The current direction toward privatization in education is equivalent to outsourcing in the criminal justice system. The Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) is the criminal justice equivalent of the education privatization movement that is currently underway. CCA is a $1.8 billion company that builds and operates prisons and detention facilities on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the United States Marshals Service, and state and local agencies. All of their incentives are perverse. Maximizing revenue depends on "customers" and "repeat" customers. In the decade ending in 2012 CCA spent nearly $18 million lobbying various government agencies to keep the market robust. In their own SEC filing they wrote:

"The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them."

Read that excerpt carefully. CCA sees draconian drug laws and punitive immigration practices as good for business. Their interests are diametrically opposed to social justice. It takes only modest revision of the language of the SEC filing from CCA to imagine it coming from a charter organization:

"The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by proper funding of district public schools and decriminalization of certain activities that currently land young black fathers in jail, particularly with respect to drugs and controlled substances. Any changes that resulted in substantial job creation, fair wages and rebuilding of neglected urban communities might potentially reduce demand for alternative, impersonal "no excuses" facilities to house poor children."

Here too, the interests are diametrically opposed to social justice. To be fair, children in urban charter schools are not prisoners, despite "no-excuses" disciplinary practices that might seem prison-like. Even increasingly profitable charter management organizations are not going to benefit from recidivism. Education reformers do want children to succeed, at least on their own limited terms. But there is common ground with prison privatization along several dimensions. As education becomes privatized, the same perverse incentives arise. Ratcheting up class size and increased use of technology reduce labor costs. Reduced labor costs increase profit. The highly mechanized systems being developed by corporate reform are cost effective, replicable and scalable.

In short, many schools driven by education reform are really an aggressive manifestation of the industrial style of traditional education that has dominated education policy for more than a century. The difference - and it is a critical difference - is that this time it's also profitable.