I have previously posted the editorials of the LA Times supporting billionaire Eli Broad’s plans to open 260 new charter schools, enrolling half the students of LAUSD. Here are a few letters to the editor on the editorials.
The part I don’t get is the idea that one very rich man has the chutzpah to take over half the city’s children now in public schools. That is a betrayal of democracy. It should be illegal. It gives a new definition to the word “arrogant” and reverts to an old definition of the term “reform school.”
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When I read the letters this AM as I sipped my coffee and also watched the news from Paris on TV, I was amazed that the LA Times would actually print them. The “whiney” charges by their editorial board to those of us who lean on them for truth seems to have caused wide disgust.
“Whiney” is the same term used by the Wall Street Journal to characterize any critic of charters, and the CCSS, and so on.
“Whiney” must be a Frank Luntz tested-term (Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear).
“Whiney” suggests critics are like crybabies, eager to pout if they can’t have their way, childish, immature, thumb suckers,etc.
So I will not be surprised it this term appears over and over again as if a perfect way to demean the intelligence and savvy and rights of people to be critical of policies that are designed to remove the “public” from public schools.
And Diane’s brilliance shows through again with the observation that “reform” “reverts to an old definition of the term “’reform school.’” That certainly applies to no-nonsense charters run like prisons.
LAT has been anti-teacher/union forever. Teacher Rigoberto Ruelas took his life thanks to it. It isn’t any wonder that it sticks to tired old arguments at a time when others (NYT?) seem to be coming around.
Wrote this yesterday:
To the editor:
Eli Broad is not the savior for LAUSD. He is a businessman. He sees charter schools as a great profit margin.
That’s why he will not unionize teachers–that’s his profit margin. Less salary equals more in his pocket.
While private charters fail across the nation, and charter owners are indicted, why would LAUSD possibly allow Broad to control
public schools?
Why doesn’t Broad get his Ph.D. in education and then he can talk about saving education.
Steve Lopez in the EliTimes today diagnosed the the traumatic stress disorder from which we suffer in LA: PTSDeasy.
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-1115-lopez-la-schools-20151115-column.html
This is not the end, good people. It is not even the beginning of the end. It may be the end of the beginning. Eli Broad, Marc Tucker… this war has just begun.
I think that America needs to get over its fascination with the wealthy who claim that they know better (after all, they’re rich), can make more intelligent decisions (after all, they’re rich), and can guide us in the “right” direction (after all, they’re rich). We shouldn’t be electing the rich to public office because of their wealth or assuming that their knowledge and creativity as computer programmers/entrepreneurs give them some special insight into education. Until that time, I think we may be screwed.
Agreed. The super wealthy are Americans’ version of the aristocracy of earlier times in Europe and elsewhere.
The fact that the LA Times even published the letters from readers outraged by the paper’s conflict of interest with Eli Broad is almost quaint.
Partnering with the biggest force on one side of what should be a significant public debate in our city (it’s even a debate that’s making its way into the presidential campaigns) the Los Angeles Times has so compromised its integrity and ethics that the only credible voices on the subject of education are the readers themselves (along with a couple of independent columnists).
But does it even matter? The Times has repeatedly made its position clear. We can expect the paper to continue to intensify its long held position that anything related to our public school system is “resistant” “micromanaging” “pro-union”. These letters–and surely there were plenty of them– demonstrate just how out of touch the LA Times editorial board is when it comes to public education. Why bother with pretending to be a real newspaper at all? Wouldn’t it be more profitable and honest just to send a newsletter into the mailboxes of the City’s power elite?
I sent the Eli Times this last night in responce to the article about Deasy being inept.
Did the money fall off your eyes? Did Eli Broad forget this months check? I am shocked that you reported the obvious. The signs were there for years – in blinking neon. Maybe the L.A. Times was too focused on holding the bullhorn for the billionairs to see the coordinated effort to privitize a public service and undermine democracy. What ever happened to ” follow the money” and making sure your sources are not paid mouth pieces with a political agenda? Who wins and who looses and why? The L.A. Times lost all jounalistic integrity years ago and has joined the ranks of Pravda.
The frauds don’t even hide anymore. Again … The Hunger Games. Maybe the big $$$$$ folks consider themselves to be The Giver (Lois Lowry book).
This is the chilling final paragraph in the secret letter Eli Broad sent off to his fellow 1% investors that proceeded his LA Charter Plan Strategy Portfolio:
“If we are successful in working together on this ambitious project, Los Angeles will become a model for every city in America… In all our years working to improve public schools, we have never been so optimistic in our strategy that we believe has the ability to not only change the lives of thousands of students, but also the paradigm of public education in this country. If we can do this in Los Angeles, we can do this in every city in America.”
We live in a post-Citizen’s United democracy.
Here in LA, we get Eli Broad’s handsomely paid representative to lobby at an “invitation only” forum to discuss public policy and funding to turn the district charter.
We then get the information in the LA TIMES, a newspaper that takes the same billionaire’s donated funds to report and editorialize on this issue.
It’s the HUGE MONEY that is the common denominator here among both the GOP and Democrats in deciding Neo-liberal education policy.
Our fellow at this meeting was Eli Broad’s Executive Director Gregory McGinity: In 2005, on leave from the foundation, McGinity served as chief of staff to the California secretary of education under Schwarzenegger. McGinity previously worked for Republican U. S. Senator Thad Cochran as a legislative assistant and for GOP U. S. Representative Lindsey O. Graham as legislative director. McGinity advised both members on education and training issues. Prior to that, McGinity served as a legislative liaison at the U.S. Department of Education during President George H.W. Bush’s administration.
McGinty is now paired with Paul Pastorek who was Bobby Jindal’s acolyte and George W. Bush Education team member and the champion of the New Orleans Recovery district which he intends to use as the “successful” model for their take over here in LA.
When Broad had lobbied and got Mayor Villaraigosa to appoint John Deasy as Superintendent without any democratic input, Broad and other “philanthropist” charter backers paid for about 20 LAUSD senior positions including help with Deasy’s salary. McGinity, insisted this outside funding (the words I would use is influence or buy) would “ensure that as many public dollars as possible go to the classroom.”
As an avid supporter of Parent Trigger laws and the Obama Race to the Top initiative, McGinity, also is a board member and trustee of KIPP LA Charters.
Rather than propping up all teacher-training programs, McGinty said, “governors and school superintendents must be more aggressive in using data to determine which schools of education are doing a good job” and then “put the dollars into the schools that provide the best teachers.”
McGinty continues, “Critics focus too much on proposals for firing unsuccessful teachers while ignoring plans to use merit pay and public recognition to reward teachers whose students improve.”
And at the private meeting, in McGinty’s audience was Steve Zimmer, President of the largest democratically elected school board in the country, McGinty previously said, that local control has not worked: “We have local control and we have continued failure — 40 years of failure. It’s the state government’s responsibility and the federal government’s responsibility to find out the cause of that failure.”
McGinity insisted that the Broad charter expansion plan was created “for discussion purposes.” At the meeting, he lamented that his report was leaked to the public hoping instead for a “quiet conversation” about their plans.
These people despise the spotlight and are used to their money separating them from the public and that “quiet conversation” translates into behind-the-scenes big money power politics where the rich get their way and it is then announced to the public.
The vast public trough that is public education funding is now ripe for hedge and venture fund picking under the guise of “Civil Rights” for children.
Arms Merchants take note on Broad’s glossy new investment portfolio strategies that he is hawking to LA’s citizens.
When a group of billionaires sit around to “discuss”, you and I are not at that table.
Our children live with what they decide….not theirs, nor the editors of the LA TIMES.
“but also the paradigm of public education in this country”
Never ran for election, never was elected, but can “change the paradigm” of public education with zero input from the public simply because he’s wealthy and powerful.
They should stop calling it “public education”. This has nothing to do with the public. It’s a transaction conducted between a few politicians and a few wealthy people.
Frightening to read about the conflicts of interest and the encroachment (via funding) of the privateers’ agenda into our commons. Perhaps an equitable tax system would help our commons, such as public schools, receive needed funding without being driven by a billionaire’s whip.
It’s not just the EliTimes that have compromised the neutrality of public discourse in Los Angeles, our public school board was compromised when Dz rapidly pushed the deform agenda. Let’s just call Los Angeles Eli land. The board, the Broad board of education, our civic and state leaders, Eli whipped.
In the thread to a very recent posting on this blog, “LA Times Throws John Deasy Under the Bus,” we are treated to a stirring and heroic effort by “Karin Klein, editorial writer, Los Angeles Times” to absolve the LATIMES of having been a MSM spin center for John Deasy during his interregnum at LAUSD. And of being openly partisan on education issues.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/11/12/la-times-throws-john-deasy-under-the-bus/
Here’s an exemplar of the teflon defense, last paragraph:
[start]
By all means, disagree with the editorial board’s viewpoints. But please don’t put forward outrageously incorrect statements about the board supporting every one of Deasy’s moves.
[end]
Ok, technically speaking “studies show” that the LATIMES’ 95% support of a rheephormster’s plan to wreck to wreck LAUSD from within is NOT, I repeat NOT, complete and utter and unconditional support for “every one of” his moves. After all, even 99% support for Deasy’s fiascos would not equal 100%. Is that perfectly clear!?!?!?
😱
My reaction? More than anything else, embarrassment. Leave aside the sadly self-revealing evidence of a lack of an honest and thorough process of self-examination and self-correction by the strongly pro-rheephorm LATIMES.
This sort of non-defense as defense is terribly self-wounding. The writer is hoisting herself by her own petard. It becomes close to impossible to take such people seriously. Or an an old dead French guy once observed:
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
What would he have said about self-ridicule?
😎
So, where is the attorney General. The truth has been out there for a long time on Perdaily: http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html Just search that site for the name “Deasy’ and see how long the turn was ‘out there” but no tithe media.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/have-reporters-become-poli-ticks–the-media-parasites-of-the-body-politic.html
Now, with the schools in freefall , Broad is stepping in? Predictable.
“The part I don’t get is the idea that one very rich man has the chutzpah to take over half the city’s children now in public schools.”
The answer is one word: psychopath
Psychopaths are unable to form emotional attachments or feel real empathy with others, although they often have disarming or even charming personalities. Psychopaths are very manipulative and can easily gain people’s trust. They learn to mimic emotions, despite their inability to actually feel them, and will appear normal to unsuspecting people. Psychopaths are often well educated and hold steady jobs. Some are so good at manipulation and mimicry that they have families and other long-term relationships without those around them ever suspecting their true nature.
When committing crimes, psychopaths carefully plan out every detail in advance and often have contingency plans in place. Unlike their sociopathic counterparts, psychopathic criminals are cool, calm, and meticulous. Their crimes, whether violent or non-violent, will be highly organized and generally offer few clues for authorities to pursue. Intelligent psychopaths make excellent white-collar criminals and “con artists” due to their calm and charismatic natures.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wicked-deeds/201401/how-tell-sociopath-psychopath
Wealthy people wouldn’t be running the country without the overt support or passive acceptance of elected leaders.
The people that we elected either cheer this on or allow it to happen. Every single day, they make a choice to allow this.
Elected people have plenty of power. They could rein these people in- they choose not to. Eli Broad doesn’t have any more power than elected people hand him.
You wonder if elected leaders worry about becoming completely and utterly irrelevant. They’re almost there now- half the country doesn’t even bother to participate in elections and the other half are completely disgusted with the capture and corruption.
He will support the opening schools which will be empty unless parents choose them. Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge that part of it makes it clear that they don’t much care what parents want for their children.
And those that think this is a money making venture for Broad are drinking the anti-reform Kool-Aid. Rationalizing away parental demand and philanthropic support are just very transparent ways of avoiding introspection about issues with traditional public schools.
Talk about “avoiding introspection.” Anyone who fails to recognize that parents are not clamoring to take advantage of Parent Trigger laws to shut down their neighborhood schools and turn them into charters, and who lacks the ability to acknowledge the fact that the practice of privatizing en mass implemented in urban areas like Chicago involves shutting down neighborhood schools DESPITE parent protests, in order to turn them into privatized charters, so that parents have no choice BUT charter schools, has the insight of a blind person.
It’s funny you should say that, John. I spoke with someone in LAUSD’s charter division, and he confided in me that every charter that opened in the last two school years fell far short of their enrollment projections — from 30 – to – 70% short of expectations.
For example, there’s an Alliance charter in the San Fernando Valley whose data showed a demand for at least 300 students to leave public schools to enroll at Alliance… or so said their “charter.”
Only 70 kids enrolled there when it opened in August 2015.
LAUSD is saturated with charters. We’re all stocked up.
That brings up the question of marketing. In New York City, charter schools such as Eva Moskowitz’ SUCCESS ACADEMY spend $3 million a year to poach students from public schools, using the most ridiculous lies and scare tactics. The public schools, both here in L.A. and in NYC, have neither the money nor the desire to engage in this marketing. They’d rather be … well… educating their students. Imagine that.
Jack,
Since they get paid per student, they are only a cost if they have enrollment. No enrollment, no funds.
John: can you spell “midyear dump” and “counseling out” and “screening out”?
Guess not…
😎
KrazyTA,
Find them spelled for me in some actual data or research instead of anecdotes and I’ll be happy to read. It would be the easiest data to provide (district school and charter school enrollment by month), but I’ve never seen it.
Charter schools bill per diem, so charter critics could literally show the days on which this occurs. Wouldn’t that make an awesome chart that would just prove this nefarious plot, even if only in one city?
Well, where’s the data? Where’s the chart? Where are the dozens of parents whose children got “counseled out” (seems they’d be upset enough about it to write a letter to the editor or file a complaint, true?)
In the absence of any of that, I believe it to be complete fiction. You may choose to believe it based on faith, conspiracy theory, or just because it fits your narrative. I like to see evidence.
In my city, the district has been talking about midyear dump for a decade, but they have the data and could easily prove it true if it were happening. They have yet to show it, and there has never even been a newspaper article about or letter to the editor by a parent whose child was “counseled out”.
Diane, John says” In the absence of any of that, I believe it to be complete fiction. ”
John want the proof in front of his eyes, but is very particular about what he passes n front of this orbs. If he had been reading the chronicles LAUSD which is the website Perdaily.com. he might have had the chance to learn about this assault on the ethnic minority of this district, and the reality of this districts’ decision- making for almost the entire past. Here is nonfiction John, and plenty more at the site, proving that sending the kids to charter schools was the plan all along. and why they caused intentional failure by removing the real professionals, en masse from the classrooms
Here are but a few links that offer PROOF of the real issues/questions…not who wants charters, but what is happening to the second largest district in the 15,880… the ending of public education. Plenty more proof, and interesting reading at this site John!
http://citywatchla.com/8box-left/6666-lausd-and-utla-complicity-kills-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-la-s-teachers
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/08/more-charter-schools-ahead-more-illusion-of-improvement-in-public-education.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/06/lausds-treacherous-road-from-reed-to-vergara–its-never-been-about-students-just-money.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/social-promotion–lausds-prime-mover-for-continued-and-predictable-student-failure–do-they-really-w.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/09/racism-cant-function-without-minority-5th-column.html
Susan Lee Schwartz,
Nothing you supplied says anything about mid-year dump, and I think every bit of it is about the adults in schools, not about kids, true?
Nice Try, john. Got better things to do then chat about nonsense.
Wanna know what I think. Go to my quick links o series at Oped, News.
http://www.opednews.com/author/quicklinks/author40790.html
http://www.opednews.com/author/series/author40790.html
John, where is the evidence that half the kids in L.A. want a charter
If they don’t, there will be empty schools that won’t cost taxpayers anything. As you know, demand for, and enrollment at, charters keeps increasing.
“Words empty as the wind are best left unsaid.”
That’s Homer, the old dead Greek guy.
Not Homer Simpson.
What a sadly partisan and vacuous comment to leave on this blog.
😎
John, it’s obvious that Broad isn’t in it for the money. He’s in it to push his own agenda for what he thinks this country should have as an educational system and he doesn’t care what ANYONE else thinks. He doesn’t respect democracy. He’s dong all he can to subert democracy. And in the end if he makes money off this venture while subverting democracy, do you think he will complain?
Broad is an obvious psychopath.
I suggest that you educate yourself by starting with The Broad Report
http://thebroadreport.blogspot.com/
Former Chicago Schools head pleads guilty to federal fraud charge
On October 13 former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools Barbara Byrd-Bennett pled guilty in federal court to one count of wire fraud.
Byrd-Bennett, who is also employed by the Eli Broad Foundation, was brought into CPS in spring of 2012 as the highest-paid consultant in the district, Chief Education Officer, at $250,000 yearly. She brought with her a three-person team, each paid $100,000 annually.
She was subsequently promoted to CEO of CPS in October 2012 in the immediate aftermath of the Chicago teachers strike when Brizard was abruptly let go. In 2012 and 2013, Byrd-Bennett oversaw the preparation and implementation of the Emanuel’s administration’s plan for mass school closures, shutting 50 elementary schools and laying off thousands of teachers and staff.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/10/22/cpss-o22.html
John: “If they don’t, there will be empty schools that won’t cost taxpayers anything. As you know, demand for, and enrollment at, charters keeps increasing.”
Eli Broad got rich building and insuring housing track development. Charters use government grants, taxpayer, for schooling track development all over LA county. If they go empty, they take up a great deal of prime real estate with economic void. That hurts you, taxpayer, charter school owner. If the schools get filled, they greatly increase educational disparity and racial and economic segregation. That hurts everyone.
John, the One Newark app for getting your kids into schools of your own “choice” was b.s. It was intended to get more kids into empty seats at charters, and create the illusion that parents are clamoring to get their kids in.
In many families with several children, each of their kids were sent to different schools. To be completely ridiculous, lets use the example of twins, who happen to live 1/2 a block from their neighborhood schools, which was the number 1 choice for them from their parents. Meanwhile, the One Newark app sends one of them to a charter school 1 mile away, and the other to a public school 4 miles away. The parents didn’t want it or choose it, but that is what the One Newark app did.
So lets say you actually wanted your kid in a charter a mile away and you got your pick. Good for you; you’re happy. However, there were many instances where families with several children had their kids sent to different schools, not the ones they chose. For instance, there is a particular family of four kids where each got sent to 4 different schools. It just doesn’t work, “one size fits all” with the One Newark app.
The propaganda that parents are demanding charters is just that. When 600 public schools are closed, replaced with charters, where else will parents be able to send their kids?
When your local A&P closes, and is replaced by ShopRite, you start shopping at ShopRite because the choice has been made. Now, I’m sure you’ll counter with people can shop wherever they want to, but lets say that grocery store LOCATION is in their neighborhood, convenient to walk to with a tag-along cart, or take the senior citizen bus to, etc., you’re not going to inconvenience yourself, or take a bus an hour away, or an expensive taxi, or call your relatives because you live in Newark and want to pay loyalty to A&P in Livingston — that is, if an A&P even exists there anymore. So lets say all the A&Ps in the world are now closed, replaced with ShopRite — chances are, the person who’s A&P closed will now shop at ShopRite.
Closing schools and replacing them with charters doesn’t give people choices–it forces charters down their throats. Maybe I don’t want my 6 y.o. precious daughter treated like a silent prisoner also forced to wear “orange” as her charter/prison uniform. Maybe I don’t want her to be punished for an untied shoe or an untucked shirt, or for side glancing and not eye-tracking the scab “teacher” at all times. Or for pissing her pants during a pre-test, or for crying because she is a 6 y.o. and life at home is loving, while life at school is hellish.
Sell crazy elsewhere.
Donna: you wrote—
“Sell crazy elsewhere.”
Not when there’s $tudent $ucce$$ involved! Then winning an argument isn’t everything—it’s the only thing!
😱
After all, it’s absolutely sane and rational and logical that the (often openly & ferociously) rheephorm LATIMES & LAUSD BofE would investigate such immoral (if not always strictly illegal) charter practices like midyear dump/counseling out/screening out in order to put egg on their own faces. *To use rheephorm lingo: where’s the profit in that?!?!?*
😳
Why, just look at the comment by Karin Klein of the LATIMES editorial board of 11-12-15 on a thread of a posting on this blog. You will gasp in wonder and amazement at just how probing and self-critical and honest the supporters of corporate education reform are about their words and deeds. Black is white! Day is night! And the bear doesn’t…
Don’t want to violate the quite sensible Rules of the Road on this blog.
After years of reading online comments by the spin doctors and salespeople of rheephorm, I still marvel at how they think that displaying open contempt for others does anything more than reveal their own emptiness.
Perhaps it is simply a fact of life we are going to have to live with that, when it comes to having open and honest and respectful conversations the rheephormsters are not, in their own charter parlance, “a good fit.”
And they have “no excuses” because they did it to themselves.
😎
John,
I’m an elementary school teacher on the ground here in Los Angeles, so I have experiences and information that you unfortunately lack.
Here’s one of them:
On a rare rainy morning last spring, an announcement was made that we were to take our students inside to our classroom at 7:00 am, an hour earlier than usual (an unpaid extra hour of supervision / work, but hey, who’s complaining? 😉 )
While I was sitting drinking my coffee, with the sound of rain outside the window, one of my female fifth-grade students was talking to the other students present about a charter school presentation that she and her mother had just attended the night before. They attended this meeting in pursuit of information they would use to decide which school she will attend in Fall 2015:
… the traditional public middle school that our school feeds into,
or
… the charter middle school whose presentation they attended.
This is a school that is competing with the traditional school for students.
Given my obvious interest in the issue — no, really Jack? — my ears pricked up at this.
My student then began recounting what she and her mother were told by the charter folks. The traditional middle school was to be avoided at all costs, as it is a hotbed of academic failure.. “They say that ____ is ‘a failure factory.’ ”
I then heard the same dumb-ass, word-for-word cliche I’d heard countless times before:
“If you go to ___ Middle School, you have a 1% chance of going to college. If you got to Acme Charter Inc. School, you’ll have a 99% of going to college.” (This asinine and bogus one-liner was also used almost verbatim by Holly Hunter’s character in the school reform propaganda film WON’T BACK DOWN… these reformista idiots—including their screenwriters—all apparently read and quote from the same playbook, obviously.)
Audible groan from me, then shaking my head, rolling my eyes… knowing this to be total bullsh#%, as I had knew of countless former students of mind and others who attended our traditional public middle school and went on to complete college. I also had friends who taught at ____ Middle School, so I was angry on their behalf as well. Furthermore, this particular charter school in question had just started up, and thus had no such 99% college-attendance record about which they can make such impressive boasts, nor did the charter school world in general have any such data to justify such a boasts … if that’s what the recruiter was trying to claim
However, things then got really ugly. My student then started talking about how _____ Middle School was embroiled in gang violence… shootings… stabbings, and… I’m not kidding here… rapes, etc. If you go there, she insisted, you might get shot or stabbed or even… raped.
This was a then-ten-year-old girl — her birthday was last summer — recounting this. Think about the sick mind and absent morals of a highly-paid charter recruiter that would put “rape” into the minds of ten-year-old children.
Chew on that for a while, John.
I then spoke up and interrupted this entertaining colloquy. “Kids, I’m sorry, but I HAVE to say something here. None of what (FEMALE STUDENT’s NAME) was told by the charter people last night is even remotely true. It’s all lies. All of it.” I continued in this vein for a bit, then had an idea. “Say, I have friends who’ve taught at that school for decades. What say, we call up one of ’em, and here what that teacher has to say? Good idea?”
I then whipped open my cell phone, dialed, and waited for an answer:
“Hi, (NAME), it’s Jack here … yeah, it’s good talk to you, too … Fine.. how are you? … Great … ” Eventually, I got around to my point in calling, ”
“Look ____, I’m trying to find out some information about your school for my students who are right her with me… First of all, how long have you taught at ___ ?”
I put the phone on speaker mode, then held up the phone to the students.
“23 years.”
“In your time at ___ Middle School, has there ever been a shooting or stabbing?”
“No. Of course not.”
“No.”
“Is your school full of gang members terrorizing your students?”
“No,” he replied, audibly laughing.
“In your 23 years at ____, has any student ever been raped, or sexually assaulted, or even sexually touched in any way?”
“Oh, no. Absolutely not. Where’d you hear this nonsense?”
“It doesn’t matter … Now, as someone’s whose tight with both your school’s teacher’s union leader and with the principal, and as someone who’s heavily involved in what goes on in that school, you would know if such a thing had ever happened. Like this could not have occurred, with you not finding out about it? Correct?”
“Sure.”
“In 23 years, have you EVER encountered a gang member who attended school there… even just one?
“No … if there was, he or she kept it a secret. Gangs are like a total non-issue here.”
“Thanks for talking to me, ____. I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
The room went dead silent at the sound of my phone clapping shut.
I had a hard time concentrating that day while I taught, I was so incensed.
After school that day, I went to the Main Office at ____ Charter Middle School, and asked to speak to one of the administrators. A nice enough and very young (mid-to-late 20’s) woman then came out to talk to me across the counter. I introduced myself as a 5th grade teacher from ____ . I mentioned that that some of my students might be attending her school next year.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she replied, a little surprised and curious as to why I was there… after all, I’m an evil union member setting foot on non-union turf.
With a serious expression, I then told her about her school’s forum that one of my students attended the night before, and the disturbing things that one of her school’s marketers told this student and her mother, and that he also told all the other people attending this fourm.
She became visibly uncomfortable, and didn’t want to talk about this, “Look Jack, that’s not my area of responsibility at our school. I’m not involved in any of our school’s outreach or recruiting, so I’m sorry, but I really can’t speak to any of that.”
“Okay, well then let me just ask you: do you approve of what I just described, of what your marketers said and did last night? I mean YOU, personally, _____. Do YOU approve of that?”
