Jersey Jazzman reports that Newark officials, who love to close public schools, will close a school that First Lady Michelle Obama highly praised. When she visited Maple Avenue Elementary School in 2010, she praised the staff and called the school “phenomenal.”
The Obama administration loves closing public schools and firing everyone who works in them. This is called a “turnaround.” It is one of the administration’s worst initiatives. Call it the Donald Trump approach to school reform: “You’re fired!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Did you have a beleagured intern write this post? Your reaction to this makes no sense. How can the administration via fLOTUS love a school, calling it phenomenal, then close it? The feds give public schools loads of money but school closures are almost always LOCAL decisions.
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Intern? I don’t think Jersey Jazzman has an intern. And, by the way, the feds offers millions of dollars for districts that close public schools.
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I would LOVE to have an intern! Please send resumes at once! Can’t pay anything or offer college credits, but the “experience” would be so awesome…
Jojo, read my post – carefully. No one has done more than yours truly to document how Chris Christie’s administration, which has control of Newark’s schools, has worked to close neighborhood public schools at the expense of charters.
But it is naive to think that Barack Obama’s embrace of school closings, exemplified by SecEd Duncan’s career in Chicago, has not created an environment where this sort of thing is accepted by large swaths of the Democratic leadership in cities like Newark.
I am pointing out an irony: a school the FLOTUS praised is being shuttered due to rampant charter expansion – a policy embraced by Obama. I know it’s tough for Obama supporters to take criticism from folks like Diane and me on this issue.
I would, however, suggest that both the president and his supporters take some time to actually listen to what we are saying. Again, no one has done more to point out the sins of Chris Christie’s education policies than I. But he has acted, on this issue, with the blessing of the SecEd and the POTUS. Denying this doesn’t make it any less true.
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What’s a FLOTUS?
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Is this a “federal” approach or a local one? Why not call out the local management of the school district? In Philadelphia, it has been the state-run SRC (members appointed by Republican Gov. Tom “Cut it” Corbett) that closed schools, not the federal government.
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isonprize, I’m trying not to get too defensive here; however…
No one has done more to “call out” the “local” management of Newark’s schools – which is really state management, as the district has been under state control for nearly 2 decades – than your truly.
But the closing mania that has swept Newark, Philly, NYC, and cities around the country is a result of policies touted by the POTUS and SecEd Duncan, who famously closed many Chicago schools while in charge there.
This is an undeniable truth: Barack Obama has called for charter school expansion, which has led to public school closures. I’m sorry his supporters have a hard time acknowledging this, but it’s true.
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Jersey Jazzman: understood.
On an unrelated note: Yusef Lateef died two days ago. Among other comments in his LATIMES obit is the first line of the caption under his photo:
“Yusef Lateef combined thoughtfulness and a probing intellectual curiosity with impressive musical skills.”
Link: http://www.latimes.com/obituaries/la-me-yusef-lateef-20131225,0,7549278.story#axzz2obGdKG9r
To be honest, I do not know how skillful you are as a musician, but I do know you also combine “thoughtfulness and a probing intellectual curiosity.”
I will think of you and your contributions on your blog and elsewhere the next time I listen to Lateef’s INTO SOMETHING and its cuts like RASHEED and WATER PISTOL.
KrazyJazzMan, keep testifying!
😎
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I missed that Lateef had died. An important musician who didn’t always get his due. Thanks for letting me know.
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Hi Ms. Ravitch: I have a question and I am not sure if I am contacting you directly. I am intrigued by the current corruption scandal in Turkey and the possible involvement of Gulen, the leader of among others things, the largest charter here in the U.S. Is there a connection between Gulen, Erdogan, and privatization. Could you comment on your blog? Thank you.
Diane Hartunian
>
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Check farther down the blog. This was discussed a couple of days ago.
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Please read the posts on 12/27 about the Gulen charters.
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When I read the post title I thought that the plans were highly praised, not the school.
