The Fight Over Dyett High School | #FightForDyett | WTTW

The Fight Over Dyett High School | Chicago Tonight | WTTW:

The Fight Over Dyett High School

Though Chicago Public Schools decided to phase out a low-performing, under-enrolled school in the city's Bronzeville neighborhood, it has agreed to reopen the school in the 2016-2017 school year.

The district has opened a request for proposals for the school to be reinvented, but a coalition of activists have gone on a hunger strike, claiming the city and the district don't really intend to allow the school to reopen.

We look at the history of the closure and what the new proposals are. 

TRANSCRIPT

Kenneth BrownBrandis Friedman: As he enters his freshman year of college, Kenneth Brown can proudly say he graduated at the top of his high school class – a class of 12 students.

Kenneth Brown: It wasn't the senior experience I was expecting it to be.

BF: Chicago Public Schools began phasing out Dyett High School three years ago.

By the time Kenneth’s class graduated, few students remained, and even fewer teachers.

KB: My last year of high school was … we had to take a lot of classes online, we didn't have math, we had to take gym online, art, science online. I would say you probably spent more time in computer lab, than you spent in an actual class with a teacher.

Charles Campbell

BF: Charles Campbell was the school’s last principal.

Charles Campbell: It was rough. My biggest challenge was battling the low morale, a lot of stakeholders, parents, students, staff felt as though they were forgotten, they were left to the wayside. 

BF: Records found on the district website show Dyett High was chronically underperforming. A level-three school on intensive support for 10 years.

The average ACT score in 2014 was 14.1 -- four points below the district average.

A 2012 CPS presentation on the school’s closing showed that two out of three Dyett students don’t graduate, 15 out of 16 students weren’t meeting standards on state tests, and only 25 percent of students in the boundary area chose to attend the high school.

BF: But none of that has stopped the community from demanding the district reopen and revitalize it.

Jitu Brown: We don't have a stable neighborhood high school in our community. Everything is either selective enrollment or charter. We have a problem with that, because we pay taxes, so why can't we have quality neighborhood schools.

BF: This year, CPS agreed to hear proposals for a new Dyett, and received three.

Among them, a proposal for the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School, submitted by a group called the Coalition to Revitalize Dyett High School.

The group advocates a high quality, open-enrollment school focused on environmental sustainability and leadership for peace and justice.

Rico GutsteinUIC professor Rico Gutstein helped develop the proposal.

Rico Gutstein: It's tied into the idea of green technology because clearly we have economic and environmental ecological disaster facing us on a global scale, so we actually need global leaders who can emerge from the local to the global situation.

BF: Another comes from the arts organization Little Black Pearl Workshop, which already operates a CPS high school at its center in Kenwood.

LBP also teaches thousands of students through summer and after-school programming.

The non-profit proposes an open-enrollment, visual and performing arts high school, where students would also receive college-prep instruction.

Monica HaslipMonica Haslip of LBP: Because we know and have been able to see over the years how impactful the arts has been for a lot of students that have been a part of our other programs, our after school programs, summer program, we have artists that are now internationally known artists that came out of Little Black Pearl. We know that given access it creates a whole new world of opportunity for them.

BF: The third proposal comes from Dyett’s former principal, Charles Campbell.

His rebranding idea: The Washington Park Athletic Career Academy – a sports-themed high school using project-based learning to prepare students for college.

CC: Picture being a math teacher trying to teach statistics, but your students are just not getting the concept of statistics. What better way to engage students, [then to] have them compete in a fantasy football league, or a fantasy basketball league. Then you show the student, ‘This is how stats work in real time, this is what general managers get paid six figures to do, to figure out who stays, who they’re going to trade, who they’re going to release, based on statistical performance.’

BF: When Dyett was closed, incoming students in the boundary area were reassigned to Phillips High School, almost two miles away.

But it’s also a level-three school, and it’s been on intensive district support even longer than Dyett, at 19 years.

Map: Click on the icons to see school info, including CPS rating.

It’s why Anne Jones, a mother of four, is planning to send her 14-year-old daughter Tyler and hour away to a school in Little Village, rather than find a closer high school.

Anne Jones

Anne Jones: She's going to commute two hours throughout the day. I'm afraid because of all the killings, children missing. She's not used to that kind of a travel. I'm being forced to introduce her to something she's not even used to.

BF: The district says there are three other CPS high schools nearby that would-be Dyett students can choose from – all open enrollment.

