Rob Lytle and the Parthenon group... Edu Industry profit scams are facilitated by NCLB, RTTT and the push for Common Core
The billions of ready cash from No Child Left Behind provided a dollar-powered incubator for the birth of the modern day education industry. State and local education agencies in search of quick solutions to meet NCLB�s impossible demands desperately turned to business solutions, ranging from direct instruction products to more expansive plans for corporatization of schools and school governance. NCLB�s focused control mechanism built on collection of test data and a primitive fear-based accountability provided a model for expansion of the education industry into higher education.
Rob Lytle of the Parthenon Group has been explaining how profits can be increased as the privatization of education is increased with the Common Core. When combined with the ideological incentives to gain control of unions, re-position the teaching profession within corporate boundaries, and establish total social control over poor and minority populations, the profit possibilities triggered by NCLB gained traction like never before in American education.
With $700 billion at stake each year in education spending, schooling has become big, big business, a fact that has made corporate control at the federal and state levels paramount in order to keep the revenue streams running. Among the most well-positioned and fattest parasites among a new consultant species is the Parthenon Group. Rob Lytle heads its �Education Practice,� which is strategically burrowed into a corporate governing bureaucracy that advises large swaths of K-22 educational institutions, both public and private.
What makes Parthenon�s position most interesting, however, is the fact that Lytle and the jackals under his watch take the information gleaned from advising schools and colleges in how to establish new techno-efficiencies to then create flashy powerpoints to share with hedge fund gangsters, ed industry profiteers, and venture philanthropists looking to steer public policy while collecting huge tax breaks to do so.
Here is what Lytle told a group of investors in Manhattan in 2012 about the coming bonanza from Common Core:
"Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools. . . . If they�re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They�ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it. . . You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up. It could get really, really big."
In 2009, Lytle declared in another powerpoint aimed at higher ed investors looking to make a killing in the online business that �all students are not equal�some are more profitable than others.�
And just yesterday, Lytle was in DC at the Education Industry Days Summit with another powerpoint, �Parthenon Perspectives: What is Next in K-12 - Digital is Coming!�
How do we know �digital is coming?� Because Lytle has been manufacturing opinion that says so. Here is his slide to prove that "district decision makers" prefer technology over decreasing class size:
No doubt Lytle has another presentation that he uses with school officials that says that "increased technology use" has been shown in research studies by the Gates Foundation to be cost effective in raising scores than lowering class size.
