Jim Horn of Schools Matter pored through the 200-page document describing the plan for the immediate future of the Memphis public schools, and this is what he learned.
The Memphis schools will be merged with the schools of Shelby County, allegedly for efficiency. But in fact, the plan is to implement a massive transfer of students to charter schools.
By 2016, a mere four years from now, enrollment in charter schools will increase from 4% to 19%. This will happen not because parents or students have asked to be assigned to charters but because the planners want it to happen (one guess as to who devised the plan).
This will result in a handover of $212 million of public funds to privately managed charter schools.
That is, $212 million will be removed from the budget of the public schools and transferred to charter schools whose governance is private and not subject to local, democratic control.
The plan acknowledges that costs will be greater “due to loss of scale” and the introduction of multiple managers, but cost savings will realized by such measures as teacher layoffs and the replacement of experienced (expensive) teachers with inexperienced and less expensive teachers. If the teacher layoffs and other strategies are insufficient to save money, there is a contingency plan to add to savings by laying off 115 librarians.
The plan was devised by a “transition planning committee.” The secretary of the committee happens to be the executive director of Stand for Children (are you surprised?).
Tennessee is a state with a Republican governor and a Republican legislature. The state commissioner of education is Kevin Huffman, who previously worked for Teach for America (and yes, readers, he is Michelle Rhee’s ex-husband). The “Achievement School District,” which is taking charge of the state’s lowest performing schools, is run by Chris Barbic, a TFA alum who created the Yes Prep charter network in Houston.
It is simply mind-blowing to watch this small cadre of people who are associated with TFA, Gates, Broad, Stand for Children, and the Walton Foundation colonize and privatize America’s public schools. Who elected them?
Diane
P.S. In a comment to this post (scroll down to find it), a resident of Memphis who is also a director of Stand for Children wrote to disagree with Jim Horn’s description and with my reactions to it. This comment added the commission’s summary, linked below. I read it and did not see a justification for the large expansion of privately managed charter schools. If charter schools don’t get different results from public schools, as the preponderance of studies show, what’s the point of shifting over $200 million out of the public schools. Nor was it apparent from the commission summary why the public schools could not offer universal pre-K or the other initiatives here proposed. Then I noticed that the background work for the commission was prepared by the Boston Consulting Group, the same management consultants that recommended the privatization of 40% of Philadelphia’s public schools. I found that more worrisome than Jim Horn’s account. (Mitt Romney’s old firm, Bain, was a spin-off from the Boston Consulting Group.)
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@Jim Horn, First, I simply lend my support to what Martha, Ginger, Chris and others have said in strong support and recognition of SFC Memphis and the TPC’s overall efforts. Although not nearly as dedicated as they are, my wife and I are also proud members of SFC and proud parents of MCS students. Second, for whom are you such a redundant, shrill, patronizing mouthpiece? That answer would inform us all re your own bias and puppetmaster(s). Although from the opposite end of the spectrum, your dogged repetition of the same extreme, sensational talking points ad nauseum remind me of the stomach-turning “right-wing nut job” Tea Partiers who have seized control of the Republican Party, grinding our Congress to a practical standstill and rolling out state legislation that is simultaneously depressing, disturbing and sometimes draconian. Education – like all of the issues critical to our country and our communities’ future – is complex. To make progress and affect positive change, complex issues require nuanced, open-minded deliberation focused on reaching realistic solutions. Such solutions will necessarily require compromise, and often there will be winners and losers. I suspect the answer to my question above may place you and yours in the latter group. Obviously, this is a blog favorable to your views and, in and of itself, it’s a great example of the First Amendment in action. However, your extreme criticism of SFC Memphis and the TPC – and the individuals who serve in those organizations – is, like death panels in “Obamacare,” false (i.e., a lie). And your dogma is offensive, tiresome and non-productive. That being said, I share some of your concerns about the role of charter schools in Memphis and elsewhere, and their propensity to distract from funding and improving public education. Regarding Memphis, however, I do not share your apocalyptic view, and I am confident in the TPC’s and the Unified School Board’s good faith, as well as in SFC Memphis’s – our – intention and ability to hold them and other relevant government officials accountable.
For someone who is entirely bamboozled by the propagandists of SFC (Stand for Corporations), which gets it political and financial support from the same corporate foundations that now run your incredible shrinking school system, I can understand your consternation and suspicion of someone who clearly doubts the wisdom of the economists and lawyers from the Gates, Broad, and Hyde Foundations.
Unlike the SFC and its propagandists, professional influence peddlers, and political money shovelers, I have no corporate, union, think tank, or any other funding outside of my paycheck from Cambridge College. My blog, Schools Matter, doesn’t even post ads. I think you will find my views are quite my own–and well researched.
I am a Tennessean by birth with almost 20 years experience in Tennessee public schools, and I am committed to returning the public schools to the control of the public, rather than the Business Roundtable and the Billionaire Boys Club. I am also committed to those unfortunate “losers” that you summarily dismissed as part of your zero sum game that functions to maintain power and privilege for those who already have it.
You have been very specific about the area we might find agreement, but your blanket statement that I am a liar with no specifics to back it up speaks for itself.
And if I may add, that’s not a very Christian attitude, Mr. Leopard, and certainly not the kind of verbal behavior I would expect of a Southern church man like yourself. I am appalled, I tell you. Appalled.