The Jhub

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has already tipped his hand on a vision for education in America — more charter schools, federal vouchers for parents who want to shop for their kids’ education and more moves to privatize public schools.
In a white paper Romney released last week, he championed the continued use of standardized tests as the measure of quality schools and teacher “accountability.”
The overview of existing education in America from the Romney camp also questions the need for existing teacher-certification requirements and continues to blame “teacher unions” like the National Education Association for shortfalls in the achievement levels of this nation’s students.
So Romney’s decision to pick Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna as a member of his Education Policy Advisory Group should come as no surprise — even if he’s the only state superintendent named to the 19-member group.
Luna’s also the only state superintendent in the country without a degree in education. He’s the only one of 50 without any personal classroom or school administrative experience. And he’s also the only one who has faced a recall election attempt and has his major educational reform package facing a referendum vote this fall.
We’re just guessing, but Luna is also likely the only state superintendent who kept his plans for a major overhaul of the existing public education a secret until after he had won re-election. Perhaps he’s the only state superintendent who fashioned a major overhaul of a public school system without consulting individual school district officials, administrators and teachers.
What does this say about Romney’s plans for an overhaul of American public schools as we know them?
One need look no further than the bulk of the all-star lineup Romney has chosen for his education policy advisory body.
They come from private education companies, conservative think tanks and universities, and include co-chairs Nina Rees of the for-profit education giant Knowledge Universe and Martin West, an assistant professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and editor of “Education Next.”
Education Next is a journal that contains articles that tout education reforms and the creation of charter schools. Knowledge Universe made $1.6 billion in revenue last year and is headed by former junk bond king Michael Milken. Knowledge Universe controls 50 individual companies in the for-profit education business, including Leap Frog educational toys for kids and online education giant K-12 Inc.
According to an article in the Los Angles Times, Milken “hopes to become a dominant player in the growing business of education, which many on Wall Street compare to health care as the next industry ripe for growth and restructuring.”
Profits will grow if public education is restructured so the money most state constitutions require to be spent to educate children moves from public to private control.
Of course, like the so-called “Students Come First” plan that Luna opened as a surprise package in the 2011 Idaho legislative session, this is all supposedly being done to better educational opportunities and success for school-aged children.
The problem is research does not back up many of the claims about the effectiveness of online instruction or the efficacy of charter schools over existing public schools.
However, there is no doubt that there’s big money to be made in online education. Knowledge Universe owns K-12 Inc., which runs the University of Phoenix, the largest online university in the U.S. and also the most expensive to U.S. taxpayers.
Last year the U.S. Department of Education listed Arizona as having the highest default rate of any state on federally guaranteed loans because all University of Phoenix students are considered from Arizona. A total of 44,216 of the 276,057 student borrowers credited to Arizona were in default, twice the national rate.
If we had some concerns about Romney’s choice of Luna to help shape his education policy, people representing Michael Milken’s empire should scare us.
Education in the U.S. could well become cradle to grave-robbery.