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Jack Schneider: The Best Way to Help Charters in Massachusetts is to Vote NO on Question 2

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
15

Historian Jack Schneider fears that charter schools in Massachusetts have lost their capacity to innovate. Instead, they have a single-minded focus on test scores and “no-excuses” discipline. They have lost sight of the original vision of charters as laboratories of innovation.

http://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/charter-cap-debate-clouds-original-intent/

He writes:

“Yet an emphasis on the original vision of charter schools—charters as experimental hubs in an integrated network of public schools—might do a great deal to reestablish common ground. Perhaps more importantly, by thoughtfully regulating the charter sector with the aim of fostering system-wide innovation, policy leaders might make it possible to reap the benefits of charter schools without paying the steep associated costs.

“Of course, Massachusetts charter schools are regulated. The number of charter seats in each district is limited by the state—a cap being challenged by Question 2. And charters are held accountable by the state for their performance. But current regulations do little to support charters as laboratories. In fact, current state regulatory practices have fostered a climate hostile to innovation.

“The chief problem with current regulatory practices is that the state relies chiefly on standardized test scores to determine charter performance—a practice that severely undercuts any impulse to innovate. Additionally, given some high-profile charter implosions, the state has become increasingly risk-averse, and now only approves “proven providers.” Thus, rather than a thousand flowers blooming, we instead have seen the proliferation of a single model—one oriented towards rigid discipline and test-oriented instruction; three-quarters of the charters in Boston, for instance, are so-called “no excuses” schools. This kind of monoculture is fine for parents who desire it. But it hardly reflects the wishes of most parents, and it certainly isn’t going to promote systemic improvement.
Eliminating the cap on charter schools won’t solve this problem. In fact, it will exacerbate it, as a small number of chain operators will be in the strongest position to take advantage of the new opportunities to expand. Simply put, another KIPP, MATCH, or Uncommon school is not going to bring new ideas to Massachusetts, or to Boston, where most of the expansion is likely to occur….

“Charter schools were supposed to be places of innovation—something we have not seen in practice. This vision, however, can still be rescued. Charters can play a critical role in the strengthening of all public schools. But not if Question 2 passes and we eliminate the cap. However ironic it may seem, then, a vote against charter expansion may be the only way to save the original promise of charter schools—as places for innovation.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Massachusetts, Privatization

UCLA Study: Charters Suspend Disproportionate Numbers of Black, Disabled Students

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
10

The Center for Civil Rights Remedies at UCLA conducted a national survey and concluded that charter schools suspend extraordinary numbers of black students and students with disabilities.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/study-charter-schools-suspend-more-black-students-disabled-students

“Charter schools suspend students at a much higher rate than non-charter schools, some of which have suspension rates north of 70 percent. But a disproportionate amount of those suspensions fall on black students, who are four times more likely to be suspended than white students, and students with disabilities, who are twice as likely to be suspended as their non-disabled peers.

“Those are just some of the inequities highlighted in a blistering new analysis from researchers at the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Notably, the data was from the 2011-2012 school year, when every one of the country’s 95,000 public schools, including charters, was required to report its discipline data.

“The report, which is the first comprehensive description of the use of suspensions by charter schools, covers 5,250 schools and focuses on out-of-school suspensions at elementary and secondary schools.

“Specifically, it examined the extent to which charter schools suspend children of color and children with disabilities at excessive and disparate rates.

“Among the many finding of the 36-page report: More than 500 charter schools suspended black students at a rate that was at least 10 percentage points higher than the rate for white students. And moreover, 1,093 charter schools suspended students with disabilities at a rate that was 10 or more percentage points higher than for students without disabilities.

“The most alarming finding, the research points out, is that 235 charter schools suspended more than 50 percent of their enrolled students with disabilities.

“In addition, while racial disparities in suspension rates between black students and white students were significant at both the elementary and secondary level, the rate exploded during secondary school, jumping from a 6.4 percent disciplinary gap to a 16.4 percent gap.

“It’s been well documented that the frequent use of suspensions, among many other things, contributes to chronic absenteeism, is correlated with lower achievement, and predicts lower graduation rates, heightened risk for grade retention, and delinquent behavior that often leads to the juvenile justice system.

“The host of findings, the researchers wrote, suggests that the excessive suspension rates are contributing to the school-to-prison pipeline and that at least some charter schools are likely violating the civil rights of students.”

