Indianapolis: What the Public Schools Learned from the Charter Schools
Indiana has been taken over by the forces of corporate school reform, under a succession of Republican governors devoted to school choice: Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, now Eric Holcomb. The public schools got a brief respite when educator Glenda Ritz was elected State Commissioner in 2012, but Pence spent four years attacking her Office and taking away its powers. Indiana has the gamut of privatization reforms: charter schools, vouchers, cybercharters.
The epicenter of the privatization movement is Indianapolis, where an organization called The Mind Trust has led the effort to destroy public education.
A teacher in Indiana recently left a comment about what she encountered when she returned to teaching in the public schools: lessons learned from charters.
She writes:
“I believe this “hypernormalization” can be traced back to the use of TFA teachers in our public school system. I had to come out of retirement to go back to the classroom for economic reasons and found an Art teacher position in the Indianapolis Public Schools. I joined a staff of over 50 teachers in a K-6 school with mostly young teachers (less than 10 years experience), TFA teachers, administrators with NO teaching experience and no teacher’s license, and a building with a high needs student population that was in complete chaos. The principal and assistant principal were only concerned only with “creating classroom culture,” or making sure that all the students walked in straight lines with a bubble in their mouth, hands clasped behind their backs. Data collection and testing was the driving force behind everything and it was of utmost importance to point out to any Indianapolis: What the Public Schools Learned from the Charter Schools | By Diane Ravitch | Common Dreams:
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Indianapolis: What the Public Schools Learned from the Charter Schools | By Diane Ravitch | Common Dreams: