My, how time flies. It seems like only yesterday—actually it was early 2013– that Oprah began filming “the dramatic transformation of John McDonough High School in New Orleans for a film called “Blackboard Wars.” The star of the show was charter entrepreneur Steve Barr, who had founded the Green Dot charter chain in Los Angeles to national acclaim, then moved on to found a new chain called “Future is Now.” FIN was going to work its miracle on John McDonogh and Oprah was going to be there to capture it on film.
This was printed in The Advocate in January 2013:
“NEW ORLEANS — The students of John McDonogh High School will be at the center of a documentary series scheduled to air in March on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
In a news release sent by the network on Saturday, “Blackboard Wars” is described as telling the story of “the dramatic transformation of New Orleans’ John McDonogh High School, where more than half of its students fail to graduate.”
The series was filmed over the fall at the school, which has a reputation of struggling academics and violence, particularly after the gaining national media attention when a student was fatally shot in the school’s crowded gymnasium in 2003.
Six hour-long episodes have been filmed thus far.
Last summer, Steve Barr, leader of the charter operator Future is Now, took over the school, which was still failing after six years of being run directly by the Recovery School District.
Barr is known for his aggressive takeovers of schools in Los Angeles and for working closely with teachers’ unions, an unusual approach for a charter operator.
With “unprecedented access,” the news release describes following the adult stars of the show, “education maverick Steve Barr and no-nonsense principal Dr. Marvin Thompson as they embark together on an unpredictable mission to reinvent and revive the struggling school.”
Thompson, who was hired by Barr as a co-principal, previously worked as the superintendent of schools in Roanoke, Va., and then as president of an education consulting company. Barr also traveled around the country to recruit talented teachers.
At a panel discussion held Saturday in California, Thompson, Barr and the show’s producer, Eddie Barbini, addressed questions about distrust from the community, privacy, the use of the word “war” in the title and their educational philosophies.
Asked if he felt the school’s outcome was successful, Barr described his first visit to the school last year, when it was set to close, according to a transcript of the panel discussion.
He said of 261 students enrolled, it was rare to see more than 60 in attendance on any given day.
Currently, he said the school has 409 students and an attendance rate of approximately 80 percent.
One audience member at the panel discussion asked Thompson how, as principal, he could change the attitudes of students who didn’t want to learn.
“It’s not failure or inability to learn,” Thompson said. “It’s the desire to learn and someone to push them. Most of us in this room had someone to push us. … These young people don’t have that. So we have to meet them at their most fundamental level, which is their most basic self-esteem need, which is love first.”
The miracle is already captured on film. The secret is out: No one was pushing those kids until FIN arrived.
Except the miracle didn’t happen.
In January, 2014, the news got out that McDonough was closing. Steve Barr said it was closing for renovations, and he didn’t want to disrupt “the culture.” Louisiana blogger Crazy Crawfish pointed out that enrollments were falling, test scores were abysmal, and costs were astronomical for the school. Some “culture.”
At a board meeting of the charter last spring, Steve Barr said there were too many high school seats in the Recovery School District, and McDonough was closing simply because of supply-and-demand.
“As John McDonogh High’s leaders begin the process of closing the New Orleans school, charter chief Steve Barr took the opportunity at a no-quorum board meeting Tuesday to give his explanation of what went wrong. He said the problem boiled down to supply and demand.
State Education Superintendent John White told him that New Orleans public high schools had 125 seats for every 100 students, Barr said. “It’s not management. It’s not we don’t know what we’re doing. You can’t run a high school with 300 kids.”
John McDonogh had 311 students as of Oct. 1, 2013, down from 389 the year before.
The state Recovery School District decided to close the historic New Orleans building for renovations, and Barr’s Future Is Now charter group will not be in charge when “John Mac” reopens. The school has posted dismal test scores in its first two years of a failed turnaround and was called “the most dangerous school in America” in an Oprah television network miniseries.
Tuesday was the charter board’s first meeting since the closure was announced. Two board members attended — John Hope and Charles Fenet — and no members of the public.”
So, no dramatic transformation, no turnaround. Steve Barr returned to California to become leader of the pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform.
Mercedes Schneider explains what happened next:
“McDonogh closed in June 2014. As a part of washing its hands of New Orleans, Barr’s ironically-named Future Is Now (FIN) left behind equipment that the Recovery School District (RSD) (another ironic name) is auctioning off in the aftermath of the FIN-RSD divorce.
