“Creative Disruption” Destroys Public Education in Chicago’s Bronzeville
Portfolio school reform is the theory that underpins much of what is happening across the school districts in America’s biggest cities. It is the idea that a school district should be managed like a business portfolio, shedding the failed investments and resourcing the smart investments. It is a program of the Center for Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington and it is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One of its primary features is the practice of closing schools.
Trymaine Lee, who has been covering school reform in Chicago for MSNBC, reflects in thispowerful article on the impact of the rash of school closures in recent years on the children and adolescents in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. “After Parrish Brown graduates from Walter Dyett High School this spring, it’s likely he’ll never set foot in that school building again. Not for a 10-year reunion or to catch up with former teachers or to admire the gleaming trophies inside the school’s display case. Because if all goes according to the city’s plan, there soon will be no Walter Dyett High School to return to in Bronzeville, an historic African-American enclave on the city’s south side. ‘They closed my elementary school and now they’re phasing out my high school. One day there’ll be nothing in my community to come back to,’ said Brown, 17.”
Describing Chicago, Lee reports, “Since 2001 the district has shuttered or phased-out about 150