I just love those "Top 10" lists, don't you?

From John Curry, February 14, 2012

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/

Top 10 Reasons For 1%ers to Support Charter Schools

Based on comparisons from the Stanford CREDO study of 2009, only 17 percent of charter schools nationwide are performing better than matched public schools. Of that 17 percent of higher-scoring charters, the intensely-segregated urban charters use forms of total compliance lockdown teaching, corporate positivity, and cultural sterilization that white teachers in these schools would never allow to be used on their own children.

There must be, then, more important social and economic reasons that some folks, who would otherwise not leave children behind in these hellholes if they were public schools, see charters schools as the only other choice for children in crumbling public schools whose poverty and lack of privilege are predictably reflected in their very low test scores.

These are a few of the reasons that charter schools garner so much corporate support, venture philanthropy, and unending public relations boosting from the corporate media:

TOP 10 REASONS FOR 1%ers TO SUPPORT URBAN CHARTER SCHOOLS

1. Urban charter schools require minimal public investment in physical plants, library programs, the arts, science labs, athletics, personnel, and transportation infrastructure.

2. Urban charter schools are cheaper because they depend upon an endless stream of young beginning teachers with few benefits, no retirement payouts, and no collective bargaining.

3. Urban charter schools make it easy to segregate based on race, economics, gender, and disability.

4. Urban charter schools allow for the exclusion or dumping of problem students whose abilities, behaviors, or test performance that could damage to the charter brand.

5. Urban charter schools make it easier to hide the problems of the poor by pointing to testing success by those who survive the charter gauntlet.

6. Urban charter schools allow for the imposition of cultural and psychological control techniques in urban areas that are not subject to public scrutiny.

7. Urban charter schools put decision-making and control into the hands of unelected executives with no oversight beyond hand-picked board members.

8. Urban charter schools (not for profit CMOs) allow corporations and wealthy donors to reap huge tax benefits for their generosity to corporate charter schools.

9. Urban charter schools (for profit EMOs) expand business opportunities for the education industry & testing-industrial complex.

10. Urban charter schools make it possible to take the state tax dollars saved from the forced choice of urban charters and use that money to enrich suburban public schools without raising taxes.