When Joel Klein left his job as NYC Schools Chancellor, he landed in a big old pile of cash, working for none other than extreme right-wing Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch. This certainly beats working for a living, and even beats being Bloomberg's mouthpiece while pretending to put "Children First. Always."
As head of Amplify, Klein can devote his attention to selling crap we don't need to schools, and raking in a tidy profit for Rupey, who simply cannot amass enough money. And who better to get it from than NY City's 1.1 million public schoolchildren? For goodness sake, if the money weren't going to Rupey, it would be frittered away on teachers, and you need only read Rupey's NY Post to learn how worthless they are.
Furthermore, were the city to run around hiring teachers, it might have the effect of reducing class sizes, and it's well known that Mayor Bloomberg would like to fire half of all working teachers and double class sizes. This would benefit students by letting them know how little attention they merit, knowledge that would serve them well in Rupey's vision of an entire non-unionized, serf-like work force. Of course, a big step toward that goal is getting rid of those pesky unionized teachers, and we're getting closer each and every day.
In fact, it's no longer just right-wing lunatics who want to profit off of our children rather than educate them. President Barack Obama's Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, as often as not echoes whatever nonsense Bill Gates sees fit to spout. He gleefully broke the New Orleans teacher union, gave the city to charter schools, and declared Katrina the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans. The fact that the schools are not so good as a result is of no consequence, just as his abysmal failure to fix Chicago schools through closing them means nothing but a replication of the system nationwide.
Now, Duncan's press secretary, Justin Hamilton, has abandoned all pretense of being a real Democrat or supporting working Americans. He's jumped ship for a gig with Rupey and Joel. So it really pays to do the reformy stuff Rupey favors.
If you don't believe that, just ask the ex-teachers who run Educators for Excellence and pretend to represent working teachers. Is it a coincidence that every time they get 100 people to sign a petition saying teachers need fewer rights Rupey's Post runs a story about it? Why should they bother going to some crappy trailer to teach unpredictable teenagers when they can simply do whatever Rupey wants and get paid for it?
There's gold in that there reformy stuff. What the heck is it that makes 80,000 UFT teachers get out there every day and try to educate children when there's so much more money to be made elsewhere?
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