The privatizers got badly beaten in 2016, when they tried to lift the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts. Funded by the Waltons and the usual coven of billionaires, they asked the public to endorse a proposal to launch 12 charter schools every year, wherever they wanted to open. The referendum was overwhelmingly defeated, much to the surprise of its sponsors.
Governor Charlie Baker is a Republican who has appointed a choice-friendly State Board, so the privatizers have not given up hope for undermining democracy.
Now they are back with a proposal for “innovation zones.”
Jonathan Rodrigues writes:
In a world where we’re more and more accustomed to jargon inherited from corporate start up world like “disruption” and “big data”, “innovation” stands out as one of the most empty vessels in which we project meaning without much thought of it.
In the education world in particular, almost anything can be “innovative”. Even bringing back purposeful segregation and differential treatment under the guise of educational opportunity. Governor Baker’s latest “Innovation Partnership Zones” may be clever, but it’s certainly not very innovative.
If only segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace had known it would be this easy to fool people, he’d had changed his 1963 speech to “innovation today, innovation tomorrow, innovation forever!”.
So what are “Innovation Partnership Zones” (IPZs), and what would the governor’s bill do? It’s important to note here this idea has prominent Democratic support as well, it was only last year that Education Committee co-chair Alice Peisch (D-Wellesley) and Senator Eric Lesser (D-Longmeadow) sponsored very similar legislation.
The bill allows groups of 2 schools or more (or one school with more than 1,000 students) to create an IPZ which would allow an outside organization to manage these schools and give the “zone” autonomy over things like budget, hiring, curriculum, etc. Essentially third-partying away the public good, but doesn’t “partnership” sounds so much better than “takeover”?
The IPZ can be triggered in two main ways.
- Through local initiative of school committee members, a superintendent, a mayor, a teachers group or union, and parents. .
- Through the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) Commissioner’s choice from schools determined to be “underperforming” by high stakes testing metrics.
The process would then call for proposals jointly with an outside entity that may include nonprofit charter operators and higher ed institutions….
If past is prologue, the results should look familiar. Brown University Annenberg Institute’s 2016 report “Whose Schools?” analyzed the board composition of charter schools in Massachusetts. 60% of charter schools in the Commonwealth had no parent representation at all. 31% of charter board members were from the corporate sector, heavily from finance.
We should all look forward to our IPZs filled with executives from places like TD Bank, who certainly might live in the “region,”, but have no respect for Boston’s biggest neighborhood.
It is especially worrisome that IPZs will be inevitably pushed on communities of color, continuing a nationwide trend of stripping away voice from families of color from Philadelphia to Chicago, Detroit to New Orleans.
A 2015 Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools “Out Of Control” report examined the disenfranchisement of black and brown families through mechanisms such as appointed school boards, and state and district turnovers. In their 2014–15 analysis, there were 113 state takeover districts nationwide. 96 were handed to charter operators. 98% of affected students were Black and/or Latinx. In New Orleans, parents had to navigate 44 different governing authorities; in Detroit, 45.
The most important innovation of all would be the full funding of schools in poor communities.
He concludes:
In no place where black and brown families are the majority in the school district is the innovation of a fully funded quality public school with adequate staffing, special education services, mental health supports, art and music, full-time librarians, and school nurses ever even attempted.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Now they are back with a proposal for ‘innovation zones.'”
Keep coming back…just like cockroaches, don’t they?
just when you think you’ve killed the cockroach…it simply morphs
The “Innovation Zones” is a fancy title that will enable the suppression of democratic rights and local determination that will most likely result in enhanced segregation. These zones are designed by the privatizers to gain access and control over a segment of the public schools without having to put the proposal up to a public vote. “Innovation Zones” are designed to circumvent democracy.
“Whether intentionally or coincidentally, architects of Governor Baker’s bill might have borrowed significantly from a 2010 American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) model legislation.”
Not by coincidence, Florida is proposing a very similar bill that will create “Innovation Zones.” These proposals are the invisible hand of the Koch brothers working to move public money and democratic governance out of the hands of poor minority communities and turn all decisions over to corporations. What is surprising is that such a radical right wing proposal is being considered in Massachusetts. If you read the following description of what is proposed in Florida, the bills are very similar. Both bills take public matters out of the hands of the public. https://www.redefinedonline.org/2018/02/fla-house-tweaks-autonomous-school-proposal-create-innovation-zones/
What is surprising is that such a radical right wing proposal is being considered in Massachusetts.”
It’s only surprising if you have never lived there.
On the whole, the people are very gullible.
Witness the fact that so many Democrats often vote for Republican governors who quite transparently oppose their own interests.
Dems knew that Mitt Romney was a vulture capitalist and claimed two houses as his primary residence — one in Mass and one in Utah (so he could run for office in either state) — yet voted for him just the same.
The MIT corporation is inextricably linked to the Koch’s.
It’s where Aaron Schwartz was arrested for stealing something that was free. His suicide was attributed to hounding by prosecutors.
The Federalist Society produces right wing lawyers and judges, a fair share of whom, I presume are in the Northeast.
The same is true for New Jersey. There are lots of people with money in both areas. Lots of people work in financial services, ie hedge funds. They have enough money to leave a lasting impression on the government, and they promote reckless privatization.
I’ve been living in NJ for close to 30 yrs. There is any unique combination here: stubborn small-town-ism, residential segregation à la Long Island yet decidedly liberal statewide policy, old-style Dem cronyism, unionism, tolerance for racketeering, w/a pull at the south end of small-biz/ farmer conservatism. Perhaps I am naïve, but I don’t see evidence that reckless privatization by fin/ hedge-funders rules the roost. The big $ here is in RE, & unfettered constr/ devpt/ is the tail always threatening to wag the dog.
“old-style Dem cronyism, unionism, tolerance for racketeering” is being threatened by AOC. This has the old system in a panic.
It’s simple. We don’t need two school systems. Innovation is only a good thing if it promotes the values and goals we want. Segregation is a negative value. We need less of it, not more. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/04/its-innovative-but-is-it-really-better/?utm_term=.f4503a1c4256
It happens that I am working in one of these entities. The school in which I serve, the High School of Commerce in Springfield, Massachusetts, is part of the “Springfield Empowerment Zone.” I can’t speak for other schools in “the Zone,” as it is colloquially known, but I can tell you that if failure to adequately serve special needs populations, the creation of chaos, harsh disciplinary policies where the punishment always outpaces the crime, and a bloated and self-serving administration are innovations, then we are in this school innovating the heck out the the place!
If those aren’t innovations, then not. Never mind.
Also, another way that we “innovate” in this school is to use scripted, one-size-fits-all curricula pushed by big corporate publishers. The one I’ve been assigned has been especially innovative and effective in alienating the students I am charged with educating.
It sounds like you are experiencing what Diane R always tells us: if the reformers say one thing, they mean the opposite.
Funny you should say that, Roy. When I interviewed for this job last October, the principal of this school and one of the representatives of “the Zone” had looked at a lot of the adapted curriculum I developed for working with students with special needs in New York. And indeed, when I first arrived here, I began using that material successfully with my students here. We were actually developing self-motivated, engaged readers.
Three months in, however, they dumped a scripted literacy curriculum on me that is plainly inappropriate for the population I currently serve. When I presented it, thinking the kids would be willing to give it a try. What I heard from them is some variation on this: “Mister, teachers have been pushing these stupid books on me since fifth grade. I’m not reading that.”
That’s what empowerment looks like to these bureaucrats.
“Loopy Reform”
Möbius loop
Escher stair
Bottom is top
Cheat is fair
Up is down
Back is fore
Round and round
Reformer lore
“Truth be Told”
Truth be told
I never lie
Hot is cold
And live is die
Up is down
Wrong is right
Square is round
And day is night
Deform’s reform
Reformspeak game:
Lie is norm
And truth is lame
“How do you spell RESPECT?
How do you spell RESPECT?
With Common Core and VAM
With poverty neglect
And “public” charter scam
With NCLB waivers
And sleazy Deasy deals
With Billyanaires as saviors
And “civil rights” appeals
With marketing and hype
And testing till they drop
With Chetty study tripe
And Races to the Top
You spell it with a book
As far as I can tell
Should really have a look
A book by George Orwell
Thanks, Roy. Sanity begins when you understand Reformer language as Opposite Talk.
You have my sympathy. These programs are sucking the life out of real public education.
sometimes we simply have to wonder if the goal IS to alienate the kids, to make them hate learning and to run from schools — the less kids know, the dumber they can be kept, the easier it is for professional political manipulators to do just that: manipulate them
Absolutely, Ciedie–I’ve wondered that right along.
Frankly I don’t think the folks pushing this crap think beyond next quarter’s bottom line. The problem is big private $ calling the shots re: public goods.
The word “innovation” is a PR label like “school choice” and “pro-life”. The words are selected because they don’t evoke negative associations. Those fighting back against the richest 0.1% are forced into a linguistic position that puts them at a disadvantage. Media always uses the vernacular that serves the rich e.g.. “outsourcing”
which is truthfully, worker exploitation and disregard for health and safety.
😀 Linda you are so right. Takes me back to my youth in the dawn of TV advertising, when every product was hailed with a blared: NEW!
Leaves us in the position of shouting from the steps of tradtional brick & mortars: OLD!
We now live in a United States where we should not accept anything we hear through the Internet until the source proves itself and then spot check to make sure that source stays as honest and accurate as possible.
Most of the traditional media is reliably honest in reporting news, but no one should trust what they read or hear from an Op-Ed without doing some fact checking.
While most traditional media sources are somewhat biased one way or the other, do not forget that bias does not mean they are lying. It just means they are leaning one way or the other.
Thank you, Lloyd. What you say here about traditional media sources applies to our governmental spokesmen as well. I am so sick of congressmen and senators implying that their opposite numbers, or folks they are questioning are lying– even openly calling each other liars– immediately converting interchange to the level of name-calling, preventing any semblance of governing.