Here is “choice” at its worst.
Cami Anderson, Governor Chris Christie’s pick to run the state-controlled Newark schools, is closing public schools to make way for charter schools. All children get new assignments.
The Tillman family used to attend the Newton Street school, across the street from their home. Their father, George Tillman, Jr., walked his five children to school every day. But under the “One Newark” plan, the five siblings were assigned to five different schools. After the father complained to News 12 New Jersey, a local television station, a school official moved all the children to the same school, the Dr. E. Alma Flagg School.
“Tillman believes he was vocal enough to get the chance, but others aren’t as lucky.
“I’m not the only family that’s been affected like this,” Tillman says. “There’s a lot of kids that are being dispersed throughout the city.”
So far, about 1,000 people have signed a petition demanding that the schools go back to local control. Some parents say they are going to boycott all the schools during September.”
This was not the Tillman family’s choice. They liked their neighborhood school. That choice was no longer available to them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Deformers claim to be the champions of children for the good of society, yet their hallmark is inhumanity.
Dear Diane, Friend of Bertis Downs’ here. Thought you might enjoy my attempt to share the importance of play and recess around the world through an organization I am honored to serve as a Board member and Communications Officer. We spent a year and a half working with the UN expanding the understanding of the importance of the child’s right to play and engage in arts and culture. The video was released in English and now is out in Arabic and French. Next up are Spanish and Chinese, followed by Hindi and 10 other languages.
Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHX0X36hbCn9pLrLvPhlVg and thanks for what you do. Best wishes, Cynthia
Cynthia Gentry Cynthia@PlayAtlanta.org (404) 200-0170 Founding Director Atlanta Taskforce on Play (ATOP) http://www.PlayAtlanta.org
Communications Officer International Play Association http://www.ipaworld.org Editor, PlayRights Magazine
Check out the VERY playful video at article31.IPAworld.org Join us at the IPA World Conference in Calgary Alberta Canada in 2017
and I thought LA was insane…
Let’s leave aside the question of charters for just a moment.
Does anyone in administration in Newark have a clue (ok, rhetorical) how hard it is to do a good job of opening a new school? You have to find staff, but they don’t know one another and haven’t had time to develop any kind of relationship with one another. No adult knows any of the kids. All are new to the building, so all are unfamiliar with its quirks and facility issues.
Then you have all the regular challenges of teaching.
Here in Boston, one of our K-8 schools has received all kinds of plaudits, such as “The Remarkable Turnaround Of The Orchard Gardens School.” This turnaround even included a hero principal as well as a visit from the one and only Arne Duncan and his boss, the President!
But it didn’t have to be that way. The union suggested that the school be opened on a staggered basis, beginning with K and first grade, as well as a sixth grade, then have grades added each year. It was also suggested that teams of teachers be recruited to work together so the whole construct would not have to be begun from scratch. That advice was dismissed; many of the teachers and administrators as well as the principal were novices and so the school was chaotic from the get-go. Some less-than-principled principals from other schools were said to have counseled the parents of their more challenging students that a brand new school was going to open in the fall and maybe little Freddie would be happier over there. Lots of Freddies showed up at the new facility where no one knew Freddie, Freddie’s challenges, Freddie’s mom or one another. Use your imagination – this is why there had to be a turnaround in the first place.
Not feeling like all the new schools opening in Newark are going to be shining stars.
You are on the right track Christine! The union sent us a letter that teachers are not to boycott because we can be fired. I still do not have my assignment at this late date.
Orchard Gardens is vitally important to Democrats, because they need a public schools they’ve actually “improved”.
After all, many people might not have voted for them had they known that “improving public schools” meant replacing them with privately-owned and privately-run schools, and setting up a new “governance system”.
I credit Republicans with open hostility to public schools. At least you know what you’re getting.
BTW, the hero principal has departed for greener pastures in the suburbs.
Another OMG!
I love this back and forth in the COMMENTS section.
(NOTE the compassion that “Rosemary” has for a man—thanks to privatization/charterization—is now forced to take his five children to five different schools… since he owns a car, Rosemary figures, he should just shut up and accept the new charterized / privatized Newark:
He commented, if two of his children were seriously injured at different schools, he would have to make a choice as which one was more important. CAPITALS are mine, Jack))
——————————————————————
Rosemarie Villanova · Top Commenter
“It may be hard for you and for Mr.Tillman, but everyone is always yelling about the lack of education their children are getting..This so makes sense to take them to Charters.. Children do so much better in Charter schools..
“WAKE UP AND STOP COMPLAINING ABOUT BEING INCONVENIENCED and do what is best for your children! and anyway Most parents wish they had the inconvenience of being able to drive their children to school..They can’t they leave for work at 7am and have to have them at preschool program…”
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Kevin Manofstrength Johnson
“Rosemary can I ask you two simple questions?
“1. Are you a longtime resident of Newark?
“And
“2., do you have any children that attended public school in Newark?
“And
“3., if you were ever raised in Newark, did you graduate from any of the public schools here?
“Those questions are key because only a Newark resident who is affected by this can truly say what’s best for their kid, especially if they’ve been raised in its educational system and did O.K.”
Jack,
Fewer than half the families in Newark own cars.
“Fewer than half the families in Newark own cars.”
———————–
Therefore what?
He should just shut up and accept all five siblings being assigned to five different schools? If you own a car, you’re not entitled to be upset or complain about that?
My point was Jack that it would be virtually impossible to get five children to different schools on foot and using public transportation. Siblings should be placed in the same school. I am against the One Newark plan as I have commented many times before.
Parents should be happy that their kids simply have schools to go to. New Jersey is going broke from $100 billion in unfunded public pensions. Moody’s said that NJ could have a financial collapse from pension costs in 4 years and it either has to raise taxes or make cuts to Medicare and education. If parents want to stop the school closings they should make suggestions to Christie how to pay off that $100 billion debt (with real money and not phantom stock market gains).
I hope you’re being sarcastic. You’re suggesting that Newark accept this ridiculousness, which will turn out to be more expensive in the long run, because they might not have schools at all????????!!!!! Perhaps you should suggest to New Jersey state lawmakers and the governor to not raid the pension funds for other projects, and to actually pay their portion into the pension fund in the first place. The pension mess is not the fault of the teachers, parents, or students, who have the right to have a decent education, regardless of what the state lawmakers are doing.
Your screenname says it all.
Interesting to see that JP Morgan Securities is using the Bear brand to branch into the comment thread business. Best of luck. The growth potential is high but the margins are terrible.
TAGOOOOO!
Wow.
This has for to be a cautionary tale for the rest of the country.
Did they ever reveal how this top-secret school assignment works or are we still just relying on the inherent goodness and honesty of this one individual?
What’s the formula for child-slotting? Do the parents know? I saw on their Website there’s some kind of appeals process. Who wrote that law and who hears the appeals? Any oversight there?
Boy, these better be some extraordinarily good people rewriting laws and setting up a quasi-public system. Absolutely no one checks their work.
So we’re going to set up all school systems exactly like New Orleans and pretend they’re local and specific to a city?
Add the national charter chains and public schools will be more uniform and standardized, not less.
I understand the family’s displeasure in losing the convenience of having their children enrolled at a school across the street, but the piece doesn’t mention whether they attempted to enroll them at a single school.
Tim, do you think the family wanted to enroll its five children in five different schools? You always come up with excuses for choice reforms that go bad. Whatever happened to “no excuses”?
Diane,
Many families, including mine, choose to enroll children at different schools even if they are age- and zone-eligible to attend the same school. I would not support a choice system that didn’t allow for siblings to attend the same school, but I think the little detail of what school(s) the parent actually chose is important. Whether or not the school across the street should have been closed or restructured is a separate issue.
I’m not following your comment about “no excuses”. I have no affiliation at all with charters; I live in New York City and my children attend NYC DOE schools.
Tim, the article says the father sought publicity to get all five of his children into the same school. He said if he had two simultaneous emergencies at different schools, he would have to choose only one to help. Do you need more proof than the father’s words and actions that he wanted all five in the same school?