Categories Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Reform, Privatization

Doug Garnett: The Brilliant Strategy of the Philanthrocapitalists: The Echo Chamber

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2016 //
54

Doug Garnett is a communications specialist and a regular reader of the blog. He writes here about reading “Policy Patrons,” by Megan Tomkins-Stange.

Been reading Policy Patrons. And it’s given me a different insight.

We all feel like Gates, Broad and others are “dictating” what happens. It’s hard – because they aren’t. What they’re doing is far more subtle but with similar results.

What they’ve done is create a “walled garden” of groups that are all paid to support their position. The list in this article is an example of creating that walled garden – a range of community organizations, researchers, university credibility, etc…

THEN, with the walled garden created, the foundations themselves never have to “tell the government what to do”. They are able to say “well, I know somebody who deals with that – you should talk with them”. Except the foundations have ensured that this “somebody” is somebody who will give the answer they want.

It’s incredibly deceptive – but politicians and press seem incapable of detecting when they’ve been had in this way. Because the “walled garden” of true “ed reform believers” are the only people they end up talking to. In a sense, Gates, Broad, et. al. deliver answers on a silver platter so that state education departments, school districts, politicians, and press don’t have to work hard.

This informal (but massive) walled garden they’ve build believes in testing as management, believes in CCSS, believes in charter schools, and believes that privatizing government services is always good.

As a result, state education bureaucrats NEVER have to wander outside the garden – so they never have to confront uncomfortable truths. (It’s dangerous outside those walls and that threatens one’s career.)

But this also explains why politicians are so shocked when citizens confront them with dissatisfaction with their policies – they’ve been blissfully living inside the Eden of Reform – unaware that they aren’t in touch with reality. I’ve seen this in Oregon. Our legislators cannot believe it when someone rational challenges what they’ve been doing.

It’s a HUGE problem for those of us who believe in public schools and believe in the value of researched answers. Because it’s not illegal what they’ve done. They believe it’s entirely moral. And they think they’re being “good people” by doing it. And it spreads blame by breaking it into tiny bits so no single organization can be blamed for much. Kind of a guaranteed “plausible deniability” clause.

Yet the result is entirely immoral – because it’s the future of our children.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Contact the NAACP and Urge Them to Support Their General Assembly’s Resolution for Moratorium on Charters

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2016 //
12

There will be a vote this weekend by the Board of the NAACP on whether it will sustain the general assembly vote for the Moratorium on Charters. The charter lobby is on fire contacting them. I am seeing calls to action on their Association sites. Please post everywhere.

Call these two numbers and express your support for a moratorium on charter schools

Hollywood Bureau
Los Angeles, CA
Phone: (323) 938-5268
Fax: (323) 938-8153

Washington Bureau
1156 15th Street, NW Suite 915
Washington, DC 20005
Phone: (202) 463-2940
Fax: (202) 463-2953
washingtonbureau@naacpnet.org

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Arthur Camins: Individual Choice is No Substitute for Democracy

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2016 //
11

Since the Reagan era, Republicans have touted the virtues of individual choice. The idea was appealing but ignored the fact that none of us lives alone on an island. We form communities and societies to solve problems and create possibilities that none of us can do alone. We collaborate for our common well-being and safety.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party decided to co-opt the language of Republicans in the crucial area of education. Whereas once Democrats championed equity and support for teacher professionalism, the Obama administration joined in the chorus seeking school choice instead of better public schools for all and belittled our nation’s career educators. So for the past 15 years, we have had a Bush-Obama agenda of testing, accountability, school choice and competition. This agenda has done incredible damage to children, teachers, and public schools. Arthur Camins writes that it also hurts our democracy.

In this post, Arthur Camins explains why individual choice undermines democracy. Camins is Director of the Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education at Stevens Institute of Technology.

Camins writes:

“In an 1857 speech, Fredrick Douglass offered this advice: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. […] If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

“Douglass called for a struggle for a democracy in which the disempowered are the active agents and shapers of their own destiny.

“Donald Trump and promoters of unelected school boards would have us acquiesce to a contrary subservient vision. How dare I equate Trump’s racist, xenophobic, misogynistic, authoritarian appeal with charter-school advocates who wrap themselves in the mantle of civil rights? Well, I am not equating, but I am asserting that they share a dangerous dismissal of the vitalness of democracy.

