District officials say they are closing schools to save money, but experience has shown that the savings seldom occur. They claim the schools are under-utilized even as they open charters to compete with the public schools for which the officials are responsible. The officials help the charters to grow and simultaneously harm the public schools. They are negligent in their duty to the children and to the public. They should be held accountable for their failure to promote, preserve, and support a democratic institution entrusted to their care. It is the school officials who have failed, not the schools.
A reader sends this. Please read it:
“Testimony from Kate Shaw Executive Director of Research for Action along with their issue brief on schools closings, detailing the impacts of school closings that district officials often neglect to take into account:
1) On the short-term financial savings, district officials often neglect to account for transition cost, maintaining and selling properties, etc which cut into the savings and sometimes come at a cost to the district.
2) Savings from school closures come primarily from large-scale cuts in faculty not from not having to heat “half-empty buildings. ”
3) The most important is that there are short-term negative impacts on students’ academic achievement, unless they are put in higher performing schools which is rarely the case.
Additionally students often feel a sense of neglect while districts fail to prepare the receiving school for the influx on new students.
Testimony: http://bit.ly/13yICRV
Issue Brief on Schools Closings: http://bit.ly/13CAUuN
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How is it that I became so well educated 50 years ago. There were no computers and the ball point pen was just becoming popular. Many teachers were qualified with a 2 year degree. Then I taught school and had to become “well qualified” with more than a masters degree along with everyone else and the schools began to fail. The schools failed by design to open the way for charter schools etc. so corporations could find another source of profit.
The schools are “failing” because of the test scores that show us as 27th in math and reading in the world, or whatever our current number is. No on mentions that thses test scores include all children, regardless of special ed status. Other countries that score higher than us often track their lower-perfroming children into tech schools, and these kids don’t take the tests. We’re comparing American apples to the world’s oranges.
I would love to compare the cream of our crop to the world’s cream and see where we really rank. If we were so dismal, why are we still producing the world’s greatest innovations: ipads, iphones, facebook, etc. These things may be produced in China or Tiawan, but they were invented here. We must be doing something right.
My cousin has a phD in engineering, and he attended public schools k-bachelor’s degree. In Florida schools!!! We’re supposed to be so awful down here, but I know many successful people who came from public schools.
exactly, there was no guided reading, mini-lessons, turn and talk, data binders, conferencing, smart boards, scaffolding, Lucy Calkens,
Charlotte Danielson, whole child, blah, blah, blah ad nauseum.
A whole lot of technology, theory, experts, the business people and very little if anything to show for it.
We’re all sail and no ballast!
Let us not neglect the $7.7 million needed to hire “safe passage” escorts for kids who now have to cross gang boundaries to go to different schools.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/19113214-418/cps-to-hire-more-safe-passage-patrols-to-watch-over-kids-going-to-different-schools.html?intcmp=emailheadlines
This commenter really knows what they are talking about. It is all about spin and getting people to commit to something before they know what is really happening.