Pimping Our Children

Are we pimping out our children’s education just to help line the pockets of big business?

There’s a new movie in town called “The Cartel” that argues we are losing our children’s future because of a terribly rotting educational ecosystem that supports redlined administrators more than front line teachers.

My favorite quote from the film:

Why aren’t parents lighting fires an breaking windows?

Here’s a clip from the movie:

New Jersey offers a dramatic instance of this corruption and improvidence. After New York, no other state spends as much per pupil–but the Garden State has very little to show for its investment. Spending can exceed $400,000 per classroom, and yet only 39 percent of the state’s eighth-graders are proficient or advanced readers, and only 40 percent of its eighth-graders are proficient or advanced in math. Of new high school graduates attending the state’s community colleges, nearly 80 percent require remediation. More than three quarters of New Jersey’s high schools have been warned that they may be placed on the state’s list of failing schools. And the problem is not one of inadequate funding: Some of the worst schools receive–and squander–the most money.

“The Cartel” sounds alarms about the waste in our educational system.

Are we strong enough and serious enough to fix the system?

Or will we forever be broken and beholden to those who pass laws, secret the money under the table, and then personally profit from the underwhelming performance of a majority of minority students?