A reader from Sacramento warns that privatization is moving rapidly in his city:
Here in Sacramento we are facing an all out assault by the privatisation armies. Sacramento City Unified School District has slated eleven elementary schools for closure under their “Children First” and “Right Sizing” plan. Instead of following the six month plan our state dept of ed suggests for closing a school they are pushing it to a vote in one month. We have about a week and a half until eleven of our communities are decemated. Our superintendent – Jonathan Raymond – is a big player in the republican hierarchy with no educational experience. He hired a local charter school bigwig as his chief of staff. To make matters worse our mayor – Kevin Johnson – is married to Michelle Rhee. We are doomed. Here’s a good synopsis from one of our effetced neighborhoods.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is another example of how terrorist capitalism and crony politics trumps democratic ideals, and community solidarity.
The more of these egregious stories I read about, the more I’m convinced that the only
strategy left to educators and citizens to combat this is to engage in direct action like strikes, workplace occupations, and nonviolent resistance (at least initially).
The public has no idea whatsoever of what’s taking place in their education system and of the dire consequences for their children and for democracy. It’s our obligation as teachers to move out of the confines of our classrooms and into the streets.
You are up against it, indeed. Your story needs to be told and the story of efforts to shutter public education and give the corporate world a big win in its very successful campaign to seize the universe and make it safe for corporate domination. How we go about fighting back is what we should be considering and how we make the argument that corporations in charge of schools and educational policy is something we should have been thinking about for a long, long time. Robert Reich’s book Super Capitalism seems to get at the heart of the problem, the destruction of the balance that once did exist, as tenuous, as it may have been, between greed and real need. Please, let us all admit to the fact that we, the people involved with schools, did not do a very good job of helping students understand the reality of the growing power of corporations in matters of state and we did what we were told to do in using textbooks and other materials written not to teach students how to fight back but how to live as docile workers who would feed the beast that would one day swallow them.
If we are to have a chance at doing what needs to be done, putting power back in the hands of the people, providing education that does indeed allow for equal opportunity, but also opportunities worth wanting, then school people will have to play their proper role in this democratic society, educating the rebel, the active citizen who does what is necessary to preserve the freedoms promised in the founding documents of this nation. No more taking what comes and doing nothing about it. No more use of texts approved first by crazies in Texas and then by our states’ crazy or terribly blind politicians. No more teaching to tests if that is what it takes to keep our jobs. No more giving in to horribly harmful mandates such as those we found ways to live with when forced to abide by the dictums of No Child Left Behind.
What we need to do is not fight the battle a school or a district at a time but put before the American people a manifesto that defines proper education for a free and democratic society, one that mentions jobs in passing, as something people create to sustain a decent quality of life, not something they give up their lives for to sustain the life styles of those who have and feel they deserve even more no matter what the cost to those who help to sustain their fortunes through hard work (workers are more productive than ever) for ever less pay.
The public schools have never taught to the rebel, to insure that the citizenry is one that is informed and ready and able to act when the rights of people are being violated. The American public, it seems, is unable to recognize the enemy or use its collective intelligence to insure that those enemies of democracy are kept at bay. We fight wars that are justified to us without any kind of meaningful justification. We suffer an economic crisis without knowing the cause or or complicity in making it happen. We don’t know why our homes are being taken or why some have private jets while others go hungry to dilapidated schools where underpaid teachers are forced to teach to a test they had no had in writing.
We need to know why Kevin and Michelle hold the power they hold and why no one attempts to wrest it from them despite the wrong doing such possession of power leads to, the closing of neighborhood schools, for example. What is happening needs to be understood in the context of why it is happening and the conditions that allowed it to happen. Part of the reason will be found in the passivity of the teacher corp and its unwillingness to teach to truth that are terribly painful because that passivity is, at least in part, responsible for generations of passive citizens. We have failed to promote the rebel self and, in doing so, devolved the spirit that sustains democracy.
Wonderful comment. Enjoyed reading it.
How in heaven’s name did a man with no school experience get the job of superintendent?
He is a graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy and he has all their resources behind him.
Thanks, Florence, that explains a great deal. Did I miss something in the article, or are you party to additional knowledge?
It is the same thing here in NYC. Teachers ask how could a person with no teaching experience get a principal’s position. Easy! Get a SDA license from NYS, attend the DoE’s Leadership Academy of Incompetence, and now that person can destroy education. The DoE will protect those administrators even if they’re in the media creating “videos” of shameful education. http://chaz11.blogspot.com/2013/02/another-disgusting-example-of-does.html
Same in Louisiana. John White. No teaching credentials, yet appointed State Superintendent of Ed. Follow his trail of failed Ed Deform. Anyone see a pattern here?