There was another story of a parent in Newark with a special needs child who was slotted to go to a school clear across town, having to use public transportation to get there. This is not choice. This is forced.
From the attached article where it is implied that Tillman wanted his kids to go to the same school, from the One Network quote that says
” all his kids could go to the Dr. E. Alma Flagg School,” and from the various other corroborating Internet sources, it would be a morbidly-profound punctuated jump in logic to assume that the father didn’t want his kids to go to the same school.
Could you supply a link to a source showing that Tillman chose the same school for his kids using whatever application process was required by One Newark? All I found was that Tillman is joining the lawsuit against the district and that he has been a handy resource in the past for reporters looking for a parent to talk about how awful Cami Anderson is.
Chicago newspaper calls for better regulation of charter schools.
http://www.suntimes.com/m/29414902-773/kids-pay-the-price-for-weak-oversight-of-charter-schools.html#.U_3KU7xdVH0
It’s sad to watch this happen all over the country, because it’s been going on for 15 years in Ohio. I have news for people in Illinois. They will never re-regulate these schools. Either the regulations go in at the outset of the privatization plan, or they don’t go in at all.
Once you give lobbyists a chance to get embedded in a state legislature you won’t be able to remove them with a crowbar. Newspapers in Ohio have called for better regulation of charter schools for a decade. Nothing has happened. In fact, they’ve been expanded and further deregulated, and they’re now funded with property taxes which was never mentioned when ed reformers were selling them.
IL will join OH, PA, MI and FL in the states with no regulations for charter schools. I guarantee it.
Another reason for local neighborhood schools. Families should be able to go to the same schools as each other and their neighbors; that’s what builds community. How many of us went to school with our older sibling? Wasn’t it a great thing when you saw them? Especially when having a bad day, you always knew someone was there for you.
With the public schools and transparency, parents who cared about their children’s education had a choice. To be closer to public schools with better reputations, they could choose where to live—as long as they could afford the rent or the mortgage payment.
That’s what we did with our daughter, and she graduated from Stanford last June after 13 years in the public schools that her parents picked after carefully doing their homework.
Now, that choice is vanishing as opaque schools that are profit driven and not managed by democratic education legislation take over teaching America’s children.
The corporate manufactured crises in public education that is driven by fake eduction reformers financed by billionaires with names that end in Gates, Koch, and Walton—for instance—are more interested in making a profit and don’t care what parents want or think. CEO’s and their puppet politicians are sending this message to parents, “Just shut up and we’ll do what ever we want with your children!”
Choice is always available for the wealthy. It seems to only be controversial here when it is available to the poor.
I disagree. There are choices even for “poor” parents. For instance, even though the homes in our area are expensive, rent is relatively the same as local towns that have high levels of poverty.
Just a few blocks from our home, there are hundreds of apartments that charge rent that is close to the rent charged in communities in the same region that have high rates of poverty and street gang violence.
Parents who are engaged and who take the time to educate themsevles have choices of where to live and where their children may go to school.
But when the parents are not engaged and they are not readers/literate, then that is also a choice. They made a choice not to read. They made a choice not to discover that they had choices of where they could live.
For instance, our daughter has a friend who graduated from the same high school at the same time. This friend and her parents immigrated from the Ukraine. The father worked more than one job and the mother worked too. They lived in one of those apartments. In addition, my wife is Chinese and I can tell you for a fact that all of my wife’s Chinese friends who immigrated to the United States do their homework and rented apartments or bought homes in areas with public schools that were highly rated—-thanks to the transparency of the public schools these parents had a way to check for facts to make choices like staying away from areas with high rates of poverty, violence, crime and street gangs.
Our daughter’s friend’s name is Christine. She went to UCLA where she has already graduated with a BA (last June) and is continuing her education to become a dentist.
It’s all about choices and transparency. It isn’t about profits for corporations or test scores.
There are about 14,000 democratically run public school districts in the United States with about 100,000 schools and that translated into a lot of choice for parents who take the time to educate themsevles about the choices that are out there.
