This reader says that reformers almost never protest budget cuts.
Another word for reform these days is……….neglect.
“I think the “abandonment” idea is really powerful. As the parent of a public school kid in Ohio, I really do feel abandoned by both my state government and the federal government. Ordinary local public schools need not apply!
The crazy state and federal focus on the 5% of schools that conform to the rigid “reform” recipe is something we’re going to regret.
Besides Arne Duncan’s one statement on Philadelphia schools, a statement he made only after being pushed, has one single national “reformer” advocated for a restoration of pubic school funding?
We could use less “innovation” and more simple, competent stewardship of the schools that MOST children attend, existing schools, but I suppose “stewardship” isn’t nearly as exciting and media-friendly as “cage-busting.’
Wendy Lecker, civil rights attorney and director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, read an opinion article in the New York Times and was outraged by its recommendations. Here is her analysis:
It seems like these days, one has to be wary of anyone claiming to “help” poor neighborhoods.
An oped in the New York Times on July 13 by Michael Rubinger extolled the virtues of federal “new market tax credits” to “fix” neighborhoods in decline. Among the “valuable” neighborhood investments Rubinger mentions are charter schools.
Anyone paying attention the past year knows that expanding charter schools has been a weapon to destroy neighborhoods, not revitalize them. In Chicago, officials funneled public money to charter schools while defunding public schools. Then, declaring public schools “underutilized,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed an unprecedented number of neighborhood schools. These neighborhood schools were the anchors of their communities and parents and children vigorously protested their closure. A similar tragic story played itself out in Philadelphia, another city and state that starved the city’s public schools while funding charters, then closed a record number of neighborhood schools, despite strenuous protests by parents and children.
These new charters very often fail to serve all the children in those neighborhoods, regularly excluding ELL students and students with disabilities.
Not much of a neighborhood revitalization plan.
Although I am not much of a tax maven, I heard that term “new market tax credits” before. In 2010, Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News wrote about their connection to charter schools. It turns out these federal tax credits are a vehicle for banks and hedge funds to make enormous profits on the public dime. As Gonzalez explained:
“the investors who put up the money to build the charter schools get to basically virtually double their money in seven years through a 39 percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re collecting interest on the loans, as well as getting the 39 percent tax credit. They piggyback the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits, like historic preservation or job creation or Brownfields credits. The result is, you can put in $10 million and in seven years double your money. And the problem is that the charter schools end up paying in rents the debt service on these loans.”
And that debt is paid, of course through taxpayer funds.
These credits help destroy neighborhoods but they certainly revitalize the balance sheets of these crafty banks and hedge funds!
And surely Michael Rubinger knows it. Just last week, he was a featured speaker in a symposium instructing Wall Street how to cash in on charters, entitled: Bonds and Blackboards: Investing in Charter Schools (New York, NY).
If the wealthy want to make a difference, they should pay their fair share in taxes so that public schools and communities can have the resources they need to provide the supports to combat the effects of poverty, help overcome the challenges of language barriers and provide the special education services to ensure that every child is provided the education they deserve and need to achieve her greatest potential.
The return on investment for those children and our society would be greater than the hedge fund managers could ever achieve.
As Rahm Emanuel once memorably said, when he was President Obama’s chief of staff, never let a crisis go to waste. Naomi Klein surely agreed in her book “Shock Doctrine,” which showed how crises, both natural and man-made, are used to achieve other goal unrelated to the crisis. Hurricane Katrina made it possible to wipe out public education and the teachers union in New Orleans. The budget cuts and imposed austerity will soon make it possible to crush the teachers union and privatize Philadelphia’s schools.
A teacher in Philadelphia writes, challenging an earlier post that called Los Angeles ground zero for corporate reform:
“Sorry to contradict, but Los Angeles is only at the forefront of the push-back (and a fine thing that is too.) The next big front in corporate “reform” will be in Philadelphia in a little over a month.
“The contract for the PFT is up and we are facing demands from the state-controlled School Reform Commission and their hand-picked Superintendent William Hite, a graduate of the Broad Academy. I and my fellow teachers are facing a demand that we give up $133 million in salary and health benefit concessions, which is bad enough. But we’re also looking at proposals to eliminate seniority, institute performance pay, eliminate contractual caps on class size, and virtually every other fond wish of the “reformers”.
