More on Memphis: Jim Horn Responds
In my post about the Memphis-Shelby County schools yesterday, I quoted Jim Horn of Schools Matter. Horn was extremely critical of the plan to increase the proportion of students in charters from 4% to 19%, resulting in a $212 transfer of public school funding from the Memphis public schools to private hands.
A comment on the web site was highly critical of Horn and said he knew nothing about the plan or its supporters.
As a resident of Shelby County, former teacher, parent, and director of Stand for Children in Memphis, I take offense to the unbased reflection you present here about the merger of Memphis City and Shelby County Schools.
The plan you speak of was intentionally vetted through over 14,000 people in the community and led by 21 community volunteers on the Transition Planning Commission. Yes, one of them was Stand’s Executive Director
A comment on the web site was highly critical of Horn and said he knew nothing about the plan or its supporters.
As a resident of Shelby County, former teacher, parent, and director of Stand for Children in Memphis, I take offense to the unbased reflection you present here about the merger of Memphis City and Shelby County Schools.
The plan you speak of was intentionally vetted through over 14,000 people in the community and led by 21 community volunteers on the Transition Planning Commission. Yes, one of them was Stand’s Executive Director
Trouble in New Orleans Charter Paradise
Down in New Orleans, which corporate reformers treat as a model for the nation, there’s trouble.
One of the charter groups, called the Algiers Charter Schools Association, is in hot water with parents. Algiers has eight charters, enrolling over 5,000 students. It recently lost its CEO and hired an interim chief academic officer, Aamir Raza, from New York City to implement changes. Raza is a management consultant (not an educator, needless to say) who had worked for the New York City Department of Education charter office.
Algiers has this problem: Some of its charters are high-flying (a 93-97% pass rate on the state tests) and some do very poorly (a 7% pass rate on the same test). Critics in New Orleans attribute the disparity to a conscious
One of the charter groups, called the Algiers Charter Schools Association, is in hot water with parents. Algiers has eight charters, enrolling over 5,000 students. It recently lost its CEO and hired an interim chief academic officer, Aamir Raza, from New York City to implement changes. Raza is a management consultant (not an educator, needless to say) who had worked for the New York City Department of Education charter office.
Algiers has this problem: Some of its charters are high-flying (a 93-97% pass rate on the state tests) and some do very poorly (a 7% pass rate on the same test). Critics in New Orleans attribute the disparity to a conscious
Follow the Money
If you want to know why so many politicians think so highly of charters, there is a basic rule of politics that explains it all: Follow the money.
The most visible organization promoting corporate reform is called Democrats for Education Reform, known as DFER (commonly pronounced “D-fer”). DFER is the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group. It always has a few non-hedge funders on the board, especially one or two prominent African-Americans, to burnish its pretentious claim of leading the civil rights movement of our day. Kevin Chavous, a former council member from Washington, D.C., fills that role for now, along with the DFER stalwart, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. DFER has its own
The most visible organization promoting corporate reform is called Democrats for Education Reform, known as DFER (commonly pronounced “D-fer”). DFER is the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group. It always has a few non-hedge funders on the board, especially one or two prominent African-Americans, to burnish its pretentious claim of leading the civil rights movement of our day. Kevin Chavous, a former council member from Washington, D.C., fills that role for now, along with the DFER stalwart, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. DFER has its own
The Lie Behind “College for All”
Teachers provide a reality check to the grandest of visions.
The grand vision of our time is that every student should go to college. If everyone goes to college, everyone will have high wages. Poverty will end because everyone went to college.
This is fallacious reasoning. If everyone has a college diploma, then a college diploma will be as valuable as a high school diploma is today. The more diplomas there are, the more they become an entry-level requirement. As readers have noticed in my recent blogs, college graduates who work at Apple stores are making $12 an hour
The grand vision of our time is that every student should go to college. If everyone goes to college, everyone will have high wages. Poverty will end because everyone went to college.
This is fallacious reasoning. If everyone has a college diploma, then a college diploma will be as valuable as a high school diploma is today. The more diplomas there are, the more they become an entry-level requirement. As readers have noticed in my recent blogs, college graduates who work at Apple stores are making $12 an hour
A Case for Local Control
A reader explains why local control works in her community’s public schools. She realizes the downside of local control. She knows that local control can be a way of maintaining ignorance and rejecting science and knowledge. But there is a danger in standardization, and she explains why we must seek to find the right balance between the forces of localism and the forces of standardization. If we don’t, we lose something of value.
Local control also allows for some pretty different and interesting curricula options. Our local high school, a rural school in California, has a vineyard, an orchard, pigs, and sheep. The program is very successful at this school. I daresay if I proposed this as a statewide standard and suggested that LAUSD implement it at all their highChaos in 24 NYC Turnaround SchoolsOn Friday, an independent arbitrator issued a binding ruling to stop the “turnaround” of 24 schools, where some 3,500 teachers lost their jobs so that the city could claim federal School Improvement Grant funding. The federal program requires that the principal and at least half the teachers be fired; the school gets a new name, and voila! All is transformed, turned around due to the magic of mass firings. But the arbitrator agreed with the union that its contract had been violated. Mayor Bloomberg, however, is not one to be easily deterred. So he announced not only that he is suing to More on Local ControlI have always had mixed feelings about local control. On one hand, I think it is very important for people to feel a sense of pride, belonging, ownership, and engagement in their local school. On the other, I don’t want the school to reflect nothing more than what the local people already know and believe. That way, no one every learns anything new or is challenged to rethink what they know. Education is about tradition but it is also about encountering and grappling with new ideas. So, I don’t want to seem wishy-washy, but I recognize that there is merit to both sides of the argument and that, as in so many things, a sensible balance is needed between the forces of localism and those who push against localism. I should add that, these days, I find no case to be made for federal control of curriculum, as the federal bureaucrats are even less thoughtful, less imaginative, and more rule-bound than their local counterparts. At |
