OlsonOnline

Hypocrisy

Or more aptly, in the case of Corbett School District Superintendent Bob Dunton, a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Dunton, who has proposed a charter school for Corbett in order to boost enrollment, is "irked" that neighboring districts, namely Reynolds and Gresham, are offended by the proposal.  He calls the objections unethical:

"I wasn't going to let them take kids who want to be here, whose parents want them to be here," ... Dunton said. "Kids are not a means to an end, to financially support you as a district. That is unethical."

But that's precisely what Dunton's charter school proposal is, a "means to an end, to financially support" the Corbett School District.  He said so:

"...Dunton said he feared his 10-year quest to make the 700-student district a success would stall if schools in Gresham, Fairview, Troutdale and east Portland stopped allowing their students to transfer to Corbett."

Voila!  A K-12 Charter Academy that will merely mimic the programs up and running in the existing K-12 school.  Corbett already relies on transfers for a quarter of its enrollment.  The new charter will allow it to increase enrollment by an additional 300 students, each bringing in about $5K to district coffers.

The best part of the charter plan is that state law allows any student to enroll in a charter school --it doesn't matter where they live.

That's clearly a surefire financial "means to an end". 

Supposedly Corbett offers a superior learning environment to neighboring districts.  Maybe so.

But that's not so surprising given Corbett's small size and its lilly white demographics.  According to the Oregon Department of Education, 92% of its 700 students are white.

That will go a long way toward boosting a school's reputation.

Cutting through the crap on health care reform

From T.R. Reid's piece in yesterday's Washington Post exposing the myths undermining the argument for American health care reform:

"The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage."

In other words, no country with national health care allows private for-profit insurance companies to profit from the provision of basic health care.

Don't you think that prohibition, in and of itself, would slash the obscenely high cost of health care in this country by 20%? 

At least?

The private insurance companies in Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and Switzerland don't seem to have a problem with the "no profit" rule on basic health care.  Why then should America's private insurers?

So, President Obama, there's your message --get the profit out of basic health care!  Start with that and leave behind the incessant chatter about public options and health co-ops.

Maybe that will break the stalemate in the House and the Senate.