Leslie T. Fenwick, dean of the Howard University School of Education, has a different analysis of the rationale for school closings. It is a land grab. This article, published originally over two years ago, kept haunting me as I watched the process of school closings and takeovers tearing urban communities apart in city after city.
Fenwick writes:
The truth can be used to tell a lie. The truth is that black parents’ frustration with the quality of public schools is at an all time righteous high. Though black and white parents’ commitment to their child’s schooling is comparable, more black parents report dissatisfaction with the school their child attends. Approximately 90 percent of black and white parents report attending parent teacher association meetings and nearly 80 percent of black and white parents report attending teacher confereDespite these similarities, fewer black parents (47 percent) than white parents (64 percent) report being very satisfied with the school their child attends. This dissatisfaction among black parents is so whether these parents are college-educated, high income, or poor.
The lie is that schemes like Teach For America, charter schools backed by venture capitalists, education management organizations (EMOs), and Broad Foundation-prepared superintendents address black parents concerns about the quality of public schools for their children. These schemes are not designed to cure what ails under-performing schools. They are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education.
Consider these facts: With a median household income of nearly $75,000, Prince George’s County is the wealthiest majority black county in the United States. Nearly 55 percent of the county’s businesses are black-owned and almost 70 percent of residents own homes, according to the U.S. Census. One of Prince George’s County’s easternmost borders is a mere six minutes from Washington, D.C., which houses the largest population of college-educated blacks in the nation. In the United States, a general rule of thumb is that communities with higher family incomes and parental levels of education have better public schools. So, why is it that black parents living in the upscale Woodmore or Fairwood estates of Prince George’s County or the tony Garden District homes up 16th Street in Washington D.C. struggle to find quality public schools for their children just like black parents in Syphax Gardens, the southwest D.C. public housing community?
The answer is this: Whether they are solidly middle- or upper-income or poor, neither group of blacks controls the critical economic levers shaping school reform. And, this is because urban school reform is not about schools or reform. It is about land development.
In most urban centers like Washington D.C. and Prince George’s County, black political leadership does not have independent access to the capital that drives land development. These resources are still controlled by white male economic elites. Additionally, black elected local officials by necessity must interact with state and national officials. The overwhelming majority of these officials are white males who often enact policies and create funding streams benefiting their interests and not the local black community’s interests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t know about the land grab theory but we all agree charterization has nothing to do with reform of public schools. It is a money grab, a way to break up the unions, a plan to fleece the public and profit from it, get blacks and veteran teachers out, kill public education etc. because we have so many greedy politicians thinking about private money instead of protecting the public, it’s highly supported.
The Local Initiatives Support Corporation ( LISC) has been captured by funding from the Walton Foundation since 2002, and its work is now enjoying support from the Gates Foundation, specifically, promoting charters, and charters ONLY, in so-called community development projects.
There is no support for the idea that public schools open to all might be a vital aspect of efforts to create sustainable and vital communities in historically black and/or low-income neighborhoods.
The new super-rich segregationists are eager to repurpose the “distressed” land and buildings in urban centers through “opportunistic purchases.”
But as this post shows, the issue is not just about income. It is also about race, through and through.
http://www.lisc.org/section/ourwork/national/education/our_events
I no longer believe they want public financing of charter school facilities. I think it’s much easier if they can skip the public review process completely and private financing fits much better with the privatization ideology anyway.
They have an enormous amount of political clout. If they wanted charter facilities funded the way public school facilities are now, they would have pushed that through a state legislature. I think they prefer private financing.
They’re still claiming they “don’t get local funding” in Ohio and they absolutely do. This isn’t difficult and they’re not stupid people. They know each charter student in this state is taking a portion of local funding with them to the charter.
If they admit they’re getting local funding they’d have to subject themselves to local review and public scrutiny, and they don’t want to do that.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is staying on the on the story of the Obama Administration charter grant in Ohio and whether that grant was connected to the Youngstown take-over. I was really pleased to see they’re not dropping it, because people in this state deserve to know where the ed policy in this state is coming from. We can hardly make an informed choice in elections if all this stuff is going on behind the scenes and they just spring it on us in a manner that looks very much like cooperation between the Obama Administration and the Kasich Administration on privatizing Youngstown.
“Gov. John Kasich signed HB 70 on July 16, coincidentally the day federal officials received Ohio’s grant application. Uses of the $71 million, the application said, will include “[integrating] quality charter development into the State’s new authority to create ‘recovery districts’ that serve the children of the most underperforming districts.”
