Pandora’s box opened a bit wider in Kansas with last session’s passage of the corporate tax credit scholarship. Kansans should make sure it doesn’t go any further. Jan Ressenger reports on the Pandora’s box of school privatization.

“These are all such nice ideas. The problem, however, in Ohio and Michigan and many other states is that our politics is awash in money. The owners of the for-profits, the on-line charter schools, the shady Charter Management Organizations and other proponents of school privatization including major philanthropists are spending buckets of money to influence the politicians who would have to be responsible for requiring charter operators to be more transparent and for legislating more regulations to protect the public from unscrupulous or ineffective charter school authorizers and boards.

“Do you remember Pandora who was sent to earth by Zeus with a jar she had been warned never to open. Pandora peeked under the lid, however, and out flew myriad plagues and evils to wander forever among mankind. How to get the lid of regulation and oversight back into our system of education now that the myriad plagues and evils of privatization have been loosed across our states? The question for us, now that academic research increasingly demonstrates the pitfalls of a school choice marketplace, is whether we can create the political will to force our elected representatives, in spite of all the money and political power behind privatization, to restore the social contract with well regulated public schools that serve the needs and protect the rights of all of our children.” http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/school-privatization