Essential Reading: Peter Greene’s Expose of Ohio’s State Takeover of the Lorain City Schools
Retired high school English teacher in Western Pennsylvania, prolific blogger—and recently a columnist on education at Forbes Magazine, Peter Greene has published the tragic story of the state takeover of the school district where he spent his very first year of teaching—in Lorain, Ohio.
His post is long and filled with details, but if you live in Ohio, you should feel guilty if you don’t sit down and read the whole thing.
And if you live in another state, you should also read OH: Lorain, HB 70, and a Reformy Attack. Why? Because it is very same story as what happened in Flint, Michigan (see hereand here) when a state-appointed emergency manager arrogantly and ignorantly oversaw the lead poisoning of the city’s water supply. And it is the very same story as what happened to Newark, New Jersey’s schools under the bungled state-appointed manager, Cami Anderson, (see here) who refused to attend the meetings of the locally elected school board.
Greene’s tale of Lorain, Ohio is the story of the actions of the legislatures in lots of states where people from rural areas and little towns disdain the people who live in urban communities where poverty is concentrated—places where the poorest citizens are segregated in school districts where test scores lag. These days lots of states prefer to punish the school district instead of investing. Ignoring decades of research that correlate lagging test scores with neighborhood and family poverty, and wooed by corporate reform ideologues preaching school governance by appointed school boards and CEOs, our society has allowed itself be snookered by politicians who think it is best to deny local control in poor school districts.
Greene’s story is about Ohio and House Bill 70, slammed through the Legislature in one day without debate in June of 2015. The Legislature was considering a bill that would have CONTINUE READING: Essential Reading: Peter Greene’s Expose of Ohio’s State Takeover of the Lorain City Schools | janresseger
