As a parent in Nashville, the blogger called Dad Gone Wild attended a meeting called by the state’s “Achievement School District” (ASD) to persuade parents that their community public school is a failure and needs to be turned into a charter school run by the ASD.
Dad concluded that the state officials were “gaslighting” the parents–misleading them, frightening them with false data, slandering their school.
This is no failing school, he wrote. The teachers were greeted like rock stars. Failing school?
“This description doesn’t fit any of the schools I’ve been in. In each of them I’ve been hit by an overwhelming wave of community. Last night teachers from the school were introduced at the beginning of the meeting and they were greeted like they were the Rolling Stones taking the stage. So wait a minute, you mean the community loves the very people that are robbing their children of their future? How is that possible? In fact the crowd was so anti-ASD that if I was them I would have packed my stuff and gone home, but I don’t have a savior complex.
“It was interesting that when the opposition spoke there was an energy in the room, but when the ASD representative spoke the room felt heavier, the shuffling louder, and the sound of side conversations increased. Looking around I see a well kept school. Examples of student work litter the halls. Teachers move about interacting with students and their families. They obviously have formed strong bonds. Trust me, I know failing and this didn’t look like it.”
The reformers won’t stop labeling children, teachers, and schools as failures. That’s their bread and butter.
Dad Gone Wild won’t stand for that:
“When Chris Barbic as head of the ASD says “I’m just here to make a bad school better” and chooses to ignore all the factors that go into that school, that’s immoral. When teachers tell me that the ASD representatives who toured the school were more interested in the property then the actual students, that’s immoral. When you refuse to provide adequate translators to parents who are going to be affected by your actions, that’s immoral. I also believe, when you stand and preach about how every dollar goes to the child yet you draw a salary of 200k from working with kids that live in poverty, that’s immoral. The whole process is predatory and immoral.
“I’ll be honest with you. I consider quitting this fight on a daily basis. It makes me nuts. It impacts my home life. It takes time away that I could be spending with my family and truth be known, we have other options. Then on a day like today, when I go read to my child’s class at a school that because of demographics could be labeled a failing school, it becomes crystal clear again. When I look out at all those kids who are all facing their own individual challenges that reformers expect them to overcome alone or they’ll label failures, I remember. Going to this school is going to make my children better people and their presence is going to make those children better people. I owe it to my children to give them that chance.”
This Dad is correct. The meeting he attended was scheduled on the same night as another ASD takeover meeting at another school to divide the crowd and elected officials. The ASD said that it was a monetary issue of hotel cost that forced them to schedule their public ASD meetings simultaneously (that doesn’t explain why they did the same thing in Memphis). Even so, both meetings were packed.
Where was the head of the charter school that was slated to takeover this public school at during these public meetings? At a Christmas party with the mayor and other important people. He had the gall to tweet what a wonderful time he had that evening. Yes, he knows where his bread is getting butter from.
I’m glad the parents weren’t fooled. The fools were the folks from ASD.
Politicians seeing children as their taxpayer funded golden parachutes is sickening.
AMEN.
Speaking of old words whose time has “come round” again, I think it’s fitting that we now replace the word “reformers” with that more apt “reivers”.
Entertaining video about a library in Troy, Michigan:
Perhaps we need a Constitutional amendment proposed that all public schools are banned. Parents and communities are prohibited, by law, from organizing school boards and PTA organizations, punishable by civil and criminal penalties. All schools must be incorporated as for profit and a “separation of school and state” doctrine enforced. Teachers are now given partial American citizenship status and classified as 2/3 person, classified as property owned by corporations. Teachers must get permission to speak in public, where to live, who to marry, and whether to start families. Failure to do so results in expulsion from the career and jail time. Students now also are owned by the corporations and all data tracked as an asset. Corporate bylaws supercede parental authority in all states including decisions on testing, higher education, and school attendance. Students who do not meet the corporate standards of excellence will be housed in special camps for re-education.
This is the world of the anti-education, conservative, pro-free market crowd. Are we there yet? Does the general public care anymore? Is it time for a decision in America of whether we value education and teachers, or do we just continue to limp along, throwing scraps to our kids and demonizing teachers?
Very powerful elaboration on some of today’s realities– the corporate ownership society, cradle to career and beyond.
Fantastic video!
Keep fighting, Dad gone wild.
“It makes me nuts. It impacts my home life.”
Dad Gone Wild isn’t alone. I’m currently reading “The Educator And the Oligarch” by Anthony Cody, and I tend to do my reading before I sleep at night.
To be fair to Cody, his isn’t the only book I’ve read, and I also stop by this Blog daily to read and skim. I recommend reading Cody’s book. I think most readers will finish the book with a deep distrust of Bill Gates as a human. I’m only halfway through the book and I have trouble thinking of Gates as anything more than as a narcissistic, sociopathic psychopath—-in fact, maybe all of the oligarchs have more in common with monsters like Stalin and Hitler than an average human.
Anyways, what I’m learning wakes me early in the morning usually around 3:00 a.m. and my mind is always spinning with possible solutions and thoughts that would offend or bother someone who read them if I shared them publicly, and some of those thoughts might cause the likes of Bill Gates, the Koch brothers and the Walton family to lose sleep if they knew the content of the solutions that flow through my mind at 3:00 a.m. about them.
If I may make a minor correction:
“Examples of student work [brighten] the halls.”
This was just posted on line at MSN.com about charter sweeps contracts. Yes, MSN! I was astounded so I felt I had to forward it to you.http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/when-charter-schools-are-nonprofit-in-name-only/ar-BBgywI3Loyal reader,Robert B. Vellani, PhDBronx, NY
Don’t you believe that this idea of gaslighting parents is part and parcel to the Arne Duncan comment that suburban moms have to realize that their kids aren’t doing as well as they thought? I mean, the whole point of this exercise has been to undermine teaching as a profession. How better a way to prove this than to give students developmentally inappropriate lessons and tests and then blame the teachers? It is one giant con game after another, IMO.
Did we ever consider how do we help the kids that are falling behind academically.
Thank you!!!! Hang in there!
I have taught at the school that was selected for takeover. It does indeed need serious help, for many reasons– it would be very incorrect to say the school is “fine”. However, converting it to a charter will not address the needs of all students by any means.