Republicans were once the party that advocated for local control of schools. No longer. Now they support state takeovers. This is the Big Bad Wolf technique. State Control makes it easier to privatize public schools. No need to listen to parents or communities. No raucous school board meetings. No democracy. State control of schools is autocracy in action.
In Arkansas, a state that is almost wholly owned by one wealthy family, the Little Rock School District wastaken over by the state because six of its 48 schools had low test scores. A Democrat proposedto End State Control after five years. That bill failed. A Republican state legislator has proposed to extend state control to nine years.
The Republican legislator puts the onus on the district for failing to improve while it is under state control. This is whacky. If the district hasn’t improved under state control, it’s the state that has failed, not the district. Why punish the district for the state’s failure? Why not hold the state accountable?
This report was published by the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, without a link.
“BY CATHY FRYE
“LITTLE ROCK – Senator Kim Hammer, R-District 33, on Monday filed a bill that would allow the Arkansas Department of Education and State Board of Education to retain control of public school districts for up to nine years.
”SB668 accomplishes this by letting the State Board grant two 24-month extensions if a district that has been under state control for five years still isn’t meeting expectations.
“The bill appears to be a response to Senator Will Bond’s failed legislation that would have required ADE and the State Board to return school districts to local control within five years of a takeover.
“Bond, D-District 32, testified last week in the Senate Education Committee that the bill would apply to any and all school districts taken over by the state.
“Current law states: “If the public school district has not demonstrated to the State Board and the Department of Education that the public school district meets the criteria to exit Level 5-Intensive Support within five years of the assumption of authority shall annex, consolidate or reconstitute the public school district…”
“Bond’s bill,
SB553, proposed another option – returning a district to local control as long as it met certain criteria.
“At that committee meeting, ADE Commissioner Johnny Key contended that approval of the legislation would create an uncertain situation where “we’re back to not knowing,” adding that in the case of the Little Rock School District, which is approaching the 5th anniversary of its takeover, “the exit criteria was recently communicated.”
“Per Bond’s bill, the State Board would be able to return a school district to local control if the following criteria were met:
- “The public school district has adopted a plan to correct the issue or issues that caused the classification of the public school district as being in need of Level 5-Intensive support; and
- “All public schools within the public school district that is classified as being in need of Level 5 – Intensive support are making demonstrable progress towards the removal of the Level 5-Intensive support classification; or
- “The number of public schools that are classified as in need of Level 5 – Intensive support within a public school district has increased while under the authority of the state board.”
“The bill further states: “The state board may promulgate rules to establish regarding the criteria by which a public school district may exit Level 5-Intensive support as established under subdivision (c)(2) of this section.”
“In closing for his bill, Bond asked committee members to think about how their school districts would feel about remaining under state control for more than five years. This isn’t just about Little Rock, he said.
“In the end, the bill failed.
“Hammer’s bill has been referred to the Senate Education Committee and could run as soon as Wednesday. The committee meets
at 10 a.m. in Room 207. An agenda has not yet been posted.
“Hammer’s bill still offers the State Board the options of annexation, consolidation or reconstitution of school districts. At the end of five years, the State Board could consider those choices or extend the state takeover by another 24 months. When the two-year extension ends, the bill states, the board would then be allowed to grant a second two-year extension.”
Senator Kim Hammer hates democracy and local control.
From Wikipedia:
Kim David Hammer is a Missionary Baptist pastor and hospice chaplain in Benton, Arkansas, who is a Republican member of the Arkansas House of Representatives for District 28 in Saline County near the capital city of Little Rock.
Bentonville is the home base of the Waltons, where most of them attended and graduated from the local PUBLIC schools. The Waltons, having benefitted from their good public education, are now using their multi billion dollar ($150 billion) to destroy public schools across the nation. Ingrates.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hello Diane: It seems to me (and I have no poling data on this) that the mostly-Republican forces that we find we must push against target state legislatures as a kind of Goldilocks place to work out their power grabbing: easier to exert control?
. . . not TOO local, not TOO national . . . state legislatures are “JUST RIGHT” for their operations.
It seems local powers are too diverse (aka: informed-democratic-influential in the neighborhoods and schools), and national powers are too connected to the Constitution, too diverse, and too powerful in other ways (aka: an informed-democratic, law-ordered) (small d).
E.G.: Even so, at the national level, we see Mitch McConnell doing everything he can to pack the courts with right-wing judges before he leaves or dies. So the movement is a matter of emphasis, but still not exclusive to state legislatures. That’s my take on it: FWIW. CBK
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They say this about manufacturing, not retail, but maybe it applies to the Waltons:
The first generation were tradespeople, the second generation were engineers, and the 3rd generation are MBA’s who destroy everything the 1st and 2nd built 🙂
It really holds true too, to a remarkable extent.
The Waltons should spend less time union busting and eradicating public schools and more time on their stores. They look like garbage all over the midwest. They’re 30 years old, they weren’t high quality buildings to begin with, and I don’t think they’ve invested a penny in any of them in decades. They’re understaffed, poorly-lit, trash-strewn eyesores with pot-holed parking lots and crumbling facades.
Maybe some of these business people could attend to their actual businesses, instead of privatizing the public sector.
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The Waltons have far less contempt for the upper middle class people who spend $100 for the privilege of shopping at Sam’s Club. Even the bathrooms are nicer.
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It was clear to anyone who understands how government works that setting up a system of state schools all through a state meant the state schools would be poorly regulated.
