Archives for category: Closing schools
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Jeff Bryant on the United Opt Out Protest

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2013 //
8

Last weekend, United Opt Out sponsored a protest rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. The event was called Occupy the DOE.

Jeff Bryant of North Carolina reports on the protests here.

I spoke on Thursday afternoon of the first day. The crowd was small, which was not surprising, because it was a workday and it is expensive to travel a distance. And the event organizers had no money for travel. Everything was handmade and improvised. No funding from Gates or Walton or Broad or anyone else. No paid staff. All volunteers: teachers, parents, students, librarians, and others who were there to speak out against the DOE’s damaging policies and for a better vision for American education.

The slight media attention focused on one remark by one speaker but there were many speakers with inspiring messages, all of which were ignored.

The opposition to high-stakes testing, mass school closings, and privatization will not end. They will continue and they will grow. Why? Because they are not only wrong, they are harmful to the future of our nation and the lives of our children and grandchildren.

Categories Class size, Closing schools, Education Reform, Support for public schools, Testing

The Educational Marketing Game

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2013 //
3

A reader offers this comment about the education marketplace:

Better and cheaper aren’t even issues in the disruptive Educational marketing game. Only profit matters. Especially if you capture regulatory control, you can degrade quality to reduce cost, then mandate public funding to maximize profits. There’s no public sector, and no free market, to stop you.

I’ll quote again from Farrell:
“Christensen’s theory of innovation showed how “true revolutions occur, creating new markets and wreaking havoc within industries. Think: the PC, the MP3, the transistor radio.”

The wheel is still spinning on applications of internet and satellite “technology” in education. I’m a visionary and innovator myself, but in our classrooms, profit seekers are trying to freeze out wondrous real advances for their own advantage. Don’t confuse innovation with mean-minded little schemes to curtail and monetize other people’s inventions. The emperor is naked, and has no actual innovations to offer.

If you want to think more deeply than opportunistic market manipulation, here’s Anil Dash’s magnificent rumination on the internet, The Web We Lost:
http://dashes.com/anil/2012/12/the-web-we-lost.html

He also understands the wheels are still spinning, and proposes ways to bring the internet back into the commons, where (like public education) it belongs.

Categories Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, On-Line Education, Privatization

How to Close Public Schools: A Guide

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2013 //
54

Just in case you have been wondering what is the best way to shut down your local public schools, the Broad Foundation has thoughtfully provided a guide to help you.

It has assembled all sorts of useful information about how to deal with community opposition, how to engage stakeholders, how to make your case, how to get the right leadership, and how to pack up and move out.

Some well-known school districts–perhaps yours?–contributed to the writing of the guide.

Presumably some of the many superintendents who were trained in the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy have this guide in their desk.

Read it and be forewarned. Your own public school may be next.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry

Occupy the DOE: The Song

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2013 //
6

Matt Farmer is a public school parent in Chicago. He is also a lawyer. If you have not seen his cross-examination in absentia of Penny Pritzker, the billionaire member of the Chicago Board of Education, you should.

Now Matt is in his way to the rally in DC this week, from April 4-7, and he wrote a great song, which is here.

Watch, listen, and think. Who is closing the schools? Why? Who benefits?

Categories Accountability, Chicago, Closing schools, Support for public schools

Why Cities Should Not Close Schools

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2013 //
4

Jack Hassard explains here that public schools are part of the fabric of their communities. Closing them tears apart the fabric of their lives. It harms children, families, and communities. It does not save money.

He cites the advocacy of Edward Johnson in Atlanta, a follower of W. Edwards Deming, who has diligently explained the folly of closing schools based on some arbitrary goal set by people who are not educators.

As Hassard writes, “As Deming (1994a) points out, beware of common sense when we think about such issues as ranking children by grades, ranking schools and teachers by test scores, and rewards and punishments. Deming believes that grades should be abolished, and that the ranking of people and schools should not occur. And significant to the issue of school closure, Deming suggests that taking action (such as closing a school today) may produce more problems in the future, and that a better remedy would be investigate why children in poor neighborhoods are not doing well on state mandated tests, and then do something about it.”

Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Education Industry, New York City, Parents, Philadelphia, Privatization

A Broad Connection to the Atlanta Scandal?

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2013 //
54

This commentary, written two years ago, connects the dots.

The Atlanta school board was trained by the Broad Foundation.

Key officials were trained by Broad. Beverly Hall was not a graduate of Broad’s unaccredited training academy but she was sufficiently in step to speak at Broad training conferences, get Broad funding, and Broad-trained helpers. And she absorbed the Broad message that tests scores=performance, and nothing else matters.

The Broad philosophy, as best it can be deciphered from afar, is management by targets. Goal-setting. It is a business plan, not an educational vision for children. As Eli Broad once said, “I know nothing about curriculum and teaching, but I know management.”

With Broadies running many urban districts and placed strategically in key leadership positions, the Broad approach shows its flaws. It has nothing to do with understanding the needs of children, families, and communities. It has nothing to do with learning and knowledge. It is all about reaching the targets. Reach the targets and you get a bonus. Fail to reach your target and be fired or see your school closed.

Now schools across the nation are closing because they did not meet their targets. That too is part of Broad’s philosophy. If they don’t succeed, close them.

Who will hold Eli Broad accountable for the destruction of urban public education in the United States?

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Closing schools

What Do Katrina, Camden, and Chicago Have in Common?

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2013 //
4

This just arrived in the morning email

It is a question for a multiple-choice test.

Write your own.

Here goes:

I am part of a small group of educators (hoping to grow teacher and parent awareness – via our facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/NJ-Educators-United-to-Protect-Public-Education/350194368424508 – where – among other articles – we have been transcribing and posting YouTube “homerun” statements that you have made via speaking venues).

Anyway, here are my simple thoughts and a sample standardized question:
————————————————————-
Does history repeat itself? You bet!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/01/duncan-katrina-was-the-best-thing-for-new-orleans-schools/
http://uftelections2010.blogspot.com/2010/02/mike-fiorillo-on-duncans-katrina.html

“The following paragraphs are in response to a post at GothamSchools after Sect’y of Education Arne Duncan remarked that ___________ was the “best thing” for the __________ school.

‘This despicable statement by Duncan represents a common motif among Democrats and Republicans alike, and validates Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine thesis, namely, that ruling elites create or opportunistically use crises to implement policies that would otherwise be blocked. In the case of New Orleans, it’s the wholesale privatization of the school system, with the schools being turned over to large charter school chains…Where were these people when the urban schools were suffering from decades of neglect and under-investment? They certainly weren’t teaching in them, or sending their children to them. Why are they only now proclaiming their “passion” for education, which is based solely on their lust to dominate and control them, driven by an agenda that, PR rhetoric aside, is about their will to power and profit?’”

Proposed Standardized Test Question: Take out the words “Katrina” and “New Orleans” from the above excerpt and fill in the blank:

a.) State Takeover; Camden
b.) School Closings; Chicago
c.) All of the above

While I am a believer in optimism in the face of difficulty, the reformers have taken this to a new, unholy level:

I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity.
— John D. Rockefeller

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago, Closing schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, New Orleans, Privatization

Mississippi Retreats from Public Education, Back to the Dark Ages

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2013 //
13

In Mississippi, the speaker of the House of Representatives announced that he was appointing a proponent of charter schools to the state board of education that oversees public education.

The nominee was home-schooled.

Is Mississippi moving boldly forward into a world without public schools or dumbly backward into a world that predates the establishment of public education?

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Education Industry

The Hoax of Closing Schools to Save Money

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2013 //
5

District officials say they are closing schools to save money, but experience has shown that the savings seldom occur. They claim the schools are under-utilized even as they open charters to compete with the public schools for which the officials are responsible. The officials help the charters to grow and simultaneously harm the public schools. They are negligent in their duty to the children and to the public. They should be held accountable for their failure to promote, preserve, and support a democratic institution entrusted to their care. It is the school officials who have failed, not the schools.

