No doubt reacting to the news that New Hersey has selected an inexperienced young man with no obvious qualifications to run the Camden, New Jersey, public schools, EduShyster has concocted a hilarious parody in which she is the one hired for the job.
She acknowledges that she has no experience, has never run a school or a district, and has never set foot in Camden, but she insists that these are precisely the qualities that make her just right for the position.
Being a reformer means you need no experience. You need only high expectations and the right connections.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The education racket is alive and lucrative. Some people who are a part of it would not consider themselves a part of a racket, especially one that cheats teachers and students from teaching and learning, but they are. Follow the money to non-teaching professionals. We must be able to create teaching practices, like doctors and lawyers create their practices. An English teacher, math teacher, science and history teacher contract with the state, outside of that town’s school board. I would even say that the teachers should abide by the teacher’s union of that town and pay union dues. I only want teachers to have overriding say in what and how to teach. If we focused on knowledge and skills, high-stakes testing would take care of itself. I know the testing industry would disagree, but it is a part of the education racket.
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Connections? Certainly.
High expectations? Well, if by that you mean high profit forecasts, then we are in agreement.
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Parodies work better when reports of the actual subjects have room for exaggeration. This seems like it would be better served by simply reporting what a lot of these people are actually doing.
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That is really funny.
I just had an epiphany that I alluded to in another comment.
Perhaps the answer to move towards, in consideration of universities and teacher prep and what the observations are about traditional teacher prep from both sides is that teacher prep should, in the future when we begin rebuilding everything from the corporate reform years, only be at the graduate level. That is, maybe it shouldn’t be an undergraduate major. ?
This way reformers and TFA types can’t say that content is lacking on the part of practitioners and at the same time the attention given to training teachers (that those of us in the trenches know is helpful and essential) will not be skipped over. That is, perhaps the end game will be one of elevating the profession more.
It has to be. I don’t think it it took the reform movement, necessarily, to drive a change like that, but perhaps that is an improvement that can please both sides of the debates.
??
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When I first saw the headline for a flash I thought “Is this real? Eduschyster is going to be superintendent. What happened?” And then I got the humor of the reality of the situation. Eduschyster, I wish you lived in L.A or I lived where you do as you would be such fun to go into public and nail them together with the facts and what they mean. You are as good as they get. Thanks for your input and humor with serious issues.
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Congratulations Shyster!! I know you will raise expectations and make 100% of the children career and college ready! (oh, and increase your bank account at the same time.) After that you can cash in on a charter school or sit on a committee telling us of your miracles and solutions.
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“Racial isolation of African American children in separate schools located in separate neighborhoods has become a permanent feature of our landscape. Today, African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago, while most education policymakers and reformers have abandoned integration as a cause.”
I think I’ve connected the dots of how the education reformers are using the inevitable product of black/white segregation to milk the cash cow called public schools dry.
Their call to close the educational achievement gap between the races through market based remedies (such as charters which actually increase segregation) is a callous and intentional misdirection. The intended outcome is corporate control of all aspects of education policy. There are trillions to be made.
CONFRONTING THE GREATEST CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE OF OUR TIME: HOW THE BLACK-WHITE ACHIEVEMENT GAP SABOTAGES EQUAL OPPORTUNITY
Dr Rod Paige 02/01/2010 –
Achievement First Promo: “Closing the achievement gap is the civil rights issue of our time. Despite the promise of equal educational opportunity, the United States education system has largely failed to provide low-income and minority children access to the high-quality education they need to compete on a level playing field with their white, affluent peers.”
the charter chain Achievement First is a financial and political powerhouse. I Connecticut, for example, State Commissioner of Education Stefan Pryor was one of its founders.
they have also been chosen by the Gates foundation to train new “leaders”
this week:
Hartford Courant – Hartford Board OKs 2nd Achievement First Charter School
“Either you educate or you incarcerate,” said Carl Hardrick, 72, a longtime city activist and gang mediator who was recently robbed and beaten by a group of young people in the Blue Hills neighborhood. Hardrick linked a lack of education with the cycle of violence and said he supported Achievement First.
http://touch.courant.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77184165/
http://www.achievementfirst.org/our-approach/achievement-gap-and-mission/
Th truth is that we are “two Americas” as John Edwards pointed during his 2008 campaign for president. The economic prospects of the African American continue to be significantly bleaker than that of whites. There is no solution on the horizon. But that doesn’t concern the hedge fund managers and their craven toadies who will nevertheless frame their efforts in altruistic terms.