“On October 11, 2014, RSD auctioned off laptops that still had student information on them, including student social security numbers.”
More broken promises. More charter churn. Will Oprah return to New Orleans to report on the failure of FIN? To write FINIS to FIN? Don’t count on it.
But wait, I thought excellence was supposed to create demand. So after Barr and Thompson performed their miracles, why weren’t parents clamoring to get their kids in? Shouldn’t McDonough have been stuffed to the rafters?
That was my thought. I mean, excellence attracts demand, right?
That’s the thing. Whenever it doesn’t work out for the charter operators or their numbers just don’t quite line up, there’s always some distraction or excuse. (Ironic since no-excuses is a preferred mantra among them.)
I know, all this free market stuff really confuses my poor little pea brain. I wish TE would come by and explain it to me.
Be careful for what you wish, Dienne!!!
Aw, c’mon, Duane, don’t you want to see TE tie himself into a pretzel trying to explain away all of the contradictions between “free market” theory and how it works out in practice?
You’ll excuse me, but I have to go pop some popcorn.
Once again, edupreneurs can dabble in education and then leave when they realize it is tougher than they thought. Neighborhood schools don’t just up and close overnight.
Let’s never forget Randi Weingarten’s close relationship with Steve Barr.
“Barr the Door… quick, before he comes back”
FIN was fun
But now it’s done
The door is Barred
In Seventh ward
This may be a stupid question, but isn’t the NO system a counterfactual? We’ll never know what might have happened if there had been a huge federal, philanthropic and private infusion of money into what were the existing public schools?
Does anyone know what they spent per student over the last decade? Can that be compared to what the public system spent per student prior to 2003? Not “collected” from public sources. Spent. From any source. Don’t you at least have to consider this, the fact that we don’t know what a massive investment would have done for the public schools and we don’t know what they spent per student on the charter system (total investment plus funding bump per student, over time”?
What happens when the effects of that massive investment start tapering off and they have to get by on ordinary public funding? Wouldn’t you want to know that prior to privatizing another system?
That would take too much thinking….and rational thought.
I have to correct a little misinformation about Barr’s background. Green Dot, the charter operator he created, aggressively took over ONE struggling LAUSD school — Locke High School in Watts — to a huge amount of hoopla about the coming miracle and a book written by pro-“reform” blogger Alexander Russo. The hoopla has died down and the project has fallen off the public radar. Initial reports, when the spotlight was on the school, were the predictable: The campus is cleaner and safer (due to boatloads of money that public schools don’t have for campus cleanups and safety measures), but academic results are unclear/mixed.
I’ll have to go look up some test scores.
Barr left Green Dot under a cloud involving some questionable spending, though predictably, THAT got little hoopla. I’m not sure how involved he still was during the Locke takeover media hullabaloo.
Other than Locke, Green Dot has not taken over existing schools; it has run startup charters with the usual freedom to ensure that the student population includes only the motivated, compliant and high-functioning — and with mixed results.
I thought Barr was doing some stuff in New York, but haven’t followed it as I have his activities here in California.
There has also been a lot of hoopla about the fact that Barr has a background working for the Teamsters Union, and that apparently Green Dot schools are nominally unionized, though it’s my understanding that the contracts don’t include job security. So I’m not sure if that could be described as working closely with teachers’ unions.
Other figures in education “reform” have backgrounds working in or with organized labor too, but become virulently anti-union and anti-teacher along the way — former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is one example. So a background in the labor movement isn’t inherently a sign that someone is working closely with unions.
OK, I looked up some test scores for Locke (former LAUSD high school now run by Green Dot charters after a hostile takeover several years ago). Locke was broken up into several small schools that are reported separately.
California’s longtime accountability program is called the Academic Performance Index, or API (referred to by the savvy as the Affluent Parent Index). It distills student test scores into a figure on a 200-1000 scale, with 800 viewed as the mark of distinction.
Four of Locke’s small schools-within-schools have APIs: 531, 681, 564 and 606. APIs this low are not surprising in a high-poverty school, but obviously nothing to brag about, and no “miracle.” Two Locke schools show “no data,” for unexplained reasons, and one has this disclaimer on the California Department of Education website:
A security breach involving social media exposure of 2012–13 test material for the Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) Program and/or the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE) has been confirmed at this school site. This school is not eligible for state or federal award recognition during the 2013–14 school year.