“Trump wears his disdain for democracy proudly on his sleeve. I am your voice… No one knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it. Trump’s message is that the solution to persistent problems is not democracy or for people to join with one another in a struggle for a better life, but rather to trust him.

“Advocates for privately governed, but publicly funded, charter schools are more circumspect. To justify abandonment of democracy, they point to the dysfunction of elected school boards. Netflix’s billionaire CEO Reed Hastings, a charter school cheerleader, argued that instability due to turnover in elected school boards makes long-term planning difficult. Similarly, in one post the Fordham Foundation asserted, “When it comes to school boards, what matters most is the character of those who serve — not how they were selected.” Whatever it takes to get the job done assertions have a practical and utilitarian patina, but are profoundly anti-democratic as its apostles typically eschew the inconvenience of dissent and challenge. History is replete with examples of the slippery slope that begin with constrained restrictions of inconvenient democracy in the name of addressing real or trumped up threats but end with more generalized despotism. The solution to the necessary messiness of contentious democracy is never its avoidance in the name of expediency.

“In contrast to Douglass’s call for struggle, Trump, and advocates for privately governed charter schools share a let others solve your problems for you philosophy. Many share something else. They are- or claim to be- billionaires. The already empowered stake their claims to legitimacy on convincing “the less fortunate” that despite vast differences in wealth, power, and life circumstances, they should trust the judgment of their self-appointed defenders rather than one another. One such disingenuous pitch is that poor folks should have the same school choices as the wealthy. The cynical messages are: Give up on struggle for equity across your racial differences. Give up on democratically governed schools. Improvement depends on being out for yourself, just like us.”

There is more. Please read it.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Privatization

Attorney General of Massachusetts Says NO on 2

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2016 //
5

Maura Healey, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, has come out in opposition to Question 2, which would lift the cap on charter schools. Another dozen charter schools would be authorized every year indefinitely. Out-of-State billionaires, including the Waltons of Arkansas, have contributed millions of dollars to privatize public schools in Massachusetts.

I received this email the other day:

cps1

We Have the People, They Have (more and more dark) $$! 

cps2

Dear Diane,
And what excellent people we have! People like youand Attorney General Maura Healey, who has joined Senator Elizabeth Warren and the ever growing movement to protect public education for ALL students.
“If you say the money follows the student and then you don’t actually reimburse the district – then that’s a problem.” – Attorney General Maura Healey
cps3
And in other encouraging news, the Boston and Newton School Committees passed No on 2 resolutions this week, and our total has reached more than164 school committees statewide, including urban and suburban districts.
It’s time to stand up to the out-of-state billionaires and show them what a real grassroots campaign looks like, because when we fight, we win!
There have been countless great commentaries and letters to the editor from our No on 2 grassroots, but I wanted to highlight this commentary by Boston University Professor of Social Studies Education Christopher Martell. Clickhere to read his five thoughtful and clearly presented reasons to vote no.
And don’t miss EduShyster on this week’s big court ruling for keeping the cap and against the folks who argued that lifting the cap is a civil rights issue.
We have victory in our sights thanks to the hard work of people like you, people out knocking on doors, making calls and talking to everyone you know!
Sign up for a canvass shift this Saturday, Oct. 8 near you:
Boston – 10:00 AM
Almont Park
40 Almont St.
Mattapan
Brighton – 3:00 PM
Ronan’s Deli
243 Faneuil St.
Brookline – 1:00 PM
Also Sunday, 11:30 AM
Dunkin’ Donuts
1955 Beacon St., Cleveland Circle
Fall River – 10:30 AM
Fall River Educators Association
178 4th St.
Haverhill – 3:00 PM
Haverhill High School
Parking Lot A
Lowell – 4:00 PM
Riley School
115 Douglas Rd.
Northampton – 10:30 AM
Potpourri Plaza
243 King St.
Norwood – 2:00 PM
Norwood High School
Pittsfield – 2:00 PM
188 East St.
Quincy – 9:30 AM
MTA Office
Worcester – 3:00 PM
16 Alden St.
Click here to see a full list of all neighborhood canvasses. Question 2 is bad for our schools, and it’s time we stand up united to vote NO.
To get in touch with the Save Our Public Schools campaign and learn how to plug in to this important movement, click here.
Best,
Lisa Guisbond and Ann O’Halloran
CPS Executive Director and President
P.S. Click HERE to help CPS continue to inform the public on education issues, including charter schools, high-stakes testing and full funding of our public schools. 
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization

UPDATE: Unmasked! The Pro-Charter Blogger in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
62

UPDATE: Marc Kenen, the executive director of the Massachusetts Charter School Association and also the author of ballot Question 2, which would expand the number of charter schools in the state, has written to say that this post is untrue. I have no way of knowing who “Nat Morton” is since he or she will not reveal his/her identity. “Nat Morton” is a passionate advocate for charter schools who posted comments here frequently. If Marc Kenen is not “Nat Morton,” I apologize. Someone writes a blog and calls him/herself “Nat Morton,” and I implore that person to give their true name so readers can judge their credentials and their authenticity. I will also ask Marc Kenen to stop writing insulting comments to this blog, as such comments are not permitted.

Knowing this background: I leave the original post intact but warn readers that the identity of “Nat Morton” is unknown, and I can’t be certain who he/she is, other than that it is not me. Beyond that, I can’t know until “Nat Morton” removes his/her mask.

The original post began here:

Reader Christine Langhoff in Massachusetts sent the following comment about a blogger who has frequently written on this blog to defend charter schools, support Question 2 to permit more of them, and to flout his superior research abilities.

“A Boston parent, exchanging emails with (G)Nat Morton, received a digital file from Gnat in support of his arguments. But he forgot to use his nom de plume, and revealed himself as Marc Kenen, executive Director of the MA Charter School Association and also the author of ballot Question 2.

“http://www.masscharterschools.org/about-us/staff

“Kenen has not denied that Nat Morton is his avatar. Further, Stephen B. Ronan is the only person I have ever seen refer to Nat Morton’s blog, and in any forum where the one appears,the other is apt to chime in. This leads me to conclude that Kenen is Gnat is Ronan.

“I find it difficult to enage seriously with someone who would defund our excellent public schools when he is not even willing to own his perspective publicly by using his own name as he advances the cause of the privatizers. And if there’s any question whether the ballot question is designed to defund our schools, it’s worth noting that Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson made this point in the Askwith Forum at Harvard on Sept. 27 regarding Question 2. He asked Kenen directly why he had not written a funding mechanism into the proposal. Start at 1:12:00 (It’s apparent in the video that Kenen bears more than a passing resemblance to his Nat Morton avatar.)

“https://youtu.be/XCsZZ-J7mcU

“https://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/16/09/more-charter-schools-massachusetts-vote-and-national-debate”

So there you have it: the leading advocate of Question 2 (more charters) pretends to be an independent researcher but is in fact a paid employee of the state charter association. Why not give your name and affiliation and let people make their own judgment? This is redolent of the charter movement itself, which pretends to be about helping poor kids but attracts funding from Wall Street, right wing politicians, and others whose real goal is privatization, not helping improve schools for all children.

Our national goal is equal educational opportunity, not a free-market of winners and losers. Privatization does not advance equal educational opportunity. It exacerbates inequality, just like any free market.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Privatization

Larry Lee: Public Education is Under Attack in Alabama: Help Us!

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
2

Larry Lee is one of the staunchest supporters of public schools in Alabama. A few years ago, he criss-crossed the state and identified 10 rural schools that were doing everyday miracles for their children and their communities because of the hard work and dedication of teachers, principals, and families, all doing their best for their children.

He sent me the following urgent message:

These are dark days for public education in Alabama. Since the legislature changed hands in 2010, things have gone steadily downhill.

Take a look:

* A bill to have A-F school grades, a practice intended solely to be punitive and a practice that research does not support.

* The Alabama Accountability Act that has now diverted $72 million from the Education Trust Fund for vouchers for private schools. A law that failed utterly in its stated mission to “help; poor students stuck in failing schools by their zip code.

* A bill to establish charter schools which cuts into already under-funded public schools funding.

* A bill known as the RAISE Act that would have forced teachers to be evaluated with the highly controversial Value Added Model.

* A bill intended to set up Education Savings Accounts that would have diverted more funding from the Education Trust Fund.

Instead of seeking input from professional educators, legislators are listening to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Jeb Bush foundations and Alabama special interests. In fact, the Senate majority leader boasted after passing the Accountability Act in 2013 that this bill was purposely hidden from educators because “they would have opposed it.”

