The Progressive Magazine: A School Crisis
Politicians in Puerto Rico are seeking to solve decades of fiscal mismanagement by adopting the same education reforms that are hurting children and starving school districts in the mainland United States. The disaster capitalism coming to the azure waters of Puerto Rico is very similar to the school privatization and private-control education reform causing an uproar in Chicago and Detroit.
A day strike by thousands of teachers across the island of Puerto Rico on Tuesday demonstrated the intensity of their concern about the new regime.
In October, Senator Eduardo Bhatia fast-tracked Project 1456 in the Puerto Rican Senate. School closure requirements in 1456 are the first notable parallel with the Detroit and Chicago school privatization playbook. In Chicago, 50 schools (primarily in African-American neighborhoods) were recently closed under the pretext that they were under-enrolled. A University of Chicago study showed that after neighborhood school closure, students were shuffled to a new set of low-performing schools— often charter schools.
In Michigan, the state created the Education Achievement Authority (EAA), an education board similar to the one proposed in Project 1456. Michigan is different from other states because the vast majority of its charter schools are already run by for-profit companies. The Detroit News reports that the EAA and the for-profit charters have been plagued by low performance and corruption.
Since 2014, the Puerto Rican government has closed 135 schools— about 10% of the schools on the island. The results of these school closings are class sizes as large as 40 students. The new law requires the closure of 400 more public schools—30% of the remaining public schools on the island. Additionally, Project 1456 requires that the government turn at least 15% of schools into Lider (charter schools) every three years under the auspices of private control and the education authority.
While a debate rages on the quality of charter schools in the United States, most peer-reviewed literature demonstrates that charters typically The Progressive Magazine: A School Crisis | Cloaking Inequity: