Theft of Public Education in Memphis
Jim Horn of Schools Matter pored through the 200-page document describing the plan for the immediate future of the Memphis public schools, and this is what he learned.
The Memphis schools will be merged with the schools of Shelby County, allegedly for efficiency. But in fact, the plan is to implement a massive transfer of students to charter schools.
By 2016, a mere four years from now, enrollment in charter schools will increase from 4% to 19%. This will happen not because parents or students have asked to be assigned to charters but because the planners want it
The Memphis schools will be merged with the schools of Shelby County, allegedly for efficiency. But in fact, the plan is to implement a massive transfer of students to charter schools.
By 2016, a mere four years from now, enrollment in charter schools will increase from 4% to 19%. This will happen not because parents or students have asked to be assigned to charters but because the planners want it
Will Florida Ruin Its Higher Education Institutions?
A reader informs us about Florida Governor Rick Scott’s plans to transfer the destructive ideas of K-12 to the higher education sector. Last fall, Governor Scott memorably said that Florida doesn’t need more people with anthropology degrees, that presumably being an unusually useless area of study; his daughter has an anthropology degree:
The university system is already under attack in Florida. Our governor wants professors to be judged by studentBloomberg’s Defeat..For NowMayor Bloomberg is intent on closing as many public schools as he can before he leaves office at the end of 2013 (his third term). He has already closed about 150 schools, maybe more, of the 1,100 or 1,200 that he started with. He has added hundreds of new schools. I’ve lost count. Maybe he has too. The mayor loves privately managed charter schools, competition, and choice. He has done his best to promote those ideas over the past ten years. There was a time when the mayor and his public relations team sold the idea of a “New York City miracle,” but those claims blew up in 2010 when the state acknowledged that it had manipulated the passing score for years. When scores across the state were recalibrated, the “miracle” about Why This Preschool Teacher Voted to StrikeA lot of cash will be spent in Chicago to beat the teachers down for authorizing a strike. Expect a barrage of ads aimed at demeaning the teachers and distorting their grievances. The big equity investors and corporations like to complain about the power of the unions, but the unions don’t look very powerful these days. The CTU looks like downtrodden and much-abused teachers. Democratic mayors like Rahm Emanel have shown that they don’t care about CTU, and don’t need them. They talk “respect” out of one side of their mouth, but they are ready to throw the teachers under the bus. Emanuel’s Wall Sreet friends will make sure the public hears his side of the story on radio and television. Time to hear the other side. A preschool teacher in the Chicago public schools explained recently why she voted to authorize a strike. These Guys Want to Run Our SchoolsJoe Nocera, a regular columnist for the New York Times, wrote a column about what can only be described as the legal looting of Burger King. He describes how one group of financiers bought the company, paid themselves a few hundred million, then sold it to some other Wall Street bunkum artists for a billion, who extracted another billion from the company before selling it to yet another group of investors who had figured out how to milk the company one more time. Every time it changed hands, some smart guys on Wall Street laid off workers, did some fancy footwork with financial instruments, got rich and dumped the company. I read the books about Enron (The Smartest Guys in the Room and Conspiracy of Fools); I know about Ken Lay School’s Out at a Turnaround SchoolThis era may be remembered as the time when our nation’s leaders decided to break the spirits of our teachers and to close enough schools to instill fear in the hearts of all educators I don’t know which “thought leader” came up with the idea that the best way to “fix” a school with low test scores is to fire the principal and at least half the staff. I don’t know the evidence to support this policy of wiping the slate clean without individual evaluations. But now with the federal imprimatur of Race to the Top, it’s happening in many school districts. And of course, the U.S. Department of Education will stretch to prove that lowering the boom works, because it’s their idea. But One Reason Why Louisiana Turned into a Bad JokeThis parent in Louisiana noticed that the state insists that only trained professionals can trim his shrubs. And only licensed florists can sell flowers to him. But under Bobby Jindal, the children of Louisiana can be taught by anyone who wants to teach, even if they have less training than a shrub technician or a licensed florist. And that’s why Louisiana is now an international joke. Pearson Helps the PoorPearson, the all-encompassing media giant that dominates education publishing, plans to open $3-a-month private schools for children of the poor in Africa and Asia. According to Sir Michael Barber, who advises Pearson, there really is no point depending on government when private entrepreneurs can supply education at low cost far more efficiently. I suppose the goal is to get the business up and running, then get government to foot the bill as it outsources Lawyers Garnish Teacher’s Wages to Pay Off Student DebtJohn Hechinger of Bloomberg News is the best education journalist at work these days. His latest story is chilling: It tells of a determined effort by the federal government and lawyers to collect a student loan debt owed by a teacher in Los Angeles. The teacher had a debt left from the 1970s. The aggressive lawyers emptied her bank account and grabbed a Do You Believe Sugar Bugs Cause Cavities?Gary Rubinstein is a friendly critic of TFA. As a former corps member, he knows the good and the bad side of the TFA experience. The question that is the title of this post is answered in his post, which I recommend. What attracted me to Gary is that he doesn’t like hype and spin. He doesn’t like boasting. He thinks that TFA |