“Sir, I’m not discussing this … Sorry.”
“Well, fine, then let me finish with this. I want you to pass on to your people that I’m seriously considering going to the LAUSD and to the Los Angeles Times, or to the where-the-hell-ever I can think of to report this. Let’s just take the ‘rape’ thing. First of all, that’s a slanderous and easily disproven lie. Secondly, and most importantly, what your recruiter did last night was child abuse… emotional, mental, psychological abuse of a child… in this case, a child for whose well-being I’m responsible. So I take this seriously, ____, and if you give a sh#% about children, you should, too. For someone connected with your school to put such baseless and traumatizing images in the mind of ten- and eleven-year old girls is utterly reprehensible and sick. Sweet Jesus, have you people no sense of decency? Is there NOTHING you won’t do… no sleazy tactic you won’t stoop to… no vile behavior that you folks won’t engage in to lure students to your school? Let me tell you. This better not happen again. You got it?”
She nodded, and I left the building … feeling a little better, but still unsafisfied.
I’ve told this story privately many times, but not publicly… until now, that is.
By the way, to the best of my knowledge, all my then-students went to the traditional middle school. Furthermore, I have no beef with the teachers at this charter school — they’re all my brothers and sisters, I like so say. Indeed, I’m currently heavily involved in helping them form a union at this school and the other schools in its chain. Those teachers are doing so, in the face of opposition from a highly-paid union suppression organization — the same one used by Walmart, and connected with the Broad-funded California Charter Schools Association — that is every bit as evil and as amoral as the charter school recruiter described above.
But that’s another story.
John: this is where a decent and honorable person accepts full responsibility for employing the sneer, jeer and smear of the rheephorm playbook and profusely apologizes for dishonorable conduct.
This is not just a test of your intellectual capacity to understand the depth of the indecency you have dug yourself into; this is a test, public, of your moral character.
Silence is compliance. Speak up. Show some of the “rigor” and “grit” you rheephormsters mandate for small children that vomit into the plastic bags that accompany the high-stakes standardized tests with which you punish them.
No excuses. No shifting responsibility onto anyone else. It’s all on you to save, or shame, yourself.
😎
KrazyTA, I can’t make any sense whatsoever of what you are even saying.
LOL. Clueless.
Why am I not surprised?
To be honest, I feel sorry for you.
😎
This is what might happen because Broad hasn’t done it yet.
If he does spend almost $500 million opening hundreds of Charters in Los Angeles, that will arrive with a lot of media blitz propaganda written by Madison Ave types who will sell anything to anyone to earn their six and seven figure incomes, then there will be hundreds of Charters opening their doors across Los Angeles simlar to all those gas stations and fast food restaurants that are also waiting for customers to come.
I haven’t forgotten what happened to the milk industry when they claimed “Milk has something for every body”
If the customers don’t come, what happens to those suspension academies funded by Broad and his Cabal? Will Broad be willing to keep pouring money into a losing venture?
If not, those suspension academies will close. Like any private sector business, to stay open they must have enough customers to generate the revenue that will pay the bills and turn a profit that will make Wall Street and the banks happy.
This is a gamble on Broad’s part. He’s willing to spend half a billion dollars in an attempt to break the back of the community based, transparent, non-profit democratic public schools and close them down. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks. To bet him, the supporters for the public schools must reveal this scam for what it is—the same type of scam and fraud that launched the Common Core Crap.
Chiara’s rejoinder to Lloyd nails the fundamental problem: As long as voters ignore the local and state elections— and any examination of the voter turnout for those elections makes it difficult to prove otherwise— those with money will find a way to get sympathetic legislators elected to office and “reform” with it’s reliance on testing of students in age-based cohorts will continue. We need to elect thoughtful school board members and replace the State legislators who promote the panaceas peddled by the reform movement. Until that happens, schools will continue to “fail” and more children, especially those raised in poverty, will be left behind.
And at the national level, we could start this ball rolling by electing someone who isn’t taking PAC money and is earnestly trying to motivate people to see that their votes DO matter… and that wouldn’t be the candidate endorsed by the NEA or AFT…
Not sympathetic legislators, paid-off legislators.
Teacher Ed,
You have a valid point about shutting down district schools over parent objections (or charter conversions for that matter). That should be looked at very carefully since it involves a district making decisions about what’s best for students. That’s a different thing than school choice.