Ohio also proposed earmarking $10.25 million of the $71 million “for the creation of high quality schools in any recovery [school] district.” That seems to bolster the opinion of some HB 70 foes that the Kasich administration’s ultimate goal may be to convert the Youngstown district’s schools into charter schools.”
You know, we keep being told that the ed reform “movement” are trying to develop “humility” or whatever, yet these secret deals continue. They’ve learned nothing.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/more_troubling_developments_in.html#incart_river_home
“Develop humility”? Not in May, when the Director of Partners in Learning at Microsoft Canada, told Entrepreneur magazine, if teachers didn’t embrace her view of technology, in the classroom, they, “Should shift or get off the pot.” Arrogant and no class.
If school districts took responsibility for integrating their public schools, schools with mostly black students would not be such easy targets of “reform.” A diverse district like Prince George should be able to accomplish this by simply redrawing attendance catchment areas, which is what the diverse school district in which I taught did. Each of three elementary schools in our district contained 25 to 33% minority students. We did not have one black-latino school and two white ones. Civil rights groups need to take a hard look at the reality of “reform.” Most of the ‘reformers’ want to make a profit by increasing segregation in schools that function as test prep camps. They want to exploit, not elevate black lives. As stated so eloquently in this post these ‘reforms’ “are designed to shift tax dollars away from schools serving black and poor students; displace authentic black educational leadership; and erode national commitment to the ideal of public education.”
Much of the “reform” in urban areas is a land grab for real estate near the CBD. Cities need to wake up to the fact that the goal is to seize public assets and turn them into private equity. While Alexandria is close to Washington DC, Philadelphia is following a similar path as most of the closing schools are near downtown. http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2015/10/the-siege-of-philadelphia-public.html
When your school district is 87% black and brown kids, and 78% are below the federal poverty level how do you intergrate? That’s the current situation in Boston. The push is on to move more and more to a charter system, staffed by non-certified Teach for Awhiles. Three or four years ago, about 95% of core academic classes were taught by teachers who were highly qualified, i.e. certified; now the Boston number has dropped to 77% vs 96% statewide. This is due to pursuit of policies to pressure out veteran teachers, such as a proposal this week from the mayor to fire teachers who, despite having excellent evaluations, have not secured a school assignment after being forced out of schools due to turnarounds or take overs by charters.
“Indeed, mayoral control has been linked to an emerging pattern of closing and disinvesting in schools that serve black poor students and reopening them as charters operated by education management organizations and backed by venture capitalists. While mayoral control proposes to expand educational opportunities for black and poor students, more-often-than-not new schools are placed in upper-income, gentrifying white areas of town, while more schools are closed and fewer new schools are opened in lower-income, black areas thus increasing the level of educational inequity. Black inner-city residents are suspicious of school reform (particularly when it is attached to neighborhood revitalization) which they view as an imposition from external white elites who are exclusively committed to using schools to recalculate urban land values at the expense of black children, parents and communities.”
The above paragraph from Dean Fenwick could have certainly been written about Boston, which right now has one of the highest rates of gentrification of any major US city. The Republican governor and Democratic mayor of Boston testified in State House hearings this week about the glories of charters, not withstanding whitering testimony from, among others, the State Auditor,
” After two decades and the transfer of millions of public dollars into the hands of private charter schools, there is still little more than anecdotal evidence of outcomes to support the contention that charter schools are better suited to meet the needs of our students and charter schools are still experiments.”
See the complete transcript here: http://www.mass.gov/auditor/news-and-updates/press-releases-2015/remarks-of-state-auditor-suzanne-bump-before-the-joint-.html
The auditors full report on charters in the commonwealth is here: http://www.mass.gov/auditor/docs/audits/2014/201351533c.pdf
I totally agree with you. It issue is not just about race, but poverty. In Alexandria, with a diverse middle class community, I think they could have integrated the schools. In my school district our minority population was mostly poor with some middle class black families. Integration with some additional resources for poor students worked wonders for the neediest students, and it was cost efficient. When districts are mostly poor and minority, the issues are far more complex, increasing resources, not cutting programs as in the case of most poor, urban schools, makes the most sense. I know many districts have tried magnet schools, but they are not the total solution. I would like to know what evidence the Boston people are using to support the statement that ” that charter schools are better suited to meet the needs of our students.”
