In today’s day and age, individuals or corporations with a lot of money generally have a lot of power in the government. This is because, in the government, money is synonymous with power. Corporations and wealthy individuals have recently started expanding their influence to encompass the education system. With people that don’t know what they are talking about in positions of power, the education system is slowly crumbling, as the needs of the school and the needs of the students grow ever farther from the needs of the corporations. Schools want to provide for their students, students want to actually learn material, but the corporations want to create an education system that is better at making workers, better at finding future workers,
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The problem of having corporations take over the public education space is so great that there is a group called “In the Public Interest” and they track such corporate involvement in public services. Michelle Davis, a specialist in educational technology, writes in her article about the various laws passed and actions taken by the corporations to gain money and she was able to obtain information from In the Public Interest. In the Public Interested looked into states such as Florida, Louisiana, Maine, and New mexico and found from emails that “companies worked through the nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education, a Tallahassee, Fla.-based advocacy group, to help get lawmakers to set new policies and pass education laws friendly to the companies ' business interests…” (Davis, 1). What is beneficial to the future of the company will always come before what is beneficial to the students, but this does not matter to corporations, not when they are hauling in millions of dollars because of these lucrative education laws. In the Public Interest has shown that a nonprofit organization in Florida was used to “[help] write legislation to increase the use of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, a $250 million contract Pearson Education holds.” (Davis, 1). Those kinds of deals are the reason why corporations have gotten involved and continue to increase their involvement in the education system. The corporations have the power and the money to create laws, deals, and programs that bring in a massive amount of revenue for the corporation while the schools must move potential money from other supplies or needed materials towards this test. The money gained by the company is two-fold. As the use of the test increases, so too will the use of test prep
The problem of having corporations take over the public education space is so great that there is a group called “In the Public Interest” and they track such corporate involvement in public services. Michelle Davis, a specialist in educational technology, writes in her article about the various laws passed and actions taken by the corporations to gain money and she was able to obtain information from In the Public Interest. In the Public Interested looked into states such as Florida, Louisiana, Maine, and New mexico and found from emails that “companies worked through the nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education, a Tallahassee, Fla.-based advocacy group, to help get lawmakers to set new policies and pass education laws friendly to the companies ' business interests…” (Davis, 1). What is beneficial to the future of the company will always come before what is beneficial to the students, but this does not matter to corporations, not when they are hauling in millions of dollars because of these lucrative education laws. In the Public Interest has shown that a nonprofit organization in Florida was used to “[help] write legislation to increase the use of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, a $250 million contract Pearson Education holds.” (Davis, 1). Those kinds of deals are the reason why corporations have gotten involved and continue to increase their involvement in the education system. The corporations have the power and the money to create laws, deals, and programs that bring in a massive amount of revenue for the corporation while the schools must move potential money from other supplies or needed materials towards this test. The money gained by the company is two-fold. As the use of the test increases, so too will the use of test prep