I'm Bill Moyers. It's good to have your ear. This week, Home Mortars & Company.

Historian and public advocate Diane Ravich says Wall Street wants to turn our schools into cash cows and milk them dry.

There are huge opportunities to make money. Now, I never thought a public education as an industry,

but the entrepreneurs do see it as an industry.

They see it as a national marketplace for hardware, for software, for textbook publishing, for selling, whatever it is they're selling,

and for actually taking over all of the roles of running a school.

Public education is an essential part of our democracy.

So an attack on public education is an attack on democracy. Thanks for joining us.

Charter schools are booming and controversial. There are now more than 6,000 across the country

double the number from just a decade ago. They're publicly funded,

but privately run. And whatever you think about the merit of charter schools versus public schools,

merit is no longer driving the debate. What's driving the debate is money. The charter movement

is now part of the growing privatization of public education

and Wall Street sees an emerging market. Take a look at this piece published last fall on

Forbes.com. Quote, dozens of bankers, hedge fund types, and private equity investors gathered to

discuss investing in for-profit education companies.

There's a potential gold rush here. Public education from kindergarten through high school

pulls in more than $500 billion in taxpayer revenues every year, and crony capitalists and

politicians alike are cashing in.

Example. In Ohio, two firms, both contributors to Republicans, operate 9% of the state's charter

schools and are collecting 38% of the state's charter school funding increase. In Philadelphia,

a Democratic stronghold, 23 public schools closed

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