Education

it doesn't cost much is the same reason apple's computers in elementary schools didn't cost much & bill gates' computers in librarys didn't cost much: loss leader.

Teachers can produce better materials costing very little via crowd-sourcing too. Khan academy is a distraction. If you think kindly corporate guys are going to continue producing free materials once they have control of schools, think again. Ain't gonna happen.

You are right about the shit on a stick; the education deform people are selling shit on a stick big-time -- for example, the costs of the new testing requirements are huge; the costs of Common Core will be huge as well; and charter schools, after more than 10 years of experience, are not money-savers, but *are* more susceptible to major financial fraud.

And administrative costs? You ain't seen nothing yet. Take a look at the salaries some of the charter school principals and administrators make -- bigger than the salaries for administrators of entire *districts* in some cases.

Education is seen as a new profit center by the folks pushing charter schools -- not only in the US, but globally. The same 'reforms' are being pushed around the world, and there are global education corporations already in place to start raking in the bucks.

If you think parents don't have enough control over their children's schools now, you are going to *love* the new world of privatized global education, where your city is assessed for the costs of schooling but the only power you have as a parent is the power to 'choose' between coke, pepsi & 7-up.

And the local tax money will not stay in your community to be recycled through local businesses, but will wind up in some tax haven in the bahamas or at corporate HQ in Nevada or Delware.

Public education has problems: most of which have been created in DC or by general social conditions in the US (such as widening inequality). And some of them are just canards (such as the widely-promulgated notion that US students aren't competitive internationally or have been doing worse on national tests than prior generations).

Privatized education has even *worse* problems, by several magnitudes.