A reader offers this comment, responding to the Washington Post article about the incredibly high expulsion rate from DC charter schools:
Bad kids need education too. The Good kids still in Public Non-Charter schools need education too. I am going to go out on a limb and suggest that it seems highly unlikely that you have a dog in either fight. I don’t either as I am here in Detroit area where they are doing the opposite, setting up a shadow state wide system to warehouse the “Worst and the Dumbest” as a separate but unequal system entirety in the name of reform but in reality to speed up privatization of for profit schools, to make big bucks for the future owners who are polishing up their computerized learning systems so they can eliminate educated teachers and replace them with Armed Security guards as part of the fast track “School to Prison” train. I bet you think this is some wild conspiracy theory. Sadly, it is not and if you search “EAA” and “Michigan Schools” you will see that it is true.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
3 paths for the “choice” the masses would be stuck with: 1) Prison, and behind razor-wire manufacturing work for “3 hots and a cot” (ala’ sweatshop labor that will attract foreign “investment); 2) Low wage clerical/service work to support the mechanisms that allow the wealthy to live comfortably; 3) Military-to promote U.S. “interests” and security.
So true, Dan. I agree totally.
we’re well on our way to this scenario
One the whole the military is not the dumping ground for our youth as it may have been in the past when judges would offer the Marines or prison. It offers fantastic training opportunities and eventually education. Having been on both sides of the military perimeter fence I offer that the military can be a good option for many but not for those unwilling to work hard physically and mentally.
However, just like our students sometimes the ones you think will wash out the first week end up being some of the finest NCOs and Officers you’ll ever meet. ROTC is another excellent path for students in high school to help them gain the self-confidence and self-discipline for college and once at college ROTC offers a great deal of leadership and positive role models.
I was never in ROTC but I saw the difference in the new troops coming in during their orientation training and was impressed by the caliber of the ROTC cadets. Some came from scarily tough home situations and they would credit their high school ROTC group with giving them the support they did not have at home to get through high school.
Please do not treat the military as a negative option. Even one tour can be what a kid needs to get them out of their home life and give them a perspective that may be eye-opening.
Yet, “to promote U.S. “interests” and security” suggests you find it a less than honorable profession. Veterans have been fighting this attitude since Korea. Military service and being a veteran is tough enough without people telling us we are bad for being in wars, defending the U.S. or being placed in situations that are politically charged. We aren’t there because we like killing people.
Still confused, eh!
They don’t call it basic training for nothing because that is what the military does, trains people to accept killing others with whom they have no beef. Training is not the same as educating. We can train many animals to do many things but it doesn’t mean they are educated.
Yes, it is a negative option!
“Even one tour can be what a kid needs to get them out of their home life.”
Yes, and straight to the after-life.
And this: “We aren’t there because we like killing people.”
Then why do we keep making so many enemies? You do realize that nearly every “terrorist” has specifically cited U.S. aggression in Muslim countries as the reason for their acts, right? If some foreign country were drone bombing the snot out of you, your family, your neighbors and your fellow religious believers, what do you think you might be? I don’t know that we “like killing people” but we sure do like war.
I still think my foster son could have benefited from joining the military, but he was not able to score high enough on the exams.
It all goes back to who is advocating for these students. Based on our experience as arts educators having worked for 20 years with students on Rikers Island in New York City, we have found that most parents and teachers of incarcerated students are not advocating for these youths.
Instead of teaching to kids’ strengths, we are taught to teach to their weaknesses and categorize them into meaningless categories such as “Far below basic” “Basic” and so on. It is quite disgusting. But it is all in preparation for our downward spiral into a corporate oligarchy. Well educated people don’t want to work for 8 bucks an hour so the solution is to well, have less educated people while at the same time blaming public school teachers for the “school to prison pipeline.” And if we’d only just “teach the standards,” everything would be just fine. Meanwhile, charter schools toss kids out like crazy.
We’re already in a corporate oligarchy.
Here is the formula: LD,ED,JD=Jail
Inclusion before readiness with a deliberate and well designed plan to push them
through, net them up, and create a low wage earner, rebuild the infrastructure and
manufacturer environment with an economic incentive, and a different slant on a
return to slavery for the poor, disenfranchised, challenged and special education
learners. Little to no identification of the learning disabled. Identified will get minimal
assistance, build frustration to emotionally disturbed, the streets can calim them,
and many will end up in jail or social services.
The For Profit Prisons have been put in place, the technology is ready,
the market share financial community is ready to spring for the education share of
the federal budget, so forth and so on! There is even the incentive to take the draw
down of the military for those that fit both the education needs and the police presence
wanted and plug them into the education formula for a new model. Brilliant and
diabolical and very real and on a fast track!!! Kids are no more then a commodity
for global and government workforce needs.Charters are the sorting mechanism to
find the value added learners and the rest returned to the public schools that have been soaked of their budgets and left with the most challenged students. Humanitarian and education interests as we would like to believe exists is past history. What a sad and creatively vacuoiusfuture for millions upon millions of children. Shame!!!!!
This is not new and has been going on for at least twenty five years at break net
speed. In fact, 1947 in an NEA paper talks about school being community clinics.
Oh Well!!! Here we are!! It has come to pass.
If the world is not about people but robots and widgets, and the children are
separated from each other as if in a herd for the defective to be discarded and
the good to best for the gifts….then we have lost our way and now at the gates
of tomorrow should at least fight to end the hypocrisy and reverse for the sake
of humanity.
Ronee: We are now at the gates of hell. But we WILL push back!
I do believe your reader. It’s not a shadow system. It’s a parallel to compare after 10-20 years. That way, the entire US public system will be under private entities so that whole school populations can turn into inner-city prison systems and outer-city academic/vo-tecs.
When New Jersey ramped up QSAC (Quality Singular Accountability Continuum), it was clear that they wanted to privatize all schools. Then if certain schools wanted more funding to keep the worst population, they could make that choice freely. If teachers choose to teach in those schools, they would be paid well. But that is the only arena in which they will teach for most or all of their careers.
In higher-performing private schools, friends and associates of business leaders, or the “owners of the schools” will be the teachers with competitive salaries, better benefits, professional development, and the ability to be competitive across a better landscape. We saw this four to five years ago in New Jersey. What’s happened since then? Tenure has all-but-died, and now the merit pay movement is gaining momentum. Be competitive and build your skills. Get as many certifications as possible in the areas you want to teach. Credentials are key as well.
Teachers will also have to be able to draw in grants and monies from the very circles they are recruited from. All in all, teachers at the elementary levels will have to be as focused as professors at the college level, because our schools will most likely privatize or be state-run facilities within the next 10 years – if that long. It’s that simple.
This commenter is right on the Money so to speak. The prison industry is also a profit maker for the same crew. They do not care how they make the money, just give it to us. ALEC has helped write laws to send more to jail to feed the prison industrial complex with revenue generators, people. This is all a part of zero tolerance another failed ideological game. K-12 is the main generator for the prison industrial complex so why not make it on both sides? At LAUSD in 2010-11 over 102,000 students did not come to school everyday. You know they were on the street and many are getting into trouble. In 2002 when LAUSD had 156,000 more enrolled students than in 2010-11 only 14,500 did not come to school everyday. Now you tell me how does something that dramatic happen in only 8-9 years? Accident or plan is the question. I say plan as they are really not that dumb.
State run prison systems also create incentives for longer incarceration. Here is an NPR story about overcrowding in California. One of the major causes is the three strikes law. A major political backer of this law is the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. Link: http://www.npr.org/2009/08/13/111843426/folsom-embodies-californias-prison-blues
Even misery is a commodity. How do the “reformers” sleep at night?
It is really terrible. Families are broken up as the children’s mothers get caught up in the prison/parole system through a continuous stream of fees, fines, and punishment (jail). It is like “I was a prisoner on a chain gang” and debt peonage all in one. How did this happen to our rural areas?
Burned out, poorly supported and over loaded court systems with the 3 strikes laws for minor drug offenses. Prisons run for profit. NO re-education or drug programs, RARE reintroduction programs and offenders go right back out into the same home and situation they left, but now they have learned new and worse behavioral and social skills from other inmates. Juvenile courts systems are a mess. I went and sat in several court rooms for an entire day each, so I could see for myself what was happening. It just about brought me to tears. The average time on each case was under 5 mins, and we are not a big city. Attorneys and judges followed a well worn script but by the end of the day I could not see or think of any other choice. The court was a constant ebb and flow of parents and kids, some on their best behavior and others in shackles and hand cuffs depending on which courtroom I was in. Parents were terrified and/or so angry you could feel it.
Many looked like they could not afford the attorney, and the ones with money brought their own. I gave up counting how many cases went through.
I worked for a year prior to entering the classroom at a local rural prison as a job readiness educator for prisoners 17-25. 100% were illiterate due to learning disabilities, truancy and in so many cases no glasses-these kids sat in classrooms for years unable to see, afraid to admit it, knowing their parents had no money for glasses. They were manipulative, wary and immature. We graduated 2 classes that year, it was timed so they were in the program for 5 months just prior to release. I left that summer as most of them were re-arrested.
They went home to the same poor, struggling family they left, with a prison record so no one would hire them, barely literate-I had them for 5 months!
There is a Brad Paisley song about leaving your Southern Comfort Zone. I think one of the requirements for public office or an elected position should be being air dropped into the real world. If you want to hold public office in the USA then you have to work for one year in a real and authentic world as well as meet the age and income and residency requirements. I would love to have Jindal watch my 8th graders while I walk slowly to the bathroom!
IF you have never seen poverty you have no idea what these kids live with day after day after day. I work with teachers who are killing themselves trying to help every kid they can and others who think illiteracy is a problem only for lazy people, poverty is because people due drugs or are feeding off welfare. No public transportation, no help with clothing, and no childcare you can afford will certainly keep the poor living in poverty.
Here in the south if you stay on the big highways you will never see what is just behind those trees!
What are the consequences of allowing a private corporation to manage both prisons and schools? Robert Reich, in his book Supercapitalism, states that future corporate managers will have little incentive to provide for general social needs. Their focus will be on minimizing consumer cost, maximizing shareholder income, and following regulations. So consider the quandary of a future CEO managing both private schools and prisons where he knows that he can increase prison population and profits by cutting per student cost in his private schools.
This could be easily dealt with by prohibiting firms that own schools from owning prisons. Governments do this sort of regulation all the time.