On the very eve of the weekend celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Newark’s state-appointed superintendent showed the citizens of Newark that they have no votes and they have no voice when it comes to the fate of their schools.
The Newark public schools have been under state control since 1995.
Cami Anderson, the current Newark Superintendent is a former Teach for America teacher and a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy, which is known for advocating the closing of public schools and the handover of public schools to private management.
At a public hearing called by Newark Councilman Ras Baraka to discuss school closings, the principals of several schools spoke against their closing.
Anderson fired them for daring to dissent.
Here Jersey Jazzman describes the situation.
He quotes Councilman Baraka, who said:
“Today Cami Anderson indefinitely suspended four Newark principals: Tony Motley of Bragraw Avenue School, Grady James of Hawthorne Avenue School, Dorothy Handfield of Belmont-Runyon, and Deneen Washington of Maple Avenue. She suspended the four principals because they spoke at a public forum on Wednesday in opposition to Ms. Anderson’s widely criticized “One Newark” reorganization plan which includes closing or “repurposing” nearly one third of Newark’s public schools.
Ms. Anderson’s action in suspending the four principals is the last straw in a chain of inept, and horribly out-of-touch decisions. The people of Newark need to hear the views of those within the school system who disagree with Ms. Anderson. The four principals have a constitutional right to speak out. The Newark school district is not a military dictatorship, and Ms. Anderson is neither an army general nor a police chief. Her behavior must be governed by the principles of our democracy.
Whatever one thinks of Ms. Anderson’s political and educational ideology, she has proven time and again that she holds in contempt the opinions of the people of Newark. From the beginning, she has not consulted with Newark’s parents, community and political leaders, or professional educators on any significant decision. Most recently, she announced and began implementing her ” One Newark” reorganization plan on the people of Newark with no consultation and no advance notice. In doing this, she ignited a firestorm of opposition from outraged citizens.
Anthony Cody watched videos of the hearing and has extensive clips from the testimony of each of the principals.
New Jersey is making headlines this month as the bullying tactics of Governor Christie have gone beyond shouting down individual school teachers, which many in the media seemed to find amusing, and into the realm of political scandal as the “Bridgegate” emails came to light.
Now Newark, New Jersey, is exploding, thanks to the attempts at intimidation by Governor Christie’s hand-picked superintendent of schools, Cami Anderson. Anderson came to Newark after working in New York City schools. Before that, she was employed with New Leaders for New Schools and Teach For America. She was trained by the Broad Academy, which literally wrote the book on how to close schools.
Journalist Bob Braun today carries a report on the decision by Anderson to “indefinitely suspend” five of Newark’s principals. Braun explains:
The “incident” was a community meeting at the Hopewell Baptist Church last Wednesday where (H.G. James) spoke, praising the efforts of his students, teachers and parents.
James was one of five principals indefinitely suspended in one day by Cami Anderson, Christie’s agent in Newark. The others were Tony Motley, Bragaw Avenue School; Dorothy Handfield, Belmont-Runyon School; Deneen Washington, Maple Avenue School, and Lisa Brown, Ivy Hill School.
Four of the principals…tried to answer questions from local residents worried about what would happen to their children as Anderson moves toward a wholesale transfer of public school assets to the KIPP Schools, a charter organization that operates TEAM Academy Charter Schools. Questions Anderson wasn’t answering.
The plot thickens when we understand what these community forums were all about. These forums were convened by mayoral candidate Ras Baraka, to give the community a voice in response to planned school closures. A video shows the principals speaking to their community.
It is not clear whether four or five principals were indefinitely suspended. It is clear that Christie, Cerf, and Anderson intend to hand the children of Newark over to charter operators, regardless of the wishes of their parents and the community. And it is clear that any school employee who disagrees will be indefinitely suspended.
This is not the way democracy is supposed to work. Public schools belong to the public, not to state officials to use as their plaything. Public officials are supposed to serve the public, not dictate to them.
The state-controlled districts in New Jersey–all predominantly African-American–are being treated like subjugated territories, in which the residents have no say about the control or disposition of their schools.
I agree with Anthony Cody: The destruction of public education in New Jersey’s state-controlled districts–deliberate and knowing–is far worse than Bridgegate. One involved an abuse of political power, an act of spite on the part of Governor Christie’s closest staff. The other involves the deliberate destruction of democracy and public education. It should be an impeachable offense.
Time for a lawsuit…or five. Professionally, educators are obligated to speak well, not ill, of their districts’ policies. However, the fact that the people have no advocates make these principals public heroes. There needs to be a forum that cannot be strong-armed by politicians. The parents should show up at Anderson’s door with torches for this.
Do they have a union? I definitely would seek legal counsel. Of course, that will not help the children. I would be horrified if my child were forced to attend a KIPP school. And if they don’t have the resources, they cannot steel other options.
This is a sad day.
@LG torches and pitchforks!
I agree, but a few choice guillotines would not hurt either . . . .
This is insane. I hope there are things we who don’t live in New Jersey can do to show our support. Perhaps BAT (http://www.badassteacher.org/) can help. I know Mark Naison is already moving into action but the rest of us need to, too.
This is the fear mentality that allowed the tampering with our state of education to progress this far. Our country is in BIG TROUBLE!
Start with repressing free speech in this context and watch it spread into all other realms of American life.
This is the recognizable, irrespressible, and undeniable launch of fascism . . . . . .
Free speech does not apply to the workplace, whether that is a public or a private enterprise. The same can be said for democracy. And that is where we spend the majority of our time. The rights of employers trump the rights of workers: “Where Free Speech Goes to Die: The Workplace”
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-03/where-free-speech-goes-to-die-the-workplace
While people live under the illusion of being free, the plutocracy rules this nation with an iron fist. When are people going to become sick of this enough to finally unite and fight back against the 1% and their political lackeys?
And that is why Diane’s blog is so important..
I will not remain silent…
“If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.”
― Albert Einstein
MLK said the same thing about silence . . . .
Robert..
I got this quote from goodreads….Did MLK use the exact quote or something similar?..No time to research this a.m.
Aaron – BATs area already on the case. It was a BAT that first broke the story 🙂
I think Christie’s actions to destroy public education in the state controlled districts are part and parcel of Christie’s agenda overall. Look at the news today that two Christie cronies threatened Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer over a real estate project – agree with what the governor wanted or kiss a couple hundred million in Sandy relief funds goodbye. There are connections between the owners of the property Christie wants developed and Christie’s cronies just as there are connections between the companies enriching themselves in Newark and elsewhere on public education and Christie and his cronies. It’s a cut from the same corrupt cloth.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
Christie and his minions have zero tolerance for dissent. Christie sets the example for how to bully, undermine and intimidate any who disagree, and the Democrats here mostly roll over, except for a few like Buono, Sokolich of Ft Lee, Fulop of Jersey City. In Montclair, principals and teachers are also fearful of speaking up, afraid of being targeted, only one principal has tenure. The Board here issued subpoenas against its most vocal online critics, insinuating they were behind a criminal leak of district tests, even though no evidence of any criminal activity. The PTA is an insider-operation in the pocket of the anti-union, derelict Board. Our parent opposition group, Montclair Cares About Schools, has been speaking up for 8 months now, supporting one lone heroic Board member and a Town Council majority opposing the Board, encouraging more parents to raise their voices. Only a parent uprising can stop the hollowing out of our public schools.
This is a violation of constitutional right of those principal. This injustic to parents ,children,teachers and the schools MUST STOP. RESIDENTS OF NEWARK MUST FIGHT BACK.
Let us not forget what the 20 somethings were shouting loudly and clearly as they initiated a well needed movement in America “Occupy Movement… from Wall Street to McPherson Square in DC.. and in nearly every major city in America they shouted… “this is not what democracy looks like”… So here we go again… Governor Christie… “This is not what democracy looks like”… may this be another mark against any notions he may have for running for presidency! This is a national disgrace and the superintendent should be immediately have to go before a board to explain herself and defend herself and let the board decide whether she stays or goes! I know what I would vote!
Like Ken commented on the Sandy fund story today, “This is what always happens when a bully’s reign of terror starts to show some cracks. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a corrupt politician, a mafia don, a tribal warlord, or a 10 year old schoolyard bully. The process is the same. Once the bully appears vulnerable, victims who up till then had been keeping their heads down for self protection start to speak up. And the crack in the dam starts getting bigger and bigger, until suddenly the whole thing collapses.”
“t doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a corrupt politician, a mafia don, a tribal warlord, or a 10 year old schoolyard bully. The process is the same. Once the bully appears vulnerable, victims who up till then had been keeping their heads down for self protection start to speak up. And the crack in the dam starts getting bigger and bigger, until suddenly the whole thing collapses.”
———————————————-
That reminds me of the following.
There’s a great scene in the mini-series ANDERSONVILLE, about the Darwinian conditions among POW’s in a notorious mass prison in the Confederate South during the Civil War—-set up for just 2,000… it ended up holding 10,000 prisoners.
A small minority of bullying thugs have been terrorizing the majority of Union POW’s… stealing or just plain taking from them at will, and sadistically killing and torturing them for sport…
And everyone is too paralyzed with fear to stand up to them.
It just takes one guy to stand up to them. He witnesses the start of the sickening “initiation” the bullies inflict on the naive, newly-arrived POW’s. A weasel-y bully feigns concern for these new prisoners, gaining their trust, as he leads them into an ambush where they will be beaten senseless, and robbed of anything of value.
Well, this one guy takes in this grotesque predation for the ump-teenth time, but this time, he just can’t take it anymore, and he has to act.
Grabbing a club, he repeatedly screams the one-word question,
“WHO???!!” “Whoo-oo-oo???!! “Whoo-oo-oo???!!”
as in
“Who else will join me in fighting back against theses bullies?”
People tell him to stop, that taking on the bullies is hopeless, but he will not be deterred.
He starts out alone, and gradually, one-by-one, others join him…
People of New Jersey… this is for you.
“WHO???!!” “Whoo-oo-oo???!! “Whoo-oo-oo???!!”
Eventually, the commandant of Andersonville—the only Confederate tried for crimes against the Union (and also the only one sentenced and hung… but that’s another story… see the movie)—allows the leaders of the Union prisoners to create their own court and hold a trial of the bullies. This leads to the bullies eventually being found guilty, sentenced, and hung.
Thanks for sharing this, Jack. There is strength in numbers.
Just watched this clip – it was completely inspiring. Thanks for sharing.
This was a move of desperation, and it will backfire for reasons beyond Cami Anderson’s comprehension. She’s chosen a bad week to try to beat this particular city down. These young principals spoke out to their communities because they are lifted by courage and hope, and the people of Newark are emboldened to rise with them.
Poet and jazz musician Amiri Baraka was laid to rest in his city of Newark today, January 18, 2014. Cornell West and Danny Glover are there now, to speak at his funeral. Our whole generation is there with them, in our hearts.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/01/18/3878473/nj-funeral-for-activist-poet-writer.html
I think what will happen is, those schools will remain in the hands of their communities, and Newark will have a new mayor, Amiri Baraka’s son Raz.
Fantastic.
Especially the Def Poetry Jam poem: Why Is We Americans which starts about minute 3:22
Some of his words are about education
Beautiful.
Blessings to those heroic principals.
You are so right about Anderson’s tone-deafness. A community meeting on Dr. King’s birthday called by Newark Councilman Baraka results in the suspension of 5 Afro-American principals and the ejection of an Afro-American parent from his role as President of the PTO at his child’s school is clueless enough.
Lacking any knowledge of the city of Newark, Anderson has made a critical mistake. Now Cornell West, Danny Glover and other prominent, powerful, educated people are in the city to pay homage at the memorial service for the Councilman’s father. I urge all to watch Amiri Baraka recite his poem at 3:21 in the video. This poem will be quoted all over Newark in the days to come.
Even without the extra limelight – blow up at the African American community right before Martin Luther King Day is a really bad move which won’t go un noticed.
But it WILL go unnoticed if the Star-Ledger doesn’t report it. Still waiting… !!
As two of Chris Christie’s goons were discussing the fate of Fort Lee school children stuck in traffic in hot busses on their way to school, Christie’s high school buddy texted : “those are the children of Buono voters!”
Likewise, the students in Newark are predominately, “the children of Buono voters” (see Delpit’s “other people’s children).
BS like this would never fly in the wealthy burn of Mendham.
S/b “weathly burb of Mendham”
I fear we may have to follow our Mexican brethren before anything is going to change: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/mexico-teachers-attack-pri-party-offices_n_3154986.html
I’m glad we’re covering the hypocrisy of our rulers for Dr. King weekend. This weekend, Rahm Emanuel will be hosting a media event with the four or five dozen of his favorite (read, highly subsidized) preachers and “educators.” But the big news is already curling the knees of Fox News and the rulers. On Wednesday (the actual King Birthday), Karen Lewis and CTU hosted an event featuring the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (the guy the Obamas utilized for their climbing Black Community networking until he became too hot to handle in the right wing media). And in the true spirit of Dr. King Rev. Wright called out the current hypocrites in power in a brilliant “keynote.” The best line: “Dr. King had a dream. Barack Obama has a drone…”
While most of the world is cheering the Chicago Truth Squad (including the CTU and Rev. Wright), Fox News and the same people who called Dr. King a “Commie” after he came out against the Vietnam War in 1967 are now going crazy when Rev. Wright speaks the truth in 2014. As a historian, Diane can fill in many of the blanks we’ve missed here, but we are featuring a massive lesson plan in sequential stories at substancenews.net all weekend. In part, I’m doing this to bring the history up to date for my own children, since a lot of that nonsense passed off as “civil rights history” is as true (in the sense of Truth) as the claim that Race To The Top is the “Civil Rights… whatever…” of this millennium…
George – it’s revisionist history at its best. Pure lies at it’s worst.
There are so many truths I relearned as an adult. So many deeds which were hidden. The more I discovered, the more horrified I became. It is only in my recent adult years that I have been taught that in order to move forward, we need to recognize the deeds of the past.
And that’s part of the problem of working with the minority children of the inner city. We ignore their history and treat them as if the past doesn’t matter. We expect them to live as if they were born white and privileged, even though they live a subjugated life.
I am so sorry for what has happened, even if it was over a hundred years ago. I am so sorry over what is happening today. Since we are using musical references I’ll refer to the line “When will they ever learn? When will they e-ver learn?”.
Land of the free and home of the slave
Is it possible for a brainchild named “One Newark” actually come from a brain that appears to be that of a corporate education drone, or is this part of a menu of prepackaged tactics placed in that brain by the likes of Broad Academy? It would be helpful to readers to see a “TFA to Superintendent of a school district” timeline. That seems like one helluva fast track!
This is the culture in schools today. If you speak out, you are finished.
“If I were to remain silent, I’d be guilty of complicity.”
― Albert Einstein
We’ve been doing this for years. How do you think we closed all the neighborhood high schools in NYC? The public showed up for days and days and days of hearings. It meant absolutely nothing. It was predetermined that we would shut all the schools. No one cares what the public thinks! Get over it!!!! No one cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“The public showed up for days and days and days of hearings. It meant absolutely nothing. It was predetermined that we would shut all the schools. No one cares what the public thinks!
“Get over it!!!! No one cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Mark, you know what the proper response is?
“WHO???!!” “Whoo-oo-oo???!! “Whoo-oo-oo???!!”
“WHO???!!” “Whoo-oo-oo???!! “Whoo-oo-oo???!!”
If your state votes for something like a Christie, then what can I say? That’s Democracy isn’t it? That says a lot about your state. I just remember him shouting down teachers in town meetings, etc. on television. People in New Jersey must find that appealing – telling teachers to “Shut up!” Who would vote for that thing? Oh well… I have seen “Jersey Shore” and “Sopranos”, so I have a rough idea of what New Jersey is, as does the rest of the country. You get what you vote for. The majority rules, and evidently the majority of New Jersey wants Christie.
“Oh well… I have seen “Jersey Shore” and “Sopranos”, so I have a rough idea of what New Jersey is, as does the rest of the country.”
Generalize much? Please, PLEASE do not judge New Jersey by television shows. It weakens your commentary.
Sad but true, Governor Snooki has brought shame and ridicule to our state and our citizens!
Perhaps, some will take solace when the truth finally comes out and his gang of goons, thugs and bullies are in prison: not me.
So glad to see Mayor Zimmer coming out to reveal more bullying.
Galton: I didn’t like what Romney did to Massachusetts but I wouldn’t want you to judge the whole state by him…. we can’t always have the politicians we support get to win elections… they don’t represent the entire state ….
wow, harsh! suggest you change the channel.
The agenda has been clear when Cami Anderson was appointed to serve as Superintendent in Newark. Ignore the community at large, blind yourself to the need to include them and move forward to change Public Schools to Charter Schools. She came with an agenda and never has cared what anyone has to say, whether a parent, student, administrator, teacher or support staff. Her attitude has always been I arrived here and only I have the answer to the future of all students in Newark. She has closed schools, spent money contracting companies associated with her network from Broad Academy, hired administrators who do not have certification or experience for the positions being held, hired principals that included family and friends, and destroyed the departments that were created to support the needs of ELL students and students with disabilities. Someone needs to take a moment and examine how she has destroyed the moral of teachers and all other staff working in Newark schools. There is no one who could question her direction and there is no administrative leader who could develop a program as everyone must do what she wants you to do. She is not a leader she is a dictator. Public Schools could be effective if you put them under the leadership of an educator who knows how to respect those who she is depending on to make it possible. Cami, go run the Broad Academy and become the savior of some community outside of America where dictatorships are accepted. Lets support what we know has always been successful in America, Public Schools staffed by professionals who are continuously supported through professional development, students that are supported through development and implementation of programs centered to meet their needs and a school culture that can respect its community.
I’m half kidding. My sister lives in a nice town in New Jersey. There are educated people, but it is like the rest of the country. We are in the Alamo, and the ammunition is running low. Dr. Ravitch, if she were being realistic and pragmatic, would lead her people (thinkers, artists, and teachers) to freedom and Democracy somewhere else in the world. That is the only way out I see. Dr. Ravitch could save 50 or 100 thousand teachers and their families. She could lead them to freedom. She could be the Raoul Wallenberg of our society. We would be like a Noah’s ark of American culture. It sounds crazy, but it is the only way out of this situation. I don’t think many of you really understand how dire this situation is, how hopeless…
No, John.
We need Diane right here and now.
And SHE will not lead or solve this problem for us.
We will lead each other and solve this problem for all.
DIane is a catalyst, a motivator, a mover, and a shaker, but no one in their right mind sees her as the mommy.
We must all become civic participants and save our democracy. . . . THAT is the only hope, and having heard Diane speak live in public twice and having interacted with her and others at NPE, I can tell you right now that one od Diane’s main mantras is, “This is still a democracy and we still vote!”
We do understand how dire this situation is, and the fight is not over.
It’s just begun . . . . .
Diane*** , I am not a fan of Cami. but to correct your post again, Cami was NOT a Broad Grad. !!!!
She worked in NY and on Booker’s campaign that gave her the edge over the Broad Grad that they were considering!
Hmm. Indeed, the Broad Center webpage comes up blank on her. It does appear it was another candidate who has that distinction.
But I did find this article penned by Eli Broad himself praising Cami, and also praising others for collaborating with her in setting the stage to turn Newark’s education real estate over to Booker’s KIPP cronies. Guess who.
Push your computer away, colleagues, so you don’t throw up on it.
“The leaders involved in reaching this historic agreement deserve great credit. Together, State District Superintendent of Newark Public Schools Cami Anderson, Newark Teachers Union President Joseph Del Grosso, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten and New Jersey’s Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf offer a stunning example of organized labor and management stepping outside their comfort zones, breaking through traditional paradigms and collaborating on a creative “third way” approach that both sides agree is in the best interest of kids. They have proven that collective bargaining can be a mechanism for positive change.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eli-broad/teachers-deserve-this-tha_b_2138297.html
Thanks for the warning, chemtchr! Wow. Talk about a trojan horse. Anytime those folks work in collaboration and cite NCTQ, as if there is any credibility to their opinions, teachers would be wise to not believe a single word any of them say, including “and” and “the”.
Thank you for supporting the teachers of Newark. I just wanted to note that as far as I know, the principals were suspended, not fired. (One of the principals, Lisa Brown, leads the school at which I teach, Ivy Hill Elementary School, with great skill and dedication.)
please correct: not fired, but suspended pending investigation.
Suspended with or without pay?
It does make a difference . Without pay is like being fired – there just is a waiting period until the termination date. With pay gives a little hope.
And I hope these principals continue to speak their minds while they search for a new job.
This fight is to keep their jobs. These principals are daring to change history. This is pivotal.
She took their keys and locked their email. I’d go with “fired” for now, because it conveys the situation more clearly. And if she has to back down, I’m looking toward “reinstated”.
What ever happened to the idea that the elected serve at the “consent of the governed”? Has New Jersey’s governor forsaken the constitution and replaced it with an autocracy? It amazes me how minority communities are treated like servants with no voice or power. This is sick. I’m glad people are fighting back. All of the educators in the state should stand up and fight for these educators. This is the same playbook used in state after state in this country. They run roughshod over the community and steel their schools and power. They’ve done this in Detroit. They have schools that were taken over by the state. The EAA is a total disaster. It is shameful.
Follow the money. Bet it leads to Chrisiie cronies.
The same thing is happening here in Florida. We have a new state reform initiative this year called the differentiated accountability teams or DA for short. They are all political appointed who left the classroom long ago and most of those I’ve met have a sour, superior attitude that brooks no dissent and allows no questioning or disagreement. Not surprisingly this initiative has drawn the worst kinds of people who crave power over others and whom never, ever smile or treat teachers with anything but contempt.
My district has decided to side with them against the principals and teachers in the nearly 20 “failing” schools that were created last summer by the state department of education. By raising the cut scores on the FCAT test for the tenth time in as many years they caused huge numbers of schools to be labeled as failing. Then they created these teams of failed teachers who left the classroom before the worst of NCLB and who have never taught CCSS or experience VAM to tell us what to do every minute of every day.
These sour-faced bullies that are pretending to be “experts” for turning around the falsely-named failing schools (which are actually just the Title I schools who serve immigrants, English language learners, the poor, and children of color, no surprise there) spent weeks stalking our classrooms with their clipboards and telling us that everything and I do mean EVERYTHING we do is wrong. Their amazing conclusion about all 20 schools in my district that received F or D grades? We need more RIGOR! Rigor is lacking! When asked to demonstrate that amorphous CCSS and Danielson-inspired poisonous quality they get angry and accuse you of being negative and refusing to comply.
