Flipping Schools: The Hidden Forces Behind Education Reform
I am posting an excerpt of a report originally posted on truthout. What is happening in New Jersey is similar to what occurred in Chicago when the now Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was then the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, see Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality? and Catalyst’s In-Depth report of Arne Duncan’s Renaissance 2010, the plan for Chicago schools that he rolled out as CEO of the Chicago Pubic School system. He heralded his plan as a success and his appointment to Secretary of Education was based on this so-called “success”.
Is this what we want in Seattle?
A Newark Public School at Clinton Place & Hawthorne Avenue in Newark, NJ, 1929.
Half a year after Newark Public Schools launched an “agenda to ensure all students are in excellent schools,” the plan has come under a federal civil rights investigationto determine whether it “discriminates against black students.”
The investigation centers on a cluster of school closings in Newark’s predominantly black South Ward. Absent a consistent reason why the district targeted these schools – such as poor academics or declining enrollment – activists alleged discrimination. The “One Newark” reform plan, they wrote, would “continue a pattern of shuttering public schools in communities of color.”
This investigation could illuminate the structural forces behind Newark school reforms. Though there’s been ample media coverage of the city’s noisy school politics – from Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million gift to this year’s contentious mayoral election- so far, these structural forces remain opaque.
But an in-depth look into the district’s ultimately unsuccessful attempt to close one South Ward school reveals how real estate concerns and facilities funding increasingly drive neighborhood school closings and the expansion of privately managed charter Flipping Schools: The Hidden Forces Behind Education Reform | Seattle Education: