This parent was not opposed to charters. She didn’t pay much attention to battles over school issues, although her own children attend a public school in Los Angeles.
But when she realized that millions of dollars were flowing into the school board race, many from out of state, she began to realize that something big was going on.
She realized that the big money was interested in something other than its stated aims. She realized that the rhetoric of “reform” was a cover for privatization of public goods:
“This election, with its shockingly outsized spending has revealed a hidden agenda, as old as the hills. With massive institutions and systems is embedded the opportunity for equally massive personal gain. Prerequisite is private control, wrenched from what was formerly public, democratic governance. Couching this banality of greed in educational ideology has been an effective strategy, but tonight’s results suggest a whisper of increasing awareness and resistance to uncontrolled and unbridled, unjustified change.
“Because the evidence is starting to pour in. The Reform School agenda which seeks to install privately setup small, isolated, corporately run charter schools are at best no worse than their public counterparts, and reach a small, select subset of the public besides. They result in breathtaking segregation and privation and an impoverished educational landscape. They leach public resources. Unaffordable, now, are the rich opportunities of varied educational “services” like music programs and art programs, lending libraries and speech and behavioural therapists. This School Reform Emperor has no clothes, and the evidence while slow to come in, is arriving at last.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks, Diane. I have a friend in LA who is a parent – I will forward this to him and others.
Because I worked on the campaign friends and family are calling and emailing from all over the country to “congratulate.” What amazes me is that they are so much better INFORMED about the issues than they were a month ago. And I’m beginning to see articles, like one in Alternet the other day: “Why Sending Your Child to a Charter Hurts Other Children” (with quotes from Diane, of course!). It emboldened me to ask my daughter, who is worried about the “prison-like” public school that my angel granddaughter would go to in two years, “If that school is too dangerous for her, it is too dangerous for the hundreds of children who go there every day. Who will advocate for them if not you?”
Has this election awakened a sleeping dragon?
“If that school is too dangerous for her, it is too dangerous for the hundreds of children who go there every day. Who will advocate for them if not you?”
Beautiful, thank you!
There are good signs that people are becoming more aware, but what is lacking is a political party to champion the cause of public education and denounce the efforts to feed from the public trough.
The sad thing is that 50 years ago public education for the public good was so much a part of American lore that both parties championed the public schools. There were debates, of course, there were always debates about the quality of the schools, whether to allow prayer, about questions of race — but no one doubted the importance of a universal system of public education run by people who made it their profession.
Now both political parties seem willing to abandon what may be the greatest achievement the US can claim — creating a system of public education that allows for at least some social mobility for a significant portion of its population and serves as the lynchpin of Democracy.
The Republican path has been clear for decades — they believe, or would have us believe, that the profit motive and models based on the market improve public education when the inevitably distort its goals and mission. Beginning with the stalking horse that was the early Standards movement, then called for us (under GHWBush) to redefine ‘public’ so that ‘public school’ meant ‘school that receives public money,’ moving on to the other Bushes to labeling schools as ‘failing,’ so that they could later justify setting up sets of private franchises.
And the Democrats have been not much better, accepting the rhetoric of a crisis in American Education and offering up solutions to this non-existent crisis which do not resolve the true problems of poverty, but dissolve public institutions and set the stage for a far greater crisis — the demise of the very idea of a true democracy.
They have accepted that markets are the only way and rejected the model of a civil service that is professional, creates its own standards and can be entrusted with the job of educating our children, not because the model doesn’t work, but because there is money awaitin’. They’ll leave it to the White Hats of the world, who will homogenize education the way White Castle and McDonald’s homogenize food.
The arrogance and elitism of our leaders, especially the current President, who could have made a difference, leads them to believe that good schools are like the ones they attended — schools that keep bad students out.
Hey, Obama’s still got four years to change is mind and stick up for public schools and denounce the privatization of the greatest school system in the world. The choice is in his hands, and history may remember him on this issue, beyond anything else he does.
I’m afraid Obama is not the type to care about his legacy so much as he is the type to care about his current power.
Bill Clinton has earned an estimated $200 million dollars since he left the White House in 2000, as payment for services rendered while in office: NAFTA, elimination of AFDC and the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
These three events alone resulted in billions of dollars in profits, and the radical shift of power and wealth from Labor to Capital in recent years.
With that as a prelude, just imagine Obama’s prospective payday if he is successful in undermining Social Security and Medicare, and handing the public schools over to his 1/10 of 1% constituents.
That said, congratulations to the people of Los Angeles. Maybe the privateers are in for increasing resistance to their looting of the common wealth.
Would you please forget about Obama? An earlier commenter asked, “can we move on?” Yes, WE can–so work on fixing your part of the world, & it will spread, town by town, state by state, without Obama’s help.
The spinning on this election in both the L.A. Times and Daily News is astounding. First they are not making it easy to understand the massive difference of money behind the two groups of candidates meaning those for privatization and corporatization such as Garcia, Anderson and Nury’s former seat. The privatizers spent more than 5X more money. Garcia, board president won by 56%. If that a big win when she spent millions and someone like Skeels had at most $20,000? She should have run away with the store and did not. In the Zimmer case he won by 2.1% and Anderson had vastly more money to spend. What most do not know in the Zimmer case is that Jeneen Robinson, who was a write in candidate who was not on the ballot as someone played games with her signatures, asked her supporters to vote for Zimmer. She did this to prevent what I call the “Nader Syndrome.” It looks like that worked. Those without much have won two big ones here in L.A. lately and they are we stopped Measure J for $90 billion and Kate Anderson was stopped also without much money. Money is not always the determining factor even though it is a big one especially with our corrupt Supreme Court. It looks like we are going to have a runoff in the Valley for that Board seat. Now is the time nationally to come out and stop this right here in L.A. since they picked this as ground zero.
Sorry, off-topic, but Eric Zorn is tepidly approaching the education debate again. He could really use some nudging to get on our side. http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2013/03/class-size-and-school-day-debates-feel-similar-to-me.html#comments
Take a look at this article by Susan Ohanian. Wowzer and right on.
http://www.dailycensored.com/duncan-and-gates-plan-documercial-gotcha/
Everything you say is true. I think the more clear it becomes that the people do not want privatization it will force the news media to cover the popular angle of support for local public schools controlled by local people. You could see glimmers of this when Stephanopolous interviewed Rhee. I think the days of all out bashing teachers may be coming to an end. But who knows, the people who want to steal teacher’s pensions probably won’t give up easily.
It’s time for awakening parents to get involved http://unitedoptout.com/