Thanks to Mike Klonsky for calling attention to this article about state takeovers of districts and schools. A takeover nullifies parent and community voice. A disproportionate number of takeovers have been inflicted on African-American communities. As we know from the failure of the Achievement School District, these takeovers have a bad track record. What do they accomplish? They nullify parent and community voice.
In New Jersey – which, in 1987, became the first state to take over a school district – Camden is among several urban districts that have come under state control. The state hired Camden’s superintendent, while the mayor appoints school board members – a practice that predates the state takeover of the district in 2013.
A judge last week dismissed a lawsuit from Camden residents seeking the right to elect school board members, questioning the rationale for electing a board that has been stripped of its power by the state.
In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia School District is governed by a five-member School Reform Commission, with three members appointed by the governor and two by the city’s mayor. The Chester Upland district is also under state control. Camden, Philadelphia, and Chester Upland have large minority populations.
Be sure to read the descriptions of districts where democracy was snuffed out.
They are districts hollowed out by poverty, deindustrialization, and white flight. The state takeover didn’t help. It stripped away one of the few ways in which residents had a voice. Now they have lost that too.
This is how the story of Highland Park, Michigan, begins:
“Highland Park, Michigan, a small city within Detroit’s boundaries, was once called the “City of Trees.” Thick greenery lined suburban blocks crowded with single-family homes built for a growing middle class. Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line at his automobile plant on Woodward Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare. The suburban school district was considered one of the top 10 in Michigan, according to a report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in 1962.
“Today, most of Highland Park’s trees are gone. Overgrown, empty lots and burned-out houses outnumber occupied homes on some blocks. The Ford plant stands empty. And parents say Highland Park’s once-proud school district has collapsed, hastened by four years under state control.”
As you read these stories, ask yourself the question: seeing the problems, why was state takeover of the schools supposed to be a good idea?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
State takeovers and “reform” unfairly target African American and Hispanic communities. While policymakers use test scores as a weapon to disenfranchise poor communities, these are often the same areas that have been made to operate on bare bones budgets due to funding education through real estate value. Rather than address funding inequities, state officials take over and privatize the schools. This process should be the ‘civil rights issue of our times,’ and I hope some lawsuits emerge from the resulting hijacking of democracy and increased segregation.
In major cities the community destruction goes a step further; it is tied to land values and gentrification. Using charters to social engineer poor families out of the areas near the transportation hub and the CBD, developers and government collaborate to put cheap charters outside the convenient areas so they can redevelop the core for profit and higher tax ratables. As the gentrified neighborhood emerges so do the selective charters created to ensure that the urban white students can attend a school without the poor locals. We have seen this in New Orleans, Philadelphia and Chicago and other cities; this plan is now at work in Newark. I went to a wedding last week in north Jersey and stayed near the airport with its impressive, convenient transportation. The area near the train station, which used to be a haven for the homeless, is now being advertised as the next great investment. Many commuters priced out of Manhattan will buy the convenient yuppified housing that displaces the minority community. The choice factor of charter schools is often an euphemism for segregation. This scenario is playing out in several cities across the nation. The only way to fight back is in the courts.
You describe circumstances in Denver perfectly: As the gentrified neighborhoods emerge so do the selective charters created to ensure that the urban white students can attend a school without the poor locals. Although Denver has been publishing a PBS “look” into the growing achievement gap in its schools and neighborhoods — a gap widening despite years of invasive programs and the “firing” of bad teacher after bad teacher, guess who’s a major funder for this “look” into the achievement problem? The Gates foundation.
Diane asks: ” . . . why was state takeover of the schools supposed to be a good idea”? I’m relatively new to this blog and have more questions than answers; and though I cannot answer that question in the particular, I think it’s well stated. In any case, please take these comments in that light.
Your question, then, leaves open a further set of general points to possibly consider?
That is, if getting to and implementing “what’s best for students?” both generally as education, and in this specific case in Highland Park, MI?” is the question (and the general question is discussed on another part of this blog with your introduction of the Economic paper), then, . . .
. . . in either case of local or state control, EITHER can be wrong-headed or completely on target, or somewhere in-between. If that’s true, we can start with the further foundational point in place that the power of local voices is enshrined in the very idea of a democratic/republic. On the other hand, again, those voices, on principle, can be off-course in bringing about “what’s best for students,” even when their own children are involved. So there’s the tension.
So it seems to me that, because of the very nature of democracy, the tension is already set. In that tension is the essential need for mutual respect and ongoing dialogue between state and local voices in the development and implementation of educational policy that, in turn, is deeply influential of (has power over) families and their children and, more remotely but surely, the quality of the State itself.
Also, for either side there are (a) the longer and shorter views, and (b) the always-present specters of corruption and smiling-but-underhanded political duplicity by those who have no interest at all in educating young people (or worse, who bid “certain children” no good will), and who vie for that power in “dark” places where slimy opportunists live.
So that, we can hope that parents at the local level are well-meaning and fully informed, and in both the longer and shorter views; and we can hope that those parents are not being manipulated in their short-term intentions by those who are gifted at dark-to-light double-speak, but who have long-term and “dark” self-interest in mind. And we can hope that, in specific cases, State representatives truly do have the best interest of students in mind; and that, in representative’s minds, that understanding is couched in and actively informed by a high regard for the INHERENT power of parental voices (as enshrined principle).
The question, then, as you have set it out, is provocative in the good sense, because it doesn’t claim that what matters is “who is in power,” but leaves open to question (1): “What’s best for the students? generally, and then as specific to Highland Park, MI. (2) What’s going on at the State level? For instance, do representatives and policy makers claim to know, and can put their case about, what’s really good for the students in the long and short term; and are they respectful of the PRINCIPLED power of parent voices? or are representatives aware of or influenced by other “dark” and duplicitous forces who know how to muddy-the-waters on both sides of the argument, or just “takeover” when the opportunity presents itself. Catherine
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.