SAVING COMMUNITY SCHOOLS reposted from May 2013
Organizing Communities To Save Good Schools
by EdwardBerger on May 16, 2013
Destroy the good to reform the weak? What can communities that have good schools do to stop the destruction of their schools and the weakening of their societies? Is the movement to reform education driven by educators working for children, or forces determined to destroy the American Dream and establish a new type of feudalism?
What if your community has created great schools and is constantly improving them? What if your state is controlled by the extreme right? Should you allow your school district to be starved and damaged until it is broken into many partial schools that do not provide comprehensive education for all or a comprehensive curricula?
Together, superintendents, school boards, teachers, parents, and teacher’s associations can organize and counter the legislators who work against their communities. That means supporting candidates who want to preserve our schools. That means putting more pressure on elected representatives than those who have bought them. As these elected representatives live in the communities fighting to preserve their schools, many will change course. Organized and united school districts must put pressure on the legislature to change funding models designed to destroy public schools. They must demand that non-educators – political opportunists and ideologues – do not control the State Department of Education.
Educators say:
We can improve our schools and make them better. We have the best schools in the world – they are comprehensive in population and curricula. We are doing what needs to be done and getting better at it all the time. Failing schools in core city areas are a reflection of a failed political-economic system, not bad teachers.
Defromers say:
ALEC: Privatize K-12 education. Destroy teacher (worker) representation. Discredit teachers, teacher education, and experience. Corporatize education for profit. Buy legislators and get them to introduce corporate-favorable laws. Control elections by massive funding of their candidates, essentially creating a one party system they control.
KOCH BROTHERS (evolving from the John Birch society): Destroy public education. Destroy worker representation. Privatize prisons. Privatize education. Give corporations access to government by subverting the will of those who elect the representatives. Support ALEC and other extreme organizations. Use massive amounts of money to manipulate government.
EXTREME RIGHT WING: Starve public schools and replace them with for-profit schools and schools that SAVING COMMUNITY SCHOOLS reposted from May 2013: