The privatizers have been searching for the past decade for a “proof point” that privatization is the path to a great education that will lift all children out of poverty, thereby avoiding the necessity to raise taxes on the rich.
First, they focused on New Orleans, but despite their massive propaganda campaign, there are many doubts about the “success.” Even their own data report that at least 40% of charters are F-rated by a charter-friendly state department of education.
Then they tried Newark, buoyed by Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift (matched by others). That was a complete flop.
Then they started the “Achievement School District” in Tennessee, whose leader Chris Barbic promised to lift the schools in the bottom 5% to the top 25% in only five years. As of now, four years later, the first batch are still in the bottom 5%, except for two that reached the bottom 6%.
And now it is poor Camden, New Jersey’s turn. Camden, the poorest city in the Garden State, is the target for the elimination of public education. Camden is supposed to prove that charters can conquer poverty. No need to create jobs, build housing, make medical care available to all, or do anything else to improve the lives of the people of Camden.
Just yesterday, the privatizers held a conference on their plan of action. The State Education Commissioner was there. The Camden superintendent was there. The Democratic boss of South Jersey was there. The president of the State Senate was there. The minority leader of the State Senate was there. The executive director of KIPP in New Jersey was there. The head of the New Jersey Charter Association was there. Bob Bowdon, the pro-voucher filmmaker whose film “The Cartel” compared the NJEA to the Mafia, was there. Who was not there? Parents and educators from Camden.
Open these links (you don’t have to belong to Facebook to open them):
Don’t these bozos–forgive me, policymakers– ever learn anything? How many millions went down the drain in Newark?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Parents and students as well as teacher and community folks need to organize.
99% of us need to organize.
We should have seen this coming the day we elected GWB on the strength of his “business experience”. The only business experience he ever had was taking his dad’s money and running companies into the ground. But he did it over and over again, so he was very experienced.
Perhaps your not old enough, Dienne, to have personally experienced the idiocies and idiologies of the Raygun presidency. It’s been coming since then, Georgie the Least was just another in a long line of neo-liberal idiologue presidents. We’re 45 years into this insanity that allows so few to have so much and so many to have so little. Unfettered capitalism is that idiology.
Yes, Ronnie Raygun was the start of this nonsense (if not Nixon before him), but at least Reagan had the qualification of having been governor (although how he got that distinction is beyond me). I’d still argue that GWB ramped up the idiocy by at least a factor of 10 and ran the country right off the rails. Or maybe he just exposed how off the rails we already were.
I’d go with your last sentence, Dienne!
Did you miss the part on how this effort is being led by “The South Jersey democratic machine of George Norcross”? If you think this is a rebublican/democrat problem you’ve got one eye closed. The political elite are pushing this–they’re just two sides of the same bad penny.
No, Steve I didn’t miss that. My response was to Dienne’s post about when this started. That penny was run over by a freight train so that the two sides are now indistinguishable from each other.
True Democrats represent people who work for a living, not live off of daddy’s money and power or play in the stock market with other people’s life savings. I’d say there are few true Democrats around – Obama and Hillary not one of them. Nor is Norcross.
The superintendent was 32 years old when they appointed him a couple of years ago. Had worked for Goldman Sacks; minimal educational experience. Of course.
When they tried to put a charter into suburban Cherry Hill next door, guess what? The people fought it and won. They knew that opening the door would just start to suck money from public schools.
Cherry Hill has a very good system that parents pay high taxes to use so they do not want to see it destroyed. Instead, they focus on an easy target like Camden, the poorest city in the state. They should call this invasion of charter providers into poor, minority areas, neo-colonialism. It is a new way for the rich to feed off the poor.
It is just plain old-fashioned colonialism
Nothing neo about it
dianeravitch:
“Nothing neo about it”
Absopositively spot on!
😎
I believe the prefix neo is appropriate in this context as colonialism by itself has been used to describe a foreign power/people as taking land and property, destroying existing peoples and cultures and usurping control not only political but monetary and social, sometimes with the aid of native people.
The neo in neo-colonialism serves to distinguish the new form of usurping control within one’s own country or state. Carpet bagging may express a similar sentiment.