Arkansas isn’t “regulating” these schools, anymore than Ohio is. They don’t have the staff or budget to do it even if they wanted to, which they don’t.
It was always a ridiculous notion, that Ohio would “regulate” schools located in all 88 counties out of Columbus. That was never going to happen. The people who wrote the laws knew it wasn’t going to happen. Now that they’ve added publicly-funded private schools it’s even more ridiculous. Do they even have authority to audit the private schools they’re funding? Who, exactly, is auditing them? Which state official? How often? The county auditor handles public school audits, but not charters and private schools.
When’s the last time a state regulator darkened the door of a charter school? They’d need a map to find them, let alone provide any meaningful oversight.
These governance systems were designed to be non-transparent and deregulated.
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Chiara, good point. There is zero oversight for charters and vouchers. California has 1300 charters. No staff to monitor them. Authorizer May be 500 miles away.
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And this is exactly what those deformers want.
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This is exactly what happens when people are not invested in their local public schools.
I find it plain crazy to drive kids to schools far away for many reasons:
right off the top of my head … there is pollution and clogging up the streets,
and the BIG ONE …. don’t know what happening in own neighborhoods, so
“IT BECOMES A WHOLE LOT EASIER for the DEFORMERS to to do their dastardly deeds.”
The whole idea of all this is to break up communities then … OMG.
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I used the word “EXACTLY” twice … because the deformers know what they are doing.
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Yvonne. That’s right. The goal is to break up communities so everything is up for sale cheap.
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Ripofflichens preached local control only in the days when local governments were easy pickings for bribery and/or bullying by business and corporate forces. Today their corporate masters have grown so uberpowering it’s far more cost-effective to pimp whole States Reichs and prostitute whole Branches and Cabinets of federal government at once. So now it’s the local yokels in the cross-hairs.
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Republicans was regulation and control for everything and everyone, except with respect to things that affect wealth accumulation for the already wealthy. Deregulation for the 1% and regulation for the rest of us.
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Benton, AR is different from Bentonville, AR (where the Waltons originated.) Benton, AR (represented by Senator Kim Hammer) is a “white flight” suburb of Little Rock.
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There’s still a Walton link, though. Kim Hammer’s bill to extend state control of LRSD was largely authored by Jeff Wood, who is the current chairman of LRSD’s “Community Advisory Board,” serving on the CAB with Frank Scott who has recently been elected Mayor of Little Rock. Frank Scott’s transition team includes Baker Kurrus (the first superintendent of LRSD appointed by the governor) and John Rutledge, whose father (Reynie Rutledge) serves on the Northwest Arkansas Council with Jim Walton, Sam Walton’s son.
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The latest game is to use local control as a defense against not having to account for additional funding that does not come from that source. Wealthier districts hold local control as a carrot and select the community they want to participate. The administrations don’t release data about education gaps to address students of color in combination with socially economically disadvantaged, students with disabilities and their attendance in advanced classes (not AP). Therefore, the admin controls the narrative and no work can be done to answer the reasons why the majority of students are failing state tests.
Those seeking answers as a means to improve the curriculum are denied access to this data.
This could be another trick used to send families fleeing to charters, religious and pricey private schools.
Not any less important is the “extra money” funneled into construction, other “local” goals that experiment on students and their access to learn basics and digital learning and testing. None equate to improved student outcomes.
Our District began teaching social justice standards and is in it’s infancy in weaving those standards into the curriculum.
At the same time, parents are being treated as criminals ans required to scan driver’s licenses at the door before entering campus. That information is run through an international third party company based in TX. They say the reason is to address school safety. They say it cross checks parents against a pedophile database. Parents are being turned away at the door if they don’t provide ID’s even when their names on a list for a conference. Are undocumented parents being engaged? It’s a failed system.
Months earlier, our district lowered the work age from 16 to 14. The hope is to send a select cohort of children out into the work force including the heavily dominated young white men tech industry. There are no social justice standards in place at these companies. These companies won’t be running their employees through the database system.
There is no audit to ensure students taking the same class are being taught the same information with the same books. Many classes don’t use books. Students are given poorly copied handouts and asked to tape these into notebooks. Some teachers of a class offer extra credit and accept late assignments. Others teaching the same gen ed class do not offer this. There is no accountability. There is no way for parents to ask for this through the local control plan. The goals are basically dictated by the administration. Students are being funneled into workforce pathways based on what a dictate from our city and college.
Local Control is being used to force parents to get involved with chasing down homework assignments. Some teachers put this on a website, others write it on a whiteboard, others deliver it verbally. Parents need to check 4-6 different websites to find out what the assignments are. Some teachers rarely assign homework. Other teachers who teach the exact same subject assign nightly homework. Homework might account for 20% of the grade for a 8th grade math or it might be 50%. It depends on the teacher.
When local control requires “parent engagement” to amount to either teaching their kids or hiring tutors we’ve reached another apex of undermining the goals of public education and undermining the future of teachers altogether. Administrations and school boards alike need to be held accountable and focused on EDUCATION as opposed to shiny new things that detract from student learning and outcomes. There must be a fair amount of uniformity in teaching and a clear and coordinated means to deliver homework assignments, student objectives, etc.
Additionally, administrations relying on third party student data tracking that calculates absenteeism differently than local code or state code should not be used to report out this measure as a part of a local control process. FLAWED all around.
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