Imagine that you have a child who needs special education services. Or maybe you are a parent who has a child who needs special education services. You go looking for a school or a school district that is a good fit for your kid.
Now, let’s imagine that you meet with the Special Education coordinator of the district and she tells you what great work they do.
“Of the 110 pre-school students we had last year, we were able to move 109 into general education and they no longer are labeled as special education,” she beams.
Would you be pleased?
Or suspicious?
What if you found out the for every student who was moved out of their special education program a Wall Street investment firm received $2500? Then you found out that they would continue to receive that bounty every year until your child leaves the 6th grade.
Would you run like hell to somewhere else.
I would.
This is all true.
Wall Street is always looking for a good investment and that’s what Goldman Sachs and the Pritizker family have found in an investment strategy they call social impact bonds.
Can you trust the success of a program that is evaluated by how many students are moved out and which delivers a bonus check to Goldman Sachs for the head of each one?
Fertile soil for corruption, you say?
Me too.
Reports the New York Times today:
“The tool of ‘pay for success’ is much better suited to expanding an existing program,” Andrea Phillips, vice president of Goldman’s urban investment group, said in an interview on Wednesday. “That is something we’ve already learned through this.”
The $4.6 million put up by Goldman — and the $2.4 million invested by the Pritzker Family Foundation — went toward expanding an existing preschool program for poor children in Salt Lake County.
The program had already been shown to decrease the need for special education, but it had not been able to expand to meet all of the demand.
Special education and Wall Street is a toxic mix.
Fred Klonsky 
My wife was put on the do not hire list by her. I now know there is a god. But what about all the administrators those crooks recommended? I hope and pray this is only the tip of the iceberg
Now the feds need to look at all the contracts for so called Turn Around schools. Small school communities and other various ways to scam the system. As to my wife , and others injured by that crook why is anything she signed valid? I will pursue this without the interference of the castrated CTU.
What a great fight she put up,a prime example of a brave boss.
P.T. Barnum: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” …And the many cynical politicians whom we elect to office and their greedy corporate masters put Barmum’s observation into practice every day. All Republican and too many Democratic pols play enough of their voters for suckers to stay in office. They literally calculate that constituents either don’t pay attention or are not sophisticated enough to see through their B.S. Are there really that many suckers among us?
The fact that Wall Street can even contemplate such film-flam as the “sale” of special education kids” speaks volumes about our pathetic, corporate-sponsored, political dynamic which feeds like a voracious parasite on a lack of public concern, ignorance, and unwitting support. Wall Street can get away with such an obvious folly and abuse because our elected public officials aid and abet it, but we, the voters legitimize it by keeping the bums in office.
Outrages like the “sale of special education kids,” just a daily symptom of corporate greed and political corruption, never end. Why? …Because there are enough of Barnum’s suckers among us.