The lone critic on the Indianapolis school board has decided not to run for re-election. Gayle Cosby asked critical questions about the board’s “reform” policy of eliminating neighborhood public schools and working closely with charter networks. Board members expressed relief that she is stepping down. Low-income residents will have no voice on the board.
A victory for the corporate reformers. Domination is never enough for them. They want total control, no dissent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another victory for big business vampires.
It’ll get worse with labor unions gone. Now they’ll be zero funding to counter the ed reform big money:
“If the last two elections are any guide, defeating candidates who back the current reform plan will be tough to beat. All of the winning candidates in 2012 and 2014 overwhelmingly outpaced rivals who expressed reservations about the district’s direction, fueled by unprecedentedly huge contributions from pro-reform groups and individuals.”
It’s a shame because it can’t be undone. Once public schools are gone, they’re gone. It will be impossible to get them back if this experiment in privatization doesn’t pan out. They may switch contractors or change the laws around privatization, but publicly-owned and run schools won’t come back.
You are exactly right, Chiara.
When Joel Klein started out as Michael Bloomberg’s school Chancellor and public school hit man, he openly referred to the public schools as Humpty Dumpty, and how he would do his best to facilitate his fall.
I am going to write to Peter Greene about a domination situation I just discovered in St. Louis. A new person is in charge of the PD editorial page…..there is giddiness among a lot of people that he has been introduced as a “centrist”. Tod Robbins, formerly of Dallas. I read his review of “waiting for superman”….if he can get excited and enthused about charter schools from than inept piece of trash…..I figured he has to be aware of TexasCan………..someone had made a comment about charter schools are great, because if they fail, they get closed automatically….we all know it is a bit more complicated than that…….so I thought I would show what happened when the can! academy was closed without making it through even one year in St. Louis in 2008. I started to realize………there are no links to stories about what happened. All the ones in the PD have been removed. All the ones in Antonio French’s public school friendly pubdef are gone. All the stories in public radio……gone. I feel a little crazy making a claim that this is not an accident. I saved some of the stories in my e-mails….they even have photos. I wonder if anyone, can find anything about this…here is the start of a story not available so far as I know by well known in St. Louis education writer David Hunn….from my e-mails……Can! Academies can’t make a go of it here
By David Hunn
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
05/22/2008
Can!
Can! Academies students (from left) Antonio Ford, 17, Keitren Teer, 18, and Devan Johnson, 17, at the school Wednesday on Goodfellow Blvd.
(Huy R. Mach/P-D)
ST. LOUIS — Students played cards in class one day this week, as they do most days now.
Others watched movies or milled about in the halls, loud and aimless. The teacher sat at his desk, filling out job applications.
The Can! Academies of St. Louis, a charter school for high school dropouts, started this past fall on Goodfellow Boulevard, just south of Interstate 70.
Today, the state school board is expected to vote to close it, at least for one year.
Its failure has led critics to again question Missouri’s growing but still controversial charter school movement. Can is one of the first charters to open after a request from the office of Mayor Francis Slay, who is championing the schools as alternatives to a troubled city school system. It is also the first charter directly under the wing of the state department of education.
school’s leaders say Can was doomed to fail from the start. They say they never got the support they needed from their central office, in Dallas, and that they were denied the basics: tardy bells, intercom systems, computerized attendance logs, even textbooks.
My point of concern…not can! academy…long ago history….it is the eerie feeling that negative history about charters is being cleansed…..even from internet archives. If someone can find anything still out there about can!……please let me know.
“Titanic Reform”
Reform is like Titanic
With iceberg in their sight
It’s “Full speed” and “Don’t panic”
“The ship is water tight”.
“Michael Fiorillo
January 12, 2016 at 8:46 am
You are exactly right, Chiara.
When Joel Klein started out as Michael Bloomberg’s school Chancellor and public school hit man, he openly referred to the public schools as Humpty Dumpty, and how he would do his best to facilitate his fall.”
The double standard there is interesting, isn’t it? It’s perfectly acceptable in elite ed reform circles to bash public schools, but no criticism of charter schools is permitted, lest you be labeled “divisive” or “self interested”.
How do they explain these two different standards? Public schools are just the designated punching bag?
Chiara: you have it just right—
“punching bag.” A punching bag can’t hit back. That’s the way that the purveyors and enforcers of self-styled “education reform” like it.
Exactly why something as seemingly innocuous and necessary as the Scott Schmerelson motion re study & prediction of/transparency in how changes in LAUSD like the growth of charters will affect public schools is supposedly a contentious issue.
Genuine discussion, actual hard data points, considering things from a systems POV [as you have mentioned more than once] so you know how one change or action will affect everyone/everything else involved: that only gets in the way of going full speed ahead, consequences be damned, switch the drinking water and now let’s run the Detroit Public Schools!
That’s what happens when you wear the blinkers of $tudent $ucce$$. What you don’t know, didn’t want to know, and didn’t want others to know, becomes part of a Teflon Defense against any and all responsibility for words & deeds.
😎
Interesting article on “reform”:
http://www.alternet.org/education/were-phony-education-reformers-charter-school-charlatans-and-faux-reformers-take-it-chin
I only hope the optimism is upheld by reality. I want to believe but every time I turn around there is another story about the self serving blindness and thievery of the power brokers. I want to see some consequences for those head honchos, not, at most, their handpicked scapegoats.
KrazyTA
January 12, 2016 at 11:57 am
Chiara: you have it just right—
“punching bag.” A punching bag can’t hit back. That’s the way that the purveyors and enforcers of self-styled “education reform” like it.”
When the Citizens decision was marketed to the public we were told it would mean unlimited political donations from wealthy special interests AND labor unions.
That’s how it was justified. Of course, no one told the public they’d be back in a year knocking out political speech for labor unions.
Another rip off. Another raw deal. Wealthy individuals can now buy the whole political system unopposed. It’ll be utter and complete capture. I think most people would say our political system couldn’t get more corrupt. They’re about to find out different.
Diane,
Looking forward to the next 8 years so I can hit 55 years old. It will be a battle, but I can make it. The “reformers” will win and public Ed will soon disappear. I just really hope I can get to the 55 mark. It’s game over for teachers. Now, it’s just about getting to the pension.
Oscar,
In NJ, the pension may not be there either.