Group pushes privatization of education

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos will be a featured speaker at a Denver conference of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Denver that runs this week through Friday.

For those who have never heard of ALEC, it’s a covert organization that writes cookie-cutter laws to facilitate privatization. Privatizing our public schools is a primary objective, and at its meetings, education companies, lobbyists, and ALEC politicians come together to discuss initiatives that revolve around subsidizing private K-12 education.

The American Legislative Exchange Council is responsible for creating multiple schemes to label public schools “educationally bankrupt” to rationalize giving tax dollars to less-regulated charter and private schools. ALEC promotes state-mandated high-stakes testing for children and their school districts; it advocates for charter schools and school-voucher programs that subsidize for-profit schools and religious schools.

The American Legislative Exchange Council has created a variety of ways to further using public monies for school privatization in Ohio.

ALEC corporations provide funding to cover the annual conference and to subsidize the activities of the legislators who are part of ALEC. More than 65 of Ohio’s legislators are ALEC members, and some of them request reimbursement whenever they attend an ALEC Conference to learn about privatization.

Who funds those trips to ALEC meetings, and what do they expect in return?

Jeanne Melvin Columbus