“State and city leaders have engineered a budget crisis and passed only sham fixes, all to set up the PFT to be broken no matter how we react. If we give in to the concessions, we will have lost almost everything the PFT has gained for the schools and teachers since 1968. If not, we will either have a contract imposed on us or we will be forced to strike, but that in itself is illegal according to the law that allowed the state takeover of the district in 2001. The no-strike clause is unique to Philadelphia within the state, so we may be able to successfully challenge it in court, but any way this plays out the SRC and their political masters seem to think that it will give them a free hand to go full bore with every kind of corporate reform. If they succeed, they will have remade the 8th largest school district in the nation into a goldmine of corporatized “education”.
One of the few remaining Edison charter schools went broke, leaving teachers without a pay check. No one knows if the teachers will ever be paid. Most of Edison’s business now is online, not direct management of schools.
Derrick Thomas Academy charter school in Kansas City, which opened in 2002 with great promise, lost its charter and left behind a massive financial mess, with Edison demanding payment by the state, and financial backers crying about their losses.
According to the local story:
“The money that might have covered teacher salaries is tied up in court over a dispute among the school, the company contracted to manage it and the company that issued bonds for the school’s launch.
“The University of Missouri-Kansas City, which had sponsored the charter school at 201 E. Armour Blvd. since it opened in 2001, has no financial responsibility for the school or its debt. The academy announced last fall it would close after UMKC refused to renew its charter, citing poor management and low test scores. The school has since been overseen by an interim board.
“The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has been named in legal action to garnish more than $2.2 million that the management company, EdisonLearning Inc., says it is owed.
“Derrick Thomas Academy, now locked up behind a heavy black gate, also owes a substantial amount of money to the bondholder for the school, Lord Abbett.
“Jim Sansevero, spokesman for Lord Abbett, said the school has defaulted on bond payments and “$10 million is at risk.” The school used its building to secure the bonds.”
Is this disaster likely to dim the enthusiasm of charter advocates? Will they say that 11years was not a fair trial? What do you think?
yes, yes! As a black educator and unfortunately a TFA alum who has now been a teacher for 15 years, I don’t understand why Obama and Booker have embraced this corporate style of reform. I worked tirelessly to elect Obama but I continue to find his governance particularly his stance on education and civil rights disappointing. I will not do the same for Booker and I hope that the teacher’s union does not endorse him. Booker does not have grassroots support, many Newark residents see the destruction he has wreaked on their schools and do not support him. He is the darling of the media and white liberal/moderate crowd as well as hedge funds and business community. We all know that TFA and the privatization movement it has spawned is directly responsible for the decline in the black middle class. Black female educators have been disproportionately impacted by layoffs and “evaluations.” Obama as the first black president and Booker as the heir to this legacy and possible contender for higher office should recognize this and change their position on what’s right for schools before it is too late. They should support public schools, community schools and educators. Sometimes it feels like we (anti-reformers) are screaming at people like Obama and Booker through a sound proof glass door. They can see us, we can see them but they can’t hear us and they won’t open the door because they don’t want to hear the truth.
A reader who goes by the name “Democracy” reminds us of the much-hyped report by a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations, whose co-chairs were Joel Klein and Condoleeza Rice. It blamed the public schools for endangering national security and for the nation’s economic problems. I reviewed it here.
This is “Democracy’s” comment:
“Aah, Joel Klein.
Klein was a recent co-author – with Condaleezza Rice – of a Council on Foreign Relations education “report” that consisted mostly of tripe. But what can one reasonably expect from the likes of Klein and Rice?
Joel Klein perpetrates and perpetuates the myth that public education is in “crisis,” and without serious “reform” “the U.S. economy will continue to suffer.”
The “reform” pushed by Klein (and the Council report) is to impose the “business model” on public schools. This is the same “model” that led to big budget deficits, a ballooned national debt and a broken economy. Rather than take responsibility for what they did, the big bankers and hedge funders and politicians who brokered it all point the finger of blame at public schools and teachers.
Klein advocates more testing, merit pay through “value-added” evaluations, more charter schools and vouchers as “innovative” reforms. There is little or no research to support any of them.
Klein blames the current economic quagmire on public education. He writes that we used to “have a successful middle class,” but “that’s changed markedly since 1980.” Klein says “we’re rapidly moving toward two America’s –– a wealthy elite and an increasingly large underclass that lacks the skills to succeed.” His answer to the problem? The market, since “markets impose accountability.” A person would have to be moronic to make – or believe – such a claim.
