In New York and other states, parents, teachers, and principals often feel as if they are on a runaway train.
Someone controls their public schools, and it is not the local community.
The state has a super-heavy hand, and decisions are handed down with no consultation.
Hearings are held, but no one hears or listens to what the public says.
Who took the public out of public education?
How did this happen?
Peter DeWitt, elementary school principal in New York, has written a brave and pointed column about the politics of education in New York.
Who is in charge?
Not you. Not us.
Them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane – this is from today’s Politico: (politico.com) it is just more evidence of the same:
EXCLUSIVE — CANTOR MAKES NEW PUSH ON SCHOOL CHOICE : House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) will deliver “a major policy speech” about expanding school choice at 10 a.m. today in Philadelphia, at Freire Charter School, which has a 99 percent African American student body. The remarks build on Cantor’s “Making Life Work” agenda, which aims to reach out to diverse audiences and make the case that conservative policies can help them. Cantor, who also recently traveled to schools in New Orleans and Denver, will tell his predominantly African American audience in Philly that education is a civil rights issue. From his prepared remarks: “Just like the Charter School program in this state and in this city, scholarship programs like the one in Louisiana [a voucher program which he Justice Department challenged with a lawsuit in August] are aimed at furthering equality for all kids …
“The program is the very opposite of a civil rights violation . It’s a civil rights solution! … Halting the Louisiana Education Opportunity program would trap low-income minority kids in failing schools. This is nothing but Washington standing in the schoolhouse door. And it must stop. I call on United States Attorney General Eric Holder to withdraw his lawsuit immediately. … [S]chool choice is NOT an attack or an indictment on teachers or public schools. My three children attended and graduated from public schools in Virginia. … [T]oday, for the first time, I would like to make a prediction. … [W]ithin 10 years, education opportunity and school choice will be a reality for every student in America.”
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Elizabeth,
Creating racially segregated charter schools is the “civil rights issue of our time.”
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Shameful. It’s an uphill battle to change the narrative …but we (with you at the helm) are making progress. I’d love to see you on The Daily Show.
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Peter DeWitt: another good educator for the Education Nation panel.
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Great article except for this. Where is the solution to the problem? Without a solution no one in charge will listen to you. That is what the legislators tell us and we have a large position with legislators and they trust us as we are not ideologues we work issues and that is rare. No one pays us to do anything as CORE-CA does not take their money as was set up this way when Celes King III saw all the civil rights groups being bought up by the billionaires. When you control the money you control what happens. Make your benefactor mad and you have no more job. Two nights ago the Citizens Advisory Board had a dinner to honor those in the inner city who have worked their entire lives, some 60 years, to save our youth with the Sheriff’s Dept. Top brass of the sheriffs dept. were there in force for the youth. Foster youth were there as they are the most put upon. They all want to go to college.
The solution is “Public Participation” in decision making. Nationally CC calls for parent, public, participation. In California not only CC but LCFF calls for the same thing. Just demand it and take no excuses. If you had someone coming at you and your family with weapons would you just sit there if you had a weapon and let your family be killed or would you fight for them? Only one answer suffices and that is FIGHT!! When our public schools are gone we have lost the war and then it is too late. It is not too late, you must be brave and stick your necks out or you lose and deserve to lose because if you do not stick your necks out you do not deserve to win and will not. You must also be creative and that is why we want the arts back. I have made my living through high level art to the wealthy. I guess it works. It is the same with working on cars. We were in the junkyard yesterday for a friend to find a door and while there I helped two different people get their parts as they could not figure out how to get them off. I use these situations for creative thinking in another world that I know which is readapted to educational purposes by dimensional thinking.
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