Glenn Ford of Black Agenda Report explains clearly why black parents should opt out.
He understands that high-stakes testing is designed to fail most children and that black children will be failed by tests made artificially “rigorous.”
He knows that the ultimate goal– once a dream for rightwing Republicans–is privatization, which is already firmly implanted in many urban districts.
White parents won’t tolerate this scheme, and he says, black parents shouldn’t either.
It is a scam, he says.
“The movement by parents to opt their children out of high stakes testing is growing by leaps and bounds, but remains largely white and suburban, despite the fact that Black folks are the primary targets of the destructive testing regime. Almost two decades ago, the corporate world began pouring millions of dollars into a massive campaign to split the two pillars of the Democratic Party: teachers unions and Black voters. It began as a mainly Republican strategy to divert public funding to private school vouchers – an idea that was never very popular among Black parents. But, corporate Democrats discovered that public education could be privatized even more effectively – and much more profitably – through chartering the schools. Charter schools are a capitalist’s dream, in which the public provides all the money, private companies get rich contracting services, teachers are deprofessionalized and deunionized, and Black parents lose all democratic rights concerning their children’s education.
“In one of the great ironies of recent U.S. history, the Democratic Party took the lead in what had begun as a Republican project to vilify teachers and privatize schools in Black neighborhoods. High stakes testing became a weapon guaranteed to fail the students, fail the teachers, fail the neighborhood schools, and fail entire school districts in largely Black cities. Everybody loses except the hedge funds and other billionaire investors in the charter school marketplace. These are the people whose interests President Obama has served for the past six and a half years. Obama became the biggest public school privatizer of all time, wielding executive power to force the states to establish more charter schools or lose federal education funds.”
Resist!
Why does everyone (especially those not in the movement to save Black lives) feel the need to tell BLM how they should spend their time?! This post assumes BLM is not already doing this. Look at the support BYP100 and BLM Chicago are all doing and stop it.
I guess Glen Ford is just expressing his views. That’s allowed.
Are you saying Glen Ford isn’t in the movement to save Black lives? Guess you can take that up with him.
Dienne, no that’s not what I’m saying.
What are you saying? I am not being snarky. I am genuinely seeking your opinion.
I have been waiting for black groups to understand that their children are targets in this war. What started out as a movement to improve education for urban students has morphed into a money making exploitative machine. Testing is the weapon of mass destruction that gives the leaders the opportunity to turn the neighborhood school into a robot school, take away parents’ voices, create total chaos and improve very little.
Having worked in a diverse school district for many years, we debated about the best way to reach African American parents. We found that by going to black churches, we uncovered a vehicle of outreach. I recommend that anyone that wants to network in the black communities should contact the black churches. They may not allow you to be part of the service, but they may allow you to speak to parents of school age children after the service. It is a way to get the information out to people that are respected in the community.
An additional reason for opposition to school privatization- Privatization disproportionately harms the livelihoods of people of color. Historically, government employment has been less discriminatory in hiring, pay and promotion. More work needs to be done to correct remaining discrimination. However, success is more likely achieved in the public sector than in an unfettered market situation, which allows society’s biases, to operate without restraint.
The stability of retirement income, through public pensions, has been statistically more beneficial to minorities, as well.
The composition of the Board of Blueprint Schools is, IMO, concerning. Widely publicized, highly controversial views, do not, IMO, mesh with minority community progress and student learning.
I believe all parents should opt out.
There is a crucial overlap of progressive education community’s issues with those of Black Lives Matter and urban education issues.
I hope that we can embrace many of those commonalities to assist in the improvement of the lives of kids. Whereas the Opt Out movement has made tremendous inroads in middle class and affluent white communities, the true “victims” of standardized testings machinations are in the schools that have been too often directed to and ordered by the powers-that-be.
The power structure of American public education needs to be examined and exposed and discussed thoroughly with many different voices chiming in.
I am optimistic that this will happen, but we have to all be open-minded to past hurts and criticism in the process. I am a great believer in coalition building, but those honest conversations have to occur.
In the most recent NEW REPUBLIC, there is an article entitled “The New Black Intelligentsia Is Shaping American Thought Online
The latest generation of black thinkers has turned Twitter into its classroom.”
Let’s all pay attention to these voices and see what happens.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122756/emerging-black-digital-intelligentsia-embraces-online-technology?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign&utm_term=TNR%20Daily%20Newsletter
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Charter schools are emerging here in NZ. They get more tax-payers money than state schools.