Now, to add insult to injury the state board of education, the body that should be the first line of defense for public education, has turned its back on our children by hiring an attorney from Massachusetts to be state school superintendent. They ignored Alabama code and even their advertised required qualifications and put their own ideology and political ambitions ahead of the 740,000 children in Alabama public schools

Because of this, a group of 40 plaintiffs, including former local superintendents, principals, teachers, school board members, parents, local elected officials, a former college president and a former U.S. Congressman have joined together to seek legal action against the state school board.

They have said ENOUGH IS ENOUGH and formed the Alabama Public School Defense Fund to wage this battle.

Please join in standing up for our children by going to this site and contributing today.

https://www.gofundme.com/2t2r6mpy

—
Larry Lee
334-787-0410

http://www.larryeducation.com (blog)

Education Is Everyone’s Business

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers and Teaching, Vouchers

A Personal Letter to a Persistent Charter Advocate

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
122

This is a letter to a reader who frequently sends comments defending the privatization of public schools in Massachusetts. On some days, he sends 3-5 comments, filled with references to studies that support charters, insisting that charters will not take money away from public schools, even though as a practical matter, charter schools everywhere have led to budget cuts for public schools that enroll the vast majority of children. His comments are repetitive and he has taken up a lot of space on a blog that opposes privatization and opposes school choice because of the damage it does to a universal, democratically controlled system of public education. Unless you believe that scores on standardized tests are the purpose of public education and the best measure of educational quality, these “studies” are meaningless and lacking in any understanding of democracy, civic responsibility, and the common good.

For these reasons, this letter is directed to this reader.

I will not post any more of your comments about Question 2 in Massachusetts and the glories of charter schools until you answer my questions.

Why do you have so much time on your hands to defend privatization?

What is your day job?

Is anyone paying you for your constant rebuttals?

What are your credentials and your expertise?

I told you mine: 50 years a scholar of education; a Ph.D. in history of American education from Columbia University; numerous books and honorary degrees; Assistant Secretary of Education for Research in the George H.W. Bush administration; a founding member of two conservative think tanks–the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution, as well as a Senior Fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a Senior Fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution. I was an avid proponent of charter schools for almost 15 years. Several years ago, I realized that the charter industry is now led by people who want to privatize and profit from money intended for our public schools. I saw the light. I know the arguments for charters better than you do. I used to believe them.

I have determined to devote my strength and energy, so long as I have it, to the preservation and transformation of public schools so that they offer equal opportunity for all children. Charter schools are a diversion that weaken public education. I will not allow my blog to be used as a forum for those who fight to destroy public education by diverting public funds to private schools and to those who mask their goal of privatization by stealing the language of the civil rights movement. I don’t believe that anyone should put words in the mouths of those who are not living, yet I feel certain that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., would never have locked arms with the Waltons, the Koch brothers, Scott Walker, Donald Trump, ALEC, hedge fund managers, Wall Street titans, and demanded privatization and defunding of public schools. Dr. King was a great supporter of the labor movement. He was murdered in Memphis fighting for the rights of sanitation workers to organize a union. He would certainly oppose the charter industry, which prides itself on being anti-union. 93% of charters are non-union and aggressively oppose efforts by teachers to form a union.

Did you notice that the World Economic Forum just named Finland the best educational school system in the world? It has no charters, no vouchers. It has a strong union that all educators belong to. It has no standardized tests until the end of high school. It focuses on creativity, the arts, physiical activity, play, and critical thinking. It has a rich curriculum taught by well-prepared teachers. No charters, no Teach for Finland. No disruption. No teacher churn. The joy of learning is paramount. Children don’t begin academic studies until the age of 7. There is a recess after every class. There is free medical care, and low poverty.

We, by contrast, ignore poverty as a given and assume that school must be harder, tests must be harder, recess must be sacrificed to rigor and grit. Joy of learning? Play? The arts? No time for that. Gets in the way of testing.

The public is waking up. No matter how many millions your friends pour into the charter industry, an aware public will not sell or give away their community public schools. The public built them with their taxes. The public wants experienced career teachers, not temps who come and go with regularity.

You can cite all the studies you want about test scores. Readers of this blog know how those scores were obtained. They know that charter schools choose the students they want and kick out the ones they don’t want. They know charters with high scores engage in intensive test prep for months. Test scores will not convince an informed public to hand over their schools to corporations and non-educators. The Waltons have wiped out large swaths of small-town America, killing mom-and-pop stores, then hiring mom and pop as low-wage greeters. The motto of the charter industry is disrupt, destroy, privatize. Disruption harms children and communities. Tell your billionaire funders: Disrupt your family and community, but don’t impose your rootlessness on others.

No thanks. We don’t want to see the Walmartization of American public schools. They are a basic democratic institution. They belong to the public, not corporations and Wall Street. Not “Families for Excellent Schools” whose own children go to such excellent schools as Exeter, Phillips Andover, Deerfield Academy, and other elite schools where tuition runs about $50,000 a year. Too bad they don’t want similar excellent schools for other people’s children. Instead, they favor “no excuses” boot camps that impose harsh discipline and focus relentlessly on test scores in math and reading, the tested subjects. I acknowledge that there are outliers, that there are charter schools that seek to improve the education of poor kids. But unfortunately, the charter industry is now led and driven by indiduals and groups that want to destroy public education. They dress their children in identical T-shirts and bus them to legislative hearings and political rallies to demand more charters, more money. Their greedy, self-serving charter leaders use the children (their “scholars”) as pawns in their quest for political power.

When charters become a potent political force, democracy suffers. Communities are divided. Legislators become consumed by charter issues, even though the charters enroll less than 10% of students. Big campaign contributions guarantee political allies, even Democrats, despite the fact that school choice has always been a beloved Republican policy, despite the fact that it promotes segregation, despite the fact that it was the rallying cry of southern segregationists after the Brown decision.

And so, dear reader, we reject your repetitive defense of school choice. We will oppose your efforts to cripple a cornerstone of our democracy. We will oppose a dual system of publicly funded schools, one open to all, the other open to a few and privately controlled.

We will fight for great public schools, democratically controlled, accountable and transparent.

We mean to keep them and make them better than ever.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
5

Before the second debate tonight, the Journey for Justice asks the candidates to respond to these questions:


NEWS RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Jaribu Lee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(773) 548-7500
October 8, 2016
info@j4jalliance.com

Education activists release statement ahead of second presidential debate: “Will the next president be tone deaf…”
​

CHICAGO – Today, Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) released the following statement ahead of the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday, September 9th. Thousands of African American and Latino parents, students and activists have challenged both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and third-party candidates) to release their K-through-12 public education platforms, as well as identify how, if elected, they will work to end federal education policies that have destabilized communities and hurt students of color:

“As parents, students and residents of communities impacted by corporate education interventions in 24 cities across this nation, we are dismayed by the omission of public education as an issue during this presidential election season. Public education repeatedly polls as a top tier issue, but has been largely ignored by both major and third party candidates,” said Brown.

“Will the next president be tone deaf to the tremors from the ground? As a national network of grassroots community organizations across America, we have seen first-hand a determined resistance to failed, top-down corporate education interventions that cannot be ignored; Title VI civil rights complaints filed in 12 cities, thousands of people in determined protest against school closings, sit-ins and traffic blockades, students occupying the superintendent’s office in Newark, a 34-day hunger strike to save a neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school in Chicago, the rejection of punitive standardized test across the nation and from those who wish to be the leader of the free world; silence.

“The next president must base their advocacy in relationship with people’s lived reality, not corporate relationships. When a mother cries in Detroit because her child’s school is being closed, or students walk-out by the thousands in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia; it matters. The next president must understand that the United States ranks 19th in the world in public education among OECD countries but when you remove poverty we are number 2. The next president must have the courage to stare down inequity in public education with a commitment to hear the voices of the people directly impacted. The next president must understand that we do not have failing schools in America, as a public we have been failed,” he continued.

“We are asking the next president to meet with the Journey for Justice Alliance and adopt our education platform. Include J4J on your education transition team so that public policy can be rooted in our lived experiences, not someone’s opinion of our communities. We were disappointed that the vice-presidential candidates said nothing about public education in their October 4th debate. We want to hear from both candidates on October 9th about their education agenda. Will they be honest about the harm inflicted on our communities by school closings and the unwarranted expansion of charter schools? Will they acknowledge that the “illusion of choice” must be erased by the reality of strong, high quality neighborhood schools within safe walking distance of our homes? We will be watching.”

​###

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) (www.j4jalliance.org) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.

Journey For Justice Alliance
4242 S. Cottage Grove
Chicago, IL 60653
773-548-7500

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Equity, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Inequality, Injustice, Poverty, Privatization, Race
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