First it was New Orleans, its public schools crippled by a devastating hurricane, which was used to sweep away public education. Now, it is Puerto Rico, crushed by a powerful hurricane, with most of the island left by the federal government without access to electricity or clean water.
Now Puerto Rico will abandon public education and turn its students over to private operators and religious schools. Let someone else run the schools. The government prefers to abandon them.
Steven Singer writes a cogent analysis of the death of public education in Puerto Rico.
“More than five months since a devastating hurricane hit the island’s shores, some 270 schools are still without power.
“Roughly 25,000 students are leaving with that number expected to swell to 54,000 in four years. And that’s after an 11-year recession already sent 78,000 students seeking refuge elsewhere.
“So what do you do to stop the flow of refugees fleeing the island? What do you do to fix your storm damaged schools? What do you do to ensure all your precious children are safe and have the opportunity to learn?
“If you’re Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rossello, you sell off your entire system of public education.
“After an economic history of being pillaged and raped by corporate vultures from the mainland, Rossello is suggesting the U.S. Territory offer itself for another round of abuse.
“He wants to close 300 more schools and change the majority of those remaining into charter and voucher schools.
“That means no elected school boards.
“That means no public meetings determining how these schools are run.
“It means no transparency in terms of how the money is spent.
“It means public funding can become private profit.
“And it means fewer choices for children who will have to apply at schools all over the island and hope one accepts them. Unlike public schools, charter and voucher schools pick and choose whom to enroll.
“Make no mistake. This has nothing to do with serving the needs of children. It is about selling off public property because it belongs to poor, brown people.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This will be a disaster for Puerto Rico, they deserve and need good public schools. It should be an important goal of the American government to help provide educational services to the island.
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The federal government under the Trump administration has declared public schools the #2 Enemy of the People, after the free press, which is #1.
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Well, Puerto Rico probably only heard from the ed reform echo chamber.
They were “given” one option- the dominant DC thinking is definitely “privatize” – I’m sure the charter/voucher cheerleaders were out in force since the response came from the federal government.
You’ve all seen these “panels” and “consultants”- they’re the same 150 ed reformers over and over. Public school advocates are deliberately and carefully excluded. It’s not a real debate.
It’s sad because there’s finally starting to be a real debate in some states- just as Ohio moves away from privatization Puerto Rico buys it.
Scott Walker has even changed his tune. All of a sudden he’s pro-public schools. He did a 180- PURE political panic.
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Privatizers always plant their seed where the needs and vulnerabilities are greatest and they have this far failed everywhere.
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“Scott Walker has even changed his tune.”
Really? Where can one read about it?
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I hope the public school families know what this means for their kids.
Public schools are now completely off the radar. The VAST amount of lawmaker attention and care will now go to the charter and private schools.
The unfashionable public system will be left as a kind of disfavored default that none of the political and policy elites have any interest in supporting.
Just like in the states. 95% of families just became second class citizens as far as schools.
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so very clearly stated: it is now all about “status” and clear denigration of public systems
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DeVos’ dept of ed were probably the dominant voice in this because the Trump disaster response was of such poor quality they were desperate for aid.
DeVos’ team is lock-step privatizers. There’s not a one of them who support public schools.
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I thought it was funny the guv said “we’re not going to go crazy” with privatization.
Unspoken there is “like they have in the United States, where no one BUT privatizers are allowed to speak” 🙂
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Over my career as an ESL teacher I have attended conferences where I met many Puerto Ricans that were academes with Ph.Ds. Many of them credited the public schools that gave them a solid academic foundation with enabling them to achieve their goals. There is no proof that commodifying education improves education for young people. This is more reckless policy from a governor willing to abrogate his responsibility to the island’s students.
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I sometimes wonder if “disruption” is intended to keep people permanently off-balance, permanently operating in a kind of panic state, where they’re “grateful” for having a school that’s open at all and so worried about day to day concerns they don’t have the energy to operate collectively and democratically.
Because “disruption” is no big deal to someone like DeVos. She’s secure. Safe as houses. It’s easy for her to sneer at people who are attached to local public schools because she doesn’t even live in the same country we do, in any real sense.
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Read Naomi Klein’s THE SHOCK DOCTRINE. Yes, “disruption” is intentionally used to keep people permanently off-balance so they can’t fight back.
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For dictators and authoritarians, it’s the oldest trick in the book.
