Julia Keleher: The Destroyer of Public Schools in Puerto Rico
Julia Keleher will one day have engraved on her tombstone: “She Destroyed the Public Schools in Puerto Rico.” She joins the blog’s Wall of Shame for her shameless assault on public schools, the teachers’ union, and the students of Puerto Rico.
Keleher resigned her position as Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State earlier this week. Her resignation comes after two years of top down education reform. She was hated by the Island’s teachers. She’s closed more than 350 schools in Puerto Rico, worked hand in hand with Betsy DeVos to undercut public schools by bringing vouchers and charters to the island, undermined special education services for students and threatened to turn over 30 schools to fly-by-night companies with no experience who want to cash in on schools.
She is the Betsy DeVos of Puerto Rico, although she was neither born nor raised there. She was born in Philadelphia, where she attended Catholic school. She received her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and graduate degrees from the University of Delaware and the for-profit Strayer University. There is no indication on her Wikipedia bio that she ever taught, though she has done consulting, data-driven management, web-based stuff, project management, and worked for the for-profit Sylvan tutoring services. She is a Republican. She was imported to Puerto Rico to disrupt the public schools on behalf of Wall Street and the power elite.
After she resigned, she was initially given a $250,000 a year job in the treasury department but she was forced to resign that backup position after newspapers in Puerto Rico questioned her ethics.
The Yale Education Leadership conference still invited her to keynote its ed reform conference yesterday that’s supported by the Walton Foundation, Broad, 50CAN (funded by Jonathan Sackler of the opioid industry) and other right-wing organizations. Puerto Rican students from Yale wrote an open letter to Yale and to Julia Keleher which they distributed before she spoke. Imagine that: A conference on education funded only by right-wing foundations! Now there is a balanced discussion!
The letter is below.
To the Yale School of Management Education Leadership Conference:
I am disappointed, yet not surprised, that this year’s Education Leadership Conference has chosen to host Julia Keleher as one of their keynote speakers for leaders in education reform. Keleher’s “reform” of the Puerto Rican public education system does not serve to solve CONTINUE READING: Julia Keleher: The Destroyer of Public Schools in Puerto Rico | Diane Ravitch's blog