The new leadership of the Texas legislature has a plan. State Senator Dan Patrick, the new chair of the Senate Education Committee, wants vouchers, more charters, and a fast track for closing down public schools. He and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst want to shorten the time that schools have to improve or close–from five years to only two. That should clear the way for lots of vouchers and charters!
Allen Weeks, who heads the Save Texas Schools coalition in the state, wrote an article about the privatization agenda.
He wrote:
“How many schools would close under their two-year axe? Based on 2010-11 ratings, 40 Texas schools — including six charters — would shut down immediately. Dallas would lose seven campuses overnight, including five high schools. Fort Worth would lose two high schools and a middle school. Lights would go out in rural schools like Albany Junior-Senior High School and Hearne High School, triggering long expensive commutes for students to neighboring districts. Another 490 schools, already with one year of academically unacceptable ratings, would likely panic. A second miss by as little as a single student, and that’s it. No school in your community, no football team, no jobs connected to the school — and no guarantee kids will better off academically. Once scores from the new widely-panned STAAR/EOC tests are factored in, the number of “failing” schools may easily skyrocket into the thousands.”
Folks, these gentlemen are not conservative. They are radicals. Why would any sane Texan want to destroy the public schools when there is a boatload of evidence that charters and vouchers don’t do any better?
Allen Weeks is organizing a big rally to support public education in Austin on February 23. I will be there.
hopefully Texans’ love of football will save these schools from closure!
☆ February 23 ☆ Remember the Alamo ❢
I found it fascinating that Bob Schieffer on Sunday’s Face the Nation told of attending school in Fort Worth Texas and college in Texas and “never shaking a black man’s hand until he was in the Air Force”.
Today’s Fort Worth school students are composed of mainly Hispanics and Blacks. The one outlier in the rankings is a charter school were the majority of students are White.
Just look at who give them their campaign contributions and who their friends are. You buy politicians on the cheap now. This is how it rolls in our fascist country now. After all, do not corporations, and they are owned and managed by the wealthiest, run every sector of this country now?
I found the perceived losses from school closing interesting, “…no football team, no jobs connected to the school…”. Is public education about student learning or about entertainment and employment for the adults?
Those are symbols of the public school being at the heart of a community. For example, a good fraction of the teachers and staff in my school district live in or near our district, and I often run into them at the supermarket, the library, and so on — including at the occasional funeral. We feel connected, we are connected. That means we are more willing to do the things that have to be done to support and strengthen our schools. Our lives and our children’s lives are enriched by our bonds.
I’m not into sports but I know that Jr & Sr high school sports fill a similar role, as community-building experiences. As it’s been said, it takes a village to raise a child and in our contemporary world, if you are fortunate, the public school is one of your “village’s” town squares. Education is not like going to the gas station and filling up your tank, it is a process that depends on personal relationships. Having a close-knit school community allows those relationships to grow and flourish.
I am curious about how “near” the district the teachers may live, and how far charter school teachers live from the schools in which they teach.
There is no doubt that high school sports can be a great benefit to the adults in communities, but certainly not for all the children. Two of the three children I have put through public school have been varsity athletes. The third had to get up at 4 a.m. to go to a football pep rally because of his position as an officer in the math club. He also watched a half million dollar improvement made to the football stadium in his high school the same year the drama program’s budget was cut to $0. This budget was important to him because he was the head of technical theater and stage manager and he had to figure out how to put on productions using no money.
He learned his place in the community.
As always, I’m NYC-centric. And in NYC, my sense is that most teachers do not live in the neighborhood where the school is located. Many don’t even live in NYC.
To flerper:
This was not always the case. As recently as the 1970’s teachers did live in the NYC neighborhoods that they taught in.
They could afford to do so.
In 1970, in New York City, a beginning teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. Now, the newbie lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher.
The subsequent rise in property prices keep teachers out of NYC and other big city neighborhoods.
Yes, when I was a child in Queens in the 1960s-70s, my siblings and I did have teachers who lived in our (very middle, middle-class) neighborhood. It was mortifying to me when my mother would stop to chat with them in places like the produce section of the supermarket. It was a different world.
I realize I now live in as close to a Platonic ideal of a school district that is probably possible. We are a model, and the world needs models.
When I read the post, I did not focus on the part about jobs and sports like teaching economist did. Instead I imagined the upheavel in the children’s and adults’ lives that will result as their schools are closed out from under them. I remember how hard each transition to a new school has been on my special needs son and then I multiply that.
It is very common in smaller towns to have the community revolve around the school district. Public Ed is about a wide ranging curriculum and opportunities. Who in the world thinks that Public ed isn’t about learning first? Seriously.
I think public education is about the interests of a wide variety of stockholders, including local sports fans.
A large proportion of the blog entries and comments here are all about how public Ed policy IS NOT about learning first.
Scandal.
“Portage school board releases charges against former Superintendent Ric Perry, detailing ‘affair’ with human resources director (with 4-page PDF)”
http://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2013/01/portage_school_board_releases.html#incart_river_default
“The board also claims some district employees feared Perry would “engage in retribution to employees “who cooperated with the investigators.
The charges also allege that Perry, while serving as the district’s interim superintendent in January 2012, explored “activities to open one or more K-8 charter schools in Grand Rapids that would feature an international baccalaureate curriculum” and then continued that involvement after being named superintendent last March.”
“As for Koeze, she submitted her “involuntary resignation” as human resources director on Monday, hours after Portage school officials learned she had taken a job as in Muskegon without telling them.
Portage officials contacted Koeze’s attorney on Monday after learning from an MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette reporter that Koeze started Jan. 14 as superintendent of WayPoint Academy, a Muskegon charter school. A WayPoint official told MLive that Koeze has “strong credentials” for the job.”
Wow…. “strong credentials”. Why do people do such dumb things like this?
From the comments.
Is this Perry’s dissertation?
Perry, Richard, “Dissatisfaction Theory and Superintendent Turnover: An Exception to the Rule” (2008). Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. Paper 145.
http://commons.emich.edu/theses/145
I thought I read somewhere that this would only apply to public schools? Charters wouldn’t be closed after two years, even if failing? Can someone verify this?
It never ceases to amaze me how the market mentality looks at the world through ROI-colored glasses, and where there is community sees nothing but commodities.
Well, we aren’t doing much to prevent this in Texas. With 80 percent of Texas schools using the drill and kill method of CScope to drive creative teaching in the ground and turn students into pieces of STAAR test data, Senator Patrick will have his way. Parents in Texas are pissed off. We have kids that are starting to hate school as early as the first grade and by the time they reach the fifth, cheerleading and football isn’t even on the radar; parents are just trying to get Little Johnny and Suzy through the school year day by day, waiting in the carpool line to see not if Johnny or Suzy had a good day, but if there’s going to be a meltdown in the car. Home or private schools are waiting with wide open arms. Texas is stinking it up real bad. You will still have your public school, but all that will be left is low income students. Welcome back to segregation!
Re: Teaching Economist
“I think public education is about the interests of a wide variety of stockholders “”
TE, as usual, shows that he/she does not grasp the difference between a corporation and a community or a country operating on democratic ideals. Most folks would say “stakeholders” here, with the understanding of one person one stake, but TE just naturally says “stockholders”, as if to say one dollar one share.
Thanks for pointing out my editing error. I of course meant stakeholders.