Archives for category: Closing schools
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Oakland Strike: Teachers and District at Odds About Privatization

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2019 //
4

 

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement by Keith Brown

President, Oakland Education Association,

on

Status of Contract Talks

 

I do not believe that it is helpful to bargain contracts through the media. Up until now I have refrained from discussing details to give the negotiating team on both sides room to bargain. However, after seeing a series of misleading reports come out of the administration today, I think it’s time to set the record straight.

 

The district says they have moved closer to OEA’s position on salary. Implied in their statement is that significant movement has happened since the strike began. This is untrue. The fact is they have yet to make an offer that will keep experienced teachers in Oakland.

 

The administration would lead you to believe this is only about salary. The state trustee has now joined this disinformation campaign.

 

Let me be clear, the union believes our students should have access to school nurses, counselors, school psychologists, librarians and other specialists. Class sizes are just too big and hinder the ability of our educators to give students the attention they deserve. These were also the issues on the table in the recent teachers’ strike in Los Angeles. In that strike, labor and management, with the help of outside mediators, crafted solutions that brought in dollars from the county and state to fund more nurses and counselors and lower class size. We should find similar creative solutions here.

 

We also join Los Angeles in their fight for a cap on the rapid expansion of charter schools that comes at the expense of much needed resources at our neighborhood public schools – to the tune of $57 million a year.

 

School closings are a critical issue in Oakland. It should be discussed at the bargaining table – they refuse.

 

The district’s bargaining team either lacks the creativity or the authority to craft solutions to our students’ needs and our educators’ demands.

 

We appreciate the Superintendent of Public Instruction’s dedication to finding a solution that puts our teachers and students front and center in this fight.

 

It is clear that the district does not have the support of parents and the community and are resorting to lies and misinformation to try to bring the public to their side. We ask that people be mindful of these tactics. We should expect more from our district officials. When 19 out of every 20 teachers is walking the picket line joined by parents, when our rallies attract thousands, when 97 percent of our students stay home – it’s clear that this community wants what OEA demands.

###

The Oakland Education Association represents 3,000 OUSD educators, including teachers, librarians, counselors, nurses, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, therapists, substitutes, and early childhood and adult teachers. OEA is affiliated with the 325,000-member California Teachers Association and the 3 million-member National Education Association.

 

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Privatization

“Backpack Full of Cash” Showing in Philadelphia on January 27

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2019 //
1

“Backpack Full of Cash” is coming to Philadelphia, where most of it was filmed.

Narrated by Matt Damon, this feature-length documentary explores the growing privatization of public schools and the resulting impact on America’s most vulnerable children. Filmed in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Nashville and other cities, BACKPACK FULL OF CASH takes viewers through the tumultuous 2013-14 school year, exposing the world of corporate-driven education “reform” where public education — starved of resources — hangs in the balance.

2:00 PM – Sunday, January 27, 2019
Unitarian Society of Germantown
6511 Lincoln Drive, Phila., PA 19119
(parking lot is located BEHIND the building at GPS address 359 W. Johnson St, between Greene and Wayne Sts.)

Discussion following the film

Categories Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Philadelphia

New York: Is This the Worst Government Statement of Intent Ever?

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2019 //
38

Having worked for nearly two years in the federal bureaucracy, I have learned to decipher government documents (most of the time).

But this one, written under the name of New York Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia, is the worst tripe I have ever encountered.

I don’t understand it but it doesn’t sound good.

It sounds threatening and ominous. I hear the sound of punishment. Missing is any sign of hope or support.

Please let me know if you know what the plan is here.

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, New York

Leonie Haimson: Warning! The New York City Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, TFA!

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
15

After hearing from a parent in Brooklyn that decisions at the New York City Department of Education were being made by Broadies and TFA, Leonie Haimson did some digging. The parent was right. The same people appointed by Joel Klein more than a decade ago are still closing schools, imposing the portfolio model, and opening charters. De Blasio appointed Carmen Farina to run the DOE. Farina was Deputy Chancellor to Klein and left in a a dispute. But apparently she saw no reason to clean house.

Leonie shows that it is not only Broadies and TFA, but the nefarious Education Pioneers, another billionaire-funded outfit the is running the show in New York City.

Wake up, Bill de Blasio! You inherited the status quo! When if ever will you clean house?

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Portfolio District, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Eve L. Ewing Explains the Racist Purpose of School Closings

By dianeravitch
December 20, 2018 //
8

Eve Ewing has a fabulous bio, as author, academic, playwright, poet, and comic book hero.

She is also the author of the recent book about Rahm Emanuel’s historic closing of 50 schools in a single day, called “Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side.” I reviewed it here. It was the first book to my knowledge that tells the story of school closings from the perspective of the students, families, teachers, and communities.

Here she appears on the Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Speaking of ghosts, she will haunt Rahm Emanuel forever. Her book will be remembered long after he is forgotten.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Racism

Little Rock: African-American Minister Protests Plan for More School Closures

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2018 //
7

Dr. Anika T. Whitfield is a minister in Little Rock who speaks out against the steady encroachment of privatization. She recently wrote this letter to the State Commissioner of Education Johnny Key and Little Rock Superintendent Mike Poore. The district was taken over by the state because six of its 48 schools had low test scores. The State Commissioner Johnny Key is an engineer and a former legislator; among his notable positions: he voted to reduce unemployment compensation benefits, he opposed abortion, he voted to allow handguns on church property and to allow university staff to carry concealed weapons and to forbid the release of information about the holders of concealed weapons permits. He was appointed Commissioner of Education in 2015.

Dr. Whitfield writes:


Mr. Poore and Mr. Key,

There is great community concern about your recent announcement about more plans for school closures within our beloved LRSD.

No genuine, earnest efforts have been made on your behalf to engage the largest and most invested stakeholders in the LRSD: students, parents/guardians, in developing plans together before you have already developed plans and made impactful decisions of your own. And, to add insult to injury, you continue to deny students, parents and guardians the a viable opportunity to provide their wisdom and insight with you, and other LRSD administrators. Their wisdom and insight should be considered invaluable to you as the Little Rock School District Superintendent and appointed LRSD Board member and chair.

Your latest press conference, Mr. Poore, was another indication of your lack of respect for the true value of building healthy community relationships through direct open lines of communications, frequent meaningful experiences, and transparency. Your approaches lack all and most importantly, trust.

Mr. Poore, it is not acceptable that you, someone who has shown a personal lack of commitment to the well being and welfare of our city and county by choosing to not become a registered voter in the over two years with which you have resided in our community, continue to make decisions without making sincere efforts to work with the LRSD community that was unwillfully disenfranchised. Willfully exercising absolute power and authority over persons who have been wrongfully denied their rights to voice their vote is not mark of excellence in leadership, nor a sign of strength. It is an indication of fear and weakness.

Mr. Key, both you and Mr. Poore have continued to deny students, parents, guardians and the greater LRSD community the opportunity to make decisions about our children, our schools, and our community without just cause. We understand that the AR State Legislators empowered the State Board of Education to assume control over public school systems based on criteria that have become lawful. And, we are clear that the State Board of Education, prior to your appointment, decided to take over our entire district (48 schools), rather than voting to assist the six schools that were designated as being in academic distress instead.

We know that Governor Asa Hutchinson has been following the playbook of the charter school funders who have used similar tactics to take over public school systems by appointing persons who like you, Mr. Key, who have no certification nor experience as an educator nor as an academic administrator, to become Commissioner of Education.

What remains unclear is why you both have chosen this fate?

Why are you both willing to evoke violence against the most vulnerable children and families in our city? Why have you chosen to come to the largest city in our state with the largest population of students in a public school system who are African American and work to destroy their hopes, dreams, and aspirations along with their families by going along with a slow, but steady plan to destroy the Little Rock School District.

Where is your moral consciousness? Where is your moral character? Why are you choosing to aid in assassinating the hopes, dreams, and potentials of innocent children and their families?

It is beyond understanding how you could/would endeavor to work so diligently to destroy the LRSD community, one of the cornerstones of the city of Little Rock.

We are not unaware nor are we complacent. Systemic racism and poverty are alive and unwell in America, and right here in the city of Little Rock. We are working on both the cure and the sustainability plan of wellness to prevent the recurrence of these man-made epidemics.

This letter is an appeal to whatever remaining hope of justice lies within you. We ask that you release the LRSD community from bondage and free yourselves from bloodying your hands anymore.

Rev./Dr. Anika T. Whitfield

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Little Rock, Privatization

In the Public Interest: Betsy DeVos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates Want Your Child’s School to Close

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2018 //
29

Jeremy Mohler, of the nonpartisan “In the Public Interest” wrote this post:


The phone rings and a cold, automated voice says your kid’s school is closed tomorrow. A sign hangs on the school’s door saying there are “repair issues.”

That’s all parents of students at Florida’s Unity Charter School received. No word of the K-8 school closing for good. No mention that its building was just foreclosed on and will be auctioned off by the end of the year.

Luckily, the local public school district is ready to help. “If Unity Charter School is foreclosed, we’re happy to welcome students into our classrooms,” says its superintendent.

Turns out, it’s a common story. Students at charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, are two and a half times more likely to have their school close than those at traditional, neighborhood schools.

Between 2001 and 2013, nearly 2,500 charter schools closed nationwide, many because of low academic performance or because the private group in charge committed fraud or wasted public money.

Like Unity Charter School, they often have closed abruptly. A charter school in Sacramento, California, handed out letters at the end of the school day informing students that their school was shuttering that night. A Delaware charter school folded with a notice posted on its website, leaving parents and students confused. “Right now, I have no idea where my future is and that’s really heartbreaking to say for myself,” a student said in the aftermath.

Oh, and you guessed it, schools — neighborhood and charter — serving a larger share of students of color and students from low-income families are more likely to be shut down than schools with fewer students of color and similar education achievement.

But charter school closures aren’t just shockingly routine. They’re also a selling point for the deep-pocketed voices aiming to privatize public education.

Like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who once compared choosing a school to choosing which food truck you want to go to for lunch. “We must open up the education industry — and let’s not kid ourselves that it isn’t an industry,” she said.

And Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, whose infamous $100 million donation to Newark, New Jersey, in 2010 went to $1,000-a-day consultants who did little to improve education for the city’s students but closed neighborhood schools, replacing many with charter schools, some of which are now closing themselves.

And Bill Gates, who has spent millions pushing charter schools. The founder of Microsoft once said, “The freedom to perform in new ways means that if [charter schools] don’t perform, things are shut down after you are given a chance.”

It goes without saying that closing a school is disruptive to students. When charter schools close, many students return to their neighborhood schools and struggle to catch up. Dislocated students are less likely to graduate. A 2013 study found that school closures have contributed to Chicago’s high rate of youth incarceration.

But disruption is exactly what the likes of DeVos, Zuckerberg, and Gates want. They want public education to be like a marketplace, where private boards can decide whether they listen to parents or not, large corporate-like chains like KIPP and Rocketship dominate, and schools open and close overnight in a constant churn of “innovation.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Privatization

Bill Phillis: What Do Privatizers Do When They Fail?

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2018 //
20

That’s a trick question. Privatizers fail again and again, and when they fail, they double down on their failure.

After they takeover public schools, their replacement fails (unless it kicks out the students it doesn’t want and keeps only the ones that get high test scores).

After the charter school fails, it either remains open or is replaced by another charter school.

Charter lobbyists fight accountability in the state legislature. Accountability applies only to public schools.

When a charter fails and closes, it is never restored to the public, which paid for the school.

Bill Phillis of Ohio writes:

The anti-public common school horde is conjuring up more tricks to undermine the public common school system

The school privatization movement is being driven by a gaggle of somewhat diverse troops but all, intentionally or unintentionally, are working for the demise of traditional public education. Billions and billions from philanthropic organizations, foundations, corporations and wealthy individuals are being invested in the advancement of privately-operated alternatives to the public common school.

Strategies and motivations of privatizers differ but the goal is to transfer the governance of public schools from school communities to private groups and individuals.

The original charter concept of a teacher/parent schooling collaborative, in a contract with the board of education of a school district, has evolved into an out-of-control lucrative business enterprise.

After a couple decades of chartering, it is clear this industry does not and cannot outperform the public common school. Public support for chartering is waning. But charter industry leaders are ramping up efforts to take over entire districts for the purpose of advancing chartering. They campaign for charter-promoter board members, often with dark outside money. The district board of education, when dominated by charter advocates, then turns the district over to private-interests.

