Archives for category: Closing schools
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The Boston Municipal Research Bureau Works for the Trump-DeVos Agenda

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2017 //
5

Jon Shore writes about the Boston Municipal Research Bureau:

“The goal of Boston Municipal Research Bureau Samuel Tyler is to dummy down the Boston Public Schools. The “bold reform” that Samuel Tyler is always talking about is closing and consolidating schools, warehousing children and hiring unqualified, uncertified TFA “corps members” and TNTP “fellows.” These people would never be hired in the tony Massachusetts suburbs of Weston, Wellesley, or Holliston, where Samuel Tyler lives, so why would he entertain hiring them here to educate vulnerable children in Boston Public Schools?

“Boston Municipal Research Bureau Sam Tyler represents the large businesses and institutions that depend on a low wage, no benefit, service sector workforce to maintain their status quo! In Boston, the accommodation and food service industry provides the largest number of jobs and pays the lowest wages.

“Someone needs to make all those beds and Latte’s down in the waterfront and the ugly truth is members of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau are targeting urban youth in Boston for those jobs. That’s their back-up plan as ICE continues to arrest and remove undocumented workers from the state. You have to consider this with ICE being able to snatch undocumented people, currently filling many of those service sector jobs, at roadblocks as they did a few weeks ago in New Hampshire! Three of those detained were Boston Public School students.”

http://nhpr.org/post/three-children-among-25-undocumented-immigrants-detained-nh-highway-checkpoint#stream/0

Categories Accountability, Boston, Charter Schools, Closing schools

Sixty Years Later, Little Rock Is Under Attack Again!

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2017 //
4

Sixty years ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the 101st Airborne to protect the brave black children who dared to integrate the public schools of Little Rock.

The students withstood taunts, jeers, even stones. They persisted, with the dream and hope of one day having a school system that welcomed all children.

Now, Little Rock activist Anika Whitfield writes, Little Rock is under attack again.

Now it is the Walton family and other billionaires who are intent to closing public schools, opening privately managed charter schools, and dominating black and brown children.

Like many major metropolitan cities in the United States, Little Rock is experiencing the evils of unfounded and manufactured fear about black and brown children that translates beyond white flight (as we experienced soon after the Brown vs. Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas ruling in 1954) and into a calculated systemic effort by U.S. billionaires, like the Walton Family ― who are natives of Arkansas ― to create a new form of discrimination: charter (private-public) schools and voucher systems. And, as they have been successful in doing so in many vulnerable cities like Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia, they have also been successful in increasing their prison industrial system to meet the demands of their calculated systems of racism and classism. Together, these systems have been intentionally created to fester more criminal activity in the very neighborhoods and communities that are now absent of public schools.

The Waltons engineered a state takeover of the Little Rock school district. Their hand-picked managers have closed schools in black and brown communities.

If they get their way, public education in Little Rock will be a memory.

We won’t even remember why those brave children fought to integrate the public schools in 1957. Because there won’t be any public schools.

Racism comes in many forms.

Categories Closing schools, Little Rock, Walton Foundation

Steven Singer: Closing Schools Doesn’t Raise Test Scores!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2017 //
16

Steven Singer wrote a great post about a study by corporate reformers proving that they are wrong. Will they care that one of their favorite tactics is a failure? Of course not.

https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/26/study-closing-schools-doesnt-increase-test-scores/

Open the link to read it all and to see the links he cites.

He writes:

“You might be tempted to file this under ‘No Shit, Sherlock.’

“But a new study found that closing schools where students achieve low test scores doesn’t end up helping them learn. Moreover, such closures disproportionately affect students of color.

“What’s surprising, however, is who conducted the study – corporate education reform cheerleaders, the Center for Research on EDucation Outcomes (CREDO).

“Like their 2013 study that found little evidence charter schools outperform traditional public schools, this year’s research found little evidence for another key plank in the school privatization platform.

“These are the same folks who have suggested for at least a decade that THE solution to low test scores was to simply close struggling public schools, replace them with charter schools and voilà.