Predictably, the former cheerleaders have apparently forgotten they ever heard of Locke. (One of them was the New Yorker, which, to its journalistic disgrace, did an inaccuracy-laden puff piece on Barr early in the Locke takeover saga.)
Let’s put this in perspective.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is just a bunch of wild and wacky folks with hearts of gold whose irrepressible sense of humor and sparkling wisdom stand up to the test of time or for as long as it takes to utter “One, two, three, cut and it’s a wrap.“
😏
Why the “cut and wrap? Fortunately for us and posterity, it’s all on a video produced by the self-same cage busting achievement gap crushing 21st century innovative disruptors that don’t tolerate “non-strivers” (Michael J Petrilli).
😴
Rheeally! But only to be understood in a Johnsonally sort of way…
😜
A posting on this blog (1-18-2014) entitled “Peter Greene Reviews Fordham’s Wacky Video,” will provide an overview of this classic of film noir zaniness with a link to that monument of self-styled “education reform.” I gotta tell ya, folks, this gem will keep sparkling through Gates grant after Gates grant after Gates grant. And this relevant quote:
“And Diane’s become a kook.” [Yes, the owner of this blog—at 0:55 of the 2:19 clip]
Now that we’ve established Mr. Petrilli’s estimate of the judgment of the “kook,” let’s see what that ringmaster of cinematic genius said about New Orleans and the RSD and charters and such.
[start quote]
. . . . Of the 89 public schools in New Orleans, only five will not be charters next fall, all under the local Orleans Parish School Board. The city already has by far the highest charter school enrollment in the country, with 85 percent of its public school students in the schools, which are publicly funded but run by largely independent boards.
The state’s decision to go all-charter in New Orleans has implications for the rest of Louisiana. Dobard said the Recovery School District would run fewer and fewer schools in Louisiana, and would either close schools or do full-school charter transformations rather than trying to gradually phase out schools, because district officials have learned that doesn’t work.
And it has implications for the rest of the country as well, because the system has become a national example. Tennessee and Michigan have created their own state takeover districts, and other states are considering it.
Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the conservative Fordham Institute think tank, marveled at the news. “Don’t mess with success!” he said. “We will now have a full experiment” for others to learn from. “There will be important lessons — once the charter sector is the main game in town.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2013/12/memphis-hustle.html
😱
And now for the “kook.”
THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM (2011 paperback edition, p. 3):
[start quote]
School reformers sometimes resemble the characters in Dr. Seuss’s Solla Sollew, who are always searching for that mythical land “where they never have troubles, at least very few.” Or like Dumbo, they are convinced they could fly if only they had a magic feather. In my writings, I have consistently warned that, in education, there are no shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver bullets. For certain, there are no magic feathers that enables elephants to fly.
[end quote]
Michael J Petrilli, President, The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, “Advancing Educational Excellence.”
The owner of the blog “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all.”
Decisions, decisions, decisions…who’s shown better judgment?
😳
I guess I haven’t been keeping up with major changes in my native language, so I guess I’ll have to assume that when President Petrilli labels blogger Ravitch a “kook” that means—
She’s right, I’m wrong, but don’t tell the people that send me my paycheck.
As always and forever, faithful to his bedrock Marxist principles:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” [Groucho, the famous Marx]
Makes ₵ent¢, I guess…
😎
Will Oprah quietly slip away as if her project never happened?
No, she’ll have a come to Jesus show in which she rakes everyone across the coals besides herself, just like she did after she trumpeted James Frey to the world.
Who’s James Fry?
Señor Swacker: google “James Frey” and “Oprah Winfrey” and “A MILLION LITTLE PIECES” for lots of hits.
For one example, from the first paragraph of a HuffPost article—
[start quote]
Attorneys who accuse Greg Mortenson of defrauding readers in his best-selling “Three Cups of Tea” say his case is no different from that of James Frey, who admitted on the “Oprah Winfrey Show” that he lied in his memoir “A Million Little Pieces.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/greg-mortenson-scandal-_n_1268038.html
Interestingly—or sadly—Oprah is no better at distinguishing between lies and the truth in a book than she is in distinguishing between lies and the truth in self-styled “education reform.”
“A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.” [Demosthenes]
Old. Dead. Greek. Guy.
Gone for more than two thousand years and he knows the leaders and enablers of rheephorm better than they know themselves.