We are doomed in my district and state. Public education cannot hope to survive this onslaught of edu-reformy inquisition/gestapo types. Democracy and teacher due process have been completely eliminated here by the ALEC-written laws that our Tea Party legislature passes and our Tea Party governor signed into law, all under the direction of George W. Bush. The Obama administration was only too happy to sell the teachers of Florida down the river despite our having elected him to the presidency twice.
We are all simply waiting to lose our teaching licenses after our 2 years of guaranteed poor rating under Florida’s sham VAM system. I’m floating my resume everywhere I can now with the exception of schools.
Idiots! If the kids can’t do the work, make it more difficult. That will motivate them to try harder. Rigor, Bah! More like – Stupidity.
And we’ve experienced similar things in Buffalo. We have walk throughs where teams of three or four administrators from downtown plus the principal come into the room and tear the teacher’s lesson apart. “You repeated the objective, but didn’t point to it on the board. You are using fall note paper and it’s winter. You failed to introduce the main points of the lesson (even though it was a continuing lesson using previously taught skills).” The teacher is shaking before the lesson is even over. I call that abuse. Even the best lesson with well behaved children can’t stand up to that type of scrutiny.
And the “floating”, “unreachable” cut scores are a menace to both students and teachers. No matter how hard you work, or how hard the kids try, the system is stacked against them succeeding.
And the state is lucky to have any teachers willing to work in Florida. Sorry, but Florida schools don’t have a good reputation on teacher pay, benefits, or working conditions. Maybe you’ll get some replacement teachers out of college, but don’t expect teachers to flock to your state from other locations (unless they are desperate). Unfortunately, in NYS, which used to have a good rep, things have been going downhill, so we might soon be on the “anywhere but there” list. I know too many teachers to count who are barely hanging on until they can retire. Literally marking off the days.
It’s turning into an epidemic.
I’m sorry for the typos — I’m up too late. I meant “Jeb Bush” of course.
As a former teacher in Newark for 34 years…I who along with MANY teachers taught long and hard and loved the children. I was also one of the Literacy Coaches who were “laid off our positions” because we had brains to question the tactics that were being brought in. 2 years later they “rehired” young /inexperienced people for the SAME positions .The administration only wants young people who they can control through FEAR. Good principals were also let go. I feel for the five principals who spoke out. FREEDOM of SPEECH exists in America! NPS is NOT a dictatorship. Where is the proof I ask in the current test scores? Have all the schools that were “RENEWED” (all staff had to reapply for their positions) gained in test scores?? Well if we only teach to the test? Our students have become test robots as have our teachers. What pisses me off is that I am white and my school population was 99.7% African American. They did not rehire the Black teachers. Nope! Only :young, white teachers who came to Newark to “bridge the gap”. An insult to all of us veteran teachers who stayed 35, 40 years because WE CARED. How long do these teachers stay NOW? They run after 2 years. Shame on all the mess in NPS. Shame on Cami Anderson. Shame on our Governor. This was not the way to REFORM the system
That has gone on all over the country. It’s all about using bullying to take over the schools. Why didn’t people like Weingarten and other union leaders organize a national strike all across the country? Very little has been done to stop it all.
This is why it isn’t so advisable for teachers to stand up to administrators. If principals can be on indefinite suspension, so can teachers. Few of us can afford to lose income. They know that. They don’t care if we do. I have as yet seen no solidarity among union members to just say NO. There are always enough people who are unwilling to support fellow teachers even when it is for the good if the students. Some even buy in to this bad change in education.
In the last presidential election Christie fell far short of being an acceptable VP candidate, and that has obviously not changed. What we have before us is not so much a chance to knock a contender out of the 2016 race, but a chance show off this fool governor for what he is and end his 15 minutes of fame. Here’s some back story on Christie not making the grade for the Romney campaign. http://swampland.time.com/2013/11/02/the-hunt-for-pufferfish/ It seems that Christie has closets full of skeletons, not just skeletons in his closet. I wonder how many are set aside just for education?
From the link above:
“He was also a fundraising dynamo, but he and his staff were overbearing and hard to work with, demanding in ways that would have been unthinkable from any other surrogate. Months earlier, Christie had banned Romney from raising money in New Jersey until Christie had given the O.K. to do so—a move Romney found galling, like something out of The Sopranos. Are you kidding me, Mitt thought. He’s going to do that? There were plenty of New Jersey donors who’d given money to Mitt in 2008; now Christie was trying to impose a gag order on talking to them? “He sounds like the biggest asshole in the world,” Stevens griped to his partner, Russ Shriefer. More recently, Trenton insisted on private jets, lavish spreads of food, space for a massive entourage. Romney ally Wayne Berman looked at the bubble around Christie and thought, He’s not the President of the United States, you know.
Chronically behind schedule, Christie made a habit of showing up late to Romney fundraising events. In May he was so tardy to a donor reception at the Grand Hyatt New York that Mitt wound up taking the stage to speak before Christie arrived. When the Jersey governor finally made his grand entrance, it was as if Mitt had been his warm-up act.
Punctuality mattered to Romney. Christie’s lateness bugged him. Mitt also cared about fitness and was prone to poke fun at those who didn’t. (“Oh, there’s your date for tonight,” he would say to male members of his traveling crew when they spied a chunky lady on the street.) Romney marveled at Christie’s girth, his difficulties in making his way down the narrow aisle of the campaign bus. Watching a video of Christie without his suit jacket on, Romney cackled to his aides, “Guys! Look at that!” ”
I can only conclude that while Christie has a power addiction, Romney has a shallow bigotry about him.
“FIGHT OVER SCHOOL CLOSINGS IN NEWARK, OTHER CITIES HEADS TO LEGISLATIVE ARENA”
JOHN MOONEY | JANUARY 17, 2014
“State Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) is the prime sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, and state Assemblywoman Bonnie Watson-Coleman (D-Mercer) is the Assembly sponsor. At a Statehouse press conference yesterday, Rice and others stressed what they said is the Christie administration’s sale of closed school building to charter schools.”
Our New Jersey honor roll is growing fast. State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the Senate education chair, also spoke at the press conference introducing the bill. I was looking over the story for important points to summarize, but there are too many. Reporter Mooney has written a very clear and informative story, and everybody needs to open the link and study it.
http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/14/01/16/fight-over-school-closings-heads-to-legislative-arena/
The common institutions and public real estate in a city do belong to the generations that live there. The people of Newark aren’t outcast, powerless sub-citizens in their own city; they’re the actual wealth creators and inheritors. The legislators, petition signers, meeting organizers, courageous young principals, and sign-carrying children of Newark spoke out, and scared the delusional “Times 100” autocrat Christie installed over them.
So, the four principals spoke at a forum in order to rally parents against the superintendent. And the superintendent suspended them. It seems to me they were removed for insubordination.
As for first amendment rights and listening to the community, here’s something to consider. One would have to be a singularly brave or foolish person to speak out at that forum in favor of a charter school for your son or daughter. It was a meeting designed to rally parents, but only those parents who agreed with the principals, not those parents who disagreed.
Is the opposition to charter schools in Newark being driven by the need to provide a good education to the students, or by the need to protect the positions and the privileges of the teachers in the schools as they now exist? Is there really only one side to this discussion, or is it possible that the superintendent and the governor are trying to do right by the students of Newark?
This post and the comments are complaining about policy, but the arguments being made against that policy are personal attacks against the policy-makers, not explanations of why the new policy is wrong, or why the old system is better. I wish the level of debate about something as important as these schools was a lot more substantive. Our children deserve it.
Please do your research on charter schools in New Jersey. They are not the answer. Many of them are not successful.
Thank you Ccg. Can you recommend a good place to look regarding the particular program the superintendent is implementing in Newark?
A question for you: if some of the charter schools in New Jersey have been successful, is it possible to take what the successful ones are doing and use that in Newark?
The charter schools in Milwaukee also are not doing too well. A couple that were running a school now have disappeared with tons of taxpayer’s money. I am not too good at the internet, but if you are interested I am sure you can find the story from last week.
Matthew, you might want to research charter schools. In Ohio 29% of them have closed in the last 5 yrs. The last to close did so after Christmas break after they had received state funding. Others have been forced to close because of incompetence. Millions that could have gone to help some of the poorer schools in the state went to corporate profits.
More than 200 Charter school failures here in FL. Taxpayer money down a black hole. We bash public schools in general by using failing schools as the norm…which they are not. Conservatives praise Charter Schools by using a handful of successful schools as the norm….which they are not.
This is clearly a move to take over a public asset…with little or no regulation.
Do the research.
Have you ever taught in a charter? I have and know many others who have. They are cash cows that line the pockets of the CEO and family. They rip off everyone in sight while pretending to be raising the standards for education. A complete sham. No parent in their right mind would fight to bring this to their community. The principals were doing the right thing. If you knew the corrupt leaders were bringing something unsound into your community don’t you have an obligation to stand and fight? They would be cowards if they just sat by and took it like too many educators in this country have done for the last ten years.
Thank you, Dee Dee. How was your charter school ripping off the students? What were they doing wrong?
I agree that the principals were doing the right thing — if they were speaking truth to power. I don’t know enough to figure out how correct they were in describing the truth, especially if the truth should include more about how poorly their schools have been performing. I’d like to know more about what the superintendent thinks is going to improve by closing down the principals’ schools.
What is really meant is the type of students these charter schools are ripping off!!!!! Most of these charter schools are taking the well educated, the high functioning kids, well behaved kids and leaving the other kids behind… Forget the behavioral and the little troubled students because they are behind and most of their futures are cut short anyway. So people say!!!!
You should do your own research.
Charter schools are the first steps to privatizing public schools. This is a dangerous venture in that at some point, in the future, there will be parents that will not be able to afford to educate their children. There will no longer be public schools to meet this, because they’ve been eliminated and privatized.
“Is there really only one side to this discussion, or is it possible that the superintendent and the governor are trying to do right by the students of Newark?”
Apparently, you haven’t read all the comments here.
Some of the comments provide links to more in-depth articles about charter schools, but if I’m not mistaken, my comment has been the only comment to even raise the possibility that the superintendent and the governor are honestly and competently trying to help the students rather than hurt them.
That doesn’t mean the superintendent is doing the right thing — all the commenters here might be correct — I’m just skeptical when I see assumptions not being discussed and challenged, even though the governor in particular has every incentive to try to improve the schools in Newark and not anger the voters there for no good reason.
Matthew, I don’t for a minute believe you’re sincere in your concern for what Newark’s children deserve, but it’s very much part of this discussion. Just in case you do care, here are those “insubordinate” principals, explaining why they finally had to speak up:
Hi chemtechr, I actually watched this video before I left my first comment. I agree with you that the tone of the principals is not insubordinate, in fact it is pretty respectful towards the superintendent. But the content of what they are saying is entirely insubordinate: they are rallying parents to fight and overturn the policy being implemented by their supervisor.
What I find most disturbing is that the hearing/forum is actually a rally for those parents who see things the same way as the principals. Are there no parents of kids in these schools who want the charter schools? Are the four principals and the politician who held the hearing listening to those parents as well, because they sure weren’t welcome at this venue.
The danger of being an amateur community organizer on this issue is that the principals are creating a movement to support their own agenda, and not necessarily acting in the best interests of those parents who don’t show up for their rally.
