Larry Miller, an elected member of the Milwaukee school board and a member of the editorial board of Rethinking Schools, has written an excellent review and summary of Kristen Buras’ book–Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space— about the privatization of public education in New Orleans. New Orleans has gotten an undeserved national reputation as “the answer” to struggling school districts. The establishment in many other urban districts are looking at New Orleans as a model, but it is a model of what NOT to do. As Buras tells it, the reforms in New Orleans dispossessed the black citizens of New Orleans and created great possibilities for white entrepreneurs. A teaching force that was 75% black was dismissed and replaced largely by white Teach for America recruits.
Milwaukee is one of the urban districts where the civic and business leadership is looking longingly at New Orleans. Perhaps Larry Miller can share Buras’ book with them.
Miller writes: “A major theme to her research is that the New Orleans RSD is a Southern strategy to use market-based reforms to give control of public schools, attended by Black children in Black communities and often taught by Black teachers, over to well funded white entrepreneurs.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’m sure I speak for many (ahem) when I say that I sure would be interested in Joe Nathan’s opinion of New Orleans.
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Really? Why? He will ask a question or divert the focus of conversation in some way without addressing the points outlined in the review. Joe Nathan believes what he believes and is not interested in honest conversation or debate on important issues in education.
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The “ahem” was meant to indicate sarcasm.
But it is curious which charter articles Joe shows up for. The ones that are all about charters stripping democracy from the population which wants public schools, oddly Joe never seems to have a comment.
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Betsy Marshall & Dienne: neither here nor on another posting on this blog today entitled “Connecticut: State Investigation Finds Rampant Nepotism and Lack of Oversight at Charter Chain.”
These involve some heavy hitters in the charter/privatization movement. Apparently it is best to ignore the words and deeds of leading figures and players in the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement and try to trivialize matters by constantly making false equivalences.
For example, there’s good and bad everywhere, everybody has some hits and some misses, virtue and vice aren’t all on one side or another, etc.
Completely misses the point, and deliberately so. Lauding small-scale and mom-and-pop charters while ignoring the heavyweights of the self-styled “new civil rights movement of our time” shows a studied inability to deal with the big issues.
How hard can it be to denounce as unethical and indefensible the half million dollars plus that Eva Moskowitz enjoys for managing less than 1/30th the number of students that Carmen Fariña does for barely above a third of the same salary + bonus?
How hard should it be to be morally indignant that fierce charter/privatizer zealots have inflicted their iPad and MISIS fiascos on LAUSD?
Where is the distancing from the “Dr.” that graces so many charter stars?
Where is the fierce denunciation of the New Orleans RSD frauds regarding their shameless self-serving and clumsy gaming and rigging of ratings?
How can York City, PA and Muskegon Heights, MI disappear so completely from the radar of a well informed insider of the charter establishment?
But then, how easy can it be to explain and defend “education reform” which is based on a Marxist world view? Trying to mix together VAM and merit pay and teacher bashing and $tudent $uccess and management by fear with respect for the dignity of school staff and students and communities and genuine excellence in education is only possible for folks that consider the following something other than word salad and cognitive dissonance:
“Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… now you tell me what you know.”
Makes ₵ent¢ to them. Rheeally.
To the rest of us. Not really.
But what do we know? We don’t have Groucho on the brain.
😎
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“It’s all Greek to Me”
It’s Greek to me that some can be
So ignorant of fraud
Though charter schools do break the rules
They nonetheless applaud
Though profiteers and racketeers
Are rampant in the charters
The type denies their very eyes
And makes them out for martyrs
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Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
This article from 2010 describes the “shock doctrine” that GWB used to replace the NOLA public schools: http://isreview.org/issue/71/education-shock-doctrine
Those of us who hoped this strategy would be undone with the election of President Obama were sad to read this quote from his Secretary of Education: “Let me be really honest. I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. That education system was a disaster, and it took Hurricane Katrina to wake up the community to say that ‘We have to do better.’” Here’s hoping the 2016 election will bring someone to office who thinks that market-based schooling is a disaster!
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