Post Offices nationwide, to the theft of our history and heritage by selling off Post Offices and especially the downtown Berkeley Post Office, to the privatization of what should be a publicly controlled enterprise and to the scourge of privatization more generally, whereby the 1% enrich themselves by taking possession of public belongings and consuming them. On July 27 we will also publicize our long-term goal of postal banking, which will both sustain the USPS and provide an alternative to our failed banking system.

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