Thanks for giving this bill its own thread, Eric--everyone should be keenly aware of its passage.

You may have noted some conversation on it previously, buried in this thread , after "min(not verified)" brought it to my attention. There, I linked both the bill's new text and TCA's existing text, so that readers can puruse section-by-section what changes the bill imposed.

Tennessee's opening charter schools of any type to for-profit corporations is a huge hole in the dike, so I'm certainly upset to hear about this one.

If you'll follow those previous comments/links, it looks like Chris Whittle's Edison Learning is also in line to nab a piece of this profitable pie.

On-line, I learned Edison Learning, now located downtown (a block from the AJ Buidling) is presently recruiting for staff in its Knoxville office.

And Jamie Woodson, with whom I've never really had any beef, has been just a huge disappointment this legislative session.

I gotta say, she can't leave the legislature soon enough to suit me.

Well, this is from a different direction, but ThinkProgress posted a report of some of the billionaires that want to destroy public education and are doing so via the voucher scheme. Is HB1030 another tentacle of the same octopus?

But, back to the for-profit education companies v. public education. What should one expect when the party in control is under the impression that the so-called private sector is much better at a job than the government sector?

...with her appointment to SCORE. You should have seen her voting on some of this nonsense in the Senate Education Committee. She kept her face turned away from the crowd attending and voted in this tiny little voice. I wanted to stand up and shout at her, "Have at least enough courage to pass on the vote, rather than vote against your conscience and good sense, you appalling sell-out."

Who said families shouldn't work together? Working together is the hallmark of the magnanimous Miliken family and the TN ledg is anxious to impose those boys' family values on our school kids. Convicted felon Michael Miliken and his brother Lowell, can smell money, oops, I mean learning opportunities, in every facet of TN's public education system. One's an expert in virtual academies and the other is pitting teachers against each other with the TAP merit pay system. But convicted felons are people, too, so the TNLeg decided to forgive and forget.
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Not to be outdone, Lamar's own Edison Schools ((link...)) can teach the Governor how to make up the difference just in case Edison accidentally overcharges taxpayers. Haslam need look no farther then Jeb Bush's blueprint for crisis management. Simply raid the teacher's retirement fund, like he did for Edison CEO, Chris Cerf in FL. It should be easy since Ramsay kicked the teacher reps off of the TCRS board. Here's a little background on Edison's last CEO who is now commissioner of education in NJ under GOP's great white hope gov Chris Christie:
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A little background: Cerf was originally employed by Edison Schools, a for-profit charter management chain, between May 1997 until April 2005, rising to be the President and COO of the company. Though in many cases they used pressure tactics to charge districts more than average per pupil funding for their services, Edison utterly failed to make a profit or to create effective schools.

The company was eventually saved from bankruptcy when it was taken private in 2003, in a buyout by a private company called Liberty Partners, a deal facilitated by Jeb Bush, who as Governor of Florida, invested billions of the state teacher’s pension fund in the company at the same time.

I guess this is how Haslam is earning his education-reformer cred. It's not what you know it's who your daddy knows.

Kids in prison would be a great revenue stream for virtual schools:

Several hundred families have filed a class-action lawsuit against two former judges whove pleaded guilty to taking bribes in return for placing youths in privately owned jails. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are said to have received $2.6 million for ensuring juvenile suspects were jailed in prisons operated by the companies PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care. Some of the youths were jailed over the objections of their probation officers. An estimated 5,000 juveniles have been sentenced by Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2002.