“But now their own research says “no voilà.” Not to the charter part. Not to the school closing part. Not to any single part of their own backward agenda.

“Stanford-based CREDO is funded by the Hoover Institution, the Walton Foundation and testing giant Pearson, among others. They have close ties to the KIPP charter school network and privatization propaganda organizations like the Center for Education Reform.

“If THEY can’t find evidence to support these policies, no one can!

“After funding one of the largest studies of school closures ever conducted, looking at data from 26 states from 2003 to 2013, they could find zero support that closing struggling schools increases student test scores.

“The best they could do was find no evidence that it hurt.

“But this is because they defined student achievement solely by raw standardized scores. No other measure – not student grades, not graduation rates, attendance, support networks, community involvement, not even improvement on those same assessments – nothing else was even considered.

“Perhaps this is due to the plethora of studies showing that school closures negatively impact students in these ways. Closing schools crushes the entire community economically and socially. It affects students well beyond academic achievement.”

Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Research

Mike Klonsky: Rahm Plans to Close Another School

By dianeravitch
July 30, 2017 //
3

Mike Klonsky writes about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s efforts to close another school. Rahm has left his mark as the Great Destroyer of Public Schools in Chicago.

http://michaelklonsky.blogspot.com/2017/07/fighting-another-rahm-school-closure-at.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+mikeklonsky+(SmallTalk)&m=1

Mike and his brother Fred interviewed two members of the elected school council of an elementary school called National Teachers Academy, which they are fighting to save.

“It’s both an inspiring and heart-breaking tale of a school community that has managed to survive and thrive despite district misleadership and the rigors of 15 years of top-down, corporate-style reform, only to find itself on the chopping block. After finally achieving Level 1 status, NTA has been marked for closure. Its students could be moved into an expanded (1,800 students) South Loop Elementary — an elementary school that size is criminal — and NTA turned into a new high school for Chinatown…

“The school was launched in 2002 against the background of gentrification of the South Loop neighborhood, with a fancy misleading title (it was never a national teacher training academy) under the direction of a consortium of 15 school partners including universities who promised to deliver strong professional development for teachers at a neighborhood school.

“Instead, what the school got was a takeover by a private turnaround company, AUSL, leading to teacher firings and principal churn. Since 2006, the school has stabilized, developed a strong teacher residency program in partnership with UIC and has now been declared a Level 1 school, based on its rising test scores. Most of the credit for the gains goes to the school’s teachers and students as well as its two most recent principals, Amy Rome and Isaac Castelaz.

“Niketa and Elisabeth’s story recalled the legacy of then-CEO Arne Duncan’s so-called Renaissance 2010 reform initiative which was launched by Mayor Daley in 2004. It called for the closing of more than 80 schools to be replaced by 100 shiny new charters, contract schools, performance schools, turnaround schools, etc…by the year 2010.

“I still remember Duncan speaking to Dodge Elementary parents who were angry over his handing their school over to AUSL, without any input from the community, and promising them that they would be thrilled with his new Renaissance alternatives. But by 2013, CPS was already closing many of the schools Duncan had created.

“Ren 10 was a disaster on all levels. But it was the manufactured spin of this debacle as a “Chicago Miracle” which paved the way for Duncan’s appointment as head of the Department of Education.

“WBEZ’s Becky Vevea wrote at the time:

“In 2008, Dodge was where then president-elect Barack Obama announced Duncan as his pick for Secretary of Education.

“He’s shut down failing schools and replaced their entire staffs, even when it was unpopular,” Obama said at the time. “This school right here, Dodge Renaissance Academy, is a perfect example. Since this school was revamped and reopened in 2003, the number of students meeting state standards has more than tripled.”

“But fast forward another five years, Dodge and Williams are closing their doors.

“This story must have a familiar ring to the parents and students at NTA.

“But, as Elisabeth assured us yesterday, “We’re gonna win… We are an army of parents and allies from all over the city. This is not over.”

“I believe her.”

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Emanuel, Rahm, Failure, Privatization, Turnaround Schools

Florida: The Corruption and Conflicts of Interest Behind the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2017 //
15

In some states, like Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, charter operators get what they want by making campaign contributions to state legislators and the governor.

