The Alliance to Reclaim Our Public Schools (AROS) has gathered important information about state takeovers, which target disproportionate numbers of black and brown communities.
Be sure to check out this fact sheet.
When the fact sheet was published earlier this year, AROS identified 116 schools that were operating in state takeover districts in Louisiana, Michigan, and Tennessee. Of 44,000 students affected, 96% are African American or Latino.
The first consequence of the takeover is the abolition of elected school boards. Democracy ends, and the board is replaced by an appointed board, often made up of people who have no connection to the community.
The results have been disappointing. Nearly half the schools in the New Orleans Recovery School District are rated D or F by the state (other studies put the figure even higher). The charters in the Tennessee Achievement School District lag the performance of public schools. In Michigan’s Educational Achievement Authority, 79% of students either showed no improvement or lost ground on state tests.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The echo chamber are having another closed conference:
“Jeb Bush’s education foundation will discuss the newly-implemented Every Student Succeeds Act at its 2016 National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, D.C. next month — and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will moderate a panel discussion on the ESSA.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will open the summit with a morning keynote address.
Panelists will include three former Secretaries of Education, including Arne Duncan, who served as Education Secretary under President Barack Obama.”
If public schools are mentioned at all it will only be to call them “government schools” and moan about how the teachers and students are not the Best and Brightest.
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The emphasis will be on ways to get access to ESSA funding with all the usual grifters and con artists in attendance. It will not be about improving education for our poorest and neediest. It will be about ways to funnel tax dollars into corporate pockets as cheaply as possible. Most likely it will be about selling an array of gadgets and gimmicks as a substitute for meaningful instruction.
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Despite dismal results, states and cities continue to takeover local school district with this undemocratic practice. The goal of this oppressive practice is to disempower local voices and any local control. Complicit governors and mayors often use this tactic against minority communities as an intermediate step prior to forced privatization. Newark and New Orleans are good examples of this autocratic practice used against a mostly minority community.
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And it is all aided and abetted by the wealth and the influence of foundations set up by billionaires who claim moral superiority, greater efficiency, and cost-savings for corporate-style control of public services, including education.
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Speaking of which- a political site, 3rd Rail, reported that Mike Petrelli confirmed that the person who runs NCTQ is the sister of Ohio’s Chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, Sen. Peggy Lehner, a fact that was, apparently, unknown to many. Lehner claims
3rd Rail, is ECOT’s defender. The palace intrigue would be entertaining but, the reality is that charter schools are a costly, unsustainable, undemocratic failure. Total closure of the parallel system is called for. There’s been enough economic suffering in communities, enough students have been left uneducated, and enough money has been siphoned off to the rich. Fordham should take responsibility for its failure and shut down the plot. That’s what principled people would do but, then, the forward to Dr. Figlio’s research, written by Fordham, proved that ship has sailed.
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Linda,
Which do you think resonates more: parallel system or dual system? I think of the latter because it recalls the era of de jure school segregation when there were two school systems in the same city and state.
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Added to the naming options- Roland Fryer’s description of a “two-tier” system and, the “two class” system, which is the way the Democratic legislative politicians, from West Virginia, described it, when they rejected discrimination.
BTW, Diane, you are deserving of the Medal of Freedom. Bill Gates is an oligarch, who deserves pillorying, not an American honor.
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DR: “Nearly half the schools in the New Orleans Recovery School District are rated D or F by the state (other studies put the figure even higher).”
Come on Diane, this doesn’t even make sense. Do you need a “study” to look up the grades of the schools? This year’s school grades just came out this past week – the list is publicly available for all to see – and no, half of New Orleans schools are NOT graded D or F.
I understand you see education issues differently these days, but it’s sad how you no longer have any respect for the facts.
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The duplicity, by Ohio politicians, in the takeover of the Youngstown schools, as described by Plunderbund and other media, alerts us to the corruption behind the oligarchs’ plans for a two-class system of schools. School takeovers pave the way for the profitable, big box retailing of education, brought to the world, by Bill Gates, an investor, in the largest seller of schools-in-a-box. The latest dustup between ECOT, Republican state Senator Lehner, who is the Ohio Senate Education Committee Chair and, her sister, who runs Fordham’s NCTQ, exposes the Walton and Gates Foundations’ links to Ohio school decisions. The reporting about the conflict, provides further corroboration that Ohio, is one of the Gates/Walton fiefdoms. The defeat of the oligarchs’ privatization in Mass. and, the ability of Washington state voters, to thwart Gates (specifically), in the selection the state’s judges, were big wins for democracy.
The important question for Americans to ask, “Is Fordham and the U.S. Dept. of Ed. working for oligarchy, against the American people?”
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