😎
Will Oprah host a reunion show w. Zuckerberg, Booker, Christie to highlight how MZ’s money & matching funds were spent in Newark? Studio audience could include the consultants who got $20 million.
And Oprah could give everyone who is in the audience, their own private-sector, for profit Charter school.
Oprah also had Michelle Rhee on to announce Rhee’s formation of STUDENTS FIRST, introducing her as “the great warrior woman of education.”
“Barr also traveled around the country to recruit talented teachers.”
———————————–
Here’s “Ms. Cobb”—fresh from the TFA Summer Institute—one of Barr’s bright, shining discoveries whom Barr found during his exhaustive nationwide talent search for great teachers: (from BLACKBOARD WARS)
Boy, that Barr sure has an eye for teaching talent!
Let’s see… punish your kids with push-ups for “not having
a sense of urgency”… then cry and fabricate victimhood
to manipulate your students. Was this a chapter from
Gary Lemov’s TEACHING LIKE A CHAMPION?
Here’s Gary Rubenstein’s commentary on the above
clip at:
http://garyrubinstein.teachforus.org/2013/03/04/bad-o-pr-ah/
————–
GARY RUBENSTEIN: “A couple of thoughts about this:
“First, Ms. Cobb is having a lot of trouble despite having a relatively easy assignment. Anybody who has ever taught both middle and high school knows that high school is ‘easier.’ The main reason for this, sadly, is that most of the toughest to teach students drop out in high school. Most new teachers in high schools, though, teach 9th grade which can be tough too since the drop outs haven’t happened yet. But Ms. Cobb teaches Geometry which seems to be taken by the junior and seniors at this school. Also, as far as I have noticed, her classes are very small. Seems like less than 20 students, but I’m not sure if this is the case for all her classes, or just the one they film.
“Now I know that Ms. Cobb is not representative of all 6,000 2012 TFA corps members, but still I have to wonder if her problems are a result of bad training, bad recruitment, or both. I’d say that she seems to have potential as a teacher so it really isn’t a recruitment problem, but something that TFA should take the blame for with their training. I’ll bet that Ms. Cobb taught for about 12 hours over the summer and never had to deal with a ‘real’ class.
“It is interesting to me that in the show they don’t seem to reveal that she is in Teach For America. I think it is quite a relevant detail since TFAers are supposed to be the ‘saviors’ of the kids in New Orleans who, despite limited training, make big gains with their high expectations. It would have been a good comparison to see how other new teachers who have had more traditional training would be doing in the same situation.
“I also wonder how TFA feels about this series. I’m sure they don’t want it to be widely known that Ms. Cobb is a TFAer since she is probably worse than the ‘average’ corps member. This should be required watching for new corps members who will easily see that ‘high expectations’ does not go very far when you have no idea how to control a classroom.”
———–
And here are some other comments below Gary’s commentary:
——————————–
MEG: “I’ve only seen the two clips you just posted, but the two things that stuck out to me were this
“(1) managing a classroom is nearly impossible when you make it a power struggle, she’s making it about her, which is a surefire way to make sure the kids don’t listen to anything you say. her cheerleaders were right, they didn’t ask her to do any of this so she has no business making it about her (at least not in front of them)
“(2) what in the world is she wearing? one of the things that baffles me the most about some TFAers (and I’m sure this applies to some non-tfa teachers as well, but I’m speaking from experience) is a lack of professional dress. I get it was saturday, I don’t know where she was coming from (looks like maybe the club) but particularly if you are only a couple years older than your students you certainly do not want to be showing up in front of them in mini skirts. definitely not the cause of her management issues, but probably not helping either.
——————————–
ALLISON: “Thank you. I should be the last person to comment on how to dress, but geez – bring down the hemline, Girl.”
———————————-
MONICA: “The second clip is painful to watch. These kids seem perfectly appropriate in their behavior, yet she “punishes” two of them (demanding push-ups) for not demonstrating “urgency” in running down the hallway, then herds them into a room where she proceeds to chastise them, with no further urgency apparent. Absolutely cringe-worthy, and of no help to viewers’ perception of public education, charter or otherwise. I feel sorry for these students.
·
————————————-
JADESERF: “Monica, I agree. She seems like an immature bully. The kids are just being kids, for Pete’s sake!”
————————————-
EMMANUEL PARELLO: “It’s astounding how badly she handles both situations. But, I can relate to her frustration. She’s clearly in way over her head, just like most first year corps members, even though many of them don’t admit it publicly.”