A spokesman says in a statement:

"As CPS continues to work through the RFP process, the new Board and administration want to be sure that they have time to make the right decision for students. Board of Education members and CPS leadership have met with members of the community to discuss the situation many times over the past year and as recently as last week with Board President Frank Clark. As we consider these proposals, we remain mindful of the declining population in the area, which is losing students and already has 12 high schools within a 3-mile radius. We also respect the community’s passion for Chicago’s children, and we will make the best possible decision to give all the children of the city a good education."

Though the people behind those three proposals may differ on the type of school Dyett should become, they can at least agree that the community needs a school on this campus.

For Chicago Tonight, I’m Brandis Friedman.

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Below, Brandis' photos from a recent trip to Dyett High School and Little Black Pearl Workshop.

 The Fight Over Dyett High School | Chicago Tonight | WTTW:

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File Attachments: 

 Proposed Phase-Out of Dyett High School.pdf

 DyettTransitionPlan.pdf

 Dyett_FactSheet.pdf

 DyettMapAndFeeders.pdf

Education

Neighborhood: 

Bronzeville

The Fight Over Dyett High School | Chicago Tonight | WTTW:

Common Core SBAC testing – Big Cost, No Value - Wait What?

Common Core SBAC testing – Big Cost, No Value - Wait What?:

Common Core SBAC testing – Big Cost, No Value

Over the past two years Connecticut taxpayers have dropped $32 million on the Common Core SBAC tests and another $12.4 million for implementation of the Common Core.  The Connecticut state budget allocates another $43.1 million for the Common Core and Common Core SBAC tests for this year and next.

Add in the tens of million spent by local school districts on computers and internet expansion so that students can take the on-line tests, along with the substitute teachers who were brought in so that full-time teachers could be pulled out to “learn about the Common Core,” and well over $150 – $200 million dollars (or more) in public funds have been diverted from instruction to the Common Core and Common Core testing disaster.

So what has all that money gotten the students, parents, teachers and taxpayers of Connecticut?

Public education advocate, commentator and educator Ann Policelli Cronin addresses the issue in her latest blog post entitled, SBAC: The Beginning Of The End

So what did we learn from the release of the SBAC scores?  …

Not much.

We did learn that the achievement gap has not been in any way affected by implementation of the Common Core. I have been in a position to analyze CMT and CAPT scores over many years, and the SBAC scores tell the same story as the CMT and CAPT scores. That story is that students in affluent communities score significantly higher than students in poor communities do. No administration of a test will ever change that fact. No set of national standards or standardized test on those standards will ever “close the 

Common Core SBAC testing – Big Cost, No Value - Wait What?:

Teaching English at Mission High School (Kristina Rizga) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Teaching English at Mission High School (Kristina Rizga) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Teaching English at Mission High School (Kristina Rizga)

This is the second post (see here) drawn from journalist Kristina Rizga’s account of teaching and learning at San Francisco Unified School District’s Mission High School. Rizga is a journalist who spent four years observing and interviewing teachers and students at Mission High School in San Francisco. Her book, Mission High (New York: Nation Books, 2015) contains descriptions of both students and teachers inside and outside classrooms.* Mission High School has 950 students with the vast majority coming from Latino, African American, and Asian American families. Seventy-five percent are poor and 38 percent are English Language Learners.

What distinguishes Rizga’s book from so many journalist and researcher accounts about high schools with largely minority and poor students are two facts: First, she spent four years–a life time to researchers–at the school. Few researchers or journalists ever spend more than a year in a high school. The second fact is that Rizga addresses a long-time paradox buried at the core of  U.S. schooling in an age of accountability-driven reform when federal and state mandates (No Child Left Behind) label many schools as failing. The paradox is straightforward. Mission High School had been tagged as a failing school–“low performing” is the jargon of the day–and had been a step away from being shut down through No Child Left Behind rules. Yet 84 percent of its graduates were accepted to college, attendance rates have risen above the district high school average and suspensions have fallen between 2008 and 2014 nearly 90 percent. As one student put it: “How can my school be flunking when I am succeeding?”  Indeed, the contradiction of a school labeled by authorities as failing, succeeding with students beyond what other district high schools achieve is the puzzle that Rizga unravels in this book.    

