Mercedes Schneider watched the debate about Question 2 in Massachusetts and read the transcript.
The Charter Lady, former Representative Marty Walz, who is now associated with the hedge funders DFER, thinks that the schools of Massachusetts are in awful trouble. Why? Because they have elected school boards. If only Wall Street financiers and friends of the Walmart-Waltons ran all the schools, then the state might amount to something.
How stupid is that? Massachusetts is far and away the top scoring state in the nation.
School boards across the state are furious. More than 112 have passed resolutions opposing Question 2. Not a single school board supports it.
If Walz had her way, then there would only be individual, non-elected boards comprised of corporate and financial executives to oversee a school or a network of schools. So, if any students leave a school or network (whether encouraged to do so by that school/network or not), then the school (or network) responsibility ends there.
Massachusetts would be free to emulate Louisiana’s all-charter Recovery School District (RSD), a “portfolio” district (one where “there is no single entity responsible for all children”)– and one where assistant superintendent Dana Peterson publicly admitted that he doesn’t know how many students just disappear from those portfolio-ed, New Orleans schools.
Mercedes adds:
Walz does not like that Boston Public Schools receives funds to offset its losing students to charter schools. Yet if there is to be compulsory education, there must be a system of schools in which students might enroll at any time. There must be a default system, a “catch all.” Otherwise, there will be students without a school to attend, for whatever reason, including the fact that Massachusetts charters are not required to backfill empty seats in all grades– which means the charters are off the hook for adding a single latecomer student to a number of grade level cohorts.
Unfortunately, the need for a catch-all combined with non-locally-controlled charters tends to create a dual school system– and a dual school system tends to foster segregation.
The Charter Lady is thrilled that out of state money is pouring in to destabilize communities and privatize public schools.
Her reasoning is seriously flawed, as is her knowledge of education and research.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What happens when autocratic, often child abusing, fraudulent and inferior corporate charter school take over? We can learn from what has happened in New Orleans.
Click the link, read and weep in frustration or roar in anger.
“Many who have seen charters replace traditional public schools report the same problems that New Orleans residents describe: closures of public schools that held neighborhoods together, younger and less experienced teachers, the loss of union jobs, experimental teaching practices that can be rigid or harsh, cherry-picking of students and rapid teacher burn-out.”
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18352/10-years-after-katrina-new-orleans-all-charter-district-has-proven-a-failur
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YES. Closures of schools which held neighborhoods together…and a subsequently quick gentrification of same-said neighborhoods. Fifteen years after instigation of NLCB invasions, where I used to teach mostly non-wealthy and 96% non-White students is now a neighborhood I cannot even recognize: coffee shops, hair salons, two-tier baby strollers, yuppies in suits zipping by on ten-speed bicycles…
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There’s another part of the reason why Arne, Rahm, the unelected CPS school board, and others closed so many schools.
Call this an epilogue of sorts to the 2013 school closings of 50 schools on the same day in Chicago: (free market capitalism marches on!). These closings helped drive out lower income residents — since there was no longer any neighborhood school for their children to attend — thereby gentrifying certain neighborhoods even quicker.
Developers connected to Rahm Emanuel have been buying up the land and school buildings from CPS at cost.
And the latest is, according to the article below, is that the school buildings — some a century old, many several decades old — are being renovated for residence condos to be sold at top dollar. Classrooms in the former schools are being turned into expensive Yuppie condo lofts for the new well-to-do residents:
http://chicago.curbed.com/2016/9/1/12750594/cps-chicago-public-schools-apartments
The new residents can brag, “I live in a school classroom, where I wake up every morning, then walk to and from work every day and night, up the former school steps, and through the hallways that Chicago school children used to walk for decades.”
Weird.
Those buds and campaign backers of Rahm & perhaps buds of Arne, too — have been creating these new condos after rehabbing those closed Chicago schools: (not that you could afford it on a CPS teacher salary)
http://chicago.curbed.com/2016/9/1/12750594/cps-chicago-public-schools-apartments
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Sometimes what hurts most is the fact that some of these “reformers” and/or their buds have been very intentionally buying up property years before actual school closures…
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CORRECTION. The Charter Lady is Marty Walz, not Marty Walsh. Marty Walsh is the mayor of Boston. While I disagree with his generally pro- charter position, even he sees the dangers of this proposition and advocates for voting No on question 2 in Massachusetts. Marty Walz is a different person.
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Ted,
Sorry for the error. I know the difference between Walsh and Walz but my brain stalled.
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No worries (I’m sure you’re not the first to make that confusion), and thanks so much for exposing the Charter/anti- public education lies, whether in Wisconsin, Tennessee or here in Massachusetts. . We look forward to seeing you soon in Wellesley!
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It is not a big step to “being disgusted with elected school boards” to also being against any elected officials, any elections in general, and against our democratic republic in America. The oligarchs and uber rich, here and world wide, have this same insular attitude and their goal is to impose only their vision on all others. The core of this shows up with Trump and our current election farce and with the taking away of voting rights for many citizens.
Local elected school boards have been the hub of democracy, and although their members can be, and often are, flawed by political intrigue and divisiveness, they overall have functioned well for the last 200 or so years. Jefferson understood the need for an educated populace and for free universal education and he used the committee system of his era to institute and oversee public schools.
I find in my daily discussions with even educated people of good will, that they use the same phrase that to me is so meaningless. “How come all American public schools are so bad?” If I try to explain the differences in public education in well-to-do neighborhoods, versus schools in inner cities where poverty and homelessness are endemic, they quickly become bored and irritated and adopt a look of disgust, refusing to engage any further. Some sneer and think they are funny when they say, “but you are a socialist.” If they are less educated, the comment becomes…”but you are a Communist like Obama.” And I ask myself where i, and my education peers, failed in our years of teaching to have so many who don’t want to know facts.
I can only assume that too many people are not only lazy thinkers, and refuse to self educate by reading Diane’s and Mercedes’s and others accurate factual books, but they are infused with greed and their own self interest, and though they may write a tax deductible check to a charity to lessen their income tax, they do not want to see a broadened middle class and a level of income equality and education equality that would mean to them perhaps, paying their maids and gardeners a higher wage and Social Security as follows the law of land for the services they depend on.
Wonder how many Latinos work for the Trump family????
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Wonder how many Latinos work for the Trump family????
Janitors and hotel maids in his hotels, and they are probably paid poverty wages and even cheated if they are illegals.
Here’s one: “Workers at Trump’s Las Vegas hotel struggle to get by with low pay and little benefits”
“While Olvera may be silent at work, she and a collective of cleaners, bar workers, and kitchen staff at the Trump hotel have been a thorn in the billionaire’s side for the past year, using what voice they have to remind the public of the hypocrisy that surrounds his audacious run for the presidency and his record as an employer.” … “these workers point to the fact they are paid on average $3 less than the thousands of unionised hotel workers in Las Vegas who work identical jobs and enjoy a host of other benefits, including pensions and free health insurance, not available to Trump employees.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/workers-at-trumps-las-vegas-hotel-struggle-to-get-by-with-low-pay-and-little-benefits/
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You know Charter Lady Walz’s only response to the
“How are charters accountable?” question…
was and is…
“Well, they can be closed.”
Well, I recall this story from last spring in Chicago. Charters there were deemed by the pro-charter school board to be failing and/or corrupt beyond any hope of reclamation… and, per Charter Lady Walz’s talking point, the school board voted to close them.
Not so fast, however,
Governor Rauner, who’s ideologically pro-charter reversed CPS closures, provoking outrage from the CEO of CPS schools, Forest Claypool.
The Chicago Tribune covered this here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-schools-chief-criticizes-state-charter-board-0303-20160302-story.html
The charter out in Adelanto, Desert Trails Preparatory Academy (the first and only Parent Trigger seizure of a school) was voted unanimously o be closed by the Adelanto board, for major corruption in its governance, operations, and finances.
Hmmm, how did Charter Lady Walz’s accountability mechaniizm — charters chan be closed — work in this case? Not so great. The corrupt management of Debra Tarver just went authorizer shopping, and the San Bernadino County Board of Ed. took over, and it still exists, despite opposition to its existence by the duly elected school board in Adelanto:
http://www.sbsun.com/social-affairs/20160307/parent-trigger-charter-school-switches-from-adelanto-to-county-school
The Adelanto Board wanted to bar them from using the former Desert Trails Elementary, and they went to court to keep using it:
http://www.sbsun.com/social-affairs/20160715/adelanto-charter-school-retains-campus-in-latest-legal-battle-against-district
Apparently, the one and only method for holding charters accountable — as mentioned by Charter Lady Walz — doesn’t work so great after all.
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