EduShyster has noticed a brilliant new reform idea. Tear down the school, build a high-rise with luxury apartments on the site, then let the rich live right on top of the children. What a brilliant idea.
As one young man says in the article quoted, “It’s a win-win.” Or a win-win-win.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That’s exactly what they did with my old high school.
“Built in 1912, the aging, leaking structure offered only half a sports field and little hope of building rehab. In 2004, the TDSB issued a Request for Proposal seeking a development partner. The deal: TDSB would sell two surplus parcels of land to a developer, who would build a new school.
Tridel was chosen out of 10 submissions and the deal resulted in The Republic, a twin-tower (super luxury)condominium development built alongside a new school, complete with underground parking, a state-of-the-art theatre and science labs. Once the school demolition is completed, the facility will also boast a full-sized athletic field on the original building site.”
http://www.dailycommercialnews.com/article/id44128/demolition
The project has already been completed and it looks great.
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and their wealth will just trickle down…
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voilà, no more poverty!!
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Love how the developer gets a 99 year lease and the public gets 40.
That’s some awesome negotiating on behalf of the public.
Oh, well. Don’t look too closely at the contract. Smartboards and laptops!
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I’ve got to chuckle at one unforeseen consequence of this. We all know what it’s like in a schoolyard at recess….the noise factor. Wonder if people paying high rents or buying expensive condos know what they are in for in this way. Chuckle!
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Good one!
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For your amusement. Here’s the commercial for the Republic condo tower. They show the high school football field but don’t mention that the high school is built into the side of the tower. I can imagine what the outdoor cabana sounds like during a football game.
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They never lose – they will just do away with outdoor recess or recess at all.
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What a great, self-contained idea. The students who don’t do well on tests (ELL, Special Education) can be trained to clean the condos. They can call it field study or whatever and get the labor free! “See how we are giving those students an opportunity for a career!” Told you 100% of students can be made college and career ready.
It all fits nicely into the caste system that is being refined in this country.
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Way ahead of you Robert! Tridel, the owners of the Republic condo tower, has an arrangement with the school to supply the school’s marching band for Tridel condo opening ceremonies – the perfect synergy of corporate and educational interests. All that is left is a bit of coporate branding on the school uniforms. See video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWlwp6uJAEU&feature=share&list=UUQGJ0aaOQK9o-d_9gTZ0RsA
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NG’s & Robert’s comments sound like something you’d read in The Onion.
Once again, what is satire and what is reality? (Don’t answer, anyone–rhetorical comment.)
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P.S. Just viewed the videos. Looks like something produced by “The Apprentice”
contestants (especially the second one–WHAT are they advertising?)
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When I read the following blog I couldn’t help but notice how it’s story parallels that of the education “reformers” and their tireless (regardless of how tiring it is for the students) efforts to make education something it isn’t. “Rhee and Co.” reminds me of alchemists, snake-oil salesmen, and carpetbaggers.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/04/10/176660709/our-dark-materials?sc=emaf
Our Dark Materials
by MARCELO GLEISER
April 10, 2013 9:05 AM
The history of science is filled with obscure and bizarre substances. Despite all that we have learned in the past 400 years, the trend continues. Perhaps it’s unavoidable, being the way we figure things out. We need to find some apparently weird stuff — playing a game of cat and mouse with Nature — in order to make sense of what’s out there.
…
Some brief case studies may be useful. In 1667, the German alchemist and physician Johan Joachim Becher, trying to understand combustion, proposed that things burned because they liberated their “phlogiston”; without it, a substance wouldn’t burn. Becher’s hypothesis was doubted when experiments showed that certain metals gained weight when they burned, something hard to reconcile with losing stuff. Soon, speculations abounded. Perhaps phlogiston was lighter than air; or perhaps it had negative (!) weight.
This kind of wild hypothesizing is not rare in science: when an idea begins to fail, people try to save it with all that they’ve got. Who knows? Maybe a new law of Nature is hiding behind the conundrum? Only time and experimental exposure lead to the elimination or modification of the idea.
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