The Center for American Progress is supposedly a liberal organization, but it is a cheerleader for corporate reform. It has published report after report endorsing the main ideas of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
It just released a new report that lauds mayoral control.
Those of us who live in cities under mayoral control know that the primary result is not to improve education or to help struggling children, but to stifle the voices of parents, students, teachers, and community members. Under mayoral control, governance is transferred to the mayor and the power elite, few of whom have children in public schools or even attended one. Mayoral control snuffs out democracy.
The timing of this report comes just as the mayor of Chicago unilaterally decided to close more than 50 public schools, decimating communities and stranding thousands of children. Is this “reform” of public schools? It also comes as the third term of Mayor Bloomberg winds down, and the authoritative Quinnipiac poll shows that only 18% want more of the same.
Mayoral control has a predictable result: it undermines democracy and allows the rich ad powerful to privatize public schools for fun and profit.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There are liberals and there are Neo-liberals. Basically they are Conservatives posing as liberals.
One quick observation about these groups. Their experts on education have never taught. And their degrees aren’t in education but in Political Science and the other in English and Economics) One of my favorite teachers always told me to write about what I know. Too bad they didn’t have the same teacher.
Actually, I think the best education/experience combo is academic degrees with a teacher prep program and classroom teaching. I think policy making by those with economics or law backgrounds WITH considerable teaching experience is best–but this is only my opinion.
Reblogged this on @ the chalk face and commented:
Yeah, I thought Think Progress was progressive?
More here:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/03/mayoral-control-aint-done-squat-for-nyc.html
Lots of reasons to question this report.
NEO-LIBERALISM™* —
* Void where prohibited by the 1%. May contain no actual liberalism.
Latest poll showed 2% think Mayor Emanuel is doing a great job.
For a very long time almost all of the civil rights and so called liberal organizations are really right wing and controlled by the corporate privatizers through their donations to these organizations. Mayoral control has been a total failure wherever it has been instituted. When, under AB 1381, Villaraigosa tried to obtain mayoral control for LAUSD, which is in California unconstitutional, Arne Duncan, then superintendent of Chicago, and Senator Feinstein both wrote letters to the California Legislature stating that those who ran Chicago before Daley took over in 1995 had put the Chicago School District into $1.8 billion in debt which Daley et al had to clean up. Fact, I have the pertinent financial pages to the 1994 Chicago Schools Budget and there was a surplus. What will they do to promote their loser ideology? The answer is anything they can get away with. Therefore have organizations, who are being paid to do this, pretend that they have done real research. This research would never stand up to the light of review.
Feinstein’s husband is an investor in two for-profit college companies: Career Education Corporation and ITT Educational Services.
http://firststreetresearch.cqpress.com/2012/04/16/for-profit-colleges-have-uncounted-government-connections/
Susan you are exactly correct. This is the reason Feinstein lied to the State of California as it was in her financial best interests. Thank you for letting others see what is really happening in this corrupt world we live in.
These guys should change their name to “Corporations After Profits”
My tweet on this:
Corrupt mayors forcing public schools to adopt corporate ed reform works? Shame on Ctr for
Am Progress
I say shame on almost every civil rights group in the U.S. I am the Director of Policy for The Congress of Racial Equality of California (CORE-CA). The founder was Celes King III of the L.A. Kings not MLK. Their family has over 114 years of continuous work in civil rights. California used to be a part of the national CORE. In the 80’s Celes King III saw that all civil rights groups were being infiltrated by the corporations and wealthy individuals through the donations which end up controlling them and he legally separated from CORE to found a separate entity CORE-CA so that in California we would not be influenced by anything except our own research and beliefs. Celes King III was a Tuskeegee airman, In 1947 he became the only bail bondsman in the U.S. to write bail for civil rights people nationwide. He was also an advisor to three presidents. This is a shame that those who promise to uphold our civil rights are compromised. We will never sell out. What we discover we take public. We do not go public unless we have the documented proof. No one ever proves what we present in documentation is incorrect. This is the only way you maintain trust over time. We fight for the entire community not just education. For instance there is a total link between what happens from before a child is born to later life. We call this the “Prebirth-School to Prison Pipeline.” It is not just the School to Prison Pipeline. I have done a lot of research on this issue. It is confirmed by many. We work seriously in transportation, criminal justice and education for just a few as we look at how the entire system works together and are trying to readjust it to that end. If we just look at things separately the system will never work.
How about “Profits R Us?”
Profits R’ Us is exactly what they are and nothing else.
Can someone please explain why the tea party folks are not upset with this sort of thing?
Where are the rallies, the outrage, the funny hats, the crying and desk pounding and of course the tea bags (cue tasteless sex jokes).
Is mayoral control not taxation without representation?
Isn’t this “big government” overreach?
This is all about finishing converting the U.S. and the rest of the world to a fascist society. Remember fascism is corporations and govt. being one and actually when this happens corporations become the govt. This is really what we have now. Read “Hapsburgs to Hitler” by Gulick and you will understand exactly what is going on here.
It’s because the tea party was / is funded by the uber-Republican billionaires like the Koch brothers.
But a number of them throughout the south are beginning to complain loudly and bitterly about the federal (DoE) intrusion into their local schools through CC, among other initiatives.
Yay!
Don’t you just love the names these people give their organizations. It is all so “Orwellian” with their “Doublespeak.”
Also, Carrie, I saw the documentary “Koch Bros. Exposed,” and was relieved to see that they lost their fight (& all the money they’d invested!) to re-segregate the Wake County, N.C. schools. (If that’s S.C., please correct me.)
Let us make this the beginning of the corporate privatizers downfall.
Shame on these two authors and the Center for Am Progress for publishing this drivel. Their premise that mayoral control is better democracy because schools boards are elected by 10% of the electorate, while mayors can receive over 50%. Then they avoid an inconvenient fact: mayoral appointed school board is elected by 0%.
How many have read 1984 and a Brave New World? There you are. Doublespeak and such. We know their game. The game is to do what I call “Reverse Polarity.” When you turn on a lath, which turns in both directions, and then reverse it the rotation goes in reverse with the same power. We must use their own power against themselves. It works along with psychological warfare and the Art of War. This is exactly what they do and one thing I have found out to the very top is that two can play the game. Go read the stories about what happened when Arne Duncan tried to game us in Pico Rivera when he walked out. It didn’t work out so well for them. I also have the letter he wrote to the California Legislature lying about the need for mayoral control. Just ask me to send it with the proof and let us print it. Want to see them jump like cats on a hot tin roof?
Gosh, yes, George! Read ’em all & all the WW II propaganda, as well, and you know whereof you speak. That’s why we ALL have to be connect-the-dots kind of people and keep reading this blog & others, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes (“keep your friends close & your enemies closer”), & everything else. Most important of all,
don’t give up & keep fighting!
It must be noted that this study was funded by The Broad Foundation according to Anthony Russo’s blog in Scholastic. I cannot find other sources for this information (it is not stated in the report), but Russo recently had a friendly interview in Scholastic with Eli Broad, so I think this information is credible.
http://tinyurl.com/d5hmler
Philaken,
Almost every think tank in DC is an advocacy group funded by Gates.
Until The Center for American Progress releases its list of donors, they cannot be considered credible. The have consistently refused to state their funding sources. Credible sources link this study to funding from Eli Broad. How convenient is that?? This guy is the poster child for Mayoral control. I took a cursory look at the claimed academic improvement in districts controlled by mayors. In the report the authors state that the gains are modest and mixed yet on CAP’s website they tout mayoral control as providing “HUGE” gains. From ersatz “study” to press release the gains grew dramatically.
Broad. Now that’s a name I trust. I prefer the study of my alma mater- Rutgers. #JeRseystrong
Rutgers- Mayoral Control of Schools Study
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-12/mayoral-control-alone-doesn-t-fix-weak-school-systems-rutgers-study-finds.html
Junk study. Go read my comment on the article. It is the only one. How is that I might ask?
Link to your comment, please.
Go to the link to the article and it right there at the bottom. It is the only comment on that article.
TY – you posted the comment after I read the article. Why is this a junk study?
Mayoral control accompanied by testing excesses to show policy success _ just another example of a business model applied to public schools with an eye fixed on the market and little regard for teachers and students involved in the business of education.