Leslie T. Fenwick, dean of education at Howard University, argues that what is called school “reform” is really about urban land development, not about improving the lives of disadvantaged minority children. She says, follow the money to understand the “reforms.”
Dean Fenwick doesn’t mince words. She writes:
“The truth can be used to tell a lie. The truth is that black parents’ frustration with the quality of public schools is at an all time righteous high. Though black and white parents’ commitment to their child’s schooling is comparable, more black parents report dissatisfaction with the school their child attends. Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher conferences. Despite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor.
“The lie is that schemes like Teach For America, charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation-prepared superintendents address black parents concerns about the quality of public schools for their children. These schemes are not designed to cure what ails under-performing schools. They are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education.”
What is needed to change the stagnant status quo? Read the article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The last leg of the West Side 3-Day march in Chicago highlighted this issue quite starkly. We went through what used to be Cabrini Green, most of which is now highly gentrified and quite affluent. There remains, however, a few stretches of the old row houses and block apartment buildings. Manierre and Jenner are the last public elementary schools in that area and Manierre was slated to be closed. The kids would all have to go to Jenner even though there are major gang issues between the two schools. It was so obviously a ploy to drive out the (poor, black) people still living in those stretches of apartments and row houses so the rich whites can move in. At one place there is a pet massage place right across the street from some of the worst of the old block apartments. It was a pretty stark image.
Ms. Fenwick is absolutely right. Whether it is Wall Street and real estate developers taking advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit, or politically juiced charter operators being given free rein over public school facilities – as is taking place here in NYC, with the DOE in a racketeering conspiracy with edupreneur Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy chain, on the Board of which sits one of Harlem’s most active real estate developers – charters are, among many other things, a real estate play.
In support of what is being posited here, one only needs to review the landmark Supreme Court ruling in 2005 in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London. It is referred to as the “reverse Robin Hood case where land is taken from the poor and given to the rich.”
In this case a privately owned shopping center was taken by eminent domain and then sold by the city to a private corporation for redevelopment. This happened on the theory that the new development would bring more tax funding for the City.
Now this is extended by Chicago school closings, this appropriated property which indeed can be used for ostensible redevelopment…e.g. gentrification of the South Side.
Last night Charlie Rose interviewed Rahm Emanuel and the Mayor stressed his goals with his top priority being public education. He repeatedly spoke of how difficult it is to make change, but that his intention is to stick with it and keep his policy of school reform.
It is all very disheartening. Who can be trusted to work for The People…all The People?
Today, in Los Angeles, the LAUSD School Board is meeting to do budgeting, mainly of the huge new funding brought into the mix by the windfall of Prop. 30 which caused California taxes to be raised. Our Governor promised to focus distribution heavily in favor of inner city schools. The outcry from the suburbs is resounding. And now, Brown wants to spend the money mainly for implementing Common Core.
All over our county teachers and activists are beginning to emulate Chicago’s brave teachers, and committees and protest groups are being formed. It is a slow awakening in the second largest school district in the nation where Eli Broad has way too much voice and power…but I am hoping it will lead to a giant protest when our city realizes that we have the greatest amount of school closings in America, happening so quietly, fostered by Villaraigosa and Deasy, and leading to the highest number of charter schools .Putting facts before the public is difficult with so much controlled media and only one major newspaper, the LA Times, which Rupert Murdoch is intent on buying.
I know that Howard Blume reads this blog and I hope he will continue to focus on charter scams and Parent Revolution scams, all funded by the free market billionaires, Eli Broad, Rupert Murdoch, the Walton Family Foundation, etc. with the goal of making public education a free market opportunity.
I try to keep an open mind, but I can’t make any sense out of the arguments that school closures are part of some grand Lex Luthor-like real estate scheme. In Dienne’s version, school closures are a “ploy to drive out the (poor, black) people still living in those stretches of apartments and row houses so the rich whites can move in.” In Ellen’s version, the city is closing schools so it can “appropriate” the property and then sell or lease it to developers. In other versions I’ve seen on this blog, the goal is to increase blight to an unbearably high level so that property values are destroyed and then developers can swoop in and buy at rock-bottom prices. Is there any evidence that any of these theories are based in something other than paranoia?
Fenwick’s version actually has a logic to it. Her argument is that school reform policies are designed to *increase* the property values of gentrifying neighborhoods by devoting *more* public resources to those neighborhoods through the *opening* schools, and that these resources come at the expense of politically marginalized neighborhoods, whose schools are closed and/or privatized. I can at least follow that story. The others, not so much.
Flerp…it is just one more theory of why this privatization is happening so rapidly in communities across the country (which is right out of the Broad Academy play book). Since the subject was about urban land development, as with takeovers of public school land in poor neighborhoods, it brought to mind that the Kelo case which seemed relevant since this landmark SCOTUS decision was so well known as “the Robin Hood case in reverse.”
It is however exactly what has been happening to our economic life since at least the Reagan administration…take from the poor and give to the rich. Suggest Joseph Stiglitz’s book, The Price of Inequality.
Yes, Ellen, and not surprising, since Broad’s original fortune was made in real estate, developing white flight suburbs in Southern California.
He is also notorious for using his art world “philanthropy” in service of his personal interests, and is currently to control redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles.
Everything these people do with their money – which, needless to say, taxpayers subsidize – is underpinned by their economic and/or ideological interests.
Kelo was a “takings” case about the government’s authority to take private property for “public use.” I don’t see the connection here. Chicago’s authority to close public schools, or to sell or lease city property, does not rest on its powers of eminent domain.
More important, what property that currently houses schools slated for closure has Chicago indicated it will sell or lease to developers?
Pritzker’s abuse of her hotel housekeepers is comparable to her abusive acts toward school children by the closing of public schools for her own profit as well as for the charters she is invested in.
The Nation published: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174183/penny-pritzkers-commerce-part-one
“Penny Pritzker is building a Hyatt financed with $5.2 million in TIF funds. As the Chicago Teachers Union points out, the TIF fund is controlled personally by the mayor; members of the school board (from which Pritzker recently resigned ahead of her Commerce appointment), overwhelmingly his rich campaign backers, are personally appointed by the mayor; and nothing’s keeping them from leaning on the mayor to tap the TIF surplus to plug the school deficit—except the fact that this very deficit is the rhetorical foundation for all the things they’re doing to weaken the union. All in all, Penny Pritzker’s relationship with labor has become exponentially worse since her near-nomination in 2008.”