None. It’s an evidence-free argument as can be seen from the state auditor’s frustrated remarks.
I read through the document in your link, and they continuously addressed the issue of “unreliable data.” When politicians open their mouth, rarely do ‘pearls of wisdom’ fall out. Mostly they reiterate the talking points of big donors.
These are the hard, complicated facts that few people know. Congratulations to Dean Fenwick for laying this out for us.
In Buffalo, when schools are closed the land reverts to the city. In the last few weeks two schools have been purchased by construction companies to be converted into upscale housing. One prime location was purchased by a company owned by a school board member.
With the eyes set on a big area of land, they starve the schools, close the stores, force a move out, then close the schools for ‘under utilization’, now sell the land to developers and gentrify the area with high end condos. And don’t forget those high end stores.
Perfect example is Chicago’s west side. Watch the new construction begin.
And don’t forget, as noted by Forbes a couple of yrs ago (“Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express to Fat City”): In part, it’s the tax code that makes charter schools so lucrative: Under the federal “New Markets Tax Credit” program that became law toward the end of the Clinton presidency, firms that invest in charters and other projects located in “underserved” areas can collect a generous tax credit — up to 39% — to offset their costs.
“So attractive is the math, according to a 2010 article by Juan Gonzalez in the New York Daily News, “that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.”
The government is incentivizing the destruction of public education! Those laws need to be amended to exclude public education. Educating children should not be subject to the pitfalls of the marketplace. It’s like sending the Christians to the lions, and they can’t prove that it is worth all the disruption.
“Leslie T. Fenwick, dean of the Howard University School of Education, has a different analysis of the rationale for school closings. It is a land grab.”
There are at any time between 98,000 and 99,000 public schools in this country. About 28,000 public schools closed during the last 15 years. They were closing public schools before NCLB became law on Jan 1, 2002. (data from National Educational Statistics). Even though they were closing public schools at a rate of about 1500 a year, they must have been opening similar number of schools every year because the total number of public schools have remained about the same.
My question is are these public school closings a land grab? How can any one justify that it is a land grab? Are all these children being bussed to Omaha where the land is cheap? This defies common sense.
Raj, he’s saying that they only locate and invest in schools in areas where white people own (or want to own) property.
He’s saying the process is devaluing property in majority black neighborhoods. Their neighborhoods and communities literally lose value.
An example would be Chicago, where they closed neighborhood schools (leaving empty buildings) in black neighborhoods. They then invested in schools in other neighborhoods and had the children travel to the schools. He wants them to invest in the schools IN black neighborhoods, because that brings up the surrounding property value and binds the community together.
I think it’s one of the real problems in ed reform. Public schools are more than service providers. They’re anchors. People are attached to them, and that’s not at a bad thing despite the sneering at “traditionalists” in ed reform. Where I live the public school is absolutely the center of the community. It’s what we have in common.
He’s simply asking that they invest in schools where black people live, because he believes that adds value to black communities. It does. He’s right.
Chiara,
Don’t tell me that a majority of (28,000 in 15 years) public schools were closed as a land grab. I know the demography of an area changes, people get older and there are fewer children and therefore the need for schools changes. I know the population of Detroit is now less than 40% of what it used to be and the land values have plummeted and land grabbers have no incentives. New Orleans population is less than half of what it used to be.
Meanwhile people have moved out and taken their children with them and they need new schools. This results in schools closing in certain areas and schools opening in newer areas.
Sometimes the school buildings are so old and becomes cheaper to build a new school in fixing up an old one.
Anyone here can show decent examples of land grab instead of just pontificating about their imaginations. Diane is not doing any body any favors digging up old (two year) stuff from another blogger and restarting the conversation, but ignoring the big picture.
Devaluing property in black neighborhoods have nothing to with school closings. Schools close because there are not children that need it. It simply states that people living in those neighborhoods are poor and those how could afford left for greener pastures taking their children with them thus reducing the need for schools. Detroit is an example, you can buy a home for one Dollar and there are not many kids that need schools in Detroit. Closing schools has nothing to with this phenomena.
Common sense is a much better guide than these false recirculation of old blog entries.
If anyone has real proof of these land grabs bring it to light with actual verifiable data. Let us face reality and get off this band wagon of blaming every one else.
Raj – I don’t have data but I have witnessed closings which did not make sense.
The Buffalo School District was looking to close schools due to population decline. Fair enough, but they chose schools in poor neighborhoods where they got the least push back.
