D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser selected Antwan Wilson as the next chancellor of schools, promising that he would continue the policies of Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. Wilson has been superintendent in Oakland for the past two years. He is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. He has pledged to tackle the achievement gaps in D.C., which are the largest of any urban district.
D.C. adopted mayoral control of the schools in 2007, copying New York City’s example. Michelle Rhee served from 2007 to 2010, when Adrian Fenty, the mayor who appointed her, was defeated, in large part because of Rhee. Her deputy, Kaya Henderson, took her place.
About half the children in the District are enrolled in charter schools, which are not under the chancellor’s control. The Walton Family Foundation has made privatizing schools in the nation’s Capitol a priority.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hmm, let’s see, almost a decade of failure, even when using their own debased metrics (unless of course you consider privatizing half the district, in which case they’ve been highly effective), yet these failed policies will continue…
So-called reformers just keep failing upward.
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Proof positive–as if we needed any more–that it’s all about money and power with children used as human shields.
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and so-called journalists keep following along, panting in their wake
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I can’t click “Like” for the news in this post. Every time I read the words “The Walton Family Foundation”, I get angry at me, because I don’t throw up.
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Same with me, Lloyd.
And I bet you feel at least nauseated, even if you don’t throw up.
Don’t get mad at yourself, get mad at the Waltons. The Broads. The Gates. And so on.
As well as all the school districts and states and the US DOE that have bought into their corporatist, privatization agenda.
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The St. Louis Post Dispatch does not want readers to know the way students are divided between charter and non charter status. A lot of the charter schools are bad, but the Gulen Gateway schools, close to 70% white in a district which is 80% black perform well. KIPP, with two state charter boards, (13 of the 16 members are white), and their own board of 18 members, mostly people from the financial industry, get reasonably decent results. SLPS now has a policy more careful about suspending children in grades k-2, but I could not find out whether the charters have to respect the new guidelines. Earlier this year, a pd writer reported there were 10,534 charter students. As St. Louis sorts out the numbers of a de-segregation program ordered by Brown versus board of education, a program under which white students from the suburbs populate city magnet schools in exchange for carefully chosen black kids being sent to suburban schools, as well as a really stupid exchange program in the suburbs which state board member Michael Jones recognized and helped slps not become a part of, I learned today, from a pd reporter that the enrollment at slps has dropped from 27000 3 years ago to 23165 as of November. The problem is…..do I subtract the 10,000 charter students from this number, or add the 10,000. My goal is to figure out whether slps is 30% charter students, or 45.
So…my solution was to serve notice on the post dispatch that until I nail down accurate figures, I will post every comment after every relevant education story until someone clears it up. Today, I quoted a couple of lines from the song “Carol”, by Chuck Berry to honor what I thought was a quote from conservative Carol…..after one of those sanctimonious editorials by the PD……I will pass it along….if anyone asks me to. You can look it up in the PD current affairs forum….my title is 42,000 see Padres lose to the Cardinals on 7/20. How many students are there in St. Louis Public Schools.
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As you might guess…I talk to myself a lot. I was trapped where I was arraid my post would be lost when the computer was refusing to open another tab, so a couple of details I could not look up: It was actually 40,184 in attendance at the july 20 game from last summer…my point being it is easy to nail down all sorts of stats on any baseball game, but education is not always important enough to make that possible.
Carol’s comment was a defense of Trump, and I saw parallels with the post regarding G.F Brandenberg.
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Good point. Diane was discussing what to call charters, a dual or parallel system. To me they are corporate splinter schools, especially when there multiple providers. Citizens should consider how costly it is to set up entirely new sets of fixed and administrative costs to splinter resources and how inefficient this network is. They call this choice. Having fractured resources actually decreases choice. There would be more money available to serve disparate needs in a centralized public school that could tailor the programs to the students with authentic teachers in charge. This is no way manage anything! You can’t even collect accurate information.
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Please understand….I am not endorsing Carol’s comment….but I think she is not missing the mark very much when it comes to Obama and education policies of Gates and Duncan…
Carol Size · Works at A Liberal Phobe
Congrats PDEB, you got in your veiled attempt to call Sen. Sessions a racist. It wouldn’t be a day on this blessed earth without your calling Trump or someone near Trump a racist. So much for civility.
But I agree with your larger more grown-up point that we should ALL be treated equally although you do not believe that all people should be treated with respect.
I know this is difficult for Democrats to not make everything about a certain ‘identity’ but I have no problem, in fact I encourage our country to help people based on their family income.
But the LARGER problem is that in 8 years I have never seen President Obama held responsible for anything, especially his promise of Hope & Change back in 2008. What exactly have we gotten? Will the PDEB write an exist interview of what President Obama accomplished? Why exactly are we still complaining about ‘unequal’ schools along with hurting families, homeless, jobless, not to mention our vets?
The truth is that Democrat policies have hurt America. I personally believe that the money used to bus kids around town took money away from fixingurban schools and at the same time destroyed ‘neighborhood’ schools which are vitally important to communities. Integration was an interesting experiment, but at what cost?
I think it is beyond time for Democrats to re-assess ALL their social poliices to see if they have generated the expected outcomes or not.
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Yet more people who believe their own nonsense.
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In my experience Wilson was always something one step above a DFER (whatever that might be) in his efforts to jump on board with Big Money players. He is interested in power and fame; children, though he talks about them endlessly, are at most an afterthought.
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“He has pledged to tackle the achievement gaps in D.C.,”
Ha ha ha ha he he ha ha!
These jokers crack me up!
Unfortunately they also break a lot of children’s souls in the process.
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https://ousdparentsunited.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/parents-united-for-public-schools-statement-on-the-departure-of-ousd-superintendent-antwan-wilson/?preview_id=264&preview_nonce=49296e8697&post_format=standard&_thumbnail_id=-1&preview=true
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For a summary of Mr. Wilson’s time in Oakland from local parents’ perspective:
https://ousdparentsunited.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/parents-united-for-public-schools-statement-on-the-departure-of-ousd-superintendent-antwan-wilson/?preview_id=264&preview_nonce=49296e8697&post_format=standard&_thumbnail_id=-1&preview=true
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