Florida is different. The charter operators and members of their families are members of the legislature. They shamelessly engage in self-dealing. You may well wonder: How can this be legal? I don’t know.

This article in the Miami Herald by Fabiola Santiago describes the flagrant abuse of power that typifies charter legislation.

He writes:

“Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke.

“If they weren’t, they would protect Floridians from legislators who profit from the charter-school industry in private life and have been actively involved in pushing — and successfully passing — legislation to fund for-profit private schools at the expense of public education.

“Some lawmakers earn a paycheck tied to charter schools.

“One of them is Rep. Manny Diaz, the Hialeah Republican who collects a six-figure salary as chief operating officer of the charter Doral College and sits on the Education Committee and the K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee.

“Some lawmakers have close relatives who are founders of charter schools.

“One of them is the powerful House Speaker, Richard Corcoran, the Land O’Lakes Republican whose wife founded a charter school in Pasco County that stands to benefit from legislation. He was in Miami Wednesday preaching the gospel of charter schools as “building beautiful minds.”

“Other lawmakers are founders themselves or have ties to foundations or business entities connected to charter schools.

“One of them is Rep. Michael Bileca, the Miami Republican who chairs the House Education Committee and is listed as executive director of the foundation that funds True North Classical Academy, attended by the children of another legislator. Bileca is also a school founder.

“These three legislators were chief architects in the passage of a $419 million education bill that takes away millions of dollars from public schools to expand the charter-school industry in Florida at taxpayer expense.

“They crafted the most important parts of education bill HB 7069 in secret, acting in possible violation of the open government laws the Legislature is perennially seeking to weaken. There was no debate allowed and educators all across the state were left without a voice in the process.

“It’s no wonder it all went down in the dark. It’s a clear conflict of interest for members of the Florida Legislature who have a stake in charter schools to vote to fund and expand them. Their votes weaken the competition: public schools.

“This issue has nothing to do with being pro or against school choice. It’s about the abuse of power and possible violations of Florida statutes.

“The bill funds, to the tune of $140 million, an expansion of for-profit charter schools in the neighborhoods of D and F public schools, handing over to the private sector not only public money but allowing and encouraging charter schools to take the best students. In other words, instead of pouring those public resources into struggling public schools, the Legislature is turning publicly funded education into two school systems. In the struggling but also vibrant public system where choice already exists through magnets, there’s oversight and regulations that ensure standards. The charter system — which since its inception has demonstrated quite a range, including well-documented flops — is a free-for-all. Private corporations operating the schools make the rules.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article151418277.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding

Indianapolis: As School Board Plans to Close Public Schools, Interlopers Arrive to Open New Charters

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2017 //
19

I wrote a few posts last week (see here and here) about the devastation of public schools in Indianapolis by corporate reformers. Their short term goal is to close public schools and replace them with privately managed charters. In the meanwhile, they are eliminating the neighborhood high school concept and requiring students to choose a high school based on its programs, not its proximity to home. They are preparing young people to be consumers and busting up any sense of community. The long term goal is the death of public education in Indianapolis.

The major movers of corporate reform in Indianapolis are the Mind Trust, which leads the privatization movement, abetted by Stand for Children, which brings in big bucks to buy elections for the corporate reform plan.

Remember, this is Mike Pence’s state, where rightwing extremists run the state.

Now comes another addition to the reform firmament of community disruption.

“A pair of Chicagoans are moving to Indianapolis in the next few weeks, and they are bringing with them a sense of urgency that defines the best of what you can find in many schools and classrooms. It’s an urgency that is critical for so many children who face immense challenges and the risk of lost potential.

“Deeply concerned about children locked in poverty, Jacob Allen and Marie Dandie founded a nonprofit after-school program in Chicago four years ago. They built pilotED around the concepts of civic engagement and a belief in the broader benefits of helping students develop a pride and belief in themselves. They peppered the curriculum with lessons centered on the lives and neighborhoods of the students they served.”

Allen and Dandie say their hallmark is “urgency.” Apparently no teachers or principals in Indianapolis public schools have that sense of urgency that this pair will bring with them to Indianapolis.

Not surprisingly, the two are TFA alums. They were recently recognized by a Forbes on its “30 Under 30” list in education. If they are under 30, how long have they been educators? How long did they stick with the school they started in Chicago?

Disruption is the hallmark of the Mind ztrust. It just got a gift of $7 million from the Lily Endowment to keep on with its plans for more disruption and innovation. Its goal is privatization of public education in Indianapolis. The Mind Trust is an affront to democracy.

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Indianapolis, Privatization

Wendy Lecker: How Chicago Targeted Black and Latino Schools and Communities for Destruction

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2017 //
8

This article is an excellent analysis by civil rights lawyer Wendy Lecker of the deliberate destruction of public education in black and Latino neighborhoods in Chicago.

Chicago has purposely sacrificed the needs of black and Latino students while protecting and enhancing the needs of white students. We have to bear in mind what Rahm Emanuel told CTU leader Karen Lewis when he was first elected: about a quarter of these kids are uneducable. Everything else flows from that assumption.

Open the article to read the links. The most astonishing point noted here is that Chicago’s public schools OUTPERFORM its charter schools!

Lecker writes:

“Chicago is this nation’s third largest city, and among its most segregated. Recently, several unrelated reports were released about education policy in Chicago that, together, provide a vivid picture of the divergent views policymakers of have of public education; depending on who is served.
As reported by researchers at Roosevelt University, between 2009-2015, Chicago permanently closed 125 neighborhood schools, ostensibly because of low enrollment or poor performance.

“The standard Chicago used for low enrollment was 30 students to one elementary classroom — an excessively large class size, especially for disadvantaged children.

“The school closures occurred disproportionately in neighborhoods serving African-American, Latino and economically disadvantaged students. Professors Jin Lee and Christopher Lubienski found that Chicago’s school closures had a markedly negative effect on accessibility to educational opportunities for these vulnerable populations. Students had to travel longer distances to new schools; often through more dangerous areas.

“School closures harm entire communities. As Georgia State Law Professor Courtney Anderson found, where neighborhood schools were a hub for community activities, vacant schools become magnets for illegal activity. Moreover, buildings in disuse pose health and environmental dangers to the community. Vacant buildings depress the value of homes and businesses around them, increase insurance premiums and insurance policy cancellations. In addition, the school district must pay for maintenance of vacant buildings.

“Although Chicago claimed to close schools to save money, the savings were minimal — at great cost to the communities affected.

“At the same time Chicago leaders closed 125 neighborhood schools, they opened 41 selective public schools and 108 charter schools; more than they closed. Chicago charter schools underserve English Language Learners and students with disabilities, and have suspension and expulsion rates ten times greater than Chicago’s public schools. Even more astounding, despite the self-selecting and exclusive nature of charters, researcher Myron Orfield found that Chicago’s public schools outperform charters on standardized test passing and growth rates in both reading and math, and high school graduation rates.

“The Roosevelt University researchers found that the expansion of Chicago charter schools devastated the public school budget, contributing to massive cuts of basic educational resources in Chicago’s public schools. Moreover, many of these new charters have remained open despite falling below the “ideal enrollment” standard used to close neighborhood public schools.

“The education policies of Chicago’s leaders force its poor children and children of color to attend under-resourced schools, often at a great distance from their neighborhoods, on a pretext of under-enrollment and poor performance. Officials fail to consider the devastating effects school closures have on educational opportunities or on the health of entire communities.

“Chicago promised to use the proceeds of the sales of vacant schools to improve those neighborhoods. Yet, city leaders instead used those funds for school capital projects. A WBEZ investigation found that Chicago’s new school construction and additions disproportionately benefit schools that serve white, middle class students, even though white students are far less likely to suffer overcrowded schools than Latino students, whose schools do not see the benefit of capital spending.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Chicago, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Fraud, Privatization, Racism

The Corporate Raid on Public Schools in Indianapolis: School Board Election Corrupted by Dark Money

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
5

At the recent school board meeting of Indianapolis Public Schools, Professor Jim Scheurich of Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis got up to speak. The story he tells is similar to what happened in Denver, where Stand for Children, DFER, and other conduits for anonymous donors bought every seat on the elected school board, swamping the opposition with cash they could not match.

