Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn is one of the leaders of the Democratic Party in Congress. He is considering a bid to be chair of the Democratic Caucus.
On September 13, he was honored by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and received its first “African American Charter School Leadership Award.” The event is referred to in the official invitation as #BringTheFunk. The award noted that he is a “faithful supporter” of New York City’s Success Academy charter chain, a favorite of the hedge fund industry, which may well be the best funded charter chain in the nation, known for its strict discipline, its high test scores, and its high attrition rates.
The event was sponsored by the rightwing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation, Campbell Brown’s “The 74,” and Education Reform Now. Campbell Brown is a close friend of Betsy DeVos; Education Reform Now is affiliated with Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge funders’ organization. Education Reform Now and DFER exist to promote charter schools.
Like so many privately managed charter schools, the new award is segregated, for blacks only.
To understand why Congress is paying $440 million a year for new charter schools, even when there is no need for funding for new charter schools, even though they are amply funded by philanthropists and billionaires, even though they draw funding away from public schools, even though the federal General Accountability Office found that they are rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, even though charter school scandals are increasingly common, even though the NAACP called for a national moratorium on new charter schools, start here.
Not in New York, but another bought and paid for Democrat with who paid for him to be in office really clear. He should just tell people he loves Republicans and put aside andy petense of being a Democrat–meaning, among ohther values, supportive of public institutions with elected governance, including public schools and not EVAs bootcamps.
Our federal government is anti-public school.
This is the daily rhetoric that comes out of there:
“And all too often, students do not learn about our Constitution and our freedoms in the first place. I think of a survey conducted some years ago by Philadelphia’s own Museum of the American Revolution. It found then that 83 percent of Americans did not have a basic understanding of our Founding. In fact, more Americans knew that Michael Jackson wrote “Billie Jean” than knew who wrote the Bill of Rights – or even that those Rights are amendments to our Constitution.
What does that say about America’s schools? According to the 2014 Nation’s Report Card, only 18 percent of eighth graders had a proficient knowledge of American history. And in previous years, high school seniors did even worse: only 13 percent were proficient or better.
Just think about the real-world consequences of those sobering statistics.”
This is DeVos, today, but it could have been any of them.
They seem to see their role as full-time professional critics of public schools. They provide absolutely no value to public schools- nothing positive, nothing of practical or useful worth- it’s these endless, endless scolding sessions where they take public schools to the woodshed for a real or imagined failure to do something.
This passes for “bold” and “brave” in DC, although it has been going on FOR YEARS- these droning recitations of how our kids and schools and teachers don’t measure up,delivered by people who seem to believe they are CEO’s and we are employees.
This is what you’re paying for- the 5000th ed reform lecture on the topic “public schools suck”.
A month ago Secretary DeVos delivered a droning lecture to public schools on school safety- school shooters are solely the fault of public schools and solely the responsibility of public schools.
This month it’s civics education. Next month it will be whatever other national problem makes headlines. She’ll deliver a speech lecturing public schools on how they have to fix it – whatever “it is”- this somehow counts as “work” in ed reform circles- delivering lectures.
Politicians love ed reform and for good reason! How great is it that they can take every national problem they’re faced with, dump it on public schools, and walk away.
You’d love it too if you were them. It’s the best excuse ever.
I saw this week the Trump Administration have dumped opiate addiction on Ohio public schools. Unwilling to actually devote any work towards fixing that problem, they passed it off to the public schools they don’t support. Now it’s off their agenda.
Support for public schools, and disavowal of charter schools, should be a litmus test for Democrats.
agreed
“What does that say about America’s schools? According to the 2014 Nation’s Report Card, only 18 percent of eighth graders had a proficient knowledge of American history. And in previous years, high school seniors did even worse: only 13 percent were proficient or better.”
This is apparently WHY our kids take these tests- so people who don’t support public schools and don’t offer any practical or worthwhile assistance to any public school anywhere, can cite the scores.
Having put in a “day’s work” they can then go back to their full time passion, which is replacing public schools with publicly-funded contractors.
Meanwhile the 85% of students and families that use the schools they disdain go another year without support and we re-elect all of them so they can deliver another scolding lecture next year.