————————————-
LISA: “I just watched the cheerleading clip and was horrified by how ridiculously immature she looks and acts. Telling them to run to portray a sense of urgency and then telling two of them to do pushups, really–after they’ve been sitting around waiting for someone to tell them the next step!?!? (Anyone want to take a guess about whether she was a “mean girl” in high school? My money’s on it.) It’s not their fault that the buses didn’t come, and so they did what most students would: call the coach and find out what’s going on.
“I don’t know what the students did because I’m not watching the show, but I know that I certainly would have written on that note card that I wanted a new, competent coach who could handle situations like that without the melodrama. Maybe she didn’t need to come in, but it seems that if you are the cheerleading coach and the cheerleaders have a problem, that makes it your problem–and if not, the students still shouldn’t be the target of your frustration and anger. Good grief.”
————————————-
SHANNON: “Wow…and THIS is the 22 year-old that I was passed over for by TFA???!!! I’m literally speechless.”
———————————–
JENNY: “I read (Gary’s commentary) before watching the clips, and my first instinct was to feel sorry for Ms. Cobb, and think, ‘Even if she had gone to school to teach, she could still very easily have a rough year and get caught in bad situations.’ I was full of sympathy.
“Then I watched the clips.
“Holy. Sh#%.
“Totally immature. And I don’t know that I could even peg it solely on lack of training, because I got about the same training as a TFAer, going through Michelle Rhee’s New Teacher Project, and while I made plenty of bad judgment calls my first year (e.g., unlimited trips to the bathroom, extending deadlines for assignments for kids who didn’t deserve extensions, letting them listen to their iPods while doing their first-10-minute journaling assignments, letting them vote for the “student of the month” from our class, etc.), I never threw tantrums like that or made every mishap about me.
“The kids definitely did not deserve to be treated like that. I don’t know whose responsibility it was to secure the bus transportation, but it pretty definitely was NOT the kids’. So either she screwed up, or someone else screwed up (athletics department?), but it wasn’t the kids’ fault.
“And what is she talking about she doesn’t have to be there? And they should be thanking her?? Just as I would expect the football coach to be at the game, I would expect the cheerleading coach to be there too–especially if there is trouble, like there was in this case.
“As cheerleading coach, it’s totally her responsibility to show up and find out what’s going on and fix the problem. They don’t need to be grateful to her for that. That’s her job. She should be grateful she doesn’t get fired for showing up in those clothes and for throwing a tantrum in front of her kids.
“I know that editing narrows things down to the juiciest possible moments, and that most of her days are probably uneventful and that maybe she even does some quality teaching in there (if she can control her classes), and all we’re seeing are the crisis moments. Still, those crisis moments are the ones her students will remember, not the problems she helps them work through on the board. Her tantrums make her look like a spoiled brat throwing a fit because things aren’t going exactly her way–and I’m sure this makes the culture clash (underprivileged black kids vs. middle class white sorority girl) all the more striking and pertinent. It’s not that a white teacher can’t do a great job with black kids. But when you have two very obviously different cultures at play, you need to bridge the gap, not widen it by throwing spoiled-kid temper tantrums and making everything personal.
“And what was that crap at the end?
“ ‘Write your feelings on an index card’?? Really??
“I think she was asking them to write whether or not they wanted her as a coach on the card. That is without a doubt the STUPIDEST move a teacher/coach could ever make. The kids just want to get to the game. Get over yourself and move on. Instead of making them write what they think about you personally on a card, how about find a bus (or some form of transportation) and GET THE KIDS TO THE FREAKING GAME!!!
“Whatever else she does all day long at the school, these clips totally exhausted whatever sympathy I may have had for her. TFA or otherwise, this person does NOT need to be teaching, at least not in a school that isn’t full of spoiled suburban kids like herself who totally relate to the teacher throwing a hissy fit over anything and everything that doesn’t go according to plan. Why do I have this feeling she will probably be out within the standard TFA 2 years (if that)?”
Very inappropriate on the part of the teacher-the students acted more mature than her. …and very little understanding of black students…very disrespectful to who they are.
http://atthechalkface.com/2014/10/18/steve-barr-bails-on-mcdonough-surplus-laptops-sold-bearing-student-data/
Let’s see…
— selling laptops with student data still on them,
Social Security Numbers, etc. still on them;
— the national spokesman of “FUTURE IN NOW”
charters says the breach of private personal
info is not their problem any more because
their local branch, “FUTURE IS NOW — New Orleans”
“doesn’t exist any more”
— the RSD spokesman claiming they’re not
responsible because they “trained charter
staff on property-disposal procedures but not
checked up on devices until now. “We relied
on the operators actually following the protocol,”
he said.
M. Schneider: “And there we have yet another
problem with lack of oversight in the name of
charter *freedom*: ‘Trusting’ that those
preparing for disposal the property from
the school that ‘just didn’t make it’ will
actually ‘follow procedure.’ ”
Mercedes wrote this great piece on the how, why,
what, etc. regarding Steve Barr and his “FUTURE
IS NOW” charter chain’s abandonment of their
New Orleans charter expansion—the one
celebrated by Oprah Winfrey in a reality
show, if you recall.
After the show falsely called the pre-existing school
John McDonough “the most dangerous
school in America” to drum up ratings,
community members were outraged.
The ham-fisted Barr insulted those same
community members when he described the
challenges he faced in the community:
“This is what seven generations of crap looks
like.”
It all went downhill from there as it was covered
in your blog at the time:
Gary Rubenstein did a brilliant critique of Barr’s performance in that god-awful, Oprah-produced high school reality show about their take-over of New Orlean’s John McDonough High school, commenting that Barr, in his opinion, badly mistreated the community members critical of his school in one scene.
Well, apparently Barr’s contempt and mistreatment is not limited to them.
When Gary wrote that, he might not have been aware of Steve’s attitude towards career teachers—long-timers, unionized, teaching at traditional public schools… and who, as a reward for a demanding career and all a teacher’s hard work, will have something to look forward to—retirement, decent old age health benefits—once a teacher’s long haul of a career is over.
Well check out this little nugget BELOW. (The Internet rocks!)
If one has any doubt about Steve Barr’s contempt for unionized teachers at traditional public schools, and the work that those teachers do, check what Steve say about them here.
Envisioning a world where public education is extinct, and privatization rules, Barr opines…
(again, CAPS mine)
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
“Says Barr, in his classic no-nonsense style:
” ‘Where are these SHITTY TEACHERS going to go? Where are these LIFETIME BENEFITS going to go? What will happen to all of these GROUPS PROTECTING THEIR INTERESTS AND JOBS (read: “GROUPS” = “teacher’s unions”… Jack) and their construction contracts?
“The political puzzle of this is really fascinating. But I have no doubt that within five years, you’re going to see our impact. And it’s going to be huge.’ ”
– – – – – – – – – –
This 2006 piece is from the L.A. Weekly, which is ever-worshipful of all things privatization, so this gushing article might be hard to take (or amusing, as I found it):
http://www.laweekly.com/2006-12-07/news/the-secret-of-his-success/2/
That’s the page with the quote. Here’s a link to the first page:
http://www.laweekly.com/2006-12-07/news/the-secret-of-his-success/
Barr says, let’s see how things are “in five years.” Well, it’s been eight since the article (2006), and seven since Green Dot took over Locke….
… well for one thing, ex-Green Dot teacher Brett Wyatt, Green Dot’s equivalent of “THE INSIDER”—the tobacco industry’s Jeffrey Weigand, played by Russel Crowe in the movie—has part of that answer here:
and the L.A. Times bathroom article has another part of that answer here:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-locke-restrooms-20130513,0,2501944.story
Check out the photo of the Green Dot/Locke’s students’ bathrooms bereft of bathroom stall dividers. Does this look like a bathroom at a school with an extra $15,000,000 of private funding?
Again, a 30-second Google search yielded a site where bathroom stall dividers cost a mere $ 90 each:
http://www.allpartitions.com/panels.html
$ 15,000,000 of private funding—on top of the per-pupil allotment that LAUSD gives charters? Where did all that money go? Based on that photo, not to fix the bathrooms!
This isn’t the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s the school-as-prison, where students have to “use it” the way they do it in the clink… squatting down where everyone else can see you.
As to Barr’s disgust for lifetime health and retirement benefits given to teachers after a long, difficult career, that’s been taken care of to his satisfaction, at least with Green Dot teachers… since how much retirement or post-career health benefits can you collect if your teaching career is 3 years or less? (that time frame based on Wyatt’s list in the link ABOVE).