Category Archives: Issues Blogs (2011-2014)

Education

It’s Time for “Disruptive Change” Within the Ranks of Charter School Profiteers

Leaders in the corporate, hedge fund controlled, charter outfits love to use the phrase “disruptive change” as code for “we are taking over from those slow, stupid public school administrators and teachers because we can do it better.” But judging from their last few years’ track records, it’s looking like they are past due for some “disruptive change” within their own operations to root out the theft of tax dollars and short-changing of students in dire need of a true education.

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Education

What the Market Basket Grocery Strike Can Teach Educators

marketbasket strkers strike
Market Basket strikers – Credit BBC

In just three weeks, employees of Market Basket,  a regional chain of grocery stores based in Massachusetts, pulled off an upset in the world of labor relations: They successfully drove that company’s board of directors to re-hire their loved CEO who had been fired by other distant family members in a boardroom squabble over control of the company.

This successful strike organized by managers, supervisors and workers has much to teach educators about how the power of numbers can offset the power of the rich.

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Education

It Takes Practice to Become This Kind of a Rainbow

My students are from lots of places: Columbia, Guatemala, Mexico, Vietnam, South Korea, China, and Taiwan this year. The mix is always changing. My two classes are adult-ed, English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.

I am lucky to have such a good part-time job working for an awesome community college. This is only my second semester to teach in this program.

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Education

The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments — Part 3 — Newark

Newark Parents wait in line for school assignment.
Newark parents and students wait in long lines to find out their school assignment. Next, they stand in line at another location to actually enroll. Credit: myfoxtampabay.com

This is the 3rd in a series of three posts pointing out how corporate, investor-owned charter school organizations have chosen to experiment at the expense of children who are mostly from poor families.

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Education

The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments — Part 2 — Detroit

Part 1 of this series focused on New Orleans and the radical experiment there with ALL charter schools serving the city this year. I showed that New Orleans is an example of how investors and hedge fund managers see “reform” experiments as an option only for the poor. We really don’t see much, if any experimentation being proposed in the upper economic sectors of this country right now.

Next, let’s look at another example of the callous disregard for the future of poor children to serve the business desires of investors and edu-corporations.

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Education

Charter Schools to Be Defining Issue of Okla State Superintendent Race

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Democrats had two unusually good choices in this runoff race for the State Superintendent nomination between two long-time, dedicated education leaders: Freda Deskin and John Cox, the winner.

Now it is a race between John Cox and Joy Hofmeister. Both have a long track record of personal integrity. Both have a long track record of dedication to educational leadership and compassion for children. Both are highly personable, winsome, likeable people who understand the motivations of teachers and administrators.

Check.

Unless Hofmeister shifts positions, what will distinguish these two candidates will be their stance on “reform” as ALEC defines it, which means corporate charter schools and management corporations profiting at taxpayer expense.

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Education

The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments — Part 1 — New Orleans

It’s now clear that not everyone in American society has suffered equally or at all from charter school experiments.

While claiming to help the poor and people of color, in fact, corporate charters and their management companies have done the poor the most harm where those charters were given the most freedom and protection from the state.

In those instances, charter school corporations have aggressively pursued their own financial interests on the backs of taxpayers, while carefully avoiding accountability. And they have done this at the expense of poor children of color and their neighborhoods.

In this series of three posts —The Poor Pay the Highest Price for Charter School Experiments, I will focus on three instances of corporation schools experimenting with their organizational models at the expense of poor children with little regard for the children’s future.

Let’s start with the longest running example:

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Education

Poverty Is Still a Huge Issue for Students – Michelle Rhee Is Still Wrong

Michelle Rhee
Michelle Rhee – Credit: Education Week

Never really getting true reform, Michelle Rhee has stepped down from her role as the leading spokesperson for the corporation schools front organization Students First.

She held fast to an ideology – yes, ideology and not data – that denies the power of poverty in interrupting  poor students’ education. Instead, she focused on schools and teachers that serve those areas of high poverty. She placed blame liberally on teachers, insisting that with better teaching, poor students could succeed in spite of their poverty.

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Education

School Discipline Policies are Where the Anger Begins for Too Many Black Americans

Ferguson, Missouri protest, Aug 16th, Credit: CBS News
Ferguson, Missouri protest, Aug 16th, Credit: CBS News

What we are seeing in Ferguson, Missouri and in other cities is, in part, a direct outgrowth of misguided school suspension/expulsion policies over the last 50 years.

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