Archives for category: Closing schools
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Mike Klonsky: Rahm Emanuel Going to D.C. to Boast of His “Success” as a “Reformer”

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2017 //
15

Mike Klonsky writes that it was another horrendous weekend of youth violence and murder in Chicago.

And Rahm Emanuel, the mayor who will go down in history for closing 50 public schools in one day, is going to speak at the National Pres Clob about his punitive plan to withhold high school diplomas from students who can’t produce evidence of college acceptance or a job or enlistment in the military. Those who can’t do so presumably will drop out. Some reformer.

“After a Chicago weekend with 50 more shootings of mostly young people, eight of them fatal, Rahm Emanuel responded symbolically by laying off 50 more Head Start aides on the eve of the last day of school. Then, pirouetting past the graveyard, the mayor boarded a plane to D.C. where he is set to take the stage at the National Press Club, touting his latest plan to make it more difficult for African-American and Latino students to graduate from ravaged Chicago high schools.

“His speech, being billed ironically as “Moving Forward in Chicago,” will detail his plan to require all public high school seniors to provide a college or trade school acceptance letter, proof of military enlistment or a job offer in order to graduate. It’s another one of those “reforms” that would be mocked to death if proposed in the rich white suburban schools Rahm attended or in the private school where he sends his own children.

“Mainly poor, black and Latino Chicago students students will have to comply with the new mandates without the benefit of the hundreds of counselors and school social workers recently fired by CPS.

“The students, having persevered to overcome the devastating instability caused by Rahm’s mass school closings, having been forced to shift from school to school, from teachers who know them to teachers who don’t, having risked increased street violence just to make it to school every morning, will soon have another major bureaucratic hoop to jump through or risk being denied their earned diploma.”

A question for the press conference: Mayor Emanuel, you have consistently underfunded the public schools while your own children attend the University of zchicago Lab School. You have made no effort to provide equality of educational opportunity. How do you sleep at night? Do you think your mass school closings have any bearing on the violence in the streets of your city?

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Emanuel, Rahm

As Four Detroit Charters Fold, Detroit Public Schools Come to the Rescue

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2017 //
15

The turbulence and instability in the charter industry continue.

Four charter schools in Detroit closed their doors. You know, Betsy DeVos’s home state.

Under the leadership of its aggressive new superintendent, Nikolai Vitti, Detroit Public Schools began a campaign to win back students from failing charter schools.

“With a slew of charter schools closing and thousands of Detroit families expecting to be displaced, Detroit’s main district is swooping in to pick up as many new students as it can.

“If that seems cut-throat for a district that narrowly averted the forced closure of 24 of its schools earlier this year and has endured scores of painful school closings, new district superintendent Nikolai Vitti is making no apologies.

“This is what competition looks like,” he said Tuesday. “We’re not going to be passive. We’re not going to be apologetic about celebrating our programs and our schools and our teachers and our principals.”

“Vitti personally visited an enrollment fair Tuesday at the closing Woodward Academy in hopes of drawing parents to the district.

“Lawn signs have popped up at city intersections asking parents: “Is your charter school closing?” with a phone number urging them to call the district.”

Vitti has announced that his priorities are to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes and to reduce testing.

Unless DeVos gets in the way with her failed and destructive policies, Detroit is coming back from the brink of extinction!

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Detroit

Andrea Gabor: Why Are the Few Veteran Teachers of New Orleans Demoralized?

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2017 //
9

Andrea Gabor reviews research produced by the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans about veteran teachers, those who taught before Hurricane Katrina and returned.

“ERA’s analysis provides an important before-and-after-the-storm glimpse of the city’s schools from a unique perspective—the small group of pre-Katrina teachers who returned to teaching following the storm, and who have remained in the classroom for over a decade. As New Orleans looks forward, the views of these returning pre-Katrina teachers are key; they are the survivors.