This was his testimony:

“My name is Dr. Jim Scheurich.

“I have been a professor of education for 25 years, first at the University of Texas at Austin and then at Texas A&M University and now at IUPUI.

“Throughout those 25 years, I have studied school success in urban districts, even winning a couple of major national awards as a scholar.

“Based on having studied some of the best urban districts in the country, I would have to say that the IPS school board and administration are among the lowest quality I have seen.

“This conclusion is particularly evident in the many negative issues that have arisen in the school closing processes and decisions.

“What I want to address about these negative issues is how we came to have this particular school board that follows an agenda that consistently disregards what the community wants, like closing legacy high schools.

“Up until 2010, an ordinary citizen of Indianapolis could win a school board seat for $3-5,000.
Starting in 2012, Stand for Children and the Mind Trust provided over $50,000 each for their candidates. Over the last 3 elections, Stand for Children and the Mind Trust have provided around $1.5 million to elect all but one school board member, Elizabeth Gore.

“This means that six of the seven board members became board members through the purchase of our local democracy. This means they owe their allegiance to the agenda of Stand for Children and the Mind Trust and NOT to the Indianapolis community.

“It seems to me that the big money election of these six board members is certainly anti-community and anti-democracy.

“But this is not the end of this scary story.

“The $1.5 million spent on the last three elections flowed through Stand for Children that used a tax designation, 501c4, to hide the source of that money and the ways they spend it.

“Why would Stand for Children and the Mind Trust try to hide the sources and spending of all of this money if they are as community oriented as they say they are?

“What they don’t want you to know is that much of this big money is coming from wealthy individuals and organizations from all around the country.

“Because then you might ask why do wealthy folks who may never set foot in Indianapolis want to buy our school board?

“You also might ask why the same wealthy folks from around the country are doing exactly the same agenda in 35 other urban centers.

“Why are wealthy folks from around the country purchasing so many urban school boards? Why are these 35 purchased school boards following the same agenda, like closing legacy high schools and supporting the opening of charter high schools?

“We in Indianapolis do not want to follow some national agenda created by wealthy individuals and organizations from outside Indianapolis.

“Instead we want to follow an agenda that is Indianapolis centered and focuses on the voices and needs of ordinary Indianapolis people of all races and incomes.

“And, thus, what we don’t need is any closing of our legacy high schools.”

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Indianapolis, Privatization, Stand for Children

Indianapolis Plans to Close Three Public High Schools, with No Community Input

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2017 //
91

There is something very sad about watching a community’s public schools die.

The Indianapolis Public Schools superintendent has recommended the closing of three public high schools due to low enrollments. These are neighborhood schools that were the heart of their communities. Two will be converted to middle schools. The other is in a gentrifying neighborhood and will probably be sold to developers.

Only four public high schools will remain in the entire district if this plan is endorsed by the board. There will be no more neighborhood high schools. Students will be expected to choose their school based on its program, not its proximity to home.

“IPS enrollment has fallen precipitously over the last five decades from a peak of more than 100,000 students to fewer than 30,000 in the last school year. Its high school enrollment is just more than 5,000 students; its seven buildings have capacity for nearly 15,000.”

The Indianapolis Public School District is controlled by two privatizing groups: the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, and the voucher-happy Friedman Foundation. Charter schools in the city are the third largest district in the state. Mind Trust, Stand for Children, and the Friedman Foundation exist to destroy public schools, and they are doing a bang-up job in Indianspolis.

Indianapolis, under the thumb of corporate reformers, has numerous charter high schools. Curiously, their performance is worse than the public high schools whose students they were supposed to “save.”

Do the privatizers learn nothing from their failures? Answer: No. Never.