With Rizga’s permission, I offer here descriptions of lessons in math, social studies, and English. This post describes an English Teaching English at Mission High School (Kristina Rizga) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Dyett hunger strikers begin third week without food - #FightForDyett

Dyett hunger strikers begin third week without food - Chicago Tribune:

Dyett hunger strikers begin third week without food 

Dyett hunger strikers begin third week without food, call on Mayor Emanuel to move meeting to an earlier date. Aug. 31, 2015. (WGN-TV)Dyett hunger strikers begin third week without food - Chicago Tribune:

Louisiana Educator: The Great Predatory Charter School Ripoff

Louisiana Educator: The Great Predatory Charter School Ripoff:

The Great Predatory Charter School Ripoff

Lafayette group Exposes Charter Enrollment Violation

This story in the Lafayette advertiser helps to demonstrate for us what a predatory charter school does. But the Advertiser story only describes the tip of the iceberg of charter school profiteering.

Thank you to the public school advocates of the group, Power of Public Education, for insisting that the Acadiana Renaissance Charter Academy in Lafayette follow state laws and their contractual agreements relative to implementing a balanced student enrollment. The only problem is that BESE is apparently reluctant to enforce its own regulations.

The operators of these relatively new charters in Louisiana, know that they can rig the game and make their managers rich by simply suppressing the number of at-risk students served. Let me show you why this strategy is unfair to students, taxpayers and to our real public schools.

This new charter school in Lafayette operated by Charter Schools USA has contrived to enroll only 30.3% of its students from the economically disadvantaged population in the Lafayette area. This is a much lower percentage of at-risk students than is the average for the state or the area. The charter operators know that there is a remarkable difference in the academic performance of free lunch-qualifying students compared to more advantaged students.

The following chart demonstrates the relationship between student body wealth and school performance in our Louisiana public school districts serving the lowest percentages of low income students. Note: Every one of these school systems is rated as an "A" school system! (Click on image to enlarge)

The above data makes it clear why there is a regulation in Louisiana Educator: The Great Predatory Charter School Ripoff:

CURMUDGUCATION: 4 Bad Business Practices for Education

CURMUDGUCATION: 4 Bad Business Practices for Education:

4 Bad Business Practices for Education

"Schools should run like a business" is one of the modern reformster mantras, and schools are so obviously NOT businesses that we can end up overlooking the other problem with this idea-- that reformsters often mean to incorporate practices that aren't even good business practices.

If you have friends or family in the private sector, or if you've just been paying attention, you may have noticed that businesses are increasingly run very, very badly. Many of the principles that reformsters want to apply to education are, in fact, failures in the private sector.

1) Eliminate expertise.

Take, for instance, the belief that industry-specific expertise is not only unnecessary, but undesirable. Even the robber barons rose to power by working up through the jobs of their respective industries and knowing something about how the business work, but nowadays the Cult of Management insists that the only important skill is bean counting and managerial managosity. The last guy to come in to run what used to be one of the major companies in my area had previously managed a toy company and a soup company. He was brought here to run an oil company. He had never worked any job in his life except managing stuff.

These guys frequently make stupid mistakes because they actively avoid listening to people who have worked in their industry. The history of business failures in my part of the country is the history of upper management being filled up with guys who didn't know anything about the industry they were suddenly working in. 

2) Aim at the wrong target.

Reams have been written in the past fifty years about the folly of focusing on short-term financial goals instead of the long-term health of the business. Never mind where the business will be in ten years-- how can we get the stocks to trend upward in the next six months. Since the management nomads will not be here in ten years, anyway, who really cares?

This mistaken direction of the company means that the main job of the company is no longer to CURMUDGUCATION: 4 Bad Business Practices for Education:

PA: Charter Windfalls

The financial crushing of Chester Uplands Schools, where teachers and staff are now working without pay while legislators dither over a long-past-due budget in Harrisburg-- well, this mess has ended up dragging ugly worm into the light of day.

Here's an excerpt from the Judge Chad Kenney's ruling nixing the state's proposed relief for CUSD:

The Charter Schools serving Chester-Upland Special Education students reported in 2013-2014, the last reporting period available, that they did not have any Special Education students costing them anything outside the zero (0) to twenty-five thousand dollar ($25,000.00) range, and yet this is remarkable considering they receive forty thousand dollars ($40,000.00) for each one of these Special Education students under a legislatively mandated formula. This means the legislative formula permits the Charters to pocket somewhere between fourteen thousand ($14,000.00) and forty thousand dollars ($40,000.00) per student over and above what it costs to educate them. While this discrepancy needs to be seen in most instances as the operators of Charters taking advantage of legal mandates, it is clear that the Legislature did not mean for its averages to produce such windfalls to the Charter School industry in a distressed district.

