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Sunday, October 18, 2015

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Vouchers for private schools: This is what passes for 'school reform' in D.C.



Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Vouchers for private schools: This is what passes for 'school reform' in D.C.:

Vouchers for private schools: This is what passes for 'school reform' in D.C.



D.O.E.-- The Education Pentagon in D.C.


Posting from D.C. --Remember back in 2010 when Michelle Rhee was ruling the roost in D.C.? Rhee, with plenty of back-up from Arne Duncan and the Gates Foundation, became one of the superstars of the Waiting For Superman set, and D.C. was touted as the model for corporate-style, urban school reform. Duncan even used his position as Secretary of Education to stump for Rhee's patron, then-Mayor Adrian Fenty.

How the mighty have fallen. Rhee has left the world of corporate reform to go to work for a fertilizer company. After she was booted out of Washington came the revelations about her role in a major test-cheating scandal.

Spending this past week in the D.C. area has given me a closer look at Rhee's school reform legacy which goes hand-in-hand with the whitenizing of the District. In 2011, Washington’s black population slipped below 50% for the first time in over 50 years.

Not only is the city’s African American population shrinking — almost half of the District’s 650,000 residents are white — but it’s getting Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Vouchers for private schools: This is what passes for 'school reform' in D.C.: