Closing schools: Good Reasons and Bad Reasons
Current reformy rhetoric dictates that we MUST CLOSE FAILING SCHOOLS! That we must close those schools that are dropout factories or have persistently low achievement levels on state assessments. And, that we must, in the process, fire all of the staff in those schools that have caused these dismal conditions year after year, by thinking only of themselves, their tenure, their pensions and their wages – which are clearly too high for workers of their meager cognitive ability.
Take these simple bold steps and things will get better! Surely they will.
But, the bottom line is that you can’t just close down the poorest schools in any city school system and simply replace them with less poor ones – problem solved! That is, unless the larger strategy is actually about closing down entire neighborhoods, allowing them to become blighted, then seeking investors to step in and gentrify the area, replacing the old population with a new, less poor one! Problem solved. Or alternatively, if one relies on the