“In the wake of the mass firings following the storm, the teachers who returned to New Orleans and were still teaching at the time of the study, in the 2013/2014 school year, almost surely represent the city’s most experienced educators—and those with the closest community ties. While teachers with greater than 20 years of experience made up nearly 40 percent of the teaching force before the storm, that number has dropped to about 15 percent, according to another ERA study. Conversely, the number of inexperienced teacher with less than 5 years experienced now make up the majority of teachers, up from about 30 percent before the storm….

“Indeed, important characteristics of New Orleans reforms, including a high-rate of school closings and at-risk students cycling through multiple schools, are more likely to adversely impact high school students who, unlike their younger peers, are more likely to resist no-excuses culture of the non-selective New Orleans charters, and eventually to drop out. New Orleans also has done a terrible job of keeping track of kids who “fall between the cracks.”

“Education reformers like to say that “teachers are the single most important” school variable in a child’s education. As with so much else in the ed-reform debates, this is misleading. For surely, school stability and culture, which is controlled by school leaders—in the best cases, by cadres of teacher leaders—is as important as the role of individual teachers. School culture also helps determine just how much influence teachers have over curriculum, discipline and other policies. In my research, both quality education and teacher job satisfaction are highly correlated with schools that include teachers in such key decisions.

“In New Orleans, with a teacher cadre plagued by high turnover and sparse classroom experience, veteran teachers should be treasured. That so many say they have less job satisfaction than during the pre-Katrina years, suggests that they are not, which is surely a failing with implications far beyond just teacher morale.”

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization, Teachers

Mercedes Schneider Explains Why Betsy DeVos Never Mentions the School Where Her Mother Briefly Taught

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2017 //
5

Mercedes Schneider has been reading the archives of the local newspaper in Holland, Michigan, where the DeVos family reigns.

She learned about the brief teaching career of her mother in the local public school.

She learned the name of the school.

She has a picture of the school.

She knows the fate of the school. It was closed, after a century as the heart of the community.

Read her post to learn why it was closed.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Closing schools, Michigan, School Choice

Mike Klonsky: School-Killer Rahm Plans to Close More Schools in the African-American Community

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
8

If ever there is an award for the mayor who did the most to disrupt and destroy public education, it will go to Rahm Emanuel. His own children attend the highly resourced University of Chicago Lab School, but he spitefully closes public schools that he controls.

Mike Klonsky points out that the mass school closings have not saved money and have not improved student outcomes. They are part of Mayor Emanuel’s plan for gentrification.

From afar, it looks like spite work on the part of a mayor who doesn’t care about children that are not his own.

Rahm Emanuel is a textbook case in the failure of mayoral control to improve public schools. He is a textbook case in the use of mayoral control to destroy and privatize public education.

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Emanuel, Rahm, Privatization

An 8-Year-Old Child Writes Betsy DeVos: “I Love My Public School”

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2017 //
14

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/8-year-old-sends-heartfelt-message-about-her-public-school-to-betsy-devos_us_58d3ed5ce4b0b22b0d1a9076

A second-grade student wroteto Betsy DeVos to tell her that she loves her public school. She pleaded with DeVos,

“Please leave are [sic] public schools alone do not tear it down ever.”

Willa is a second grader. She is the daughter of a journalist, who posted Willa’s message on Instagram.

Do you think Betsy DeVos will get Willa’s card? Do you think DeVos will be moved by Willa’s message? Do you think she has ever seen a public school like Willa’s? DeVos seems to think that public schools are a dead end, a place where children are forced to go unwillingly. Maybe she should visit Willa’s school to understand why she loves it.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one million school children wrote to DeVos and told her why they love their school?

Categories Betsy DeVos, Closing schools, Privatization, Resistance

Closed By Choice: The Tragedy of Public Schools in Chicago

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2017 //
11

“Closed by Choice” is an important report about what politicians have done to the children and communities of Chicago for the past 20 years.

They have systematically defunded and closed public schools, offering various lame excuses, while opening well-resourced charter schools.

The report can be found here.

” *Of the 108 new charter schools opened between 2000 and 2015, 62% of new charter schools were opened in areas with high population loss (25% or more).

