Privatizers Claim Victory in Indianapolis
Is your city next?
Well, it finally happened.
The Indiana legislature passed, and the Governor signed, legislation essentially putting the public schools in Indianapolis under the authority of an unaccountable overseer.
Peter Greene reports:
After over a decade of whittling away at opposition, the Mind Trust of Indianapolis has managed to privatize the entire public school system of Indianapolis. On March 4, the governor signed HB 1423, which creates the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation.The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation is a nine-member board appointed by the mayor. The IPEC will be the super-boss-daddy of all Indianapolis schools, both public and charter. It looks a lot like the old portfolio model, which Mind Trust has been pushing and expanding in Indianapolis for years. The model is based on the idea of an investment portfolio, where you keep juggling investments in and out of the portfolio depending on how well they pay off.
I wrote about this development as it seemed more and more likely to take place:
Back in December, that lone no vote at the local level warned:
“I find my biggest reason to vote no is the level of ambiguity in the plan,” Ahlgren said. “I find these recommendations falling into this bizarre zone of simultaneously feeling both too much and not enough, bold in some areas but overly timid in others, with vague promises that the ecosystem will sort itself out.”
As Greene notes, other cities are facing similar pressures - Memphis, Camden, Oakland, San Antonio, and more.