Jeff Bryant: The Story of a School That Beat Back a State Takeover and Thrived | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant: The Story of a School That Beat Back a State Takeover and Thrived | Diane Ravitch's blog

Jeff Bryant: The Story of a School That Beat Back a State Takeover and Thrived

Jeff Bryant reports here on the inspiring example of a so-called “failing school” in North Carolina that not only succeeded in blocking

a state takeover, but then heightened community collaboration to turn the school into a community school.

North Carolina passed a state takeover plan based on Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. The state listed several schools that were targets for takeover and charterization. Community outrage slowed the state’s plan, and only one school was taken over.

This is the success story of one that got away from the clutches of the state and the privatizers.

Bryant writes:

As soon as Anna Grant’s busy workday at Forest View Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, ended, she would head toward the next school where she was CONTINUE READING: Jeff Bryant: The Story of a School That Beat Back a State Takeover and Thrived | Diane Ravitch's blog

Penny’s Power Grab – Tennessee Education Report

Penny’s Power Grab – Tennessee Education Report

PENNY’S POWER GRAB

Legislation that would give Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn broad authority to fire a school system’s superintendent and remove the school board is advancing in the Tennessee General Assembly.

Chalkbeat has more:

A bill outlining reasons the state may take over a local school district cleared its first legislative hurdle Tuesday. 

Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, said his proposal aims to strengthen Tennessee law by providing a clear process for when the state education commissioner should take control of a district, which could include firing the superintendent and replacing elected school board members.

It’s no surprise that Gov. Bill Lee, who has long expressed distrust of local school CONTINUE READING: Penny’s Power Grab – Tennessee Education Report

Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools

Rhode Island is a mess. Two years ago, the state took control of the Providence public schools. The Governor, Gina Raymond, is a former hedge funder and not a friend of public schools. She loves charter schools and welcomed them to her state. She is now Biden’s Commerce Secretary and has been succeeded by her Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee, who is also a privatizer. The relatively new State Commissioner is Angelica Infante Green, who comes from Teach for America and had a desk job in the New York State Education Department. She is a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change. The Providence Teachers Union originally supported the state takeover, hoping that it would bring new resources to the schools. Instead, the takeover has meant disruption, turmoil, threats to teachers, and bitterness between the hard-charging, inexperienced State Commissioner and the teachers.

Mary Beth Calabro, the president of the Providence Teachers Union, has been a teacher for 24 years and president of the union for five years.

Less than two years later, and with the COVID-19 pandemic overshadowing nearly all of the takeover, CONTINUE READING: Rhode Island: Teachers Demand End to State Takeover of Providence Schools | Diane Ravitch's blog

Are Urban Schools A Site of Occupation? - PopularResistance Org

Are Urban Schools A Site of Occupation? - PopularResistance.Org

ARE URBAN SCHOOLS A SITE OF OCCUPATION?

In the third season of Black Lightning, the fictional Black city of Freeland was living under a military occupation by the ASA (the quasi governmental organization occupying Freeland). Not only did the city have heavily armed troopers patrolling the streets, but also had troopers patrolling the schools– detaining anyone they deemed a threat – using violence if necessary.  In episode four, students are in a classroom discussing similar military occupations in multiple countries around the world and their harmful effects on the people being occupied.  Some students agree, but then others claim the ASA occupying their city might be a good thing, suggesting that the ASA’s presence comes with safety.  As they are discussing, the ASA comes into the classroom to detain (and abduct) a student named Tavon, under the suspicion of having powers.  Although his teacher tries to protect him from the ASA’s unlawful detainment, his teacher is beaten with the butt of an ASA officer’s gun, and Tavon is taken away and murdered by the ASA. Enraged by the murder of their classmate, students confront the ASA with a protest to get them out of their schools as well as demand answers for what happened to Tavon.  As one student tries to show ASA officers a picture of their murdered classmate (pictured above), another ASA officer beats the student with their gun and tries to detain him until Guidance Counselor Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) arrives to protect his students. Although Black Lightning is a fictional show with CONTINUE READING: Are Urban Schools A Site of Occupation? - PopularResistance.Org

How a fight for an elementary school became a catalyst for positive change - Alternet.org

How a fight for an elementary school became a catalyst for positive change - Alternet.org

How a fight for an elementary school became a catalyst for positive change

As soon as Anna Grant's busy workday at Forest View Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, ended, she would head toward the next school where she was needed. "I would get off work and immediately drive to meetings, press events, whatever we had organized [for the school]," she recalls. Her second school of concern was Lakewood Elementary, where Grant now works. In 2017, Lakewood was a flashpoint of grassroots protest due to a threat by the state to take over the school.