*Between 2000-2009, 85% of new charter schools were located within 1.5 miles of schools that were later closed.

*The 27% of all CPS charter schools that filed a 2015 audit with the Illinois State Board of Education had a combined outstanding debt of $227 million that will be paid back with tax payer dollars. This off-the-books debt is not included in CPS’ overall $6 billion debt.”

The bottom line is that the overwhelming majority of children, who are children of color, have been systematically neglected for the sake of creating a dual school system.

This is not education reform. This is privatization at the expense of the overwhelming majority of children.

This is Rahm Emanuel’s agenda, this is Arne Duncan’s agenda, this is Betsy DeVos’ agenda.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform

Peter Greene: Betsy Drew the Wrong Lesson from the Failure of Obama and Duncan

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2017 //
17

Peter Greene read Betsy DeVos’s speech to CPAC and realized that she totally misunderstood why Obama and Duncan’s reforms failed. It wasn’t because they spent money. It was because they spent money on bad ideas. Now she proposes to spend money on vouchers, which have failed miserably, and on charters, which Obama and Duncan promoted. What is new about her approach? She is candid: she wants to destroy public education. Obama and Duncan either believed or pretended that public education would get better because of high-stakes testing, punishments, and charter schools. They were wrong. DeVos is wrong too. The difference is that we already know she is wrong, but she doesn’t.

Greene writes:

“School improvement grants were like food stamps that could only be spent on baby formula, ostrich eggs, and venison—and it didn’t matter if the families receiving the stamps lived on a farm with fresh milk and chicken eggs, or if they were vegetarians, or if they lived where no store sells ostrich eggs, or if there were no babies in the family. The Department of Education used the grants to dictate strategy and buy compliance with their micro-managing notions about how schools had to be fixed.

“As with many classic reform moves, plenty of folks on the ground level could have told the reformers what was wrong with their plan. But as DeVos’s comments show, the damage of School Improvement Grants is not only in wasted money, it’s also in convicting the wrong suspect and discrediting a whole reform approach.

“DeVos and other conservative reformers are taking the real lesson of the grant program’s failure: “spending money on the wrong thing for schools doesn’t help,” and shortening it to a far more damaging assessment: “spending money on schools doesn’t help.”

“The Obama-Duncan-King program didn’t just fail, they say, but it also helped discredit the whole idea of funding schools at all. Thanks Obama.”

Given the miserable failure of school choice in Michigan and Detroit, you would think DeVos was open to reflecting on the error of her ideas. But don’t make that mistake. Her ideas of school “reform” are based on ideology and theology. They won’t change. They can’t be proved or disproved. They are set in stone. Evidence doesn’t matter.

If allowed to do her wishes, public schools will be defunded (they are “godless”), unions will disappear, for-profit entrepreneurs will cash in, and a million weeds will bloom.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Funding, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Vouchers

Hello, Betsy DeVos! Watch This Video!

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2017 //
8

Ms. DeVos:

The state of Michigan, as you know, plans to close 38 schools, most of them in Detroit.

Please watch this powerful documentary about school closings in Detroit, how they disproportionately affect black children, how they disproportionately affect children with special needs.

Detroit is littered with closed schools.

Don’t you realize that closing schools destroys communities and disrupts the lives of children who have high needs?

Please tell us what you intend to do to stop this madness.

The schools are not failing; our society is failing.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Closing schools, Detroit, Michigan, Special Education

DeVos Pushing More Public School Closings, But Only African American Schools Are Targeted

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2017 //
45

The following article was sent to me by education researchers Russ Bellant and M. Denise Baldwin. Baldwin is a former teacher in Saginaw. Recently, I was on an NPR program hosted by Warren Olney with three other people, one of whom spoke on behalf of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. He insisted that not a single public school in Detroit had ever been closed. This article says that the number of public schools closed in Detroit over the past 20 years is nearly 200, with more school closings ahead, all in African American communities. Meanwhile the Detroit Free Press published an article showing that the closure of neighborhood schools–DeVos’s goal–means less choice for black residents, who no longer have a school they can walk to or transportation to schools of “choice.”

