William Mathis, managing director of the National Education Policy Center, wrote this post for the Blog.

“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”

A Closer Look at the Changing School Privatization Claims

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​Flashed on a 1939 version of a jumbotron, the great and mighty Wizard of Oz appears, wreathed in great billows of green smoke, as a reverberating announcement commands Dorothy, the Tin man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion to “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Of course, as we all know, the mighty wizard was all pretense, magnification, and illusion flanked by great balls of fire.

​And so it has been. The privatization wizards have issued countless press releases saying that charter schools In Boston, Florida, Chicago or almost anywhere else are a great success because of standardized test score increases.

For years this omnipresent claim is that turning schools over to…