Why Elected Local School Boards Matter « Diane Ravitch's blog

Why Elected Local School Boards Matter « Diane Ravitch's blog:

Why Elected Local School Boards Matter

by dianerav

Lance Hill in New Orleans knows what it is like to have no democratic control of schools funded with taxpayer dollars (so do people in New York City, but that’s another topic).
He writes:

Local democratic control of schools is the last remaining obstacle to the complete privatization of public education. For that reason alone, the movement to save public education needs to make this a central program tenet.Locally elected boards are the only entity that has the mission of keeping public schools public. They have a vested interest in retaining public control of schools and ensuring quality education since their actions directly impact local community life. That don’t always live up to that mission, but democracy allows us to hold them accountable. State control is no different than federal control since  For the Children? by dianerav A note from a teacher who was one of those rehired for a turnaround school. Thank you, Michael Bloomberg and Arne Duncan, for the unnecessary damage you inflict on schools, communities, students and teachers, all the while publicly proclaiming that it’s “for the children.” Yesterday I made a sojourn into my school, one of the 24 closing schools. (I say my school because I was hired back although the bloodletting that followed the ridiculous interview process fills one with survival guilt.) I called first to make sure the building was open and was told “Yes” and headed in to feed my classroom fish.When I arrived at school you would have thought I was trying to penetrate the Pentagon or CIA. I was told by  Memphis: Stand for Children Responds by dianerav I received the following comment from Kenya Bradshaw, the executive director of Stand for Children in Tennessee. She was responding to the posts about the transition plan for merging Shelby County and Memphis. The transition plan envisions an expansion of the number and proportion of students in privately managed charter schools, from 4% to 19%, and a transfer of $212 million out of the Memphis public school budget. Ms. Bradshaw seems to be a sincere and committed person, and I suspect she has no idea of the enmity that Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children generated by his performance a year ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, when he boasted of stripping away job protections from teachers in Illinois, specifically in Chicago. Or the enmity he created when he launched a campaign in Massachusetts to eliminate teacher job protections. Or the enmity he gained by converting Stand for Children into a multi-million dollar corporate organization that advocates for privatization as well as the reduction of teachers’ job status. There was a time when Stand for Children was a