DeVos leads push for school closings, only African American schools targeted

By Russ Bellant and M. Denise Baldwin

When Michigan Governor Rick Snyder concluded that a new law that restructured Detroit Public Schools prohibited school closures until 2019, the DeVos network reacted immediately, demanding closures of Detroit schools. They enlisted elected officials who had received campaign contributions from the DeVos apparatus. Now the Governor has backed down, despite considerable legal muscle that agreed with his interpretation.

In a shocking move, the Governor has proposed the closing of 38 schools across the state, including 24 Detroit public schools (and one Detroit charter). But an examination of the list shows a disturbing pattern: all of them serve primarily African American populations.

The DeVos entity that speaks to education issues in the state, Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP), quickly demanded that all 38 be shut down. They ignore the reality that in one part of Detroit, it would close all the area high schools and abandon K-8 education in a large area of the City. More fundamentally, they ignore the fact that they are accelerating separate and unequal education in Michigan.

GLEP, which was set up and has been primarily funded by Dick and Betsy DeVos, has been aggressive in advocating the shutting down of public schools and replacing them with charters. The charters, in turn, have been seen as a base to get electoral support for vouchers, according to plans formulated in the mid-1990s. An amendment to the Michigan Constitution to permit vouchers was put on the ballot by the DeVos family in 2000, but it was soundly defeated.

Undeterred, the DeVos machine continues their plan to charterize Michigan public schools with no caps or accountability mandated. The charters, some placed by DeVos allies, are set up primarily in communities of color. Eighty percent are for-profit corporations, according to a Western Michigan University study. They average a thousand dollars profit off each student, out of a state foundation of just over $7,000 per student.

White school districts have been more resistant to state intervention when school performance is an issue, and it gets more attention. But when Black schools are targeted, there is less statewide concern, so they are seen as a path of least resistance for charterizers.

DeVos has directly used her political muscle to take a highly rated Detroit aeronautics high school and have a state subsidy for that school transferred to a DeVos-created charter high school in west Michigan. They also took the Detroit curriculum as their own. The West Michigan Aviation Academy says that the school was an inspiration of Betsy DeVos.

It remains to be seen how much the Michigan public will tolerate the dismantling of their districts. One school that is in an otherwise majority white district plans a determined resistance to the state closing plan. The East Detroit Public Schools, in a county that voted for Trump, has on its website a statement from its Superintendent that “We have no intention of allowing the SRO (from the Governor’s office-RB) to dictate the future of our students.” A school board member added that “East Detroit Public Schools will not accept the closure of any of the District’s schools by the state and will not allow the SRO to intervene at this point in our plans. School closures hurt children.”

The state is also facing lawsuits over its destruction of public schools and educational quality. They have directly controlled the Detroit schools for the last eight years and 15 of the last 18 years. Their citation of academic shortcomings they created as justification of the closings is really an indictment of state control, a subject they avoid.

The state has also dismantled four school districts across the state. All were African-American communities. Currently three of the proposed schools for closure in Saginaw and in Bridgeport-Spaulding Public Schools serve students who were displaced when their home district, Buena Vista, was dissolved. The proposed closings would subject hundreds of students to two major school dislocations.

Detroit is the model of proving that mass closures only put districts in a downward spiral. In the last 13 years 172 district schools (61%) have been closed, mostly by the state, in response to state-created debt and academic performance. Another 15 were taken and turned into the Governor’s personal school district. Closings have lead to abusive charterization and neighborhood abandonment. If closures were the solution, Detroit would be the Harvard of K-12 education.

There is a likely legal challenge to the DeVos-led dismantling of public education based on impact disparities on African American communities. DeVos has shown no reluctance to exploit this vulnerability in our social fabric as she seeks a world of profit-driven charters and vouchers that undermine over a half-century of educational progress.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Detroit, Michigan
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