Privatizing Education & Medicine

I've been thinking quite a bit about blogging on the parallels between the efforts to privatize both public medicine at LSU and our public education system in New Orleans. I don't need to now. Ralph Adamo wrote this excellent article in The American Prospect about the chaos that exists from the current privatization efforts in our city. With the privatization of education, companies such as Alvarez & Marsal, Sodexho, and JRL Enterprises are making quick fortunes on the backs of our students, and there is little accountability.

Adamo's conclusions are right on the mark in my opinion:

The state has to do several things in order to legitimize its actions. The schools have to be returned to the community in a manner that re-establishes accountability, not run by consultants for the short term and the quick profit. If that means a return to being run by publicly elected officials, that is the price we pay for living in a democracy. Curriculum and services such as security and hot meals should derive from the local population and economy, not be imported via giant education and service corporations. The right of teachers and other school workers to organize and to bargain collectively cannot be denied indefinitely, nor those who attempt to organize such basic rights punished for their crimes. The market drives only to one location: profit. That is a legitimate destination in business. But education, like medicine, ought not operate under the rules and expectations of business.