The quixotic task of calling bullshit on these vampires had evidently fallen to people like me. We’re screwed.
Ah, the 70’s: when segregation was seen as an issue
History:
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million African Americans out of the rural Southern United States to the urban Northeast, Midwest, and West that lasted up until the 1960s. Some historians differentiate between the first Great Migration (1910–1930), numbering about 1.6 million migrants who left mostly rural areas to migrate to northern industrial cities, and after a lull during the Great Depression, a Second Great Migration (1940 to 1970), in which 5 million or more people moved from the South
By the end of the Second Great Migration, African Americans had become an urbanized population. More than 80 percent of blacks lived in cities.
Detroit is one of the most segregated cities in the United States.[2][3] During the Great Migration, the city gained a large black population, which was excluded upon arrival from white neighborhoods.
By the mid-70s, more than two-thirds of students in the Detroit school system were black
On August 18, 1970, the NAACP filed suit against Michigan state officials, including Governor William Milliken. The original trial began on April 6, 1971, and lasted for 41 days. The NAACP argued that although schools were not officially segregated (white only), the city of Detroit and its surrounding counties had enacted policies to increase racial segregation in schools. The NAACP also suggested a direct relationship between unfair housing practices (such as redlining) and educational segregation.[5]
District Judge Steven J. Roth held all levels of government accountable for the segregation. The Sixth Circuit Court affirmed some of the decision, withholding judgment on the relationship of housing inequality with education. The Court specified that it was the state’s responsibility to integrate across the segregated metropolitan area.[6]
The accused officials appealed to the Supreme Court, which took up the case on February 27, 1974.[5]
The Supreme Court overturned the lower courts in a 5-to-4 decision, holding that school districts were not obligated to desegregate unless it could be proven that the lines were drawn with racist intent. Thus, officially arbitrary lines which produced segregated districts could not be challenged.[7][1]
Stating that there was no evidence that the outlying districts had deliberately engaged in segregation, the Court emphasized the importance of local control over the operation of schools. The decision read, in part:
The inter-district remedy could extensively disrupt and alter the structure of public education in Michigan, since that remedy would require, in effect, consolidation of 54 independent school districts historically administered as separate governmental units into a vast new super school district, and, since—entirely apart from the logistical problems attending large-scale transportation of students—the consolidation would generate other problems in the administration, financing, and operation of this new school system.
The Supreme Court’s decision removed pressure on Detroit to desegregate. According to Wayne State professor John Mogk, the decision also enabled the white flight that re-entrenched the city’s segregation.[5] The Detroit Public Schools became even more disproportionately black over the next two decades (with 90% black students in 1987).[6]
This result reaffirmed the national pattern of city schools attended mostly by blacks, with surrounding suburban schools mostly attended by whites.[6]
Racial isolation of African American children in separate schools located in separate neighborhoods has become a permanent feature of our landscape. Today, African American students are more isolated than they were 40 years ago, while most education policymakers and reformers have abandoned integration as a cause.
In place of integration, politicians, commentators, and public education critics, content with situating black students in racially homogenous schools, declare instead that the test score gap between black and white students is the “civil rights issue of our time.”
https://lcrm.lib.unc.edu/blog/index.php/tag/segregation/page/3/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/08/29/report-public-schools-more-segregated-now-than-40-years-ago/
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In the state of MIchigan most charter students are minorities. The high schools don’t come close to offering the curriculum that is offered in Detroit public high schools. Shysters get rich off of the schools. I wonder why people like Rhee who claim that educaation is the civil rights issue of our time never seem to mention this.
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