If the principals are doing the right thing here, they still knew they were risking being suspended for fighting back against the superintendent. They know they were being insubordinate, they just decided that sacrificing their authority to run their schools was a price they were willing to pay, if necessary.
Am I sincere? Yes, I am. But I think the students are more important than the principals or the teachers, so I can understand why a superintendent in some situations might want to suspend a principal or allow a principal to remove a teacher from a classroom. Or perhaps even shut down a whole school and start a new one.
Matthew – I listened to the video and didn’t hear those principals mention anything that shouldn’t be common knowledge. They were complaining that all support services had been removed from their schools, while schools in the other part of town (I’m assuming white) did not suffer the same fate. They were lamenting that their schools were under fire for low test scores (and that those scores were improving), while the new Charter Schools had even lower scores. Another concern (perhaps not widely known) was that routine maintenance provided by the district was on the back burner due to the needs of the newer schools, unless you were a school across town. They were citing valid inequities and injustices.
It seems that the poor, black section of Newark was targeted. Those principals were about to have their buildings closed and their butt put on the other side of the door. I think the one principal had indicated her school was set to be closed (told to her that morning). They really had nothing to lose. In fact, now they’ve got our attention. Perhaps the outcome will change and the schools will be saved, for the moment. Their suspension was a sacrifice for a cause they all held dear.
We will have to wait and see the outcome. (And the parents who disagree were free to indicate that by selecting a charter on the list of schools requested for their children). To be continued . . .
Something is wrong when speaking truth results in immediate dismissal for insubordination. How can anyone fight these blinded reformers? Sickening. But this is our world now.
Matthew, there are legions of paid pundits who will advance the arguments you’re so worried about us shortchanging. I notice you don’t actually defend the privatizers’ attack on Newark yourself, or offer any evidence of the charter vendors’ good intentions. You’re just uneasy so many people, after following their lies and fraud for years, have made up our minds.
No, deeper investigation reveals the superintendent is (at worst) an arrogant agent for scheming real estate cronies, leeches, and profiteers like K12. At best, she’s struggling and failing to extricate her brand from their shared lies and fraud, like poor Whitney Tilson.
I know I’m late to responding about this wonderful growth of a movement in the school where I went to high school. (Born in Elizabeth; raised in Linden — in the shadow of the refinery). In addition to everything else we have to deal with here in Chicago, we can get behind our brothers and sisters in Newark and help with this.
Newark is Chicago is Philadelphia is New Orleans…
But this video helps, as do the videos from Chicago you can get to or read about regularly at substancenews.net, which I edit.
Newark is Chicago is Philadelphia is New Orleans…
Tuesday night in zero weather our brothers and sisters will be camping out in front of the Board as part of an escalating protest against Rahm Emanuel’s puppets’ plan to create another 21 charter schools!! On May 22 these criminals and hypocrites voted to close 49 of the city’s real public schools because, they claimed, our budget was facing a “billion dollar deficit” and these buildings were “underutilized.” No sooner had they commited that crime than Rahm’s puppets turned around and tried to change the tune of their talking points.
This year,the “crisis” (they love a “crisis” and they’ve been creating them since before David Berliner published Manufactured Crisis) is
Overcrowding…
And the solution to the “overcrowding crisis” is not to help the city’s real public schools — but to add nearly two dozen charter schools (and so-called “campuses”). I’ll see if Tuesday night and Wednesday we can get a large support note for our brothers and sisters in Newark…
Meanwhile, Right On! A good way to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s real legacy (not the one that Rahm Emanuel and Cami Anderson will be trying to claim for their own and for the plutocracy they serve so slavishly..)
George – good luck with the rally. As a member of the Buffalo Teacher Federation, I have been there and done that and will continue to do so. In solidarity, my friend.
My question, if some of the schools were overcrowded, why not reconfigure the boundaries and shift the student populations. Or stagger student and teacher schedules – some early, some late. This is done all the time. It’s easier and cheaper to hire new personnel and add a few buses then to gut and reconfigure an entirely new school. Plus, I don’t see how this will help overcrowding – you still have the same number of students.
The administration is grasping at straws. We all know the truth, but changing the predetermined outcome is an almost insurmountable challenge.
May your Mount Everest be conquered without too many casualties.
Chemtchr, I’m copying and pasting here your last response to me so that I can reply to you:
“chemtchr
“January 19, 2014 at 5:58 pm
“Matthew, there are legions of paid pundits who will advance the arguments you’re so worried about us shortchanging. I notice you don’t actually defend the privatizers’ attack on Newark yourself, or offer any evidence of the charter vendors’ good intentions. You’re just uneasy so many people, after following their lies and fraud for years, have made up our minds.
“No, deeper investigation reveals the superintendent is (at worst) an arrogant agent for scheming real estate cronies, leeches, and profiteers like K12. At best, she’s struggling and failing to extricate her brand from their shared lies and fraud, like poor Whitney Tilson.”
And here’s my reply:
I’m not worried that anyone is shortchanging certain arguments. I’m worried that the fact that there is unanimity here about things that are controversial could be a big sign that the commenters are overlooking important facts that would prove them wrong (and prove Diane Ravitch wrong too).
I don’t know the charter vendors, maybe you are right that they are crooks. But if your opinion is wrong, than maybe they will do a better job for the kids of Newark. I would like to know more about it before I agree with you and everyone else in this comment thread.
Can you point me towards some information that can defend your belief that the charter schools won’t do a good job, that they won’t do a better job than the schools that are there?
Matthew – although I liked the concept of Charter Schools, the reality has been a disappointment. I have seen segregation as a result, whether intended or not. Plus, the for profit charters have done much to sour my opinion on their worth. And even the independent charter schools simply mirror what the public schools are already doing. I have seen very few charters who fill a unique educational need – the reason I first supported the concept.
Unfortunately, a nonpartisan, non political ideal has turned into a way to make money and gain control of public education, not as a system to benefit children whose needs have fallen through the cracks.
Please do your own research (mine is based on observations as well as data, articles, and feed back from sincere charter school teachers).
And to let you know how open minded I am, when I was President of the Buffalo School Library Association, we decided to include charter school and private school librarians into our organization (a controversial move). Not exactly “keep you friends close and your enemies closer” but a “better to be acquainted with your demons then to ignore the danger”.
Hello again, chemtchr, thank you for referring me to Diane Ravitch’s book.
Diane makes the case that we need to be skeptical of charter schools and private schools in general, that they are not, in general, as successful as they are made out to be by their promoters and some of their supporters. These are good points, and we certainly heed to be skeptical of anyone who wants to experiment with our kids’ education.
But the book does not tell me about the people involved on the ground in the charter schools in Newark. Who are they, what are they doing, what do they intend to do? Is what they do working better than what the schools slated for closure are doing?
i don’t expect the principals who were suspended to answer those questions — they’re too busy running their schools to figure it out, and it’s not fair to make them argue against their own schools and jobs. But the rest of us don’t have those excuses, we should look at the facts of the actual people doing actual things in Newark and see how well they are likely to succeed or fail or just muddle through.
These people are so courageous. How can we in other states best support them?
Ellen T Klock, thank you for responding again.
I will take your advice and do more research on charter schools.
I would like to respond to one point of yours in particular:
“Unfortunately, a nonpartisan, non political ideal has turned into a way to make money and gain control of public education, not as a system to benefit children whose needs have fallen through the cracks.”
Well, there are hucksters in every profession, so there must be some in the for-profit education sector and in the charter-school system as well. But “making money” is not a bad thing if the school that is making money is doing a good job. We demand nothing less for our public school teachers: good wages and benefits, good working conditions. So I hope we can all judge any given school and the people who run it based on what the school is doing and whether or not it is working.
After all, the teachers and administrators and the owners of the businesses who run these schools are not going to make money by failing their students. These new schools will be shut down if they don’t perform. That’s the whole point of charter schools– holding schools accountable for results and introducing competition to make things better. If things don’t get better, then they are gone — no union grievances filed, no paid suspensions, no pensions and retirement healthcare — the teachers are out of luck.
Thanks again for your responses to me, and thank you for including charter and private school librarians in the Buffalo School Library Association.
Matthew – I was involved with the start up of a charter school (The King Center). It was the first one in Buffalo, specifically for young kids (PreK to 2) in the poorest part of the inner city. It was developed with the help of a college professor from UB as a satellite school (thus my involvement as the librarian). Two years later it became a charter school and a few years after that the original school dissolved (since 1/4 of its students were now gone). This was not a for profit charter. It’s intentions were good. The positive was that it was a small school – about a hundred students. They received numerous donations from the community and had both a teacher and a teacher aide in each class. Their school was a converted church, complete with stained glass windows – it was a beautiful setting. Eventually, the choir loft became the library.
They instituted something I thought phenomenal. They had teachers go into the homes of the students twice a week to work with the younger siblings to prepare them for school. This is why I liked the idea of charter schools – innovative practices.
The test scores remained low. The experiment was abandoned. The school bought another property next door and now are a PreK to 8 school. I see no difference between them and other inner city schools. The original organizers on the “board” are all gone.
I am so disappointed.
Another school was organized by parents who wanted more of a say in their children’s education. Their children went to the gifted and talented school I worked at. They became a Charter School (Tapestry) which is now K to 12. It is located right across the street from the original gifted program. Again, not a national chain. This is a successful charter. Entry is by lottery. However, they have a much larger number of white students then the typical Buffalo School. Their test scores reflect this. However, the education provided is adequate, not spectacular, and not as good as their competition across the street. It’s a place for the kids to go who don’t get accepted into their first choice.
Another charter who does well is the South Buffalo Charter. I don’t know too much about it, although it’s population is mainly white (as is South Buffalo’s blue collar population) and the test scores reflect this.
The other Buffalo Charter schools are almost entirely poor and minority. And the test scores reflect that as well. I don’t see anything innovative about them. We did have a KIPP school which closed. There were lots of rumors about that school.
There is a new Charter School which is supposed to focus on the medical sciences. I’m not sure if it is up and running yet.
Perhaps the most unusual charter schools is a Military Style High School in downtown Buffalo. I can’t think of the name. Some parents like the discipline it provides. I know a few students who went there and their feedback was okay. I’ve heard stories both ways. At least it is a true choice. The students who attend tend to be the discipline problems who might succeed better with a stricter structure. Yet, once again, the test scores reflect the population of inner city minority youth.
The majority of the charter schools are just imitations of what already exists in the Buffalo Public Schools. And their test scores are right in the mix of their “peers”.
I am very open minded. I just haven’t been convinced that charter schools are a true alternative (except in a few unique circumstances). I also question the need for charters to make a profit. Public schools don’t make a profit – the money is spent on running the school. If I choose a charter school, I want to know that the funds are going into the classroom for innovations and proven teaching strategies to assist my child in developing their potential. I also want to make sure that the teachers and support staff are making a decent wage. And I want to make sure there is enough staff to handle the needs of my child and the school.
The military style HS Charter is WNY Maritime Charter
“That’s the whole point of charter schools– holding schools accountable for results and introducing competition to make things better. If things don’t get better, then they are gone — no union grievances filed, no paid suspensions, no pensions and retirement healthcare — the teachers are out of luck.”
Actually, Matthew, that is not the whole “point” of charter schools. Your “points” are those of privatizers using propaganda to effect political change in a public institution whereby the market (remember you use the term “competition?”) is served.