Diane is right. It is about COLONIALISM.
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
And here we go. How far is Camden from Wilmington?
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
When you hear “it’s not either/or but both/and” in ed reform you can be confident they’re getting ready to push an ed reform mandate thru and it’s actually “either/or” and you’re losing something.
Is there an example of a place where ed reformers have gone in and actually improved public schools? Not closed them or converted them or let them slowly bleed out- improved even one?
I just think it;s time to tell the public this has nothing to do with “improving” public schools. It’s about replacing public schools. I think they owe people that honesty.
Diane,
Wondering if Gloria Bonilla Santiago was there. On the 16th of September LEAP opened a new building — the former Wilson building–a historic building. The building is now called “Dr. Gloria Bonilla-Santiago Building” She has served as the Board Chair since LEAP was opened in the 90’s
I served as the CAO at LEAP for two years and 8 months until I was escorted to the door to leave. This CAO position is a revolving door.
Thanks and ever thanks for keeping the pulse on what is important in this conversation–teachers, children, parents and community.
My best, Deanna
Yes, Gloria was there, clapping and cheerleading for more money for herself, I mean, her school.
“And now it is poor Camden, New Jersey’s turn. Camden, the poorest city in the Garden State, is the target for the elimination of public education. Camden is supposed to prove that charters can conquer poverty. No need to create jobs, build housing, make medical care available to all, or do anything else to improve the lives of the people of Camden.”
And that’s the crux of the matter. Why spend money on attempting to alleviate the fundamental problems of poverty in our society, when we can spend money to enrich the private companies involved in the charter school movement?
{Sigh}
No one is going to go into Marin County and start a charter school – the parents would put up a stink…but go over to Oakland and you can have at it. Is that fair? Is that democratic ? Is that ethical ?
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
Well, yet another attempt to ram through an agenda that fattens the wallets of the wealthy, for-profit charter school companies. Rather than spend money on the actual problems of poverty in this country.
Not to mention, while we’re at it, producing yet more worker-bees who will be content to work for low wages and continue to vote against their own self interests.
Privatization of entire cities may be what is needed before this foolishness finally ends. Then at least this way, charters can’t cull their students, only taking the “best and brightest.”This way the data may be more reflective of the failure of charter schools as what happened in New Orleans and Newark. I don’t know how much more money they need to waste, but apparently they haven’t learned just yet. I’ve been in education long enough to see many policies and programs roll in and then roll out. This is the most costly of them.
“This is the most costly of them”
Unfortunately for the students who have been subjected to drill and kill, kids in perpetual prison schools the costs are the greatest.
But we’ve had at least two examples of privatization of entire cities – New Orleans and the place in Michigan which always escapes my mind. Both abject failures. Why do we need to try again?
Dienne, I think it was Muskegon Heights in Michigan. All the takeover districts were almost all-black. The legislature assumes that black parents are powerless and can’t fight for their schools.
Relevant — heart-breaking and eye-opening, from the brilliant Ta-Nehesi Coates.
“American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that’s left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they’ve failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report ‘The Negro Family’ tragically helped create this system, it’s time to reclaim his original intent.”
Read More:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-black-family-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/403246/
sell to the masses eat with the classes is ironic in this case 😦
Sounds like it’s time to enlist Al Sharpton… he’s a master of the protest
Diane, you may know of this already, but Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air recently interviewed Dale Russakoff regarding her book, “The Prize: Who’s In Charge of America’s Schools?” It was an interesting interview, and I found her comments about the lack of parent and teacher involvement in the Newark, NJ reform movement to have a ring of truth about them. (Since I don’t have personal involvement with Newark, I cannot say for certain, but it sounded good). However, I found her insistence that charter schools in Newark perform better than public schools disturbing considering all I have read on this blog. And then, 24 minutes into the interview, came the comment, “Of course, the charter schools’ populations aren’t as needy as the public schools’…”
Here’s a link to the interview:
http://www.npr.org/2015/09/21/442183080/assessing-the-100-million-upheaval-of-newarks-public-schools