Far to often, parents who live in poverty don’t have the skills to make those choices, and when a public school is closed in their area, they don’t check to see if the private-sector, for profit Charter that’s taking the public schools place is going to provide the same a better results or services. But there are parents in areas with high rates of poverty who are engaged in the public schools through PTAs, because they made the choice to be involved and those parents end up being advocates for the parents who are too ignorant or uncaring to do their homework and make choices.
Yet, repeatedly, we are hearing the voices of those parents who belong to PTAs being ignored and shut out by the fake education reformers when they stand up and protest the closing of the same public schools they chose to work with and improve.
We’ve heard this in Chicago.
We’ve heard this in North Carolina
We’ve heard this in New Orleans
We’ve heard this in New York
We’ve heard this in New Jersey
We’ve heard this in Florida
Lloyd,
You stated in the entry above that “To be closer to public schools with better reputations, they could choose where to live—as long as they could afford the rent or the mortgage payment.” It seems to me that you are now disagreeing with yourself.
TE:
It’s too bad you see it the way you do.
For instance, if someone has a job and pays one thousand dollars in rent for an apartment that costs about the same in a better school district, then that parent/guardian has a choice of where to live as long as it is close enough to their job so they can get to work. In large metro-urban areas, public transit is one way to get to work if you don’t have a car. Our daughter uses BART to get to her new job in SF.
However, if the parent/guardian lives in poverty and earns no money—homeless and living out of a car with his/her children—then that choice might be a bit harder to make.
But how many homeless children are we talking about?
Answer: One in 45 children experience homelessness in America each year. That’s over 1.6 million children. While homeless, they experience high rates of acute and chronic health problems. The constant barrage of stressful and traumatic experience also has profound effects on their development and ability to learn.
http://www.familyhomelessness.org/children.php?p=ts
There are about 50-million children in the public school systems, so the 1.6 million homeless children represents 3.2 percent of the total—of course some of those children may not be school age yet.
It seems to me that you had a choice but you decided to stay where you lived in a rural setting even though you have complained that the local public schools in your area didn’t offer the classes that your child should have taken—probably because that school district didn’t have the funding for those classes after all the budget cuts that have been going on thanks to the 2007-08 global financial crises, and the manufactured corporate financed fake education reform movement.
I’m curious. What was your reason for staying where you were living when you could have done your homework—-as I did—-to find a public school district that had what you wanted for your son and was the choice for those classes yours or his?
Lloyd,
Once again you are not so much disagreeing with me as you are disagreeing with your earlier post where YOU said
“To be closer to public schools with better reputations, they could choose where to live— AS LONG AS THEY COULD AFFORD the rent or the mortgage payment.”
Emphasis is mine.
TE,
You are playing a silly game with words.
Tell me, were you born into the world of poverty and did you grow up in it?
Do you have a up close and person connection to poverty because you lived in it?
Do you know what it’s like to have parents who never graduated from high school and worked blue collar jobs?
Do you know what it’s like to have an older brother who was illiterate his entire life, ran with gangs in his youth and spend 15 years in prison?
It would be interesting to discover just how intimate and knowledgeable you are with the reality of poverty.
Lloyd,
Unfortunately silly words are really all there is to work with here.
It seems to me that your initial statement that people have choices “as long as they could afford the rent or the mortgage payment.” is correct and implies that people who can not afford the rent or the mortgage payment do not have choices. Did you actually mean to say that everyone, independent of income, could move to the catchment area of a school with a good reputation? If so, perhaps you should have left out the part about being able to afford the rent.
It’s interesting how you ignore all the other points I made and dismiss them as you pursue this affordability issue—for instance, my point about early childhood education.
The 1.6 million children and their parents/guardians, if they have them, who are homeless with no jobs, can’t afford to pay rent without income.
Median gross rent in the US (based on 2012), according to the Census, is $884 a month. The average is about $937.
US Median annual rent as a fraction of median household income is 20.65 percent.
This actually has nothing to do with the factors that determine if a child is ready to learn. Children who come to school hungry are probably not ready to learn.