Education is not a competition–it is a journey to social/civic and intellectual enlightenment. Students are unique, not standard, and certainly not data points on a test. Teachers are not profiteers–they are employees who deserve to be paid for the contracted work they do despite working well beyond their contracted hours.
Teachers, like all employees, deserve employment protections and due process. Offering teachers due process rights encourages academic freedom. They pay part of their salaries to invest in the pension system–wages they earn but defer to fund this system despite the fact that all governors, with the exception of Corzine, have notoriously de-funded this system. Since communities cannot afford to pay educators what they are truly worth, teachers accept supplemental compensation in the way of healthcare benefits which are much cheaper to provide en masse than the equivalent compensation individually.
Investing in a community’s teachers is investing in the community by building a staff dedicated to these families over the long term. Instead, those who serve the market are publicly placing the blame for society’s ills on public schools and, by extension, their teachers making false arguments on “the merits of competition” in an effort to dismantle unions. Since the privatizers cannot crush an established union, they are using their money, power, and influence to create a false narrative about our country’s “failing schools” to convince the public and its lawmakers that schools should be handed over to them. This weakens a union’s membership by taking away its members’ employment. The worst part about this whole movement is it uses children as pawns.
It’s obvious that the basis for your comments here is one deep-rooted in using the public schools in failed communities as an excuse for taking employee rights away from the very people who are trained and experienced to help guide the community’s children through their education while conveniently ignoring the trials of said failed communities. Privatizers have this nasty little habit of preying upon these communities offering to “fix education” on the public’s dime while simultaneously dismantling collective bargaining for educators. It’s a two-pronged approach to serve the market under the failed idea of introducing “competition” into schools: Convince the public that their public schools are the problem and offer a privatized solution under the guise of “alternative public school,” conveniently devoid of both serving the entire public and allowing union protection. Segregation and union-busting–THAT is “the whole point of charter schools.”
Where is your argument to offer the community public schools and their families the resources necessary to improve the social conditions of the community without profit by private and corporate entities? Why not invest in the public schools instead of allowing money to be made on the backs of children by business people who serve their own? Nepotism and corruption runs rampant when schools are treated as businesses without public oversight. Children deserve better than that.
It doesn’t matter how good one thinks he looks in sheep’s clothing when his fangs just made an appearance.
I’d like to respond to the latest responses this morning but I’m at work, so I won’t get to them until this evening. In the meantime, thank you to Ellen and LG, talk to you later.
Hello again, Ellen and LG. I’m diving deeper into the world of charter schools, even as other folks are replying to me further down in the comment thread. I need to knock off for now, so I’m going to hold off on a more substantive reply to you until tomorrow evening.
Thanks again, have a good day!
We just published our first mention of the Newark events, putting them in the context of corporate school reform. Hopefully more people will “connect the dots” including Cami Anderson, Cory Booker, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan and all the other Harvard crowd who are pushing, behind those carefully rehearsed smiles, the racist destruction of urban public schools and the obliteration of democracy in cities, from Chicago and Philadelphia to Newark and New Orleans, which are placed under the dictatorship of the “reformers.” So… we are making sure that this story — the the racist-ness of it — is told and discussed. See http://www.substancenews.net.
Hello Ellen and LG, I posted a reply to Chemtchr and LG a few minutes ago farther down in the comment thread, at this spot:
I conclude that Superintendent Anderson appears to be acting in good faith, based on what little I know about the schools in Newark. If after reading my comment, you can set me straight on some things that I should know about, please do. I would like to understand what’s going on in Newark, because few things are as important as providing educational opportunities to our children.
It seems to me, and I could be overlooking a few things, that a lot of the comments in this thread are against the idea of charter schools in general and against the track record of some charter schools and for-profit schools that have nothing to do with the charter schools in Newark, some of which have been taking care of students for ten years now and doing a great job.
As I mention in my other comment, to Chemtchr and LG, the charter schools in Newark have a waiting list of many thousands of students. That sounds like a very democratic endorsement of what the charter schools have already been doing, and what they might be able to do over the next few years.
Thank you LG and Ellen for your comments. And thank you especially, Ellen, for sharing your experiences with charter schools. Your summary of what you know about the different charter schools in Buffalo helped me understand some of the pitfalls of charter schools, and helped me poke under the surface a bit while I’ve been researching schools in Newark and other places.
Have a good night!
From what I’ve read, the superintendent in Newark is planning on closing at least four schools, even easier to do now their principals are gone, and displace the student population. The parents were happy with their local schools and now will be in limbo. As part of the choice movement, they have to select the school they want their children to attend. Since the new charter schools have not been announced, their old building is not an option. That is why, in the video, they were advised to put their old school down as their only choice. A desperate attempt to show that they wanted their old school back.
The K12 schools are another issue. I’ve read that they don’t have a good track record, but it is my intuitive sense which makes me question the concept. I don’t like the idea of education being narrowed down to a computer learning “game”. Yes, those games are fun to do, in small doses, as a supplement to teaching, not to replace the classroom. The idea of sitting in little cubicles all day, supposedly emulating their future job environment, is frightening. On other threads we’ve established that this type of education is appropriate for a small population with issues, but it’s not for the average child, especially those of elementary school age. I go with my gut, and my gut says no.
If nothing else, remember that the money invested in a charter school takes away funds from the public school. This is my chief argument against charters. That is why those principals were complaining – they were expected to do more with less. Their staff was depleted – no music, art, library, support services. Simple repairs or requests (such as putting up a “board” (some special educational tool) were ignored. They were overlooked in every way – Perhaps because they were slated to close, perhaps because of their minority population. I say this because the schools in the “better” or “white” part of town didn’t have these same problems.
Another issue for consideration.
“As I mention in my other comment, to Chemtchr and LG, the charter schools in Newark have a waiting list of many thousands of students. That sounds like a very democratic endorsement of what the charter schools have already been doing, and what they might be able to do over the next few years.”
Matthew, there is nothing democratic about putting children on waiting lists for schools. Public schools do not limit enrollment or make the public wait for entry–they are responsible for providing an education for all students of school age.
The very nature of a waiting list means that obviously “spots” will open up in the future–whose spots were they and why are those students no longer filling them? The charters that the reformers like to tout as “successful” notoriously weed out the very students who struggle in their learning due to many factors: cognitive learning disabilities, little to no parental scaffolding, low English proficiency, behavioral issues, etc. Voila! This opens up spots for those on the waiting list. This is an outrage…no public school limits enrollment.
Now, the bigger question is why do charters limit enrollment? Well, if you ask their advocates, it is because they do not have the space to educate more students because “the big, bad public school machine” is monopolizing all the space. I think that charter advocates actually like this excuse. It allows them to limit the population charters accept, and through careful “counseling out” of the students who “are just not the right fit,” charters can create a designer student population of successful students just like private schools do, except on the public’s dime.
Charters have lobbied lawmakers with their big money backers (who incidentally put charters in their “investment portfolios”) to siphon public funding out of the public schools in order to create these designer educational scenarios. People are profiting either by enormous salaries to “run” said schools or by way of tax breaks for their “philanthropic” financial backing…and yet, the public is paying for these people to profit while their charter institutions exclude students from the public who “just wouldn’t be the right fit.” Imagine a public school counseling out the students who are challenges to educate? It would never happen. Public schools are responsible for seeing to the education of all children–charters are not, despite ther public funding. THIS is the travesty that charter opponents are trying to prevent.
How can anyone, in his heart and his intellect, advocate for public funds for schools that exclude portions of the public while providing profits for a choice, powerful few?
Diane Ravitch issued a proposition to the KIPP chain, a charter company that reformers like to hold up as a poster child for charter success: Take over an entire at-risk district and see if the same “success” it advertises can be achieved.
KIPP has yet to prove that it can successfully educate the entire population in an at-risk community. I think the powers-that-be at KIPP know it cannot, given that pesky issue of “having to educate everyone in the public.”
Charters do not have public oversight. Charters do not have to take or keep everyone. Charters are not required to invest in a dedicated teaching staff like public schools do–teacher turnover is rampant. Charters do not have to follow the same regulations as public schools.
Outside of the “democracy” argument is that of successful education. Within public guidelines of access to schools comes the purpose of schools: to successfully educate the populace. So how does one define success?
To further your argument about successful charter schools, perhaps you can outline the following in detail:
1. What specifically is necessary for a school to provide in order for it to be a “success?”
2. Which educational practices specifically have contributed to the “failure” of public schools in Newark that would make it necessary to close said schools?
3. Which educational practices specifically have contributed to the “success” of charter schools in Newark in comparison to their public school counterparts that would make charter schools the better system for public school children in these neighborhoods–that is providing they educate everyone?
4. What variables have contributed to your argument when comparing Newark charters to the community’s public schools, i.e. students with cognitive learning disabilities, little to no parental scaffolding, low English proficiency, behavioral issues, etc. Have the charters successfully educated the populace or just “manageable portions” of it?
5. How have the Newark charter schools built and maintained a dedicated staff of educators who have made professional investments in the community and its families over the last ten years?
Finally, it appears you have not addressed the elephant in the room that was so casually conjured up in an earlier post: In what way specifically has the AFT contributed to the “failure” of these Newark public schools that supports the idea that “competition” will provide “success” in education?
[Please do not worry about posting the wrong initials when you responded to me in the other post. If I had a dollar for every typo I make here…I could hire another music teacher for my school district.]
LG, several stories have been printed about inflated, fictitious “waiting lists” for charters. Grain of salt. No, bucket of salt.
Matthew – one other comment
LG has put it so eloquently, now here is my 2 cents
Not only do Charter Schools take money which should be used to improve Public Schools, they are also used as a Union Busting tool. Without unions, there is no tenure or other rights for teachers, thus a way to save even more money. Unfortunately, this also means that certified teachers are not necessary – TFAs can do the trick. So the Charter Movement is not only anti-public schools, it is also anti-teacher. An entire city of charter schools, an entire way to eliminate the teacher’s union. Viola! If it wasn’t such a scary idea, it would make an excellent dystopia novel.
Home schooling is looking better all the time.
Like so many of the bigger Big Lie stories about charter schools, the “waiting list” fiction was first spewed by Arne Duncan back when he was CEO of Chicago Public Schools. Chicago used to have press conferences, and I’ve been reporting on CPS since Duncan was playing basketball in Australia. After he became CEO of CPS in 2001, he began working through various lies that the charter school people and other privatizers would use as talking points. One of those was the charter school “waiting list.” After hearing it a few times, and then reading it reported as “fact” in the Chicago papers, I began asking him for a copy of the waiting list. “I’ll get back to you on that,” was always his reply. The reason is that he was making it up. The lie began at around “one thousand…” and by the time Arne went to Washington it was up to “nine thousand…” He never provided any reporter with that list, because the “list” would simply show that a lot of people (never the numbers Arne spouted) had “applied” to various option schools.
I once asked him what the “waiting list” was for Chicago’s Whitney Young Magnet High School, one of the top schools in the USA (my son graduated from there in 2007; he designed the substancenews.net website while a senior there, long before “STEM” was another silly marketing ploy; he now works in computers in California…). Again, Arne: “I’ll get back to you on that…”
And of course Arne never did because Whitney Young — ALONE — would have had a “waiting list” longer than all the Chicago charters COMBINED.
