Headlines
MI: Detroit crisis may force sale of crucial assets
OH: Interstate rest areas gets privatization look
FL:Senator says DOC records show private prisons aren’t cheaper
LA: Jindal budget ticks off many
WI: Voucher enrollment jumps after rules are relaxed
Veterans Admin accused of excessive outsourcing of vets’ jobs
The big money behind state laws – editorial
Diane Ravitch: Why states should say ‘no thanks’ to charter schools
News summaries
MI: Detroit crisis may force sale of crucial assets
..Now, the city of Detroit’s most venerable assets — from Belle Isle to the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel — could end up on the auction block as the city fights for its financial life. Facing mounting debt and the prospect of a state-appointed emergency manager, the city is looking at all options to shed expenses and raise revenue. If city officials can’t come up with a viable budget plan, an emergency manager would have the power to sell assets as part of a financial takeover of Detroit. The Detroit News
OH: Interstate rest areas gets privatization look
A study of the privatization of the Ohio Turnpike will also weigh the possibility of leasing rest areas along the state’s freeways. In his State of the State speech Tuesday, Gov. John Kasich (KAY’-sik) mentioned leasing rest areas as a way to address a recently discovered gap in the transportation budget. The Republic
FL:Senator says DOC records show private prisons aren’t cheaper
With the Florida Senate poised today to return to a contentious prison-privatization debate, one critic of the proposal to outsource prisons in 18 southern counties says the Department of Corrections’ own calculations on incarceration costs show currently private prisons aren’t necessarily cheaper than public ones. Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, has been railing on the lack of serious policy analysis surrounding the push by Senate President Mike Haridopolos and Budget Chairman J.D. Alexander to enact the most sweeping prison privatization move in the country. While they say the push to hand over the prisons and some 19,000 inmates to a private vendor like Boca Raton-based GEO Group would save the state money, the DOC records Dockery has unearthed suggest the savings from the seven currently private prisons in the state isn’t substantial. Specifically, the records compare per diem costs per average prisoner between the private prisons and their most comparable public-prison (a type of analysis the department itself uses internally, but which it has not released publicly during the debate). The results: mixed.The privately run Bay Correctional Facility, for example, had an average per diem of $48.70 per prisoner in the 2010-11 fiscal year, compared to the $43.78 per diem at the New River prison. The publicly run New River, also had to incarcerate “close management” prisoners that are more dangerous, while the private Bay prison did not. Orlando Sentinel
LA: Jindal budget ticks off many
The governor’s proposed budget, with its privatization of education, prisons, health care and state employee insurance, angers a huge number of people. Some are angry because they would lose their jobs. Some don’t want their relatives moved from one medical facility to another. Doctors and medical facilities don’t want to provide services for less.Some view the governor’s desire to create more charter schools and sending far more kids to private schools as giving up on trying to reform public education. The News Star
WI: Voucher enrollment jumps after rules are relaxed
Voucher student enrollment grew significantly as a result of legislation signed by Gov. Scott Walker that relaxed income limitations and eliminated enrollment caps in the school choice program, according to a report released Monday by the Public Policy Forum…The report also found that overall enrollment growth in the private schools that participate in the Milwaukee and Racine school choice programs was a direct result of the expanded voucher program, in which qualifying students receive a taxpayer-financed subsidy worth $6,442 to attend a private school…Critics of the program and its expansion say it drains resources from MPS. They argue students in the voucher program haven’t shown better overall results than their peers in MPS. Bob Peterson, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, points to voucher students’ failure to top MPS students’ reading and math scores.”This is not about improving education in Milwaukee,” Peterson said. “It’s about transferring students to private schools.” “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a failed social policy that ultimately is undermining the public schools and privatizing education,” he said. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Veterans Admin accused of excessive outsourcing of vets’ jobs
The Veterans Affairs Department is being accused of undermining its own goal of hiring more veterans by expanding its outsourcing practices that eliminate many federal jobs currently, or historically, held by veterans, according to the union representing 205,000 employees at the VA. In November, President Barack Obama signed into law the “VOW to Hire Heroes Act,” which included language to set up an expedited process for hiring returning solders for federal jobs. But the VA’s own outsourcing, which began to grow under the Bush Administration and are continuing to expand, are abolishing many federal jobs currently held by veterans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), an AFL-CIO union, said in a Feb. 8 news release. For example, the Veterans Benefits Administration recently entered into a $54 million three-year contract with ACS Government Systems to perform claims processing work. That work currently is being performed by “large numbers of veterans,” the union said. “To add insult to injury, the VBA employees are being asked to volunteer to train the contractors to do their work.”Federal Computer
The big money behind state laws – editorial
It is no coincidence that so many state legislatures have spent the last year taking the same destructive actions: making it harder for minorities and other groups that support Democrats to vote, obstructing health care reform, weakening environmental regulations and breaking the spines of public- and private-sector unions. All of these efforts are being backed — in some cases, orchestrated — by a little-known conservative organization financed by millions of corporate dollars. The American Legislative Exchange Council was founded in 1973 by the right-wing activist Paul Weyrich; its big funders include Exxon Mobil, the Olin and Scaife families and foundations tied to Koch Industries. Many of the largest corporations are represented on its board.ALEC has written model legislation on a host of subjects dear to corporate and conservative interests, and supporting lawmakers have introduced these bills in dozens of states. A recent study of the group’s impact in Virginia showed that more than 50 of its bills were introduced there, many practically word for word. The study, by the liberal group ProgressVA, found that ALEC had been involved in writing bills that would:…Encourage school districts to contract with private virtual-education companies. (One such company was the corporate co-chair of ALEC’s education committee.) The bill was signed into law. The New York Times
Diane Ravitch: Why states should say ‘no thanks’ to charter schools
Former D.C. school chancellor Michelle Rhee has sent her followers to Alabama to promote charter schools, but Alabama should say “no, thanks.” The District of Columbia is no model for school reform. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, which is the gold standard of education testing, shows that Washington D.C. has the biggest achievement gap between black and white students in the nation, double the size of Alabama’s. Alabama should not take lessons from one of the nation’s lowest performing districts. Charter schools haven’t helped other states and they won’t help Alabama. Here are the reasons why:* Numerous national and state studies have shown that charters on average don’t get better results than regular public schools. A small percentage get high scores, more get very low scores, most are about average in terms of test scores. Why kill off a community’s public school to replace it with a privately managed school that is no better and possibly worse? * Charter schools weaken the regular public schools. They take money away from neighborhood public schools and from the district budget. As charter schools open, regular public schools must cut teachers and close down programs to pay for them. The Washington Post