Jeff Bryant of the Educational Opportunity Network visited Jackson, Mississippi, to learn about the state takeover plan for the district. As you would expect, Jackson has a sordid and racist past, one where whites ignored the needs and potential of black students.
After the Brown decision declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional, Mississippi fought the decision. When compelled to comply, it introduced school choice, so that white kids would have tax money to pay for private segregated schools.
Today, Jackson has a progressive black mayor. The schools are 95% black. The state now threatens to take over the Jackson schools on mostly trumped-up violations. Test scores are low,but test scores in the whole state are low.
Governor Phil Bryant, a product of segregated white schools, says he wants to create a private-public partnership in Jackson.
Civic leaders are not sure he can be trusted. They know that the schools are desperately underfunded and that the legislature and the state’s Republican leaders don’t want to pay the cost of adequate funding.
The big actors behind the s eyes are the Walton family, which wants charters and vouchers, along with Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. The black mayors of Jackson and Birmingham know that the purpose of charter schools is to drain money out of public schools that are already underfunded.
The bottom line is that the white Republicans of Mississippi don’t want to pay the cost of educating black children. They never have. The leadership of the state will blabber on about school choice but it’s still the same song and dance. Nothing Jeff reports persuades me that Jackson’s black leadership should trust Governor Bryant, the legislature or their appointees to devote new resources to black children in Jackson. It’s a hoax. Don’t fall for it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Public-private partnership?” That’s all you need to know…
The costs are to socialized, while the profits/benefits are privatized.
It is not surprising that Jackson, MS, is a target of “Empower.” Privatization is the new Jim Crow in which black and brown communities are tossed into receivership, and the schools are sold off to privateers. However, I wish this were only true in the South. This same MO is happening all over the US map in mostly black and brown communities led by conservatives and corporate Democrats. A large component of privatization is a form of “blaxploitation.” Privatization is a repetition of our racist history as black communities are often a target, or privatization is means to sort white from minority students. Privatization is the civil rights issue of our time, not “failing” schools.
Privatization is also gentrification, which is meant to drive black people away. Chicago has been on this path for years (since Duncan was schools CEO), and the black population has sharply declined.
Absolutely. With gentrification selective charter schools are used to entice white families to a neighborhood while black families are pushed to a less centrally located neighborhood where the cheap charters are located. We have seen this in many cities including Washington, D.C. and Philly. This is currently happening in Indianapolis. The neighborhoods close to Fountain Square are being renovated for middle class housing. HGTV even has a reno show called “Good Bones” about it.
As far as I am concerned GENTRIFICATION is like the word, GRIT. Good GAWD, WHO THINKS OF THIS STUFF anyway.
Thanks Diane. Jackson is a forward looking community with a clear vision of what it wants for its children. That’s what scares white leaders in the state.
I spent the night in Jackson this month, driving back to Texas from the east coast. Drove around the capital city some and was overwhelmed by a lingering sense of the awful things associated w/the state of Ms’s governing institutions. It felt like a historical stain, irremovable. Of course, as Bryant explains, it isn’t the history that oppresses – it’s the present. It’s really difficult to believe racism will ever not be a salient, a controlling value of this state, just as I would say is true in my home state Texas. Bit I’m almost 70, and it’s not for me to give up on the future others will live. But this is a reminder of Faulkner’s observation that the past is not dead. It’s not even past.
Diane, you and I have corresponded several times over the years about the conditions in my school in Jackson. I regret to inform you that the conditions of the physical plant are now beyond words. When I was moved from a classroom with carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years, a room where I fought respiratory and skin ailments for years, I found my new room infected with black mold. It took a few weeks and a trip to the doctor, but I got that mitigated to the point where I can deal with it.
Then over the Christmas holidays, the city of Jackson suffered a cold snap that destroyed the city water system. Jackson Public Schools had to close for a week due to the water crisis. When we resumed classes, our building’s pipes, I believe had also frozen, leading to a re-occurrence of a sewer line break that has literally rendered the main hall and its classrooms a s—hole. About fifteen years ago, the same situation had occurred when I was also on the main hall. Eventually the district dealt with the situation by going under the building to dig out the contaminated soil and re-plumbing the pipes.
I’ve told everyone who will listen, but the situation only got worse until they finally closed the restroom when the new poop was coming from. Even so, there is always a lingering odor of raw sewage which becomes unbearable after a rain and when the temperature warms up. When I was checking out of my room this week, the stench gagged me, and I swelled up with tears because the whole situation is just so surreal.
The facilities manager was in the building and I told him that I had been trying to decide whose office I needed to visit with a box of poop to put on the desk and ask “How would you like to smell this all day every day?” I told him that it would be his office. He assured me that they will address it this summer.
I also told this story to the principal who related that there is the intent to go back under the building, dig the dirt out again, and once more re-plumb the pipes. If it is effective, then it should hold out long enough to get me through to retirement.
Jackson Public Schools announced this week that they will issue a bond to put money into repairing aging buildings. Our building is one of the oldest in the city, with the distinctions of once having been the only high school in the state for African Americans. We’ll see if our building’s problems will be adequately addressed.
It is absolutely true that the power brokers in this state don’t want to pay for African American children to be educated. When Jackson Public Schools mainly educated the children of the power brokers, the schools were just fine. Now that those children are educated in the private and suburban schools, we see those schools excelling. Meanwhile, the students left in tax-poor JPS are languishing in second-world conditions.
My experience leads me to advocate for a new school funding mechanism that does not put schools at the mercy or benefit of their local tax base. Our country is clearly OK with relegating a third of our children to poverty and its consequences or we would have already done something about it.
(Thank you for letting me rant.)
Lorraine
This is an incredibly heartbreaking story. I’m SO sorry for what you are going through. I wish I could say more…
In 2015, there was an effort to increase funding for Mississippi public schools, called Act 42.
Wealthy donors, including the Koch brothers, funded an effort to defeat it.
The Koch brothers chipped in nearly a quarter million dollars to make sure that poor black kids don’t have decent schools.
https://dianeravitch.net/2015/12/12/who-funded-the-opposition-to-spending-more-on-education-in-mississippi-hint-can-you-spell-k-o-c-h/
Trying to figure out MS revenue sources for public ed – was just wondering whether MS state taxes pay most of the cost, in which case it’s easier for them to say “we’ll take over.” District budget shows just 1% of revenue from Fed. The largest source is 50% from “MAEP” – a state law requiring each district to pony up 27% from RE taxes; the rest [23%] is from the state. But then there’s a separate revenue source of 31% just called “taxes.” (?).
From another source (Ballotpedia), I see that MS expends 35% of its state budget on education. The national ave in 2015 was 22% – so perhaps MS state legislature has enough clout, via state taxes supporting ed, to justify takeover of any district by whatever justification.
The problem inherent in this paradigm is that state takeover of ‘poorly-performing’ [i.e., POOR] local districts has been studied– & has a ‘poor’ track record. Take nearby district to me, Newark Public Schools, where the state ‘took over’ admin of schools more than 20 yrs ago – produced no improvement – is now negotiating return of control to locals: regardless of revenue source, locals have highest stakes in school outcomes – because their community’s kids attend those schools! – & thus are likelier to get involved & improve the situation.
A couple of years ago, there was a refendum in Miss. to increase funding for schools. The Republicans went all out to kill it and it failed. They lied about the facts and distorted.
Again with the reliance on “test scores” to judge schools–exactly what started this mess nationwide.
What CRAPPy tests are they using in Jackson, MS these days?