(Hat tip to Keystone State Education Coalition) 

Yes, I have to keep explaining this to people because it seems so incredible-- the state of PA has a payment system for charters that doesn't factor in anything about what it actually costs the charters to educate students. The legislature has set it up so that charters like the ones in Chester can pick up a minimum of $15,000 pure profit. 

You may remember a time when a selling point for charters was that they would do more with less. That has never been the case in PA-- charters promise to do whatever they feel like with as much 

PA: Charter Windfalls

Children Don’t Have Constitutional Right to Switch Schools, Appeals Court Rules - WSJ

Children Don’t Have Constitutional Right to Switch Schools, Appeals Court Rules - WSJ:

Children Don’t Have Constitutional Right to Switch Schools, Appeals Court Rules

Parents aren’t guaranteed public-school choice in Arkansas case

Aspen School District students head to their buses after the first day of class in Aspen, Colo., last Wednesday. PHOTO: JEREMY WALLACE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Public-school parents don’t have a constitutional right to decide where to send their children to school, an appeals court ruled.

The Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday rejected claims by a group of Arkansas parents that they had a right to transfer their kids out of a struggling school district in northeast Arkansas to neighboring districts where they thought the children could be better educated.

School officials rejected the transfer applications because they said the children’s assigned district, which is predominantly African-American, is still subject to a desegregation order from more than 40 years ago. The parents, who are white, sued for violations of due process and equal protection, claiming they had a constitutional right to move their kids. A lower court last year dismissed the parents’ complaint.

In a 2-1 decision, the appeals court in St. Louis agreed with the lower court’s decision, saying the Constitution doesn’t guarantee so-called public-school choice.

Courts have said parents can’t be denied the right to choose to enroll their children in private schools. But those rulings don’t apply to parents seeking to move their kids within the public system, the appeals court said. The opinion, written by Judge Lavenski R. Smith, said there was no precedent that supported the position that “a parent’s ability to choose where his or her child is educated within the public school system is a fundamental right or liberty.”

Jess Askew III, an attorney representing the parents, said the case raised “issues of exceptional importance for families and children across the state of Arkansas,” and they would consider asking for a rehearing by the full court.

“I’m pleased that the district court’s judgment was affirmed,” said George Jay Bequette Jr., an attorney who represented the school district.

The plaintiffs’ children are enrolled in the Blytheville School District in Blytheville, Ark., an impoverished small city in northeast Arkansas. The state has classified the district’s high school and middle school as “academic distressed” based on student performance on standardized tests, and the parents sought to move their kids to two nearby, wealthier districts that they said were “better suited to satisfy [the] children’s educational needs.”

Arkansas passed a law two years ago restricting transfers of students enrolled in districts still subject to desegregation orders. Blytheville officials said it was still subject to a 1971 federal mandate requiring racial balance to remedy past discrimination, and said that, as a policy, no transfers were allowed into or out of the district, regardless of the applicant’s race. This year, an amended law was enacted making it easier for parents to transfer districts in the state.

Lawyers for the parents have argued that Blytheville was no longer governed by the mandate, saying the original judge who approved the desegregation plan declared the matter closed in 1978.

The appeals court didn’t take a position on who was right in that regard, saying there wasn’t a constitutional issue.Children Don’t Have Constitutional Right to Switch Schools, Appeals Court Rules - WSJ:

Write to Jacob Gershman at jacob.gershman@wsj.com

I’m a Teacher. What’s your Superpower?! - Lily's Blackboard

I’m a Teacher. What’s your Superpower?! - Lily's Blackboard:

I’m a Teacher. What’s your Superpower?!

I love seeing bumper stickers in praise of teachers.

• Teachers Rule.
• Those who can, TEACH. Those who cannot, pass laws about teaching.
• Teachers have class.
• Teachers make all other occupations possible.
• You can’t scare me, I’m a teacher.
• And one of my favorites, a quote from Frederick Douglass, “It’s easier to build strong children than repair broken men.”

At one time or another, I’ve seen all of these bumper stickers, proudly displayed on cars, professing mad respect and love for teachers. Despite how we sometimes feel under attack and not well supported as educators, the truth is, the public—parents, our students, former students, community leaders—most people love us.

I know the negative media coverage about education can sometimes be disheartening. Pension cuts. Slashed education budgets. Tests, tests, and more tests that don’t help students learn. It’s easy to feel attacked and not appreciated.

For every negative example the media throws our way, we hit back with countless positive examples of teachers and education support professionals going the extra mile to help a child read and write, in order to forge a better path for the future. There are stories of the teacher or counselor who made a big difference that monumentally changed the direction of someone’s life. The lunch lady who saves a child with the Heimlich maneuver. The coach who sees something in a student no one else can see. Movie studios have made millions of dollars from movies that depict these very teachers.

And still, every once in a while, we hear a story that stops us completely in our tracks.

The 2015 National Teacher of the Year is Shanna Peeples, a high school English teacher from Amarillo, Texas. She recently shared her story with us at our Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly in Orlando Florida. Shanna shared her story and we cried, cheered, stood up a little taller and beamed with pride because she’s one of us—an NEA member.

For Shanna Peeples, things weren’t so easy for her as a young child growing up in Texas. She endured more challenges in her young life than some people face over an entire lifetime. Yet, she never let those obstacles stand in the way of her dreams. If you ask her, she will say that she was fortunate to have teachers along the way who encouraged her. These teachers, acting selflessly and perhaps even unknowingly, gave Shanna the tools she needed to become a teacher herself—one who would be recognized by the President of United States for her excellence.

We were so privileged and humbled to have Shanna share her story. Her inspirational, leave-no-stone-unturned message resonated with all of us because we know the sacrifices we make as educators to help ensure that our students are prepared to realize their dreams. Her deeply personal and moving story certainly made me stop and reflect on all she had to overcome to reach this impressive career milestone.

Now that the Representative Assembly is in our rear view mirror and we’re getting ready for back to school, I’ve had I’m a Teacher. What’s your Superpower?! - Lily's Blackboard:

CURMUDGUCATION: If You Want To Help Chester Uplands...

CURMUDGUCATION: If You Want To Help Chester Uplands...:

If You Want To Help Chester Uplands...

If you have not been following the story, know that Chester Uplands School District in Pennsylvania is currently so broke that its teachers and staff are working without pay. You can read up on it here,here and here.

Thanks to a commenter on this blog, I can point you to three places where you can help.

PSEA operates a fund that is used to financially assist teachers in just this sort of situation. Right now only a snail mail address is available, but on-line contributing is supposed to be coming soon.

The school district itself is actually soliciting contributions on its own page. Help out. They only need $1.5 million.

A community member has started a GoFundMe for the teachers. Again, the amount needed is staggering, but it's a way to help.

In the meantime, if you're in PA you might contact your elected representatives and say:

1) Get the damn budget done and passed

2) Fix the incredibly stupid charter funding formula that is draining public schools dry.CURMUDGUCATION: If You Want To Help Chester Uplands...:

NY State ed commissioner clarifies position on standardized tests | WBFO

State ed commissioner clarifies position on standardized tests | WBFO:

State ed commissioner clarifies position on standardized tests

State Education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia says she won’t prevent parents who want their children to skip the state’s standardized tests from doing so.

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3:07

The commissioner detailed her views on the controversial Opt Out movement in an interview with public radio and television.

Twenty percent of children this year boycotted the third through eight grade math and English tests associated with the Common Core learning standards.

Commissioner Elia says parents “absolutely” have the right to opt their kids out of state standardized tests, but she says she still wants to talk to them to try to bring them back to the fold.

“We haven’t done enough communication,” Elia said. “But if parents understand it and they still want their child to opt out, that certainly is their right.”

Elia received some blow back when she talked about a “tool kit” she’s putting together to help school administrators in schools where the boycott rate was high, including talking to the state education department’s lawyers, as first reported in Politico.

Some lawmakers, including Jim Tedisco of Schenectady, a former teacher, viewed that as a warning. Tedisco speaking last week, called it a “goon squad” that would try to “intimidate” parents.

Commissioner Elia says her remarks were misinterpreted. She says school superintendents with high test boycott rates have requested that she put together resources to help them reverse the trend . She says the superintendents  wanted her to talk to State Education Department  lawyers on the legalities of  administering the unpopular tests.

“Superintendents have asked me ‘Is it the law? Exactly what does this mean for us? What are the ramifications of this in terms of the federal law,” said Elia who said the “logical” response was to ask her department’s attorneys for answers.

“This is not a threat,” she said.