Somehow (due to my position on a site based committee when the school I was working at was slated to close) I got involved with a discussion with “down town” (representatives from administrators housed at City Hall) about this one particular school (where I had also worked). I questioned why they chose to close a school which was only 25 years old (vs the hundred year age of other buildings) and she DENIED the truth and claimed it was much older. I knew this was a lie because I had daily hall duty by the cornerstone with the date the building was created.
The reason this school was selected was because it was in a poverty stricken area and the parents did not have the wherewithal to conduct a coordinated outcry.
This building was recycled and is now being used as an alternative school.
My school was transferred to another building which was also closed for several years than brought back to life under a new name and direction (that’s how they do it in Buffalo, they shut down one school than rename it something else). Anyway, my old school was in a prime location right in the affluent part of the city and it was recently purchased by a company owned by one of the Board of Education members (no conflict there) to be remodeled into upscale housing.
Maybe some urban districts have a master plan, but Buffalo’s leadership seems haphazard at best. Nothing is obvious, but if you follow the trail eventually you find the goal – such as this recent acquisition.
Don’t be naive enough to think that there aren’t those out there who are eyeing a possible purchase of school properties as either an investment source or to sell/lease to a charter franchise.
Raj – This is from Peter Greene’s Curmudgucation blog today:
“The real estate side of the business is one more way for investors and corporations to privatize rewards while letting the taxpayers bear the risk. As Wigglesworth and Biggs outline, a developer can use school bond money to renovate a property, and if the charter school goes belly-up, the charter operators (and ultimately the taxpayers) must carry the burden of debt. Meanwhile, the real estate developer now has an empty, recently-renovated property ready to lease to a new client.”
See how that works?
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/10/charter-real-estate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FORjvzd+%28CURMUDGUCATION%29
flos56
Thank you. At least you have some data, although this one instance you cite does not explain the business of land grabbing. First the area becomes blighted due to loss of jobs and the resulting flight of middle class people to the suburbs. The school closings follow and are not the initiators of the decline of a given neighborhood and closings of the schools. Detroit is a perfect example of this process.
The opposite of this process is called the “gentrification”. Older residents living on retirement income cannot afford to make upgrades to their homes and the area starts showing age. And the older people cannot continue to stay in their homes due increases in property taxes or it becomes difficult for them care for the house. They leave and move into cheaper and smaller accommodations, like condominiums or apartments. This results in younger middle class people with more resources moving in and improving the neighborhood as long as the local job market is stable. This is the so called gentrification of the neighborhood. The older generation are the losers. Result of gentrification is the school age children population stabilizes and the need to close schools goes away. Once again no land garb in this scenario.
Public schools are not anchors. Anchors are businesses that bring or keep jobs in the neighborhood and make it possible for younger people to move in and prevent decay of the neighborhood. If the student population declines the schools have to close and open new schools somewhere else. Therefore the total number of public schools have remained nearly constant during the last decade.
The majority of the 28,000 pubic school closing in the last 15 years is due to demographic change or replacing of old infra structure with cheaper to maintain and operate new schools.
It is absolutely wrong to promote the reason for school closings as land grabbing by the well to do. People(education experts, such as deans) misuse their position in society to propagate their biases.
Raj – I agree that school closings are usually due to the changing demographics of a population, but which particular school is chosen to shut its doors is very politically motivated.
And there are always those waiting in the wings just biding their time until they can profit from the demise of these institutions.
I think part of it is how the big ed reform leaders go from place to place. They are themselves not attached to “place”. Barbara Byrd Bennett is an example, Paul Vallas is another
Byrd Bennett started in NY and then went to Detroit and then Cleveland and then Chicago. She isn’t about building value in stable neighborhoods. She’s about “developing portfolios” city-wide: schools as service providers. He’s talking about a longer term view, where the school is a neighborhood investment and asset that accrues to the benefit of all the people who are there their whole lives, or several generations.
I wonder what the land value is of all the public schools in the LAUSD? Billions? The land grab theory certainly has some plausibility.
When Alvarez and Marsal came to St Louis in 2003 they closed the high performing Waring school so that St Louis University could get its land for its basketball stadium.
Chris,
Alvarez and Marsal have a long record of taking the money and running. They present themselves as school reformers but have a record of failure…at a high price
Russian oligarchs provided the model for American oligarchs-snatching up national assets and revenue streams.