Children with parents who don’t read even if they can read are a factor that influences a child’s ability to learn.
Learning disabilities are a factor that influences a child’s ability to learn.
Growing up in a neighborhood with a high rates of crime and violence are a factor in a child’s ability to learn.
Bad credit may also get in the way of renting in a community that doesn’t have high rates of poverty, crime and violence.
You also ignored and avoided answering any of the questions I asked about your experience with poverty and what it’s like to grow up in poverty.
This thread with you is over for me. If you want to continue, then answer my questions.
Lloyd,
You ask so many questions and the wonder around a great deal. I prefer to try to stay on topic with short posts.
Perhaps we should start over at the beginning and just take baby steps so I can see if I am understanding your original point. In your original post, you stated that
“With the public schools and transparency, parents who cared about their children’s education had a choice. To be closer to public schools with better reputations, they could choose where to live—as long as they could afford the rent or the mortgage payment.”
I understood this to mean that parents who COULD NOT AFFORD the rent or the mortgage payments could not choose where they live, and thus would not be able to choose a school with a better reputation. Is that the correct understanding of your original first paragraph?
TE asked, “Is that the correct understanding of your original first paragraph?”
No!
Choice of what school a child attends is not the primary issue, because some parents are incapable of making a choice—for a host of reasons—even if they have the money. The following quote is closer to what I mean:
“School readiness reflects a child’s ability to succeed both academically and socially in a school environment. It requires physical well-being and appropriate motor development, emotional health and a positive approach to new experiences, age-appropriate social knowledge and competence, age-appropriate language skills, and age-appropriate general knowledge and cognitive skills.
“It is well documented that poverty decreases a child’s readiness for school through aspects of health, home life, schooling and neighbourhoods.
“Six poverty-related factors are known to impact child development in general and school readiness in particular. They are the incidence of poverty, the depth of poverty, the duration of poverty, the timing of poverty (eg, age of child), community characteristics (eg, concentration of poverty and crime in neighborhood, and school characteristics) and the impact poverty has on the child’s social network (parents, relatives and neighbors).
“A child’s home has a particularly strong impact on school readiness. Children from low-income families often do not receive the stimulation and do not learn the social skills required to prepare them for school.
Typical problems are parental inconsistency (with regard to daily routines and parenting), frequent changes of primary caregivers, lack of supervision and poor role modelling. Very often, the parents of these children also lack support.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2528798/
Lloyd,
Interesting. Perhaps you should simply have said ” ….parents who cared about their children’s education had a choice. To be closer to public schools with better reputations, they could choose where to live” and not added the qualifier “..as long as they could afford the rent or the mortgage payment.”
I think that statement is incorrect without the qualifier, but leaving the qualifier out would have made your intent clearer.
The real problem is that choice is manufactured and distorted by wealthy and deformers as defective consumer products that have no quality and bad warranty service.
Lloyd,
Some families live in government subsidized public housing that is not available in districts with better schools.
TE,
That was their choice. Everything they did in life was their choice based on their socioeconomic lifestyles and the world they grew up to know.
Poverty limits choice, because you can’t make a choice when you don’t know those choices exist and do not have the knowledge or skills to research those choices.
To eventually expand that choices to as many people who live in poverty as possible, there should be an early childhood education program in every state starting as young as two that is mandatory for any families that live in poverty and/or accept any form of welfare. All other famlies, the choice could be voluntary.
That early childhood education program should be in a public school system that is transparent and must follow ed code legislation and be monitored by the democratic process in place in public schools—because those schools are answerable to the public and not opaque corporations or billionaires like Bill Gates. Teachers must be highly trained. Teachers must be allowed to belong to a labor union that represents them, so they are free to protest and speak out without fear of reprisal.
That teacher training program should be a year long residency in a master teacher’s classroom with at least one more year of follow up from the teacher training program that certified these teachers.
TFA should be abolished and the opaque non-democratic private sector Charter schools denied access to any funds that come from taxation or any other funds from the public collected by state or federal governments.
Testing will not end poverty. Common Core will not end poverty.