The privatizers have been using that fictitious waiting list as a talking point for a decade now, because most reporters don’t demand facts, they simply quote the Arne Duncans, Cami Andersons, and other liars from the privatization crew as “fact.” Next time someone prattles about charter school “waiting lists” ask to see one. And in Chicago, you can also ask if the charters have such a long “waiting list” why is it that half of them are “underutilized” today. That’s according to a recent report by the “Apples to Apples” researchers at “Raise Your Hand,” one of the many Chicago parents groups that has grown up as Chicago’s lies have become more and more pernicious…
George – thank you for sharing an insiders view.
Hello again, Ellen and LG, and now George Schmidt and Diane Ravitch as well.
First, a general response to everyone.
I came to this business of charters on the march in Newark, and public schools being shuttered, because I had watched the video that Chemtchr posted above of the four principals speaking at the hearing last week, and I wanted to find out what was going on, if I could.
While I have learned a lot about what charters want to do in Newark, and about why public schools are feeling abused, I still haven’t figured out to my own satisfaction whether, and to what extent, Superintendent Camji Anderson is justified in, first of all, closing the four schools down that are scheduled to close, and secondly, whether,and to what extent, she is justified in handing over a block of schools to be re-created by the KIPP team.
I do feel like I have a handle on why Superintendent Anderson is doing what she is doing, and I do feel as if I understand why the four (five) principals are fighting back to save their schools, but I don’t feel like I know even a fraction of what I would need to know to figure out who would be more deserving of my support or anyone else’s support in this controversy.
If someone said to me, “Too bad, you need to make up your mind right now, what’s it going to be Matthew?” then I would pick Anderson’s side, if for no other reason than she is trying, in an apparently responsible and reasonable way, to make dramatic improvements for the kids of Newark. And the kids of Newark and their parents deserve a chance to do something different –and perhaps make a big mistake, but it seems like an effort that is well worth trying.
I’m impressed by the commitment and the eagerness to work with parents of the four (five) suspended principals, and I admire their passion and desire for better schools, but they come across as reactionary and re-active to me, possibly unfairly so of course, as opposed to pro-active and innovative. I hope I’m wrong about them, but that is my impression.
Diane Ravitch:
Thank you very much for addressing my point about waiting lists. It’s an honor to dialogue with you.
I agree that a long waiting list is not a cut-and-dry indicator of anything in particular, and the regular public schools in Newark have waiting lists too. However, I do think that the waiting lists for the charter schools do undermine the anti-charter argument that this whole charter business in Newark is un- or anit-democratic. The most persuasive vote for me is where parents are lining up to send their kids. That speaks louder than votes on election day, at least most of the time.
George Schmidt:
When it comes to charter school applications, what happens in Chicago stays in Chicago apparently? 🙂
I’m not surprised to hear that Arne Duncan is a slippery character, but it is disappointing that such an important figure in the debates cannot be a whole lot more transparent. Thank you for letting me know.
LG:
Maybe charter schools elsewhere make a habit of manipulating the application process and hyping their success with students who are self-selecting, but do we know that that is what has been going on with the schools in Newark, including the handful that I named (North Star Academy, Robert Treat Academy. Gray, Greater Newark, Team Academy)? If we don’t really know what the Newark charter schools are doing to engineer their pool of incoming students, or to otherwise rig the game, do we have any way of investigating the situation and finding out?
You wrote, LG:
“Diane Ravitch issued a proposition to the KIPP chain, a charter company that reformers like to hold up as a poster child for charter success: Take over an entire at-risk district and see if the same “success” it advertises can be achieved.”
Now isn’t that pretty much just what Superintendent Anderson plans to do next year with KIPP? Not quite on the same scale that you and Diane propose, but probably on as big a scale as you could do it and still not be recklessly creating general upheaval in the system.
As for your five questions, those are the very questions I would like some educational professionals and/or educational journalists (or a historian like Diane) to look into, and then tell us all what is going on. You have identified key gaps in my knowledge that I would like to fill.
And then your last question:
“In what way specifically has the AFT contributed to the “failure” of these Newark public schools that supports the idea that “competition” will provide “success” in education?”
Short answer: The AFT lobbies blindly against the greedy, dangerous reformers instead of engaging their interest, engaging their resources, their enthusiasm, and in some cases, engaging their expertise to create partnerships that can challenge, strengthen, and maybe even transform the public school system.
If people understand that public school teachers and their leaders are doing everything they can to succeed, including working with outsiders — reformers and other critics — to educate and help every student, then the AFT would be the most popular organization in America.
Ellen:
It is also an honor to go back and forth with you. Thank you again for your thoughtful replies and for sharing your extensive experience.
I understand everything you say in your 8:45 am Wednesday comment, and agree with most of your points. I am mostly unsure how much weight those points register on the scale’s balance. Even if the “failing” schools that Anderson are closing have been given short shrift, how relevant is that ultimately for what the kids from those neighborhoods need? What will serve them best — trying to make the status quo work better, or more dramatic and focused reform a la Anderson/KIPP?
As for your other comment about union-busting: I think teachers unions need serious reform. If they adamantly resist any and all change in order to deny their “opponents” a beachhead, I believe they are actually risking a greater backlash that could have catastrophic impact on their members rights and privileges. The unions should have the confidence of their rhetoric and invite anyone who cares to work with them to improve our schools.
I put “opponents” in quotes, because I see a lot of demonizing on both sides. Some of it, as Diane Ravitch has documented, is fully justified, but most of it is not. Public school “opponents’ are usually allies in disguise, as far as I can tell.
Good night everybody, all the best.
Matthew – you make it sound so easy. Plus you have a greater faith than I, that the opposition will do what is best for the children. I guess I am jaded from too many bad experiences. It will be interesting to see what happens. Then we will have more to discuss.
Ah, yes. The “waiting lists” only add to the complaint that charters should have more space in the public schools due to high volume of interest. Fictitious or not, no child should be placed on wait for education that is funded by the public yet separate from the public school. Magnets are selective but still part of their public systems and share resources. Charters are exempt from the system and share nothing.
Good morning,
LG, under the new “universal enrollment” system in Newark, each parent lists their choices for the school they want for their child. Priority is given to students who already attend a school, and to students who are brothers or sisters of students currently attending the school. Therefore, every school in Newark is going to have a waiting list. District schools and charter schools will both have waiting lists.
If you ask or demand that no charter school have a waiting list, then you are asking the school district to assign students to the school instead of allowing parents to choose the school. If a school district wants to give parents the choice of schools, why should we be against that? Especially in Newark, where the charter schools have a track record that everyone can look at.
Ellen, I don’t know that I have more faith than you that a reformer can actually reform. I think it’s more that I accept we don’t have much of a choice other than to experiment and to use experimental results to innovate.
I think you’re right that it’s going to get harder before it gets easier. You sound a little jaded, perhaps, but jade, like diamonds, are formed by high pressure, and that is what makes them valuable. Anyone waltzing into a school, charter or public, without the werewithal provided by hard experience is in for a rude awakening. But sometimes the things most worth doing are also the hardest, and working successfully towards a meaningful goal can make the hardest journey fulfilling and worthwhile.
Matthew Goggins,
I suggest you do some research on charter schools and the public anger toward Gov. Chris Christie, before you rash in making pointless criticism to take swipe at some respondents.
Don’t know if charter schools are good or bad? Go ahead and take a look at these links. Even the study by conservative think-tank (TBF) shows that charters are performing worse than public schools.
http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2013/12/20/three-indiana-charter-school-usa-takeovers-earn-fs/
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/ohio-gadfly-daily/ohios-charters-fall-short-on-the-nations-report
http://vamboozled.com/?p=562
Still think NJ superintendent is right for sacking four “insubordinate” principals on closing schools? You should watch this video and learn inconvenient truth that reformers want to avoid in their conversations.
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-real-christie-legacy-we-deserve.html
So I looked at your links, Ken. The last one was the most helpful. There was a 29-minute video report imbedded in an article describing problems at Trenton Central High School. The video was a pretty damning expose of maintenance and structural problems at the school, as well as a lack of anything resembling first-rate educational facilities. There didn’t seem to be any excuse for the condition of the school, which appears to need to be closed down immediately pending renovations or new construction.
So once again, skepticism, in this case of Governor Christie personally, appears to be fully justified. So I would ask you, and everyone else, what I have been asking of Chemtchr: what is going on with the charter schools in Newark — what do we know about them, how likely are these particular schools to do better or worse than the schools they are replacing? It’s certainly possible that Gov. Christie is on the wrong track in Newark, because he appears to have dropped the ball big-time in Trenton, but what actually has been going on in Newark?
Thank you very much for the links you’ve already given me.
Speaking out against a public policy is critical in a democracy. To call public servants insubordinate because they did so is ridiculous. By that standard, black maids who were late to work because they refused to take the bus during the historic bus boycott would have all been fired too. This is one of the reasons schools need to remain in the public realm and not be subjected to the template of the private corporate environment.
As a parent, I try to stay out of the labor debates about education because labor unions can do a better job of that, and parents who support teachers are already accused of being shills for the unions (ridiculous too!) But I am outraged by what’s happened in Newark. Everyone who cares about public education should contact that superintendent, the governor and the news media to express their concern.
So, Matthew…
Maybe you’re a KIPP fan, and you think KIPP is just great. Maybe you favor another particular charter operation, not as lousy as the ones Anderson is promoting, and you think “the market” will somehow weed out the lousy deals being forced on the Newark community.
I truly can’t imagine which of the ugly lot you’re tryiing to defend, but if you are honest in your support of any decent charter attempt, the first thing you’ve got to do is STOP the attack on Newark schools. You can’t ride to power on a wave of corruption, and expect to be free of it.
Here’s Whitney Tilson’s own mea culpa, where he tries to rationalize all his twisted support for the imposition of the K12 profiteers on unwilling and politically helpless districts. Study the reasons he advances for his complicity in a crime against children. He’s now set to make a profit on shorting it, though. Are you?
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/09/whitney-tilson-k12-short-3/
The last portion of Tilson’s explanation includes a real political positioning tell of the entire reform movement itself:
“Why have reformers been so silent [in regard to cutting off ties with k12 due to its dismal performance]? Think there are six answers:
1) Ignorance. I’ve had my finger on the pulse of the education reform movement for more than a decade – but, as I’ve come to realize, not the entire movement. I hang out with the nonprofit/TFA/KIPP types and know very few people in the for-profit ed sector. Among most people like me, online charter schools aren’t even on the radar screen. (This is also perhaps in part due to the fact that the online charter sector was very small until quite recently.)”
My thoughts: There is far more about which many reformers are ignorant, including experience as educators but that never seems to stop them from taking over schools.
“2) Genuine belief (mostly rooted in ideology). Many folks love the concept of online charter schools for various reasons: they’re nonunion, aren’t controlled by “The Blob”, are lower cost, further parental choice, and the technology is very cool (the wave of the future!). And K12 is very clever in spinning all negative reports to make it seem like they’re isolated incidents and/or politically motivated. So if you’re predisposed to believe the online charter school story (and don’t look hard at the evidence), it’s easy to believe.”
My thoughts: Privatization (where parents have little choice) advertised falsely as “choice” is the friend of the reform movement, especially since unions are viewed as enemies of the reform movement. What other reasons would reformers have to despise unions? I thought reformers cared about education? It’s pretty obvious that union employees stand in the way of reformer PROFIT.
“3) They seem like friends. At first glance, K12 champions the same things we champion (expansion of, more funding for, and less red tape for charter schools, parental choice, blended learning, etc.), plus the unions really hate them, so they must be our friends, right?”
My thoughts: Did it ever occur to the reformers that unions hate cyber charters because they devalue the entire human teaching/learning practice? Again, why would reformers automatically call that which unions consider enemies to public education their friends if the reform movement was not so tied to anti-union motivations? Anyone who misses this connection is a fool.
“4) Political necessity. We reformers are almost always outmanned, outspent, and outgunned at least 10:1 by the unions and their lobbyists in the school boards, city councils, and state legislatures around the country. So when K12 shows up with a lot of money and an army of lobbyists and offers to join us in our fight for better funding for charters, etc. (and against various poison pills the unions are always trying to get passed), are we really going to say no because the charter school bill we like has a little part of it that allows online charters unchecked growth, little or no accountability, and more funding?”
My thoughts: I find it very difficult to believe that these poor reformers are outgunned financially by those who make a small percentage in a year of what they make in a week. THOSE POOR REFORMERS!! The only “poison pills” unions give is to prevent those who would seek to profit off of children from doing so.
“5) Concern about the movement. K12 has been so clever in wrapping themselves in the major reform issues noted above that many reformers worry that if we attack K12, our enemies will use this to hurt other, good aspects of our movement.”
My thoughts: The reformers clearly have an agenda complete with “enemies outlined.” Why would they even set out on this endeavor with battle lines drawn? Ohhh, right–it’s about MONEY, POWER, and INFLUENCE. Unions are the reformers’ enemies because they seek to balance these pesky little problems of injustice instead of simply giving in to the reformers.
“6) Money. K12 has been very clever in cultivating reformers and reform organizations, offering a lot of money, conference sponsorships, etc. You know the old saying: “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.” It’s exactly what the teachers unions do to win support from groups like the NAACP.”
My thoughts: Politics, politics, and more politics. I’m so glad I read this–it’s as if the true meaning of reform has finally come out the horse’s mouth, and it’s clearly proving that its head is up its @&$.
“In my view, taking this money from K12 is blood money. To any of my friends who are working with and/or taking money from K12, let me put it to you this way: if Randi Weingarten offered you a similar amount of money, lobbying support, etc. in exchange for selling out at-risk kids trapped in failing schools, would you take it? Of course not – you’d be outraged that she’d think you were so unprincipled to even dare to make such an offer. So why are you doing exactly this with K12, selling out over 100,000 kids, an increasing number of whom are at-risk, most of whom are getting a worse education than even the worst bricks-and-mortar school???”
I wonder by whose standards Tilson measures any education at all? It must have been laid out in all those education and classroom practicum courses they make you take in business school. Oh, wait…they don’t offer any teaching coursework in business school. Silly me thinking they did seeing as the bulk of hedge-fund managers and other non-trained reformers tend to think they know all about education!
The hubris demonstrated in this excerpt alone is beyond sickening, and this guy is actually trying to “do the right thing.”
Chemtchr and KG,
I’ve been doing some research the past few days, since I knew next to nothing about the schools in Newark. It turns out K12 has nothing to do with the charter schools in Newark, so I hope the vigilance of people like you and the others who have responded to me will keep it that way.
On the other hand, there do seem to be some very good charter schools in Newark. Not all of them are good, not at all, but perhaps a majority of them fall somewhere between better and average and great.
That doesn’t mean that replacing existing public schools with brand new charter schools is going to work well. Especially if it’s done in a ham-handed way that alienates the people — the parents — who need to support what is going on. But the charter schools in Newark do seem to have a much better track record than schools elsewhere in the country.
It seems like the new system that Superintendent Anderson is putting into place is not a corrupt power grab, but a sincere attempt to help the students who need help the most. If I am right about that, then it is a shame that the two sides of this controversy seem to be working against each other. If the superintendent is really being anti-democratic, then why is there a waiting list of 10,000 kids for the charter schools in Newark? That sounds like a solid vote of confidence in what the charter schools are trying to do.
If schools like North Star Academy, Robert Treat Academy. Gray, Greater Newark, and Team Academy are doing well, why shouldn’t we all work together to make sure the new schools meet or exceed these high standards? Especially if parents are voting with their applications to have their kids attend them.
Not every charter school is good, but some are terrific. Let’s do what the best schools are doing. That is what I meant when I mentioned to LG that charter schools introduce competition to public schools. Not that we are encouraging some students to “win” while other students lose — but that we allow new schools to do things better, so that other schools can pick and choose from the new methods and make their own students and teachers do better than they would have.
Excuse me for getting the wrong initials in my comment above. I obviously meant to address “LG” and not “KG”. Thanks!
YOU DO NOT SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR REPUBLICAN PARTY WANTS TO GET RID OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS FOR THEY CAN PRIVITIZE FOR PROFIT. THEY ARE TAKING MORE AN MORE MONEY AWAY FROM THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND GIVING IT TO THE CHARTER AND CYBER SCHOOLS AND IN SOME STATES, VOUCHERS FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS. YOU MUST BE A REPUBLICAN OR EITHER JUST DAMN STUPID. WELL, BOTH AS MOST REPUBLICANS ARE STUPID. THEY ARE JUST THIEVES THAT TAKE FROM THE POOR AND LINE THEIR POCKETS WITH MONEY AND NOBODY BETTER GET IN THEIR WAY. PURE EVIL!
I don’t think I’m stupid, but I guess if I were stupid, I’d think that anyway, right?
But I know I’m not evil and I don’t support evil. Some people think public school teachers unions are evil, but calling each other names seems like a poor way to communicate and a worse way to try to get anything done. Everybody, with the exception of some very bad eggs in both the private school business and the public schools, wants the same thing: schools that work for our kids. We need to focus on that common ground and see if there isn’t any way we can work together and make things better for everyone.
Matthew, that’s the problem. Many of the reformers are not altruistic in their actions. There is too much money and power being bantered around which has attracted the rats and their kin. Not everyone is like you and me. (And that’s rule #1).
I am only aware of the success rate of the charter schools in the St. Louis area. Many parents enthusiastically signed their children up when they were first opened, hopeful of an improvement in their children’s education. Unfortunately there has been no identifiable inaction of improvement, not in standardized test scores or verbal tests. Some schools did not pay the rent in the buildings where school was held, causing those schools to close with little warning to the parents. Some officials (not the teachers) skimmed tremendous amounts of money from the funds to be used to operate the schools.
Each charter school that was not run by a college or university has had either poor performance issues or some type of scandal attached to it. kt
So people…..Who will run for President 2016 that will listen to the professionally trained educators?
Any suggestions??
It’s got to be Bernie.
This Anderson lady is acting like a Dictator instead of a leader…
She needs to be fired…
“A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.”
― Albert Einstein
America sends men to war to rid other countries of such dictatorship and she thinks she can get away with this Political Voodoo.(??)….
Dictatorship…
*Form of government in which one person or a small group possesses absolute power without effective constitutional limitations”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/162240/dictatorship
I know the meaning but somehow looking at those words ..”absolute power” brings this move by this lady into perspective…
“America sends men to war to rid other countries of such dictatorship….”
Hardly. We send men to war to *install* such dictatorship. We’re just now getting a taste of our own medicine.
“I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
US black civil rights leader & clergyman (1929 – 1968)
Beautiful. Those principals had no choice. It must have excruciating to be silent this long.
Yes, these principals are heroes and we desperately need heroes.
Please be aware that this very same woman has applied for a waiver of tenure to fire the 300 (at least) teachers and staff that will not have placement once the Newark restructuring plan is in place.
of course
Public schools always lose under ed reformers. Always. It’s weird how that happens. Must be the invisible hand of the marketplace.
Another “choice” city where the only choice will be between a privatized school and a private school.
I’m getting the feeling this playing field is rigged 🙂
Is there an ed reform city, district or state where public schools have been supported or improved? I have yet to see one.
I disagree with Secretary Duncan. I don’t think the biggest problem in this country is public schools or teachers. I think the biggest problem in this country is corrupt political leaders who are captured by monied interests. I don’t think I’m alone in that either. I’ve never seen people so disgusted and discouraged about government leaders. They know none of these people are working for “us”. Christie is a high profile example, but he just happens to be in the news as a particularly blatant individual.
Subpeona the emails and maybe we’ll find out why the principals say they aren’t allowed to tell the people who live there what’s going on.
The ACLU of NJ was helpful forcing transparency on ed reformers when this started, when they sued and won access to communications between the billionaire and the ed reformer. Maybe they’ll step in again.
Charter schools are not gaining a large foot hold here in Virginia, yet. However, our public schools are suffering because of the increased testing and the rest of this mess. We did defeat Ken Cuccinelli for governor or I would be saying the number of charter schools is increasing.
Ever since the charter-happy Republicans forced Virginia to adopt the SOL program (yes, you read that right), public education in VA has gone to the dogs. Our children are taught to-the-test, the claim that was yelled to the heavens that would NOT happen. I am a product of VA education quite a number of years ago. I was taught to think. Our children now are taught to answer a multiple-choice test. There’s no thinking involved and the teachers are ham-strung. Two of the best in my children’s elementary school left to teach at the highly regarded private school just a mile away, because they were still ALLOWED to teach at that school. They both left the second year the SOLs were put into place. A very wise doctor told me that the singlemost important reason the SOLs were pushed for so hard was to discredit public education in VA so that Charter schools could come in and take over. There are exceptions, of course, and some students do quite well, but the vast majority of our children are now taught in message bites. They aren’t taught how to think, just WHAT to think. Shame, shame, shame. Any parent who has a child in public school in VA really needs to be home-schooling on the side to make sure their child receives a decent education because they won’t get it in the public system. And that’s entirely a political failure. If we could get the *($($%# politicians OUT of the educational process, we’d be a whole lot better off. And our children could really LEARN again. And this is repeated state after state. It’s not just Virginia.
This is a story in today’s NYTimes about rip-off privatized colleges. If you read it, you will find that the consumer protection board and the SEC are investigating these colleges for selling low income people loans they can’t pay back.
There is one agency that is missing in this regulatory crackdown. A glaring omission.
Arne Duncan’s Department of Education.
Senator Warren says Duncan’s DOE is a “lapdog” for lenders. Is that true? Is that they why they aren’t regulating for-profit colleges? Is the DOE captured completely?
See below, Chiara, if you still wonder whose tail is wagging the DOE.
I’m watching for this story to break the surface on any national news outlets. So far, no.
But this ironic twist did come up:
“Students and teachers from Newark Prep Charter School will join other school choice supporters to ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange on Monday, January 27, to officially commemorate the start of National School Choice Week 2014.
National School Choice Week (www.schoolchoiceweek.com) will be America’s largest-ever series of education-related events, focusing on effective education options for children. Events will spotlight traditional public schools, online learning options, public charter schools, magnet schools, private schools and homeschooling.
While Newark Prep students ring the bell at the stock exchange, thousands of schools across the country will simultaneously ring their school bells to officially “ring in” the beginning of National School Choice Week 2014.
Newark Prep Charter School is operated by K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), the nation’s leading provider of online and blended education programs for students in pre-kindergarten through high school. K12 partners with charter schools and school districts to provide children new school options and innovative digital learning programs.”
Read more here: http://www.heraldonline.com/2014/01/17/5590474/students-from-k12s-newark-prep.html#storylink=cpy
There is something ironic about them ringing a bell to usher in their own rip-off. What a world.
Shouldn’t these children be in school at that time? SOME “educational” field trip…
Makes sense to me. Charter school students ringing the bell for the hedge funders.
Did you notice that the organizers of this event (so called Choice Week) referred to it as “nonpartisan” and “nonpolitical”?
Just because you say it’s so, doesn’t make it so!
A HUGE case of “wag the dog” (turns out the movie of that name was not, indeed, satire after all but, sadly, a reality)–GWB AND Hurricane Sandy–the fault of–teachers!!! (And–given this principal dilemma–former teachers, as well.)
THIS is what happens when the Koch bros are holding the purse strings to your governor! I know! I live in Michigan and this happens over and over! You need a recall immediately of Christie and you better get educated on ALL you elect! Not just this, ‘I think’ bull! Stupidity never wins, unless you’re a politician!
Listen, from my uunderstanding they were being asked to step down and they refused. If you look at the test scores in Newark, they are HORRIBLE. Majority of the schools that are closing have over 50% of the kids failing the state test. It seems as though sone teachers are there for the kids and some are not. I think an action plan would of been suffice before trying to close to at least give the failing schools a chance to rectify the the situation
Tt – before you judge those so called failing schools,you need to look at the demographics – Poor, minority, inner city, special ed population, ELL population, etc. Closing all inner city schools with low test scores is not the answer. It doesn’t address the real issues. And the replacement charter schools don’t do any better. Look at the charter school scores in the Buffalo Public Schools – much worse than Newark. The only charter schools doing well have a large white population (that segregated aspect I’ve mentioned).
So, now what?
Tt has advanced the most self-serving and offensive argument of the forced privatizers, who are demanding that any children of low-resource communities must be handed over to them, along with tax money and title to public properties, against the will of their families and community.
They argue that, since low-income urban children perform worse on standardized tests than their wealthier suburban counterparts, their schools must be “terrible”, and their communities must not be deserving of the privilege of democratic governance of those schools. Cami Anderson’s career has been devoted to the promotion of profit-driven exploitation of these children, through ventures like K12 inc. However, Newark schools that have been handed to her favored contractors actually perform worse on standardized tests, partly because their profitable cost-cutting “online delivery” products have negative educational value.
Several principals in the video above protested that their schools aren’t “failing”, even by “accountability” measures. Apparently, Tt heard only the district’s sound bite about Hawthorne Avenue School, for instance:
“The data also show students performed below the district average in three of four categories.”
When we look at the actual numbers, though, the district has no case to call Hawthorne Avenue “below average”: It actually performed better than the vendors Anderson wants to hand it over to, and better than some suburban schools.
“Just 34 percent of students in grades 3-5 were proficient in reading last year, while 52 percent were proficient in math. In comparison, the district averages were 38 and 53 percent. In grades 6-8, 33 percent were proficient in reading and 56 percent were proficient in math, compared to 46 and 47 percent for the district.”
http://www.nj.com/education/2014/01/newarks_hawthorne_avenue_school_holds_morning_rally_to_oppose_possible_closing.html
Hey, wait a minute. We’re talking about proficiency scores, not passing scores here, by the way.
34% vs 38%? Very weak statistical difference, if it even reaches significance.
52% vs 53%?! No difference.
33% vs 46% ? Below average
56% vs 47% ? Above average.
The moral is, they’ll say anything. If their standards-based accountability data don’t support their land-grab, they’ll do it anyway. The emperor is naked, clothed only in mealy-mouthed, racist and false paternalism.
Happy birthday, Dr. King.
This response is directly for Matthew… I understand from your point of view that a charter school is a great concept and ordinarily with some regiment adjustment I would agree…however as a parent directly affected by these changes, what the public is not being told is that our kids are being displaced..
We are to APPLY to neighboring charter or public schools.. and await a decision in April . Now picture closing the public school with kids travel time from being a 5-10 minute walk to 30+ on the bus, class sizes as high as 40kids per teacher! I can say this as fact as I have been to the One Newark enrollment
session and questioned at least 15 Charter/Public school representatives who were listed in the great category according to the One Newark application.
Now back to the school.. here’s the clarification aka dirty laundry.. these schools are being SHUT DOWN.. the building sold to a Charter school.. where our KIDS CANNOT ATTEND!! We were told by the Superintendents representative -Keith Burton.. our kids will be given first preference at enrollment to the replacement school.. Q.. what is the name of the new school? How do we apply it to if it’s not listed on the application? Why is it, we are being told they will start with kindergarten only come September?
If this is all on the best interest of public school education, why are you shutting down a school whose grades are on the rise and met state guidelines.. why would a state representative promise to return to answer community/parent questions, yet 30 days later they have no returned calls or emails?
Are we sure that NJ is still in the US? Sounding like a banana republic to me
Those principals should be hailed as heroes!
They sacrificed themselves so they could tell the public the truth.
It all depends on what the principals said. Believe it or not there are limitations on what an employee, esp. principals, can say concerning policies established by the Board. Given the take-over status of the Newark School District this could possibly be extended to the policy decisions made by a State appointed Superintendent – given that he/she establishes district policies. So, the legal viability of the suspensions depends on the correctness of interpretation of the legal restraints on employees’ freedom of expression and what the Principals said. I thought the action to harsh, but I don’t exactly know what was said.
New Leaders for New Schools is not a bad organization and KIPP does a fabulous job teaching low-income kids. It seems that this was not handled well especially considering other events in NJ that have recenly come to the public notice. However, this story may be more nuanced that a short media article can convey…
All charter schools are not bad and are not created by hedge fund managers. If they can produce real academic and character success with students, then go for it. Public schools need to learn from them best practices.
Susan Price, you do realize you are advocating for a dual school system–one system gets to choose its students and kick out those it doesn’t want, the other takes all, including the ones rejected by the other sector. Good idea?
Diane, that is a blanket generalization about charter schools. I’ve lived & worked in Newark and my children have attended both district and charter schools, specifically TEAM schools, which is KIPP. TEAM holds a lottery and takes any child that is selected. They do not pick and choose. There are special needs kids at TEAM schools, high performing kids and low performing ones…well behaved kids and bad behaved ones…
However,The academic standards are strict and if you fail one class at the end of the year, you must repeat the entire grade. Because of that, many parents choose to instead pull their child out of TEAM schools because they know the district school will allow the child to advance to the next grade even if TEAM will not. I faced that same dilemma and chose to keep my son in the TEAM school to repeat the 7th grade.
So what looks like “rejection” oftentimes is parents removing their kids from charter schools when the kids run up against the stricter academic and behavioral standards.
We’d all do well to remember that by definition, charters are PUBLIC schools. It is a “public charter” that is applied for, and if granted, there are guidelines that come along with that.
Yes, some charters fail but many succeed and thrive, TEAM in Newark being one example. North Star is another…and there are others. This whole conversation is very one-sided…
While I don’t think that Anderson’s methods are sound, I do think that its important to look at what the successful charters do well and bring some of that into the district schools and vice versa..there should be collaboration and cooperation between the 2 systems so that parents and kids have the best options available to them because there are pros and cons to BOTH.
North Star has a high attrition rate–about 60% of black males leave. TEAM. Not so bad. They are privately managed schools, not public schools.
The charter scam is the same everywhere. If they hold a “lottery” to let kids IN, they also demand conditions (often in the form of a “contract” the parents sign) that lets the charters force the kids OUT. Those forced OUT are either out of school completely (and often demoralized) or they return to the real public schools (often ashamed at having “failed” to live up to their “contracts”). This scam has been pioneered in Chicago since the founding of the “Noble Network of Charter Schools” by a former public school math teacher named Michael Milkie more than ten years ago. Milkie was one of those colleagues we all know who always try to use office politics to get only the “best” students and leave all the others in the department with the “bad kids.” Once educational “entreprenuership became the gospel in Chicago under Arne Duncan, Milkie was able to monetize his ideas and found the first “Noble Street Charter School.” From the first year, he was empowered (by Arne Duncan) to do the same thing in the quasi-private world of charterization that he had been trying to do when he taught at Wells High School in the real public schools. And he has been doing it ever since, with the sponsorship of two mayors, two Presidents of the United States, and a long string of school board members who have voted (again, tomorrow) to extend his empire. The facts about what Milkie does to kids have been coming out for years, but are ignored by the corporate media in Chicago. I have interviewed school officials who said that when the kids at Milkie’s schools are fined and can’t pay the fines (for breaking dozens of silly rules that would be illegal real public schools), they are kicked out. But the Milkie’s school refuses to release the kids’ transcripts of courses completed until the family pays the “debt.”
You can believe what you want about the charters, but they are as corrupt a reality from coast to coast (and in every iteration from virtual to merely sanctimonious) as anything to have ever hit public education in the USA. Chicago tomorrow (at its Board of Education meeting of January 22, 2014) will vote again to expand the city’s charters’ tentacles. The difference between 2014 and earlier days is that Chicago charters are being watched by citizens across the city and the Chicago Teachers Union is relentlessly documenting both the hypocrisy and the corruption of the charters…
Susan, the KIPP School in Buffalo was in the heart of the city. The place they were located has been demolished – yes, the school has been closed. The principal had less than three years experience as a teacher. Rumors abounded, but there were specific reports of corporal punishment which were extremely disturbing.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my child paddled on the butt by the school they attend. If you think this is the proper way to teach those poor black kids, then I suggest you sign up your own children at a KIPP School near you. I, for one, am not impressed. Oh, and their test scores remained low.
(Success in the way that placing your problems “out of sight out of mind” is successful).
another sampling of Christy’s Culture?
Veronica says:
“While I don’t think that Anderson’s methods are sound, I do think that its important to look at what the successful charters do well and bring some of that into the district schools and vice versa..there should be collaboration and cooperation between the 2 systems so that… yadda yadda”
Matthew says,
“I’ve been doing some research the past few days, since I knew next to nothing about the schools in Newark. It turns out K12 has nothing to do with the charter schools in Newark…” … yadda yadda … “Everybody, with the exception of some very bad eggs in both the private school business and the public schools, wants the same thing: schools that work for our kids. We need to focus on that common ground and see if there isn’t any way we can work together and make things better for everyone.”
Butter would not melt in their mouths. As representatives of the charter industry, they would like to shelter under the wings of corrupt and anti-democratic political operators, then claim innocence of the evil and destructive methods used to open their “markets” for them. They’d like to pass over the specific evidence of betrayal after betrayal, and then say, “Gosh, from what I’ve heard, some charters are super!”
We can work together with people who support democratic control of public education, free of cronyism and patronage. You had your chance to stand up and do that this past weekend, and you failed that one simple moral test. No, we can’t work with you.
Matthew, you didn’t read the conversation. K12 not only runs a charter in Newark, it’s all set to have a child from its Newark Prep Academy ring the actual dinner bell at the NY Stock Exchange. The link is above.
Moreover, your careful wording has aroused my suspicions. Your claim that “K12 has nothing to do with the charter schools in Newark,” leaves open the problem of what K12 has to do with Anderson’s reconstituted district schools in Newark. K12 boasts that it has infested over 2,000 actual public school “district partners”, but there isn’t a list anywhere. Can you find out, please, if Newark is one of them yet? Because you’ve helped install an evil regime, under which the actual people of Newark can’t protect their own children.
http://educators.k12.com/products-and-services