Letter to Civil Rights and school “choice” advocate (p.s. neoliberals skip this)
Dear Civil Rights and choice advocate,
I have noticed that some Civil Rights advocates are supporting and leading the school “choice” movement. They are searching for alternatives as our nation has consistently and purposely underserved students of color. As one reformer from Los Angeles told me, Latina/os and African Americans have been forced to attend “f_cked up schools” for decades.
In a recent Twitter exchange with Former California State Sen. Gloria Romero she framed school “choice” as a Civil Rights issue. In another Twitter exchange, Chris Stewart, a pastor from Minn, responded to my Finland post andChicago school closing post simultaneously by stating, “Finland replaced teachers with candidates from the cognitive elite. CPS can’t.”
Meta question: Why can’t the Chicago Public School (CPS) hire high-quality teachers? Why is the term hard-to-staff schools even a part of our vernacular?
If I only offered you two choices for dinner: A Vegan burger or tofu (all things I love to eat incidentally, but may cause you to recoil). Is that really choice?
Vouchers, parent trigger, charters… why are these the prominent “choices” on the table currently? What do they have in common? What do the Koch brothers, ALEC, Walton Foundation, Broad, Heritage, DFER, Jeb’s FEE, etc. all have as a common denominator?
Is it Civil Rights?
Is it Neoliberalism?… Wikipedia:
Neoliberalism is a political philosophy whose advocates support economic liberalization, free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and decreasing the size of the public sector while increasing the role of the private sector in modern society.
School choice advocates are a motley alliance between those whose primary focus is that want to see greater