When WalMart and Exxon-Mobil Run the Public Schools

Don't think putting your own kids in a "good" private school will save you, either.  First, your tax dollars will still be going into the bottomless pockets of giant corporations, and second, all those millions of corporatized school kids who learn only what Big Oil want them to learn will grow up to vote exactly the way they were taught to.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo

Regular readers here will remember that I wrote a while back about the Vergara v. California trial, which is essentially an attempt by the billionaire education "reform" crowd to achieve through a ridiculous lawsuit what they have not been able to accomplish by convincing voters. The gist of the suit is that union provisions to protect teachers hurt students, thereby harming their civil rights.

It sounds ridiculous, and it is. The plaintiffs picked a few underperforming students as their "victims" in the case, and have argued that because these particular students were allegedly somehow harmed by protections for teachers, therefore all students in California are hamed and that almost the entirety of public employee union contract law in the teaching profession should be dissolved. Even more ridiculous, right?

The State of California asked the judge to throw out the case on the grounds that even if these few plaintiffs were harmed (and they almost certainly were not), that doesn't create the grounds for destroying union protections across the state.

Unfortunately the judge dismissed that request. Which doesn't seem like such a big deal, until you consider the implications. Even if the plaintiffs lose badly in this case as they should, the precedent set here is that if billionaire "reformers" can find even a single student whose studies were supposedly harmed by poor teaching, then that becomes grounds for challenging the entirety of state law regarding job protections for teachers. Watch for this strategy to be repeated in state after state across the nation.

Karoli at Crooks and Liars has more:

SNIP

This is one of the most consequential legal battles in America right now. The Masters of the Universe aren't content to own almost everything. Education and Social Security are two of the last big pots of money they don't completely control yet, and they can't stand that. These people want to make huge profits off parents by creating a "market" in education, while simultaneously molding young minds into more efficient corporate drones.

Neither of those things should be allowed to happen.