How many Democrats will it take before we accept that this is who the Democrats are? When they show us who they are (repeatedly), why don’t we believe them? No, of course the Republicans aren’t any better. But why are we still waiting for the Democrats to rescue us? When are we going to draw a line in the sand and declare the minimum values that any politician must shown in order to be worthy of our votes? If the Democrats can’t or won’t meet such minimum standards, why don’t we find people who will?
I don’t understand — is your point that we should spend our time smearing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez because she is running as a Democrat and insist that under no circumstances should anyone vote for her even if it means a right wing Trump supporting Republican wins?
This is a democracy. You fight for the candidate you prefer in the primary — the fact that one of the most powerful Democrats in the House was defeated in the primary should get you to stop insisting that the system is corrupt. But I think I’ll refrain from insisting that the entire party is only as good as its most co-opted member. There are many good people running as Democrats and they resent people like you telling them they know exactly what Democrats are. I sure hope the voters in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ district aren’t foolish enough to believe that because she is running as a Democrat, she should be defeated even if a right wing Republican wins.
Walton-approved Democrats lost big in the primary for NY Senate seats. I hope Jeffries gets a progressive challenger in his next primary who points out that Jeffries is heavily supported by right wing money in his pro-charter stance.
Jeffries should pay a political price for insisting that Eva Moskowitz is absolutely correct to identify the many violent African-American kindergarten and first graders in her charters and suspend them for what she insists (and Jeffries seems to agree) are their many violent actions.
NYSUT is cautiously optimistic about the results of the New York primaries. According to Chalkbeat, six progressives defeated six charter supporting incumbents in the primary for the NYS senate. It may not make a big difference if the Republicans control the senate again. If the Democrats win, these progressives may be able to block the move to lift the cap on charters. While it is too early to tell what will happen, there is a possibility that the charter lobby could lose some of its clout in New York. Fingers crossed! https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/09/14/progressive-democrats-surprise-wins-in-n-y-primaries-leave-charter-school-advocates-in-limbo/
He’s the Cory Booker of the House, able to use other issues and media exposure to deflect and hide his record on education issues. He plays the game as it is instead of trying to change its rules.
Bingo
He’s another sellout. They all must go.
I know Hakim well. I worked very hard to get him elected, first, to the NYS Assembly, and then to Congress, in order to defeat the even worse Democrat Ed Towns. I even raised a bunch of money for him. Then I saw him slip over to the dark side. But, make no mistake, I believe that his embrace of privatization is NOT (as he claims) primarily about wanting poor black and brown kids to get a good education, but about the fact that there is more money and power on that side than on the side of public education. That money, the hedge funders who provide it, and the corporatist establishment Democrats, were the drivers of Hakim’s political rise. Money and power have totally corrupted him. Hakim, like Cuomo and Booker, has and will continue to sell out our public schools when they are in the inner sanctum of their party leadership positions. Hakim’s rise within Congressional Dem leadership is helping him to thwart ALL our efforts to reign in Congressional support for privatization. On education issues, he wis arguably more powerful than all the new progressive congresspeople we will elect in 2018, combined.
Sad to say, we must recognize that Hakim is THE ENEMY. He can not be defeated in his very safe Brooklyn seat, so we must all ORGANIZE to EXPOSE him as the corporate shill that he is. We must tell our progressive Congressional friends that it is NOT ok to go along with Dem leadership (Hakim) on charters and privatization. Believe me, Hakim will have the tools he needs to fight harder for his corporate friends than anyone on our side will have, so we need to be loud and clear. We also have to insist that, for politicians to gain our support, it’s NOT ok to be “progressive” on reproductive choice and Medicare for All, etc, etc, but anything less than TOTALLY AGAINST corporatism and privatization. Time to take a stand!
BTW, Hakim was a key supporter of Zellnor Myrie, the victor in one of the races against the IDC traitors we defeated in the NYS Dem primary. We need to watch what Zellnor does in Albany to make sure he doesn’t pay back his mentor by supporting Hakim’s education agenda. I’m not at all worried about the other five IDC-slayers. They are solidly and deeply pro-public education. Zellnor may be, too, but he will certainly get pressured by Hakim and that ilk. So we need to let him know that “progressive” means 100% pro-public education.