Julia Keleher will one day have engraved on her tombstone: “She Destroyed the Public Schools in Puerto Rico.” She joins the blog’s Wall of Shame for her shameless assault on public schools, the teachers’ union, and the students of Puerto Rico.
To the Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference:
I am disappointed, yet not surprised, that this year’s Education Leadership Conference has chosen to host Julia Keleher as one of their keynote speakers for leaders in education reform. Keleher’s “reform” of the Puerto Rican public education system does not serve to solve any of its problems but rather to mutilate it in order to benefit all but those Puerto Rican citizens who actually rely on high quality public schools. This celebration of Keleher’s work only displays the way in which members of elite institutions like the Yale School of Management can be so blind to the reality and context of life in Puerto Rico.
To Former Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Education Julia Keleher:
During your time as the Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Education, you promoted the closing of over 400 public schools. You boasted that schools were mostly back to normal just weeks after Hurricane Maria, despite the fact that many schools still did not have power well into January of 2018.
Rather than overseeing plans that would put the public school system onto a path of genuine recovery and growth, you pushed the creation of charter schools. In addition to this quasi-privatization of public schools, you blatantly spoke out about your intentions to meld schools with the private sector. You even boldly stated that students in Culebra should start being trained to be streamlined into the tourism industry, as if tourism should be prioritized as the only viable option for young Puerto Rican students as they grow up.
Even now as you step down from your former position, you will receive a salary of $250,000 just to serve as an advisor the education department of Puerto Rico. This is more than 10 times the average salary of a teacher in Puerto Rico, which only further highlights the longstanding disrespect you have exemplified for the public school teachers of PR. You have described unionized teachers engaging in peaceful civil disobedience as “violent” in attempts to invalidate their defense of an uncompromised public school system. Teacher unions have been part of the foundation of Puerto Rican cultural preservation, as they were key activists in the fight against English-only education efforts in the 1900’s and for keeping Puerto Rican history and cultural traditions in curriculum.
PR’s community of teachers has already been damaged by recent anti-union legislation, and your proposed charter schools would only further harm it as teachers and locally elected school board members are largely left out of their decision making process. These charter schools which you proudly explain are schools that use government funding yet are run privately (or in other words, not run democratically) further expose the colonial government practices already present in PR, which you uphold.
Beyond the political tone-deafness of the “reform” you have implemented in Puerto Rico, your sureness of their success only speaks to how little you understand life in Puerto Rico and the students you are meant to serve. PR residents know how long it can take to travel around the island due to road congestion and a lack of reliable public transportation. Forcing teachers to work 2 hours away from home through your merging of public schools is hugely disrespectful to their time and value. Working parents also cannot just drive their children to far away schools when buses are not available. Furthermore, the higher number of buses that would be required to transport students to school would only worsen the air pollution which causes Puerto Rican children to suffer some of the highest rates of asthma in the world.
Charter schools also consistently underserve and exclude students with special education needs, which account for more than 40% of all Puerto Rican students. This must not be ignored in plans for PR’s public school system.
The island’s limited funds for public education should be used to repair and update existing school buildings, not spent on unnecessary and detrimental charter schools and temporary trailers. You have relied on the emigration of families after Hurricanes Maria and Irma to justify your closing of schools, but basic logic dictates that closing schools would only worsen the conditions that made them leave in the first place. For many Puerto Ricans, moving to the mainland US was not meant to be a permanent relocation, but your “reform” only makes it harder for families to eventually return to their homes. You are closing pillars of local communities, which in turn weakens the entire island’s social and economic progress.
Though perhaps said jokingly, perhaps said in attempts to ameliorate the image of a non-Puerto Rican undermining the island’s public school system, you have referred to Puerto Rico as your “adopted land.” Though being Puerto Rican is not just about where you live and the diaspora is an integral part of the community, a fundamental part of Puerto Rican identity is a deep shared history of struggle and resilience, which you can never be a part of. This is especially true with your commitment to your role remaining outside of the sphere of the island’s politics. While the support of public education should always be bipartisan, no current administrative position in Puerto Rico is apolitical, especially not under the undemocratically appointed fiscal control board of PROMESA.
Sincerely,
Adriana Colón-Adorno
Yale College Class of 2020
Supporters of this Letter:
Dr. Adriana Garriga-López
Department Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College in Michigan
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/04/05/striking-defiant-tone-julia-keleher-defends-her-tenure-in-puerto-rico/?comments=true#disqus_thread
She has the Reformer talking points down.
40% of Puerto Rico’s students are special ed? Yikes. It’s 20% in my district, and that’s considered sky-high.
Generational poverty, little early intervention, poor health care, substandard housing and environmental toxins make that happen.
