The blogger Louisiana Educator describes a meeting in Baton Rouge where leaders of the corporate reform movement worried about the progress of their plans to privatize education in the state. Time is running out.
This is a chilling post.
I hope that its author, experienced educator Mike Deshotels, won’t mind if I excerpt this long introduction. You should read it all.
A small private meeting was held in Baton Rouge a couple of weeks ago including representatives of several highly influential power brokers who are dedicated to a major overhaul and privatization of our K-12 education system. These groups were very concerned that much of the Jindal reform legislation has either been declared unconstitutional by the courts or is still tied up in litigation. They are frustrated that the supporters of our public education system are fighting back against their sweeping “reforms”. They figure that they have only the rest of the Jindal administration in which to push through revisions of the law that will keep their reforms intact.
They are concerned that only a relatively small number of teachers are on a pathway to being fired as a result of the sloppy implementation of the new VAM evaluation by Superintendent John White. They believe also that the new laws should be identifying many principals and even local superintendents who should be fired. The firings are not happening quickly enough!
They are concerned that the privatization of our K-12 educational system is not happening fast enough. They are frustrated that many of the new voucher schools have turned out to be run by small time swindlers who knew almost nothing about education and who had no business running schools. They feel their cause has received bad publicity when it was revealed that some voucher schools were teaching about dinosaurs and humans existing at the same time.
This is a mighty hoax being perpetrated on the people of the state. Let them know. Stop the privatization movement now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“They are frustrated that many of the new voucher schools have turned out to be run by small time swindlers who knew almost nothing about education and who had no business running schools.”
I don’t think we’ll ever get the “choice” folks to admit that the fact is, parents can “choose” lousy schools and those lousy schools will then be publicly-funded. It’s happening with the cybercharters, it’s happening with the voucher schools, but facts don’t matter. Jindal’s belief in “markets” is absolute. You’ll never change his mind.
The people I can’t understand are the Arne Duncan camp, who insist they are “agnostics” who rely on market mechanisms like “choice” to (supposedly) back only “great schools.” At what point do they admit that they’re creating three separate systems; public, charter and voucher and a lot of the schools they’re funding (and parents are choosing) are no more “great” than the public schools they replaced?
Guess it means that the “agnostics” are believers after all. They show up in the congregation for every service, they sing loud and long in the choir, they lay their dollars on the collection plate and they recite the prayer book from memory.
very good analogy.
Unfortunately, the so-called reformers failure – their inability to succeed even according to their own debased metrics of high stakes exams – parallels their “success,” in achieving some of the linchpins of their agenda: destabilizing the public schools, neutralizing the teacher unions and turning teaching into temporary, at-will employment.
What I’d love to see is some real research on these “portfolio” cities (like New Orleans), apart from test scores.
Schools aren’t separate and apart from communities. What happened to these neighborhoods and communities when the public schools were closed and all of the local people were fired? What happens to a community when the kids who live there all depart and go their separate ways to schools all over the city, instead of (mostly) attending a local public school, together? What happens to kids when they change schools every year? Can they even form relationships with other children or adults with all this free market churn going on?
Chiara: New Orleans reform efforts will be revealed in all their glory[?] next year in a book by Dr Mercedes Schneider [aka deutsch29 aka KrazyMathLady]. It promises to be excellent.
For more on New Orleans and Louisiana public education, please click on the following links:
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com
Link: http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com
Link: http://louisianaeducator.blogspot.com
Link: http://louisianavoice.com
To pick up on what you and others have brought up: charters and vouchers ensure $tudent $ucce$$, not unimportant things like “building community” and “serving the public good.” For example, the more the charterites/privatizers succeed, the more they can feel absolved of all responsibility for their deeds and words by asserting “if parents willfully, consciously and knowingly chose the wrong charter/used the voucher for the wrong school—they’re responsible for the damage done to their children. Yes indeed, failed children come from failed parents. Stupid begets stupid. Nyah nyah nyah.”
The beauty of “education rheephorm” is that the biggest beneficiaries get stuck with the least accountability.
At least that’s how they see it—Rheeally!
For the rest of us, living on Planet Reality, things look—and are—a lot different.
Thank you for your comments.
🙂
To my way of thinking, this is perhaps the most chilling part:
“A small private meeting was held in Baton Rouge a couple of weeks ago including representatives of several highly influential power brokers”
Is this how democracy is supposed to work?
I was definitely not a history or civics major but I seem to remember something about for, by and of the people. Seems like a small private meeting of fat cats held to determine what kind of schools the rest of of us will be stuck with (and have to foot the bill for) is not the way this is supposed to work.
Deutch 29 is the best. She understands math and its importance to understanding and to be able to have programs by properly understanding and implementing the limited budget for the best student outcomes. This is a balancing act unless you are Philadelphia, N.Y. or D.C. with extremely high incomes/student. Philadelphia- $15,682, N.Y.-$22,000, D.C.-$29,145, LAUSD, $11,687. Why are they out of money. The Philadelphia cost of living index is 196, L.A, is 193, teachers are paid about the same. Employee wages and benefits in LAUSD are 80-85% of the budget in Philadelphia they are about 55%. Where is the money going? To finance the corporations tax break in Pennsylvania they pay charter school students in Philadelphia $6,000 less/student than the regular public school students. There are 55,000 students X $6,000 = $330,000,000 or 1/3 of the tax break was paid for by Philadelphia charter school students. I would guess that charter schools paid for the tax break and that could be proven. Does this give you something to work with in Pennsylvania?
I don’t know why these people believe that their reform schools are run by “small time swindlers”. It’s not only small time swindlers but big time swindlers taking advantage of the cash cows. 9 times out 10 the schools are run by crooks and shysters.
It’s only the small time swindlers they are worried about, because they are the big time swindlers getting a bad rap because the small timers are so bad at the whole swindling thing. Note, they are not upset about the crappy schools and their impacts on children, on their impacts on their own swindles.