| Teh Demas has a very good column -- a must-read even -- about cyber schools. This quote is making the Facebook rounds. Yes, cyberschools are a win-win: a dumping ground for undesirable students and a moneymaker for private education management companies.
indeed. This is worth amplifying. ... I've yet to be convinced why education should be an enterprise to make money. I'm not sure that's the case with many of those looking to make monumental changes to our system.
I haven't seen anyone else raise this fundamental problem. We have a few different ways of operating an organization. You can start an organization that is for-profit, not-for-profit, or non-profit. This is the first and most fundamental question you ask, in fact, when you create an organization in our system of doing stuff. If you create something that you intend mostly to create profits for investors, you operate it as a for-profit business. When you do this, your primary goal is to make profits for its backers. In fact, if you have management of a for-profit operation that is not maximizing profits, that person is subject to civil action by investors. Why? Because investors gave you money expecting to see as much return on their investment as possible. If you are concerned primarily with something else, say educating children, you create a non-profit or a not-for-profit business. I sit on the board of directors of a local business, in fact, that is a not-for-profit. That's what allows us to operate a grocery store and also a small network of community gardens that offer competition for the store (the grocery sells produce that some of the garden participants -- me, specifically, and this year's Brussels sprouts -- grow on their own and don't need to purchase). |