A community activist wrote this in a personal note:

“No other options were considered by the Task Force appointed by the Superintendent. The Task Force included no parents, no students, no teachers, no principals, and no community members who weren’t real estate developers, charter school financiers, family members of charter school founder/Board chair, etc etc. Most of the IPS central office members on the Task Force have lived in Indiana for 3 years or less, it appears.”

From another community activist:

“This is not the IPS Board’s final decision; this is the superintendent’s recommendation, but it is likely to be what happens.

“Not surprisingly, they completely ignored the community input.

“If you do not like this decision, go to the Board meeting tomorrow night, 6 pm, 120 East Walnut, John Morton Finney Center.”

The resistance to privatization communicates through this Facebook page as We Are IPS:

There is something I don’t understand about the so-called”reformers,” who have run the district for years. They don’t believe in community. They believe in consumerism. They see the relationship between families and schools as a transaction, involving no sense of loyalty, no sentiment.

They fail, fail, fail, and they learn nothing. Their experiments on the children and schools of Indianapolis have been a catastrophe.

What makes them tick?

If IPS dies, this much is sure: It was murdered by “reform.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Reform, Failure, Indianapolis, School Choice

Mark Naison: How the Democratic Party Fatally Damaged Itself by Attacking Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2017 //
81

Mark Naison and I agree. When the Democratic Party joined the campaign to impose high-stakes testing, accountability, and privatization, it attacked a key element of its own base. He says it began with Bill Clinton’s advocacy for standards, testing, and accountability. Then, the Democrats threw their support behind George W. Bush’s disastrous No Child Left Behind. Then Obama brought in Arne Duncan to bribe the states with $5 billion for the disastrous Race to the Top program, which demoralized teachers, made them scapegoats, and closed thousands of schools in impoverished communities while favoring privately managed charter schools. I argued in The New Republic that the Democratic Party paved the way for Betsy DeVos and her crusade to replace public schools with anything other than public schools. Charters under private management are the gateway drug leading to vouchers to replace public schools.

Mark wrote that Democrats have no one to blame but themselves.

He writes:

Ever since the Clinton Presidency, the Democratic Party has been an advocate of top-down school reforms whose goal has been to make the nation more economically competitive and reduce inequality. Not only have these policies failed to achieve their stated objectives, they have destabilized communities where Democrats have traditionally found support, created widespread distress among teachers and parents, and given credence to the conservative critique of the DP as the province of technocratic elites who impose policies on people without really listening to them

Every Democratic politician who has promoted the following education policies, I would argue, has been complicit in the Party’s decline

1. Promotion of national testing and test based accountability standards for public schools.

2. Closing of schools which are deemed “failing” and removal of their teachers and administrators.

3. Preference for charter schools over public schools, especially in high poverty areas.

4. Support for programs like Teach for America which de-professionalize the teaching profession.
These four principles have been pillars of the Democratic Party’s education policies on a national level, pushed by President Obama and supported by virtually every major Democratic politician in the nation including figures on the left of the Democratic Party such as Elizabeth Warren, Patti Murray and Al Franken.

What have been the results of these policies?:

1. They have inspired a national parents revolt against excessive testing

2. They have produced a sharp decline in teacher morale and inspired the creation of teacher activist groups like Save Our Schools, BATS, and the Network for Public Education

3. They have promoted an mass exodus of the most talented veteran teachers and led to a sharp decline in the percentage of Black teachers in cities like Chicago, New Orleans, Washington DC, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where teacher temps from programs like Teach for America have become the predominant labor force in the newly created charter schools.

4. They have accelerated the gentrification of the nation’s major cities and diluted the political power of working class people, immigrants and people of color.

5, The have accelerated the shrinking of the Black and Latino middle class, and the weakening of the nation’s unions.

If you are looking for an explanation of why the power of the Democratic Party has declined sharply in a state and local level during the past eight years, the promotion of these disastrous education policies has to be part of the explanation.

No better example can be found of the Party’s adherence to the voice of billionaire contributors and technocrats over its traditional constituency into working class and middle class Americans than its disastrous foray into School Reform.

And unfortunately, the current leadership of the Democratic Party shows no willingness or ability to change course on these issues

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing
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