Mercedes Schneider is a native of Louisiana. She hopes that the corporate reformers don’t do to Houston’s public schools what they did to those in New Orleans.
Arne Duncan memorably and disgustingly said that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing that ever happened to the schools in New Orleans. Katrina killed nearly 2,000 people. It also made it possible to eliminate public education, which Arne celebrated. Most schools were taken over by charters. The union was crushed. All the teachers, mostly black, were fired. Charter chains and TFA took over.
In this post, Schneider warns Houstonians to defend their public schools against the privatizers. They will see Houston as a new opportunity. The predatory Walton Family Foundation has already targeted Houston for mass charter expansion.
Houston: Beware of a Post-Harvey Charter Conversion of Your Schools
As a graduate of the Houston public schools, I say “repel the barbarians at the gates of Houston.” Send the mercenaries and profiteers packing. Let the city heal. Don’t raid its public schools. Go away. Stop preying on the public sector. Vultures.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Going to need a whole lot of money to rebuild that region. A top marginal tax rate of 93 %
would help defray the costs. Elimination of the differential gains rate would help as well.
As a side benefit the Walton’s would be spending more time with their accountants and less time at their hobby of attacking Public goods .
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There are politicians in Texas like Abbott and Patrick, governor and lieutenant governor respectively, that would want to use a disaster in Houston to expand charters. Houston already has a large network of charters with many that get poor results. It is also the home to several Kipp Schools where some students appear to do well.
The key element in Houston is Sylvester Turner, a working class African American Houston native, who is a Democrat. He is a smart lawyer with liberal leanings. He recently said, “If anyone tries to deport undocumented people during the Harvey evacuations, I will represent them myself.”
Mr. Turner is aware of social justice issues so I assume he is familiar with the NAACP’s call for a moratorium on charter expansion. Here’s an article from Julian Vasquez Heilig at an NAACP conference in 2012. Heilig did some research on the Houston schools. He was studying how many schools with African American students produce those that are “college and career ready.” He discovered that only one school, a Kipp School, that was more than 50% black produced students considered “college and career ready.” I cannot predict what Turner will do, but I hope he stands up against the Waltons and others that will try to swoop in and turn Houston into a privatized system.https://cloakinginequity.com/2012/10/19/dont-believe-the-hype-pt-ii-charter-schools-and-college-readiness-for-blacks/
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Sylvester Turner is the mayor of Houston.
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We can hope that the NAACP is now fully activated to step in quickly and question any and all profiteering — there has been so much visible abuse and unhappiness created in New Orleans.
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I was under the impression that the fix is already in.
Singer says: “The Republican controlled state legislature already has a law on the books to swipe local control from struggling districts and turn them into charters. It’s a blatant threat to takeover entire districts like HISD if certain schools within the district don’t improve standardized test scores and other measures favored by corporate education reformers.”
This is another case where the test scores of students are used to declare “failing schools,” and open up the market for charter schools.
I do think that the Republican legislature and inflow of money to support charter schools will turn Houston into another New Orleans–unless there is organized resistance.
But, organized resistance is hard to muster in the midst of a calamity. USA Today had an article today about the effort to open schools in order to give bring some routine into the lives of children (and parents) and to provide students with a hot meal. That news did not mention issues of schools unfit for use or transportation problems.
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Only one member of the Texas Board of Education is anti-charter, the “soft” privatization
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“How the Large-Scale Privatization of New Orleans’ Schools Upholds Inequality”, posted at Truthout.
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