Klein never makes any mention whatsoever, as he blames schools and teachers, of the supply-side economic policies pushed by conservative presidents, politicians and businessmen that are directly responsible for big budget deficits, millions of job losses, the most severe income stratification in the developed world, and our unsustainable national debt. He calls for “radical reform” of public education (more tests, merit pay, vouchers, etc), but says not one word about reforming the banking, derivatives trading and skewed tax system – coupled with regulatory enforcement –– that are sorely needed.
Condaleezza Rice was George W. Bush’s national security director before 9/11 occurred and during the launching of the war in Iraq, which she favored and supported. Rice helped to sell the American public the big lie of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, warning infamously that “ we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Journalists who covered her reported that she “made public claims that she knew to be false.”
There’s little doubt but that Rice (and her colleagues) ignored repeated warnings about imminent terrorist threats. After 9/11, she said (repeatedly) that no one could have predicted that planes might be used as weapons, despite the fact that there were at least a dozen documented warnings of it.
Initially, until public pressure forced the Bush administration to relent, Rice refused to testify before the 9/11 Commission. When she did, it wasn’t pretty. She wiggles and squirms, and tries to obfuscate and evade answering questions about the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) of August 6, 2001. That PDB was titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US” and warned that Bin Ladin was “determined…to conduct terrorist attacks in the US,” that he “prepares years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks.” The memo noted “patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks,” and it warned that a group of “Bin Ladin’s supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives.”
Now just imagine that the physical and human dimensions of the Twin Towers and Pentagon and planes were converted into schools and schoolchildren. Would anyone seriously think that there had not been ample warning of an impending disaster? Would anyone think that any of those involved in ignoring the threat should NOT be held accountable? What Rice said in private testimony to the 9/11 Commission has not been declassified (it should be…there are likely some real “whoppers” in there). What she said in public testimony can be seen below. It isn’t pretty.
Responding to another reader, Robert Shepherd challenges the claim that reformers want a free market in schooling:
“We are NOT seeing the emergence of free market alternatives to public schools. We are seeing is crony capitalist alternatives dependent upon federal and state regulation and the public dole that could not possibly survive in truly free markets. It doesn’t matter whether it originates on the right or the left or what rhetoric it uses, tyranny is tyranny. It’s a NewSpeak version of the language of classical liberalism that is being used to defend what is actually happening. It’s incredibly naive to buy into the rhetoric in the face of the realities. Let’s see: Pass a federal law that ensures that almost all public schools will fail. Require states to provide alternatives. Have the Secretary of Education, now a private citizen, found an online virtual school to provide those alternatives, one that depends upon the same taxpayer dollars but siphons off a lot of those into private profits. There are eight million stories in the Naked City, and this has been one of them. The others have much the same general form.
“If that’s what you think of as the creation of free market alternatives, then you have started mainlining the Soma.”
He refers to the struggle over the future of the public schools of Bridgeport, Connecticut, which has involved an ongoing battle by the mayor to gain control of the schools (he lost a referendum when the public said no) and now involves a court battle to keep Paul Vallas as superintendent. He was hired, Bailey says, by an illegitimate board and given a contract to lock him into place. Now a court has ruled that he is not legally qualified to serve under state law.
Bailey points out:
“Like it or not, our system of laws is the one we have, and making exceptions for celebrity superintendents or anyone else is only going to bring trouble.
Speaking of Vallas, he needs to go. He’s leaving anyway. He’s had one foot out the door from the day he arrived. The notion that he — that anyone — can swoop in, make some changes, lock them into place and get out of town is farcical.
One judge has ruled against him already, and the state Supreme Court has proven it doesn’t look kindly on the whole “the rules don’t apply to us” routine when it comes to Bridgeport education.
That’s the peril of this strategy. The mayor of Bridgeport might believe democracy doesn’t work. He might even convince the governor. Clearly the state education commissioner is on board.
But those judges — they’re tougher to bring around. And without them on your side, all that hard work that went into enacting anti-democratic reforms takes you right back where you started.”
Public education is part of the fabric of democracy. It cannot be reformed by undemocratic means. When elites believe that they know best, and that their ideas are so good that they need not consult parents and teachers, they are doomed from the start.