Here’s another key note:
Elisa Villanueva Beard
CEO, TEACH FOR AMERICA
Does it bother anyone in ed reform that they exclude everyone who doesn’t adopt the ed reform line from what are billed as “education forums”?
It’s an echo chamber. There’s no diversity of opinion at all. How many times can they hear the same speech from TFA? A hundred? A thousand? Does the room burst into flames if they hear from someone who is NOT in the club?
It is REALLY ODD that people who supposedly work full time on “public education” completely exclude public schools, public school advocates, public school teachers and leaders. It’s bizarre, especially given that everything they come up with in these gatherings of the Best and Brightest is then pushed immediately INTO public schools.
There is no diversity of opinion allowed at most teacher conferences (e.g. CTA’s Good Teaching Conference or the California Council of Social Studies Annual Conference) either. All the presentations must toe the party line. Currently that’s Common Core and constructivism. You’ll never find a presenter who critiques either. It’s an echo chamber. What’s strangest for me is that no one even notices the intellectual monoculture. This is not healthy for the profession.
Right on the nose with “you’ll never find a presenter who critiques.” So many “educational experts” and “educational consultants” being hired and dearly paid, but zero interest in recognizing or discussing anything which lies outside the echo chamber box.
The letter writer, Adriana Colón-Adorno, found support from Dr. Adriana Garriga-López Department Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Kalamazoo College in Michigan.
Too bad that Yale retains a colonial view of Puerto Rico and feels entitled to honor a person who perpetuates that view (along with Trump and his many friends). There should be a high visibility protest on the Yale campus. I doubt if that will happen.
I wonder if faculty and students working at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence will be participating in this event. That Center is clearly interested in having students “manage” their feelings” and markets a “ruler” for mapping and regulating feelings–no need to pay attention to justified outrages such as Adriana’s and thousands of other Puerto Ricans. The larger question is why Yale has a school for “mangement education” as if the problems of education are merely managerial.
http://ei.yale.edu/ruler/ruler-overview/
Laura,
Thank you for: “Too bad that Yale retains a colonial view of Puerto Rico and feels entitled to honor a person who perpetuates that view (along with Trump and his many friends).”
The people born and bred in Hawai’i have had to deal with that COLONIAL mentality since forever. I know. And it’s not so subtle, too.
As usual in ed reform, the singular and exclusive focus in Puerto Rico was charters and private schools:
“SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Puerto Rico’s governor signed an education reform bill Thursday to create charter schools and vouchers and help turn around a department long known for its bureaucracy and struggles to administer dwindling resources. ”
Public schools are always, always the dead last priority. There’s rarely even a specific mention of them- they are tacked on at the end as a kind of catch-all category.
So if you’re a public school family or student in Puerto Rico you’re looking at this “reinvention” and 1. you’re not included in any positive plan, and, 2. they may close your school. You’re either neglected completely or harmed.
They’re not anti-public school in ed reform. That would indicate some effort or energy, even if wholly negative. Those families and students simply don’t exist to them.
I heard recently that the dynamic mayor of San Juan is running for Governor.
Her victory would change a lot of this story.
Julia Keleher – from the people’s POV:
We can always read the BS from these religious education reformers like Julia and Betsy. But what are they thinking really? Aren’t there any leaked information on this?
UNDERSTANDING MISS KELEHER
On February 6, 2018 Puerto Rico’s Education Secretary Julia Keleher said the following to the El Nuevo Dia newspaper in an article called “EDUCACIÓN INICIARÍA CON 14 ESCUELAS CHARTER”: “When are we going to stop talking about teacher’s rights and start talking about options for our students?” In her blind infatuation with the School Choice Movement Miss Keleher has forgotten the simple fact that teacher’s working conditions are student’s learning conditions.
UNDERSTANDING MISS KELEHER
Our protagonist, Miss Keleher has grace, elegance, wit, a sunny disposition and a warm smile that could charm you into jumping off a building. She seems to really enjoy displaying a curious combination of beauty, charm, ingenuity and helplessness, like a damsel in distress who reads Machiavelli. There is a reason why her critics have compared her to the Japanese super hero, Sailor Moon. She can smile and wave at the crowds like a Disney Princess, she can talk like a victim, act like a victim and cry her eyes out on YouTube until she’s blue in the face… Julia Keleher is not a Betsy DeVos clone and she is not Penelope Pitstop…. Miss Keleher just can’t understand why these teachers and their unions can’t understand the validity of what she is trying to do. If she could step out of her “white savior” persona she’d see that the answer is simple and has been in front of her the whole time: because she is wrong.
THE JULIA KELEHER MYSTERIES
Informative articles but I’d take out the repeated references to Keleher’s attractiveness. It reminds me of Al Franken’s infatuation with Ann Coulter, and imo it has similar roots in reality. 🙂