Sue Kingery Woltanski and Jennifer Berkshire: Connecting the Dots
Sue Kingery Woltanski caught Jennifer Berkshire’s appearance on Amanpour and Company, and founds it useful in deciphering some privatizer activities.
About those angry moms at your school board meetings (or are they “Joyful Warriors”? It is hard to tell)… Whether they know it or not, their voices are being capitalized on to dismantle and privatize our public schools:
“The politicization and disruption around schools plays into long standing political goals to privatize education. And you’ll see organizations being more and more explicit about this, right, “this is our shot, let’s go for it.” And so now in a state like Michigan, where maybe you would have had school board protests during the pandemic, now you’re in the throws of a debate about full-on privatization through a statewide voucher program. Things are moving fast and I think that people are staring to realize that this isn’t just the voices of a clutch of angry parents, that there’s money behind this, there is power behind this and that the goal is really to privatize public education.” – Jennifer Berkshire, Amanpour & Company, 9/21/22
The interview connects the dots between the teacher shortage, school board protests, and moves (in Michigan, Florida and elsewhere) towards Universal Education Savings Plans/vouchers. The goal isn’t just to privatize education but to privatize the responsiblity for education, shifting the tax burden to parents and cementing current economic inequities. The days of public education being the “great equalizer” will be over.
The original post includes the full video of the interview. See it here. It is a great primer on the larger picture behind school privatization, particularly good for sharing with those who don’t already follow these issues.