Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Ownership Society news

Taking the public out of public schools
If it's broke, fix it, right? Only what happens when the people who are supposed to fix it are the ones who broke it in the first place? And they happened to have run out of the money it's going to likely take to do the fixing? Easy solution: Sell management of the school(s) to the highest--well, "superior"--bidder. (4LAKids)
Where's Rhee?

My brother wants to know what ever happened to Michelle Rhee? Anybody? Anybody?


The pub biz

Pearson Publishing
, along with rivals Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and McGraw-Hill (main profiteer and beneficiary from Bush's scandal-ridden $4.8 billion Reading First program), dominate the textbook and test publishing markets. But digital publishing and major cuts in public school budgets (especially in California) are gnawing into Pearson's bottom line, reports Forbes and WSJ. The British-based company will still do okay because it is well diversified but its U.S. education business accounts for 80% of its total sales.

According to Forbes:
There is still hope that the Obama administration's strong emphasis on education could benefit Pearson. "Around $6 billion from the U.S. stimulus package will go into books and materials. This will definitely benefit Pearson," said Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis.
The big three are all depending heavily on the boost from Obama's stimulus package and increased demand for testing, testing and more testing. You can imagine how hard and in which direction their lobbyists will be pushing.

1 comment:

  1. Super interesting discussion about how the dollars trickling down for testing are affecting the textbooks. What do you think of Cali's online textbook idea? I mean I'm split between being against kids looking at screens for even longer every day and pro Cali trying to find solutions to their budget problems..

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