Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia wants a statewide Recovery School District, just like Louisiana. He wants to be like Bobby Jindal. He wants all the low-performing schools turned into charters, just like Néw Orleans.
Won’t someone tell him that most of the charters–excluding those with selective admissions–are rated D or F by the state? Won’t someone tell him that the RSD in Louisiana is one of the lowest performing districts in the state? Perhaps he could invite Charles Hatfield or Dr. Barbara Ferguson of NOLA’s “Research on Reforms” to brief him. Or talk to Professor Kristen Buras of Geirgia State University, who just published a book debunking “the Néw Orleans miracle.” Or read Mercedes Schneider on the Néw Orleans story.
See, Governor Deal has a problem, and his name is Jason Carter. Jason is the grandson of President Jimmy Carter. More than that, his children are enrolled in public schools. His wife taught in a public high school. He wants to improve Georgia’s public schools, not privatize them.
Deal and Carter are tied in the polls. Deal thinks he can win by promising to hand schools over to entrepreneurs.
I’m for Jason.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks for informing us of this contest in Georgia. I just sent a campaign contribution to Jason Carter.
Ditto for me! We desperately need some moral people in government, and I don’t mean “family values.” I mean people that know right from wrong. It’s wrong to send public education, the single most democratizing force in what remains of our democracy, to the scrap heap while private pirates profit off the backs of poor children.
Deal is like so many politicians evidently. By following the big money he thinks he can win his seat. Whether or not this is good for children or the country means less than his gaining political power [and money]. This is evidently the thinking of way too many politicians. Don’t confuse me with the facts. I just want money and power. To the “Netherlands” with what will be best for the country and its people.
Does it bother anyone in ed reform that “scaling” and replicating these plans in each and every state goes against their other argument, which is “choice!” and “innovation!”
Turning every public school into a no excuses charter school and replicating New Orleans in every state is uniformity, not innovation.
When do the mass public school closures begin? Will it be like Chicago or Philadelphia or any of the other states and cities where they have imposed this template? Maybe Newark. Is this One Newark, South?
Any tension between national charter chains and “bottom up, community centered schools?” “Big” tends to swallow “small” in markets. Why won’t that happen with this master plan?
It’s a website where parents sign up for one of a selection of government subsidized private contractors, am I right? Cool! Just like the health care law! Any idea why we’re turning our universal public schools into our fragmented, wildly expensive and inequitable health care system? Also, is the role of public schools like Medicaid? A safety net for the “choice” system? Just wondering what the plans are for existing public schools. Are we “winding them down” or are they the safety net?
They can never get their story straight about “choice”. The charters are all so chummy with each other and they all go visit each other and use each other’s “best practices”. I just finished reading ON THE ROCKETSHIP and in one paragraph Whitmire would talk about how the charter structure allows the teachers such great freedom, then a few paragraphs later talk about how the entire charter had adopted a common literacy program, math program and Doug Lemov’s “Teach Like a Champion” teaching (sic) methods. So there’s complete freedom as long as you do what you’re told.
It’s constant, the contradictions.
The Common Core is either a classic return to America’s Educational Excellence or a job training program, depending on whether they’re talking to people in Cleveland or readers of the WSJ.
Ed reform is whatever they say it is, depending on the audience.
They vacillate wildly in Ohio between “choice!” and “excellence!”
If the charter schools aren’t any better than the public schools they’re replacing, well, that doesn’t matter because it was really about “choice!” It’s handy to have this second argument to pull out of your back pocket when the first one turns out to be nonsense, I’ll tell ya.
I listened to the Common Core debate the other night and I almost fell on the floor when the “pro” side said they were worried about “chaos” if they repeal it. They ARE chaos. All they do is create chaos, and, anyway, I thought chaos was…good?
Now we’re all about consistency and “our investment” and sunk costs all of a sudden? There are whole city school systems they’re ready to throw on the scrap heap, they have been deemed “valueless” despite decades of investment. Two years into the Common Core and we have to worry about accrued value?
Deal looks a little shaky for re-election. Will doubling down on privatization help or hurt?
I don’t know if you-all saw this, but Elizabeth Warren and Sherrod Brown are going after the DOE on their, shall we say DEFERENTIAL treatment of the contractors who service student loans. Again:
“The U.S. Department of Education will pay its oft-criticized student loan servicers more money under new contracts that the White House demanded in response to the companies’ lack of adequate customer service.
An Education Department official acknowledged the bump in pay on Wednesday during a testy exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).
“Let me get this straight: You break the law. You don’t follow the rules. You treat the borrowers badly,” Warren said of the loan servicers. “And you all just renegotiated the contracts to make sure that across the portfolio [loan servicers] are going to make a little more money if nothing changes?”
Incentives and suggestions of best practices and voluntary compliance!
God forbid a regulator should actually regulate, right? That might offend the contractor. Hurt their feelings.
Why doesn’t anyone get prosecuted anymore, you know, other than individual non-powerful people (who seem to get hammered)? Can I pay a negotiated settlement and promise to be better if I break the law? Why not?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/10/education-department-student-loan-servicing_n_5800618.html?&ir=Education&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000023
It’s always “students first” at the DOE.
“Screw the students first.” (Then go after their parents.)
Governor Deal, please read the NOLA weekly Gambit. That’ll tell you everything (& more!) you need to know about the RSD, charterization of NO schools & Bobby Jindal.
Did you know that, because of Jindal’s refusal to accept federal expansion of Medicaid (because it’s a product of the Obama Administration) many, many clinics and other health facilities have been closed, the result being medical/mental health services denied to the neediest In LA?
Not only that but, it turns out, LA taxpayers are paying for Medicaid expansion in other states.
Jindal’s LA does not set a good example for Georgia or for any other state.
Good luck, Jason–hope you win!
Some narrative-shifting appears to be going on here in GA I am happy to report (but not resting on any laurels as we are up against the Big Money snake oil nonsense like everywhere else of course)
But some examples:
–from Savannah Morning News, this is good to see, a clear and direct report on the effects of budget cuts over time–
http://bit.ly/1ux1Sjs
–from middle Georgia, Macon’s Telegraph had a recent editorial on education and poverty with a key paragraph:
“During this political season, there is no better question to ask the candidates, particularly those running for state school superintendent and governor, what they plan to do to support the state’s K-12 education system. Then, whoever is elected, will have to be held accountable if they don’t keep their word.”
http://bit.ly/1wt1LaA
–and in Athens news, check out this editorial on our school board and superintendent pushing back about the absurdities of the new testing heavy statewide teacher evaluation system– the Athens Banner-Herald supporting the position of our local educators is a good thing:
http://bit.ly/1q2NpFo
http://bit.ly/1tB14Hp
–finally, here is an interesting piece on the GO PUBLIC film recently screened in Athens:
http://bit.ly/1tQU1dN
Jason Carter has built his campaign on public education issues and slowly but surely the word is getting out that if we want to truly support public schools and teachers in Georgia, Jason Carter is the right candidate for governor. And with the incumbent faltering by the day, his talking points now featuring unabashed support for Jindal-style reform gimmicks like RSD, it’s no wonder the polls are tied and Jason has a serious chance of winning by attracting moderate Republican and independent education voters. Nobody, Republican, Democrat or Independent, nobody likes to see their local schools diminished and weakened, good teachers leaving teaching, and their children’s love of learning sapped away by the high-stakes overtesting being done these days in the name of “reform.” People are realizing the fact that under the current state leadership, that’s what Georgia will continue to get– if Deal gets another term.