"Roughly 200 protesters, parents and neighborhood residents" rallied at Lakewood Elementary to keep the school out of the state's new Innovative School District (ISD), reported NC Policy Watch, a media project of the North Carolina Justice Center. The ISD was created by the state legislature to take over low-performing schools and transfer governance from the local school board to charter school management companies. Lakewood, along with Glenn Elementary in Durham and three other schools in the state, was on the shortlist of schools at risk of being transferred into the ISD.

"It's a takeover," NC Policy Watch quoted Bryan Proffitt, then-president of the Durham Association of Educators. "I don't intend to allow a terrible legislative idea to ruin our neighborhood school," Durham school board member Matt Sears told a reporter for the Herald-Sun.

Grant now calls the protests "a community effort" that united teachers with parents, community activists, and the Durham school board in an effort to stave off a transfer of CONTINUE READING: How a fight for an elementary school became a catalyst for positive change - Alternet.org

ASD Light – Tennessee Education Report

ASD Light – Tennessee Education Report

ASD LIGHT

State Senator Ferrell Haile of Sumner County has filed SB 122, a bill creating a “School Turnaround Pilot Program.” Maybe Haile has never heard of the Achievement School District? It’s difficult to understand why someone who has served on the Senate Education Committee for some time now and should have at least a vague familiarity with education policy in our state would want to recreate one of the biggest public policy failures of the last decade.

Here’s a bit of text from his bill:

(a) The department shall create and develop a five-year school turnaround pilot program for district schools that are in need of intervention pursuant to § 49-6-3604.
(b) The department shall select twenty (20) schools in need of intervention that are diverse geographically, including rural and urban schools and schools in different regions of the state, and diverse in grade levels for the pilot program.
(c) From the twenty (20) schools in need of intervention selected for the pilot program, the department shall randomly select ten (10) schools to be a control group and ten (10) schools to participate in a school turnaround group.
(d) The department shall operate and administer the school turnaround pilot program for five (5) school years beginning with the 2021-2022 school year.

The basis for admission into this “turnaround group” is scores on Tennessee’s failed TNReady test.

Just in case Haile hasn’t been paying attention, here’s a bit of what’s been happening with the Achievement School District since its inception:

Gary Rubinstein refers to the ASD as the Edsel of school reform:

The Tennessee Achievement School District, or ASD, is the Edsel of school reform. Created with a Race To The Top Grant and developed by TFA alum Kevin Huffman, CONTINUE READING: ASD Light – Tennessee Education Report

Tennessee: Why Do Failed Reforms Survive, Only to Fail Again? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tennessee: Why Do Failed Reforms Survive, Only to Fail Again? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tennessee: Why Do Failed Reforms Survive, Only to Fail Again?

In 2012, Tennessee created the “Achievement School District” (ASD) and promised that it would catapult the state’s lowest performing schools into high-performing schools. So confident were state leaders that they hired Chris Barbic, who ran a celebrated charter chain in Houston, and he was confident that the state’s weakest schools could be transformed within five years by handing them over to charter operators. Other states were excited by the idea and created their own state takeover districts.

The ASD failed, even though it was funded by $100 million in Race to the Top money. But Tennessee refuses to accept that taking over struggling schools and giving them to charter operators is a bad idea.

The North Carolina Policy Watch reported on Tennessee’s insistence on protecting failure. North Carolina created an “Innovative School District,” modeled CONTINUE READING: Tennessee: Why Do Failed Reforms Survive, Only to Fail Again? | Diane Ravitch's blog

Shawgi Tell: Starve It, Demonize It, Discredit It, Privatize it - Miserable Bankruptcy of Neoliberal "Takeover" Reports | Dissident Voice

Miserable Bankruptcy of Neoliberal "Takeover" Reports | Dissident Voice

Miserable Bankruptcy of Neoliberal “Takeover” Reports

For decades, one of the main strategies used by neoliberals to destroy public enterprises and eliminate the public interest has been: Starve It, Demonize It, Discredit It, Privatize it.

Since the late 1970s, neoliberals and their state have made greater use of the “Takeover” reporting method to justify wrecking and privatizing social programs and public enterprises, especially public education.

In practice, this neoliberal strategy means continually cutting funding for public enterprises and making it very difficult, even impossible, to do things properly and effectively, even though an enormous amount of money actually exists. Then the targeted public entity is vilified and blamed for not surviving brutal funding cuts. The targeted entity is methodically and repeatedly disgraced, shamed, and reproached. It is blamed for everything under the sun even though it is the victim of numerous neoliberal assaults. Then, once antisocial public opinion is consolidated, the targeted public enterprise is privatized—handed over to powerful private interests in the name of “efficiency,” “accountability,” “sustainability,” “competition,” “choice,” and “results.”

Neoliberals call this attack on the public “restructuring.” Such language debases the meaning of things and sanitizes assaults on the public. It is an attempt to conceal the fact that “restructuring” always enriches owners of CONTINUE READING: Miserable Bankruptcy of Neoliberal "Takeover" Reports | Dissident Voice