A reader sends this. Please read it:

“Testimony from Kate Shaw Executive Director of Research for Action along with their issue brief on schools closings, detailing the impacts of school closings that district officials often neglect to take into account:

1) On the short-term financial savings, district officials often neglect to account for transition cost, maintaining and selling properties, etc which cut into the savings and sometimes come at a cost to the district.

2) Savings from school closures come primarily from large-scale cuts in faculty not from not having to heat “half-empty buildings. ”

3) The most important is that there are short-term negative impacts on students’ academic achievement, unless they are put in higher performing schools which is rarely the case.

Additionally students often feel a sense of neglect while districts fail to prepare the receiving school for the influx on new students.

Testimony: http://bit.ly/13yICRV
Issue Brief on Schools Closings: http://bit.ly/13CAUuN

Categories Charter Schools, Closing schools, Privatization

Chicago Principals Told to Spy on Protestors Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2013 //
20

In Chicago, the corporate reformers who claim to be leading “the civil rights movement of our time” are closing down schools in black communities. How this enhances the civil rights of the children is a mystery known only to the elites.

This is a news bulletin from the Chicago Teachers Union about tomorrow’s protest demonstration:

NEWS RELEASE

March 26, 2013

StephanieGadlin@ctulocal1.com

Secret Memo: CPS warns principals about possible civil disobedience in response to massive school closings

School officials asked to spy on demonstrators, take note of media

CHICAGO – The day before educators from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) intend to join with parents, students, clergy, community leaders, civil rights activists and the rank-and-file members of SEIU Local 1 and Unite HERE Local 1; the union released a confidential memo sent to the city’s public school principals warning them of potential civil disobedience actions in protest of school closings. Mayor Rahm Emanuel will seek to shutter more than 50 neighborhood schools in the African American community by the end of this school year.

Thousands of parents, students, teachers, paraprofessionals and school clinicians attended various hearings across the city where they presented evidence that their schools were not being “underutilized” and begged for them not to be closed. Despite the outcry, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) chief executive listened instead to a politically-connected, ad-hoc commission she created and has since recommended 61 school actions, including the closings. Should the Board approve, this will be the largest closing of schools in a single school district in the nation’s history.

CPS’s announcement was met with shock, outrage, disbelief and defiance. While many of those impacted have vowed to fight until the end to save their neighborhood school from closure, others plan to rally downtown on Wednesday, March 27th, to illustrate their demand for education justice. People will gather at 4 p.m. at Daley Plaza where they will proceed to City Hall and to Board of Education headquarters.

Preparing for what could be the spark of 21st century Civil Rights Movement in Chicago, the school district recently instructed principals to prepare for the worst. “Be approachable and supportive to feelings of unrest, anxiety or dissatisfaction” the secret memo read. “Observe and report all information regarding possible protestors, locations, dates and times… Is the media present? Which news outlet(s)?”

The CTU obtained the memorandum from a source who has requested anonymity for fear of repercussions. “They’ve asked us to do a lot of things that I’m not happy with, but some of this is going too far,” the person said.

CTU President Karen Lewis, “Why are they asking principals to work as agents of this administration when they are the ones who have created a climate of chaos? Civil disobedience is a direct response to unjust policies and practices. We intend to use whatever nonviolence protest actions we have in this fight for education justice.

“The bottom line is the schools targeted for closure are based on the racial makeup of those schools and their zip codes,” Lewis said. “We will continue to plead our cause, fight in the courts and in the streets for what is right for our students and our communities. They can start with a moratorium on all school actions now.”

###
The Chicago Teachers Union represents 30,000 teachers and educational support personnel working in the Chicago Public Schools, and by extension, the more than 400,000 students and families they serve. The CTU is an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers and the Illinois Federation of Teachers and is the third largest teachers local in the United States and the largest local union in Illinois. For more information please visit CTU’s website at http://www.ctunet.com .
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Categories Chicago, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers
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