Q: What is a Cartel?
A: Group of people who hold dominant power in a marketplace of products or services and take actions to limit competition to protect their business.
Can’t wait for this DVD “The Cartel.” Many sites have reviewed it, giving their opinions. Tells me nothing. I need to see it for myself and examine the supporting documents, many of which you can find listed in the movie website’s FAQ.
I’ve already read everything I can find. Looks to be pretty damning. Not that claims of corruption and general incompetence are new to U.S. education.
It’s not the teachers, mind you. It’s the socialist system defended by liberal ideologues blind to their own self-interest. Corruption always follows on fatter government. (Just wait and see what happens over the next decade in Washington as the bloat sets in from our recent economic “rescue” of various industries.)
The filmmaker of The Cartel appears to be an advocate of school choice and particularly lauds charter schools. I didn’t find mention of homeschool, which is suprising, given the arguments made from statistics.
American education has no checks-and-balances, no accountability.
Except for homeschoolers. We make education account for itself by saying we can do a better job. Then we do it. And we even save the school system money when we do.
Let’s Be Upfront About This
What supports that claim is a paper Homeschooling in Nevada: The Budgetary Impact going around the homeschool blogosphere right now (published in 2005). It’s not exactly an analysis done by an unbiased source. The researchers have previous issues with public education: Clements is a homeschool advocate, Wenders has projects critical of public education and the need for performance-based measures, and the Education Consumers Foundation, a consumer advocacy organization, has this to say:
Public education’s status as a regulated monopoly also serves to enhance the prominence of certain educational perspectives and to insulate them from the demands of parents, the public, and their elected representatives. Thus despite vast research and development efforts undertaken over decades, certain theoretical and institutional constraints effectively impose boundaries on the educational research that is undertaken and published. (http://www.education-consumers.org/research.htm)
And the The Nevada Policy Research Institute calls itself an “independent research and educational organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all residents of the Silver State through sound free-market solutions to state and local policy questions.” How telling are the keywords “free-market solutions” to you about the Institute’s political bent?
Nevertheless, despite any bias of the paper’s producers, the facts speak for themselves. You’ll be amazed at not just the amount of money homeschoolers have saved Nevada, but how much the taxpayers sacrifice for a broken system and in how many areas homeschoolers surpass their public school counterparts.
I would like to see similar research in Iowa and every other state.
Filed under: education, family, homeschool, reviews, video