Robert Lowry, the spokesman for the New York State Council of School Superintendents, says some superintendents did indeed ask for help. Others are trying on their own to convince students to participate.   But he says many more State ed commissioner clarifies position on standardized tests | WBFO:

Standardized testing cripples educational goals - The Daily Athenaeum: Opinion

Standardized testing cripples educational goals - The Daily Athenaeum: Opinion:

Standardized testing cripples educational goals

 At the end of every year in high school, a week was dedicated to the longest, most mind-numbing standardized test imaginable. We were taken to the gymnasium, spaced three feet apart and tested on our skills in reading, mathematics, history and science.

Since my younger sister has entered high school, there are now two weeks set aside each year for testing. During these weeks, students are tested on only reading, mathematics and science. History was cut from the list, she told me, because it was not considered one of the core subjects.

In his book "Class and Schools," Richard Rothstein wrote that because only mathematics and reading count toward "adequate yearly progress" for schools, many schools have minimized time spent on "social studies, literature, art, music, physical education and other important topics where test scores do not result in judgments of school quality."

Some schools have even eliminated these subjects from their curriculum altogether. Not only this, but America spends an obscene amount of money on standardized testing each year. Following the No Child Left Behind Act, annual state spending on standardized tests increased from $423 million to almost $1.1 billion in 2008, according to the Pew Center on the States.

By being considered standard, standardized testing is inherently problematic. People are not "standard"; there is no standard method of learning that works best for every student and no standard speed at which every student learns.

Standardized tests are only capable of measuring a tiny portion of what makes education significant. According to education researcher Gerald W. Bracey, standardized tests are incapable of measuring, and therefore devalue the importance of "creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty and integrity."

Furthermore, there is no faster way to ebb the desire to learn quicker than standardized testing. One teacher, Dawn Neely-Randall, told Harvard Political Review how she asked her fifth grade students to write down how they felt about the standardized tests. One student wrote, "I feel like we have to take all these tests, and if I pass the tests I live and if I don’t, I die."

In March of 2002, the "Sacramento Bee" stated, "Test-related jitters, especially among young students, are so Standardized testing cripples educational goals - The Daily Athenaeum: Opinion:

How the Billionaire Kingpins of School Privatization Got Stopped in Their Own Back Yard | Alternet

How the Billionaire Kingpins of School Privatization Got Stopped in Their Own Back Yard | Alternet:

How the Billionaire Kingpins of School Privatization Got Stopped in Their Own Back Yard

A unique coalition in Little Rock, Arkansas is pushing back hard on a Walton Family-funded attempt at a charter takeover.

The debate over public schools in Arkansas has been, for decades, ongoing and often fraught. In 1957, the Arkansas school year began with white mobs viciously attacking nine black teenagers as they attempted to desegregate Little Rock’s Central High following Brown vs. Board of Education, shining a national spotlight on the state and forcing President Eisenhower to send in the 101st Airborne Division. This past January, nearly 60 years after Arkansas’ first desegregation efforts, the state board of education dissolved Little Rock’s democratically elected local school board, the most racially inclusive and representative of its majority-black constituency in nearly a decade. In making the decision, the state overruled widespread public outcry to take control of the largest school district in the state. Two months later, Walton Family Foundation-backed lobbyists launched a brazen legislative push to allow for broader privatization — or put bluntly, “charterization” — of schools across Arkansas. It was a move many believed revealed a carefully orchestrated effort, begun months prior, to undermine the state’s public school system, destroy its teachers unions and turn public funds into private profits. 

Anyone with even a passing interest in public education knows how this story normally ends; one need only look to places like Philadelphia, where Walton dollars have helped launch an explosion of charters, or New Orleans and Detroit, where Walton funds have contributed to a system in which a majority of K-12 students now attend charter schools. Though it is not the only big-money contributor to the education reform movement (the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is a key player, as are countless millionaire hedge funders, investment bankers and other titans of finance), no single entity has poured more money into the push for “school choice” than the Walton Family Foundation. As a recent report from In the Public Interest and the American Federation of Teachers notes, “the foundation has kick-started more than 1,500 schools, approximately one out of four charters in the country. Over the last five years [WFF] has spent between $63 million and $73 million annually to fuel new charter openings.”

But this March, Arkansas proved the exception to the ubiquity of Walton rule. Following the introduction of House Bill 1733, which would have vastly expanded the potential for privatization of Arkansas’ public school districts, a collection of grassroots groups, urban and rural school advocates, educators, parents, and other passionate individuals committed to public education mobilized. Recognizing they were out-spent, the collective out-organized the How the Billionaire Kingpins of School Privatization Got Stopped in Their Own Back Yard | Alternet: