The indispensable blogger Jersey Jazzman discovered a column in a New Jersey newspaper, chastising me because I gave a history lesson to Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf. The writer feels sure that if Shanker were alive today, he would be supporting charters and the handover of public schools to private entities.
I have read all of Al Shanker’s columns as well as his speeches about charter schools. What I wrote was documented, not based on opinion or hearsay. I knew Al Shanker well. I did not speculate about what Al Shanker might believe today, but what he wrote and said when he was alive.
The writer thinks that charters have nothing to do with profit. She needs to read up on K12, which just won a charter; it is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and reported revenues last year of $522 million. Its CEO was paid $5 million. It operates for profit. Not your average mom-and-pop school.
For some reason, the writer thought I was angry, but I thought I was professorial. I never get angry when I am giving lessons. In instructing Chris Cerf, I was calm, cool, and collected.
It’s called circling the wagons with the “leader” safely ensconced in the middle.
How do misinformed, uneducated, narrow minded people get to be in charge? I don’t understand how they end up with all the power.
We give it to them. We elect them. The elect appoint the unelected drones and the drones tell you what you need to do. Keep the power for yourself and you can only blame yourself.
Perhaps if she won’t believe you, she will believe Edith Shanker? Her words for Klein are no less apropos for Cerf.
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2012/07/edith-shanker-puts-laura-waters-chris.html
Excellent blog share!
I guess we will all wait for her apology.
Darcie,
I posted this on another thread, but I want to be sure you get this message, so I will post here, too.
Darcie and Jersey Jazzman,
I do not live in NJ but a nearby state. I read your posts every day and I want to thank you for all your research and writing. You are helping parents, teachers and students throughout our country. I want you to know you give me hope that things might get better. You also help me to focus on my students and not get discouraged. I want to thank you for all you do.
Ah yes, K12, the for-profit education tape worm founded by two courageous tribunes of The Civil Rights Movement of Our Time: Michael Milken and William Bennett.
Milken is the convicted felon whose insider dealing led to the collapse of 1980’s Wall St. Death Star, Drexel Burnham, and his used his immense wealth wipe the tarnish off his reputation, largely at the expense of US schoolchildren.
Bennett, the reigning moralist gasbag in the Reagan Administration, is notorious for his off the charts hypocrisy and eccentric, to put things very kindly, racial theories concerning crime, abortion and African -Americans (see Wikipedia).
Where is the muckraking satirist who can do justice to this grotesque, smash-and-grab riot of the 1% that calls itself education reform?
Milkin and 1980’s Wall Street and Bill Bennett and his gaming issues. Forget about the other rumors. What happens when they team up? Possible stock and a class action suit. Who’d have thunk it?
http://www.educationnews.org/online-schools/k12-inc-under-investigation-for-possible-securities-fraud/
Nice NY Times link in above article about possible “detrimental teacher-to-student-ratios”.
K12 class action law suit:
http://www.decisionsonevidence.com/2012/02/class-action-lawsuits-against-k12-inc-announced/
http://idahoea.org/hotline/articles/k12-inc-faces-lawsuit
You schooled Cerf, and I for one am grateful!!!