The less experience in the classroom, but the more pompous and politically connected you are, the higher you will advance in the “education reform” charade.
All roads lead back to Joel Klein/Bloomberg and TFA: White and Rhee and many others.
Sacramento needs to pitch in for two one way trip tickets to hell for Mr. and Mrs. Rhee.
This pattern is straight from Obama, Duncan, Gates, Broad, Walton, HP et al. Don’t leave ALEC out either or the DFER.
Same question can be asked of the superintendent of Washoe County School District in Nevada, Pedro Martinez. He has NEVER taught or been a school administrator in his life and is completely unqualified under Nevada law to be a superintendent.
A lot of Gates and Broad money goes a long way.
You will like Jazzman’s summary of Rhee on Stewart:
Our nation’s dialogue about education has been commandeered by a bunch of ill-informed, intellectually lazy, bought-and-paid-for edu-celebrities. Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, Ben Chavis, Steve Perry, Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, and a few others are pushing an agenda that has little evidence to support it; worse, they are rarely questioned by well-informed journalists as to the specifics of their plans.
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/02/rhee-on-stewart-final-thought.html
Apartheid schools for Sacramento. Charters for the best, and public for the rest. That is one deranged plan by the mayor and superintendent. Probably not a great place to be a student while the public schools are starved into their second tier status.
I guess Sacramentoans have a choice, recall the mayor or embrace an ugly system.
What else do you expect from the puppets of Gates, Broad, Walton and HP. Do not forget that Rhee gave up custody of her own children and only taught for three years and was not that good at that. How do you suddenly get the big money in behind you? Something is bought and sold that is for sure. We have a very corrupt system now that is not for the people but only for the wealthiest 1/10 of 1/10 of 1% as they are the “Master Controllers.”
Excellent comments and analysis above. Kudos to all of you.
However, I would only say this. If we want our message to be effective, keep it short, direct and straightforward, as in: “Certain interests and individuals are trying for a Private Takeover of your Public School.”
It isn’t that difficult for people to understand the idea that a group of powerful, wealthy and influential people—who are well-connected with others like them—will manipulate numbers, withhold information, and hire well-paid, slick PR and “Community Outreach” people who know how to distract and distort, to get what they want.
Almost everyone understands this type of messaging. And the (well-founded) skepticism and distrust of these people cuts across almost all ideologies, income levels, nationalities, religious views, regional identities and years of education.
For instance, I have found that when I clearly and simply explain the so-called “Parent Trigger”—and how it allows private companies, without your knowledge or permission, to pay people to go door-to-door, asking people to sign a petition to supposedly “improve your child’s school”—they “GET IT”, right away.
What follows next? Smoke usually begins to come out of their ears, while asking, “What can I do to stop this?!?!”
And this is almost always the case, whether I’ve been speaking to a physician, a cab driver, a software engineer, a fast food worker, or the senior partner at a prestigious law firm. The reaction is shock, followed by absolute outrage!
So, let’s remember to hone our message, keep it tight, and easy to understand and digest.
As the election results from only 3 months ago demonstrated—even in strongly conservative states like Indiana and Idaho—people know when they’re being hoodwinked. And they don’t want rich, powerful elitists eliminating their elected school boards, shuttering their neighborhood’s schools, stealing their education tax dollars and diverting them into private hands.
Don’t be too subtle, nor too hyperbolic or overly emotional. Definitely do not be too long-winded.
The person hearing your message doesn’t need the entire historic narrative of how and why we got to this state of affairs. They just want to know why this is bad for their children and his or her school.
The Privatizers have the money, the mainstream media spotlight, and a specious “failing schools” narrative that, up until recently, has proven to be effective for them in their quest to slowly, over time, eliminate our public schools.
But we have the power that comes with the truth. And, no one among us is being paid big bucks to do any of this work. We’re doing it as fellow parents and citizens; because it’s the right thing to do.
No need to incorporate Hegel or Jefferson here. Just say it clearly and as few words as possible—bullet points are often excellent.
We’re making it difficult for The Privatizers to sell their wares these days, which is why they’re getting more aggressive and more hostile.
Let’s put them into a full-scale panic; just by using the fewest words and speaking them clearly and directly.
Perhaps you could see if Michael Moore is interest in your story? He might do a documentary on Sacramento b/c it is not one of the first districts to undergo this assault, and the privatizers have had plenty of time to perfect a blitzkrieg assault.