#subsidization

[cancerallianceza-blog]

Priority Area #9: Collaboration between government, NGOs, NPOs and CBOs is VITAL to improve the spread of service delivery! #healthcare #services #collaboration #collaborative #together #worktogether #advocacy #advocacymatters #cancerinsouthafrica #letstalkaboutcancer #cancer #cancerservices #subsidization #HIV #AIDS #malaria #tuberculosis #TB

[hioenews]

The Subsidization of Primary Education

In a kind of surreal tableau reminiscent of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, primary education today finds itself increasingly funded by corporations. Although, not quite as blatant as having your social studies class brought to you by a teacher wearing a McDonald's nametag and discussing the history of burgers, there's a disturbing trend of corporate-backed non-profits funding charter schools across the nation. 

The Walton Family Foundation is a conservative non-profit run by the same family that owns Walmart. It has spent around $335 million dollars on funding charter schools across the country, most notably those run by DC Prep in our nation's capital. 1,200 students attend the four charter schools run by DC Prep, which are largely successful in terms of test scores, attendance and student experience.

What does it mean for a conservative group to be funding the education of one of the most politically liberal cities in the United States? With education budgets being slashed, when do the benefits outweigh the costs? 

Some parents are willing to take advantage of the opportunity even while expressing concern over the effect charter schools have on public schools. “Charter schools are a bit of a disservice to the public schools,” said DC resident and father, Marcus Robinson . “It puts the onus on public schools to take on the people and children that other schools don’t want. But in the meantime, between everyone fighting about it, I did not want my kids to be caught in the limbo.”

When one-fourth of all charter schools have received money from the Walton Foundation, it brings into question the amount of influence a deep pocket can have on the curricula being taught to our children. The Walton Family Foundation can be credited with many trends in education like test score-based teacher evaluations and taxpayer-funded vouchers for students to attend private school. 

"Last year, the Walton Family Foundation gave $478,380 to a fund affiliated with the Chicago public schools to help officials conduct community meetings to discuss their plan to close more than 50 schools at a time when charters were expanding in the city." 

   A running theme of conservative politics today encourages the application of business acumen and values to non-business endeavors. While there can be some benefits to injecting "entrepreneurial energy" into a system that can easily find itself bogged down in bureaucracy, not all business practices make sense in education. Things like performance pay for teachers and closing "low-performing" charter schools completely miss the point of education and disregard all the influences on a student that could be causing poor "performance" in school. Where a corporation focuses on a profit margin, the success of schools has a more nuanced approach. 

One of the major criticisms of charter schools concerns the practice of expelling or "asking" students with low grades to leave, for the purpose of improving test scores. Some districts like DC have attempted to improve accountability for such tricks by publishing data on expulsions and midyear departures. But even with such transparency in place, critics of charter schools worry that already-disadvantaged traditional public schools are increasingly burdened with students who suffer from behavioral problems and learning disabilities. So in the end, those who struggle more are left with less.

Kevin G. Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at University of Colorado in Boulder, thinks the connection between Walmart and charter schools runs deeper than funding: 

“When lots of charter schools open up, it’s like a new Walmart store moving in. You could look at it and say, ‘Well, the schools in a community are losing families because of healthy competition the same way that the hardware store is losing customers because of healthy competition.’ But that doesn’t take into account the long-term harms to the community, which are probably greater than any short-term benefit.”

[aboutwhitewomen]

Petition for The Patriarchy to provide free hd cameras to all hott females currently posting selfies taken with blurry cameras.

[quotatiousquotations]

The higher entry standards imposed by licensing laws reduce the supply of professional services... The poor are the net losers, because the availability of low-cost service has been reduced. In essence, the poor subsidize the information research costs of the rich.

S. David Young

[infoneer-pulse]

Many students who receive subsidized loans to enable them to go to college, but would not be subsidized by a university, would be better off not going to college. College is not for everyone.

Are the Incentives of College Administrators Well Aligned with Social Welfare? Posner - The Becker-Posner Blog

[efficiency-blog-blog]

Tanzi argues that in countries where interpersonal relations are relevant in activating economic transactions, the only way to deter corruption is to reduce significantly the scale of public intervention. This line of analysis seems to be particularly relevant when one considers the possibility of collusive agreements between organized crime and the elected members of the public administration. [...] Most scholar think that by now the greatest business of the Sicilian mafia is precisely that of appropriating the different sources of public expenditures and of organizing frauds against the local, national and European Community schemes of subsidization.

Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Peltzman in “The Economics of Organized Crime”