News
WI: Wisconsin’s state power plants may be privatized
Gov. Scott Walker is seeking to sell off hundreds of millions of dollars in power plants or other state assets to help pay some of the borrowing he is proposing as part of his two-year $6.4 billion transportation plan unveiled Friday. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
IL: Chicago in an Uproar Over Privatized Parking
Chicago illegally privatized four downtown parking garages in a 99-year lease to a private company – which is demanding $200 million because the city approved another parking garage, a government watchdog claims in court. Courthouse News
WI: Walker’s voucher plan angers public school backers
Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to expand the private school voucher program statewide, while not allowing public school spending to increase, drew a raft of angry responses Monday from those who fear his budget leaves public school students behind. San Francisco Chronicle
FL: Florida’s Prison Privatization Isn’t Paradise
The governor isn’t waiting for state lawmakers to make this move to privatization. In January, the state’s Department of Corrections signed a $48 million annual contract with Wexford Health Sources to outsource medical care to more than 15,000 inmates in South Florida. A month earlier, Corizon Health Inc.’s five-year, $230 million contract to provide services for inmates in central and northern Florida prisons was blocked when a judge ruled the state entered into the deal illegally. Both companies have battled lawsuits in federal and state courts and have been fined in states where the for-profit companies run health services for prison systems. In Escambia County, we have seen how for-profit companies can botch health services for inmates. FloridaVoices
Professor: Why Teach For America can’t recruit in my classroom
The organization’s facile circumvention of the grinding, difficult, but profoundly empowering work of teaching and administering schools has created the illusion that there are quick fixes, not only for failing schools but for deeply entrenched patterns of poverty and inequality. No organization has been more complicit than TFA in the demonization of teachers and teachers’ unions, and no organization has provided more “shock troops” for education reform strategies which emphasize privatization and high-stakes standardized testing. Michelle Rhee, a TFA alum, is the poster child for such policies, but she is hardly alone. Washington Post (blog)