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Many thanks to Diane for keeping eyes glued to the Newark privatization fiasco. Newark is one of four NJ districts crushed by state control and by a former Mayor Booker eager to flee his town for greater wealth and fame in DC. There is a lot of real money to be made by privatizers mining the public dollars in Newark and a lot of political capital to be gained by claiming charterized success. Pls read JJ research on the false success of such schools like the North Star academy with its unacknowledged dropout rates. Newark’s hand-picked schools chief Cami Anderson is a grad of the unaccredited Broad Academy which targets public schools for closing and other end-game interventions.
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Good piece on how Andre Agassi’s charter schools are damaging existing public schools in Tennessee. Lists the private investors, too. I guess Agassi’s huge new privately-funded construction project will be very appealing to potential customers, particularly as ed reformers are starving public schools of funds while promoting charters.
I don’t know how a public entity is supposed to compete with a collection of private billionaires, particularly in reform states, where public schools have been completely abandoned by reform leaders who are now government actors. If Agassi came in here with his huge piles of cash our small rural district would be gone in no time.
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20131219/NEWS04/312190103
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“Thanks @AndreAgassi 4 introducing me to your new #snack for #kids. #BoxBuddies!!! Stay tuned for the review soon. pic.twitter.com/JRyQZptntY”
Do you think kids at Rocketship Charters eat Box Buddies? I think the rest of the ed reformers should start children’s snack companies. They can sell the snacks in the schools. I can picture an entire “branded” line-up, actually. An energy drink for test prep sessions! That’s a natural fit.
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I don’t guess any of the reformers pay any attention to reports such as the one Dr. Ravitch posted the other day about public schools out scoring both private and charter schools.
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The ever changing hairstyle empty-headed, empty heart vapid Michelle Obama was busy helping close public schools more than 15 years ago when she sat on this board and that board with her husband and belonged to think tanks whose sole aim was to charterize the system in Chicago.
This woman, who has been mistakenly compared to Jackie Kennedy, is little more than a vapid, hollow shell of a public figure, who will one day protect her shell in the $34 million dollar Honolulu ocean front manse that Penny Pritzker is helping to finance.
Michelle and her angry husband are the neo-liberal Barbie and Ken of edu-reform, they with their smiles, hugs, hair touching, and dancing with children in poor urban neighbrohoods at deliberately underfinanced public schools on blacktop behind chained link fences. . .. all in the name of privatizing a public trust system.
Make no mistakes: Organic produce and wispy bangs or not, Michelle Obama is the strong, reptilian vampire who stands behind her Dracula . . . . .
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This is a highly offensive post.
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Why?
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Shame on Newark Officials.Strong communities, strong public schools.
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This will require further study before I accept that Obama truly wishes to close a great public school. Cristy I would believe in a heartbeat, Barack not so much so. This is a blog and yet I would hope you’d reference factual data/articles to support such an appalling accusation.
________________________________
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Karen K, do you know about Race to the Top? Do you know about “turnarounds” and SIG grants?
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Karen, I have to say:
Who drives RttT? Who drives charterization and officially declared an entire day to be dedicated to the celebration of charter schools without ever making a molecule’s mention of public schools?
Who attended private schools throught his life? Who showed up in Rapids Falls Rhode Island to praise a superintendent and board thaty fired over 200 teachers without researching each individual teacher’s record, a blind, bleaching and wiping out of an entire faculty without talking to the teachers, the parents, or the unions? A firing that was so faulty that more than half the teachers ended up being rehired?
Obama is a disaster. Wake up and smell his opportunism and his rancor for education as a public trust and for his willful ignorance of pediatric poverty.
I am not Republican, but Brack Obama is a complete fraud, as is his wife and most of his cabinet members. . . . I am sorry I voted for him in the first election.
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Parent group SOS New Jersey wants people to contact legislators and to sign a petition. I think some pickets would be good too. Dull news in January, might get some coverage 🙂 http://action.saveourschoolsnj.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12633
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Another good article about this http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2013/12/newark-cami-anderson-uses-network-model.html
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