It is a curious fact that there has never been a
successful,state takeover of a local school district. Correct me if
I am wrong. Maybe there is one somewhere but I don’t know of any.
Pennsylvania took control of Philadelphia in 2001, and Philadelphia
is near bankruptcy. New York took control of the Roosevelt school
district and increased its debt. New Jersey controls several of the
state’s lowest performing districts, some for decades, which have
remained troubled. State takeover, it may be said, has no track
record of success. That’s why I applaud the Virginia School Boards Association and
the Norfolk schools for suing the state to block
legislation intended to void local control. When schools are
floundering, they need help, and the state should provide it
without delay. But academic trouble should not be a rationale for
short-circuiting democracy. Message to states: Work with the people
in the community, not against them.
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Albany about to pounce on Buffalo. It won’t end well.
Breaking News! “Deal Just Reached Between Buffalo and NY on Troubled Schools” |
http://on.wgrz.com/1c2ePqV
With all due respect to Johns Hopkins, can someone tell me why we need a private Maryland college to save a public NY school district?
Interesting…John’s Hopkins was the only university that agreed to work withTFA when the organization came into Baltimore. Coincidentally, Hopkins has also become synonymous with charter schools and in supporting their work with “social advocacy and social concern.” Remember who went to Hopkins and gave the biggest donation in it’s history (one billion dollars). Bloomberg!!!
We have to ask ourselves what gives these agencies the power to circumvent democracy?
Again the arm-twisting network and relentless rich donor power of Jeb Bush and his “Excellence in Education Foundation”, ALEC, the Koch Brothers, the Arnold Foundation, Stand For Children, the Gates and Broad Foundation, Pearson, Amplify and so many others, circumvents the democratic process in Norfolk, Buffalo, NC, TN, OH and IN.
The only way to fight back is to follow the lead of VSBA or the Southern Poverty Law Center suit in Alabama.
Reblogged this on Carolina Mountain Blue and commented:
The more I read about Virginia state government’s efforts to take over local school districts, the more it puts paid to the lie that conservatives care about local communities; after all, if they did, why would be seek to pre-empt localities on various issues of record (education, gun control, etc.)?
My niece in law, Sarah Reckhow,http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199937738.003.0005 is working on a book about state takeovers of schools. I want her to include St. Louis……….a billionaire and one of his clients Mayor Slay of st. Louis, became enraged when they were not delivered the school board they thought they had paid for, so they used stats of tests before the “wrong” candidates won, to have accreditation taken away, and as the board did the delicate maneuvering of removing a famous successful basketball coach, (who went to prison for something unrelated to his school controversies), they were characterized, inaccurately, as quarrelsome and ineffective……at least superintendent Bourisaw was able to demand that the state board not bring in a texas can charter school…..not that she was able to stop them from wasting a lot of money for a school that collapsed after 7 months…..anyway….the appointed board there since 2008 just got clobbered by new test results…….Virginians should take note of the idiocy that was forced upon st. louisians by slay and his billionaire…
It is no accident that the communities disenfranchised by the State takeovers are almost always majority Black and Brown. That is certainly the case in New Jersey, where the State controlled districts are Newark, Camden, Paterson and Jersey City.
New Jersey has many troubled school districts, but only majority Black and Brown ones are vulnerable to having their rights to local self-determination taken away.
How is this disenfranchisement different from the various efforts to make voting in general more difficult or impossible for people of color?
Well, Diane, you just don’t get the theory behind this madness. People don’t need a VOICE in school system governance when they have a CHOICE! If they don’t like the privatized schools the rubber stamp, appointed board approves, they can simply choose a different school! Apparently you haven’t read enough Milton Friedman.
Unless they’re in Michigan, where reform has reached the point where whole districts are privatized, in which case their only choice is a privatized, for-profit school. Their public schools are gone. The people in Michigan don’t have a voice or a choice.
What’s been remarkable to watch over the last decade of school reform is how commercial interests have completely captured “reform”. They have a decade of data showing privatized schools don’t outperform public schools. It doesn’t matter. The rush to privatization continues. Complete capture by profiteers and their lobbyists, in a decade.
I just read Texas is expanding online schools. Online schools have a dreadful record. It simply doesn’t matter. Online schools are profitable and online schools allow 1 teacher for 350 students, so online school continue to be sold by reformers.
Arne Duncan has no earthly idea if “blended learning” is appropriate for little kids, no idea if it’s good for 2nd graders to spend half the school day in front of a screen, yet he sells that hard, every day. What is his motivation there? It isn’t “kids” because no rational adult would be that reckless and irresponsible as to use the DOE stamp of approval on an untested commercial product. So what’s driving this?
Joe – St. Louis has several sagas.
Since 1983, th largest voluntary desegregation program in country (13,000 students at its peak went to county schools while city schools were to be improved. It was not perfect and downside of neighborhood schools lost but thousands of success stories.
But, city schools did not improve and then city schools lost accreditation and went through some bad plans and choices to get on track (including what you note above (but there’s more to some of that).
So, the City board was “taken over” and three-person board is appointed to govern. They hire the superintendent. From a governance stand point and now educational, it’s working.
The current superintendent has stability, attention to many right issues, and improvement in spite of recent state report card (which is a new scale). It was a good way to get eyes on a district that lost accreditation without a “takeover.” (Except they are moving fast working with KIPP).
So if there is a “could be successful” takeover mode that wasn’t really a takeover, this would be it.
What needs attention is MO took accreditation away from two country districts. Due to a quirk in state law, kids in those districts can claim seats in other districts.
BUT – the eye opener is MO hired CEE-Trust to consult on the two districts that lost accreditation. That means CHARTER INCUBATION big time. More segregated schools that do not take kids with disabilities or do not speak English, that narrow curriculum, and make profits for corporations churning out texts and tests – and probably more McTeachers as a business model, too.
Unlike the urban centers with tens and hundreds of thousands, this is the foot in the door (or as one person wrote, the fox in the hen house) of small poorer county districts with charters controlling those kids and those left behind left with almost nothing that looks like a school district.
California takes over bankrupt school districts but hands them back when stabilized. That’s been done successfully. Would that count?