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I buy what you are saying.
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What if the someones like DeVos exist BECAUSE of disruption?
Disrupting (cancelling) self approval (intrinsic), in favor of the approval of others
(extrinsic), divides (off-balance) the individual, and is the basis of conformity,
and divide and rule.
Cognative Dissonance is division (off-balance).
The “reading lists (lessons ?) for the subordinates” fuel CD.
What part of “democratic republic”, or “democacy” is
privilege sanctioned by law?
What part of the performative role (forced testing) assigned by the
dominant “culture”, fits
Community based, locally controlled, democratic ?
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Reblogged this on The Most Revolutionary Act and commented:
“Make no mistake. This has nothing to do with serving the needs of children. It is about selling off public property because it belongs to poor, brown people.”
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This is another way to just continue ENSLAVING the poor, brown Puerto Rican people. This is REALLY SICK.
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““So what do you do to stop the flow of refugees fleeing the island?”
Does the US of A take refugees from itself????
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Here is the skeleton of a conspiracy theory to help us understand what is happening in Puerto Rico or what happened in New Orleans. You are free to put flesh or even some fat on it. 🙂
Couple of decades ago, Charles Koch spoke to three of the most trusted board members in a darkened room at the real ALEC headquarters in Wichita:
“Since it’s only the four of us, I do not have to remind you to our two fundamental principles in all what we do: First, our plans always need to be strategic, so we defend our way of life and attack the masses out there on multiple fronts. Second, we keep our underlying motivation and strategies secret. We just pass the seemingly innocent and even dumb bill templates to the politicians, deposit money in their offshore bank accounts, and they will work on passing the bills blindly, without asking questions.”
“We understand, boss. Why are we here today?”
“I have a new strategy that needs to be executed in the form of a few thousand ALEC bills in the next couple of decades. The issue is global warming. You have seen the data, so it’s clear, global warming is real, and it causes more and more violent weather: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, never ending drought, and yes, cooling in some parts of the world like Europe. Instead of letting any guilt get to us for causing global warming in the first place, recall that disasters are our opportunities, and this one is no exception. We just need to take the following three strategic steps to make global warming work for us.
1) Deny global warming. We’ll give enough money to politicians that they’ll actually believe, global warming doesn’t exist. They’ll then work on the masses so that they’ll end up at least questioning the research evidence.
2) Make sure, states do not accumulate enough money to prevent disasters or recover from it. Because of step 1) above, people won’t feel motivated to accumulate money in disaster funds for such “unlikely events”.
3) Make sure that whenever disaster hits a state, not enough federal aid can be allocated for recovery. Again, step 1) above will prove to be useful to make sure, federal disaster recovery funds do not accumulate enough money.
These three steps will allow us to privatize anything in a state which is hit by a disaster. How? As an example, let us see how public education can be privatized within a few weeks after a hurricane. Since there is not enough recovery money, schools won’t be able to start even a month after the disaster. People will be outraged but also exhausted, so they will welcome helpful philanthropists who offer to start operating the schools for them. To solidify their position, philanthropists will execute a smear campaign against the school board that was unwilling and unable to recover the schools in reasonable time. They can then install a charter and voucher friendly new school board, and our philanthropist friends can start collecting millions if not billions from educating kids in need, irrespective of their race or sexual orientation.”
“Boss, you are a pure genius. We cause global warming, but we also get to exploit it, and make trillions in the process. We’ll get to work right away.”
“God bless you, my friends. Remember, we are the chosen ones.”
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There is no doubt that the hurricane in Puerto Rico was not an accident. Think about it: hurricanes and other disasters are very useful for privatization, hence it’s not prudent to let them occur randomly. Here is then how to proceed for reliable profit and hence to improve the economy: burn oil products to cause global warming, then global warming causes crazy weather like hurricanes, hurricanes then cause confusion which is hands down the best opportunity to privatize.
So all you need is to ensure global warming, and the rest happens automatically.
Wars used to be the best way to cause confusion, but people do not relate well to wars anymore, so the new, 21st century way of causing confusion is via natural disasters. Global warming is an excellent, perhaps the best tool used nowadays to cause confusion, but let’s not forget the tools that yield must faster results: fracking causes immediate earthquakes, deforestation causes drought within months, oil drilling and “accidental” oil spilling causes fish to die hence brings hunger within weeks to islanders.
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