This article by Jeff Bryant, Velislava Hillman is published by The Progressive Magazine. Here is an excerpt:

It’s going to be great,” Houston entrepreneur Jim McIngvale told a reporter about the charter school he was planning to open in August 2020. According to McIngvale, known locally as “Mattress Mack,” the new school—named Premier High School—would be located inside one of his businesses, Gallery Furniture, and offer Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses in automotive, electrical, welding, and carpentry.

While having part of a high school’s curriculum devoted to “valuable job training”—as McIngvale put it—might sound beneficial to students, some of that training is on-the-job at Gallery Furniture. McIngvale, in a pitch to prospective students, sketched out what this looks like in practice. His school is “going to train you for four days a week . . . That’s going to be free. You work for Gallery Furniture one day a week to pay off the, ah, equipment that you might need, tuition, whatever,” he said in a program broadcast on a local morning radio show.

So when McIngvale exclaims his school is “absolutely free,” what he really means is that he’s getting one day per week of free labor in addition to free workforce training, at taxpayers’ expense, for the students who graduate and decide to stay on as Gallery Furniture employees. It’s easy to see this setup as a racket; what’s less obvious is how Premier High School challenges the idea of a liberal arts education model, which consists of a holistic learning experience where students develop their creativity and critical thinking along with technical career knowledge and skills. Instead, the sole purpose of Premier, according to a local reporter, is to “get a job, keep a job, [and] help career advancement.”  

Find the full article through this link.