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Thursday, June 2, 2011

solidaridad: Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores, the false success story of Green Dot

solidaridad: Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores, the false success story of Green Dot

Millionaires, Mendaciousness, and Miserable English Scores, the false success story of Green Dot

"The lowest-performing, based on test scores, is the large Green Dot chain." — Los Angeles Times

Green Dot has in Arne Duncan's words 'Cracked the Code' cracked the code to poverty pimping that is. Petruzzi is stacking major paper while 'graduating' students with single digit proficiency.
Green Dot Corporation Cheerleader Anthony Russo handles softball questions from KPCC's Madeleine Brand in a recent radio interview, where Brand is mildly skeptical, but Russo gushes about his favorite privatization pushers and poverty pimps. The real story about hostile takeover of Alain Leroy Locke High School reads much different than Russo's account. If anybody were to subpoena former Locke principal Frank Wells, and force him to answer questions about his participation, and possible payola involving the takeover, there'd be scandal of epic proportions.

Back to the exaggerated reports of the supposed Locke "turnaround." Astute readers will remember how Green Dot Corporation has used an additional $15 million from plutocrat donors to "turn the school around." This is documented in the New York Times' "School Is Turned Around, but Cost Gives Pause." If public schools had access to those kind of additional funds and resources, who knows what progress could be made. At the very least, there wouldn't have been "counseling out" of the most vulnerable students.

Moreover Locke's, like every other Green Dot school, sports some of the worst remediation rates in LAUSD.