Another strategy is the establishment of the portfolio model within a school district. In this case, the control of the district is transferred to local units (charters and district schools) that are essentially controlled by private interests.

HB 70 (state takeover bill of the 131st General Assembly) has features of the portfolio model. HB 70 transfers powers of the board of education to a CEO. If school improvement does not happen under the CEO (which it won’t) the district can become a bevy of privately-operated charters.

Ohioans need to wake up to the portfolio movement of privatization, as well as other such schemes.

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 | ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://www.ohiocoalition.org

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Privatization

Chicago: Mike Klonsky Reviews Rahm’s Bragging about His Education Accomplishments

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2018 //
21

I sat in the Green Room at the Washington Post and watched Rahm Emanuel boast about his education accomplishments as his chancellor Janice Jackson smiled and agreed that he was the best mayor ever.

I had a hard time watching because I was sick to my stomach thinking about Rahm’s decision to close 50 public schools in one day, which I considered to be a major tragedy.

Jonathan Capehart, the moderator, asked about that decision, but Rahm spun it into a personal triumph.

Nothing was said about the dramatic decline of Chicago’s black population since 2000. About 200,000 people of color left Chicago The city blew up public housing, closed public schools, all in the segregated black community. Was this a policy of ethnic cleansing?

It worked!

Mike Klonsky reviewed Rahm’s lies here, at least it’s his part one.

Eve Ewing wrote the human and inhuman cost of school closings in her book, “Ghosts in the Schoolyard.” She taught in one of the schools he closed.

A Chicago station tallied the number of schools closed:

Chicago has closed or fired staff at 200 public schools since 2002, nearly 1/3 of entire district, affecting 70,160 children. Many new schools opened as replacements have already closed. https://interactive.wbez.org/generation-school-closings

This is nothing to boast about. This is disruption on a grand scale, treating black children and families like tissue paper.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Cruelty, Disruption, Education Industry, Fraud

New Orleans: Five Charters Closed, Other Charters Approved, Parents Outraged

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2018 //
7

If you should read Eve Ewing’s Ghosts in the Schoolyard, you will have the context for understanding the incessant disruption imposed on the students and parents of New Orleans. Parents were fearful that the superintendent planned to close schools and scatter their children.
At a recent meeting, the superintendent announced that he was closing five low-performing charter schools and approving a new group of charters. The superintendent, Henderson Lewis Jr., stressed how difficult these decisions were.

“This month has been a test for myself, my staff, this board and our system as a whole,” Lewis said. “It tested our courage, our consistency, and it tested humility.”

Parents were furious. They did not praise the superintendent and his staff for their courage and humility.

Because these were action items, the public was finally allowed to speak, and the meeting became heated at times. However, when speakers veered off topic — to school closures, for example — they were asked to leave the podium.

At one point, as the board asked a woman to stop talking the crowd reacted in a chant: “Let her talk! Let her talk! Let her talk!”

At another moment, organizer Ashana Bigard spoke from the audience.

“You represent us, when did you ask us?” Bigard asked. “Did anybody sit in a meeting where we discussed these changes?”

A collective “no” was the response.

Several speakers and people in the audience called for the district to directly run its schools.

One woman specifically criticized the nearly all-charter district. “Y’all are passing out charters like you’re Oprah or something. You get a charter. You get a charter. You get a charter.”

Another speaker pleaded with the board: “After tonight, please don’t close or charter any other school. If you’ve got a problem with administration, run the school don’t close the school.”

After the meeting, Bigard said she planned to help parents organize.

“We are organizing parents that want to come together to get real democracy and real choice,” she said. “We’re going to start our recall campaign tomorrow.”

She said she was particularly concerned with the trauma students experience when they’re moved from school to school.

“They’re picking on special needs children and black and brown children,” she said. “They get the least when they’re supposed to get the most.”

Forty percent of the charter schools in New Orleans are rated D or F. All of them are overwhelmingly black.

The superintendent thinks that he can make all of them excellent schools if he keeps closing those with low grades.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, New Orleans, Parents, Privatization
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