A Chicago City Council Committee gave approval to a plan by Mayor Rahm Emanuel to double the $17 million the Chicago Public Schools currently spends on pre-K education. Critics of the plan complain about most of the plan's cost going to investors who are loaning the City money to fund the program.
Goldman Sachs, a foundation controlled by the billionaire Pritzker family and Northern Trust may be paid 6.3% interest over 18 years on the so-called social impact bonds that will be issued to finance the $17 million investment, costing $34.5 million in repayments. That provision has drawn the ire of the teachers' union, which was headed by Emanuel's biggest critic and potential political foe, Karen Lewis, until she was sidelined with a malignant brain tumor.
Emanuel claims the Chicago schools will save $300 million over the duration of the children's education who benefit from the pre-K education by avoided special education expenses. Payments of $3,650 will be made for each child enrolled in the program who meet testing standards heading into kindergarten and third grade. Expect rigged testing results. These people never lose on their investments.
Can these billionaire education profiteers get any more shameless?
1 comment:
The test results only have to be better than low income, minority kids who did not go to pre-k and are not in magnet or charter schools. So, yes, they will be rigged results by design.
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