Wednesday, June 8, 2011

For-profit 'charter' schools - phillyBurbs.com : The Intelligencer

For-profit 'charter' schools

Posted: Wednesday, June 8, 2011 10:32 am | Updated: 1:35 pm, Wed Jun 8, 2011.

Former tennis star Andre Agassi deserves enormous credit for recognizing that nothing is more important than ensuring every child gets the kind of quality education that is their best chance for success in a rapidly changing world. I know, there are high school dropouts who make it to the top. But all the ones I know were blessed with gifts that enabled them to do what the other 99 percent of high school dropouts don’t.

Agassi has sponsored a charter school in Las Vegas that, as he puts it, has 650 students and 1,500 on the wait list. That is true of many of the quality charter schools, particularly those located in areas where the rest of the schools are by any measure failing.

Based on his experience with that one school, Agassi has teamed with bankers and investors to embark on a project aimed at building 75 schools over the next three or four years while making money for the investors, including Citigroup Inc. and Intel Corp.

“It’s a novel business model,” one of the investors said. Indeed. Novel and, from my perspective as a taxpayer and a strong supporter of charter schools (contributions, board membership and the like for the past decade), deeply troubling.

First of all, you aren’t going to fix education by building 75 for-profit charter schools over four years. If you’re serious about real education reform, the name of the game is transforming public schools, not allowing a few

Democurmudgeon: The Second most Amazing School Privatization Story this Week; The Corporatization of School Superintendents.

The Second most Amazing School Privatization Story this Week; The Corporatization of School Superintendents.

It’s not like the warning signs aren’t there for everyone to see, it’s just that no one is getting the information, especially if they’re only listening to conservative talk radio and watching cable news.

The phony “empowering parents” argument is anything but. These newly trained CEO style superintendents offer top down decision making management. Privatization merely tosses parents off into a corporate style system where they are cut off from the decision making process, at which time, it’s really too late to change. Check out this early warning sign that only a few will be made aware of:

EdWeek: Billionaire businessman Eli Broad, one of the country’s most active philanthropists, founded the Broad Superintendents Academy in 2002 … The nation’s three biggest districts have Broad-trained executives in top leadership positions. Broad-trained superintendents use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of decision making, and introduce unproven reform measures.

One of those critics is Sharon Higgins (started) The Broad Report in 2009 after her school district in

Truth in American Education | The philosophy of the classroom today will be the philosophy of government tomorrow. Abraham Lincoln

Truth in American Education

Truth in American Education (TAE) shines a beacon of light directly on the government’s behind-the-scenes efforts to drastically alter American education. As taxpayers, parents and concerned citizens, we believe that proper respect for the American people requires that major educational changes be subject to an open and public discussion prior to approval and implementation, not the other way around.

In particular, TAE focuses on the interrelated system of national standards, national curriculum and national testing connected to Washington’s Race to the Top(RTTT) program, although both the RTTT program and the proposed reauthorization of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, whose most recent reauthorization appeared as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, also presented historic changes in public education. The top-down mandates and billions of dollars spent according to the NCLB Act did little to benefit improved education results for all students.

Americans rightly have voiced these concerns that we address:

Mary Ann West: Sharpton's Rally for Equal Education for All

by Mary Ann West

RALLY DATE: Tonight: Tuesday, June 7th ~ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Get there early as Reverend Sharpton will be speaking at exactly 6:15 PM

Site: Brookside Elementary School
82 Highland Avenue, Norwalk, CT
for map: www.norwalk.k12.ct.us/brookside

Site of the rally is the Norwalk, Conn. school where homeless mother Tanya McDowell had placed her young 5-year-old son last fall in order to get the best education for him while living in Bridgeport and Norwalk in her van or at a friend's place on a sofa.

The "Equal Education For All" Rally is planned with civil rights leaders and keynote speaker Reverend Al Sharpton, President of National Action Network http://www.nationalactionnetwork.net and organized by the Connecticut State NAACP and the Norwalk Branch of the CT NAACP http://norwalkbranchnaacp.org Rev. Sharpton will lend his support and media star power on behalf of Tanya McDowell, the woman arrested for "stealing" education on behalf of her young son.

Also speaking: Connecticut State NAACP President Scot X Esdaile, Ms. McDowell's attorney: Darnell Crosland,

Michelle Rhee's Handiwork: Florida Diplomas For Sale And Much More | Crooks and Liars

Michelle Rhee's Handiwork: Florida Diplomas For Sale And Much More

24 comments

By karoli

So Michelle Rhee hired Hari Sevugan away from the DNC to join her right-wing-in-liberal-clothing organization known as StudentsFirst. Presumably, Hari will rehabilitate the StudentsFirst image which has become irrevocably tainted with the stench of right-wing public school destruction. Hmmm.

This comes on the heels of Rhee's huddle with Rick Scott before he gutted Florida's public education system, her public support for Scott Walker's plan to limit teachers' bargaining rights (see video), lobbying on behalf of Ohio's SB5, a special appearance with Governor Kasich to screen Waiting for Superman, andher cozy support for Chris Christie's school-gutting ways.

Michelle Rhee claims to be all about teacher performance, but she's really much, much more than that. She

The Value of Hopeful Skepticism in the Education Reform Debate - E.D. Kain - American Times - Forbes

The Value of Hopeful Skepticism in the Education Reform Debate

by E.D. Kain

Freddie deBoer has a long post up on education reform, responding broadly to the education reform movement. He writes:

I am incredibly skeptical about the efficacy of constantly banded-about educational reform efforts. I am, for obvious reasons, deeply suspicious of the motivations of many involved in education reform, whether conservatives who hate unions, Democratic constituencies, and government efforts like public schooling, or corporate interests who seek to make money by destroying public education and replacing it with their own, accountability-free private surrogates. I do believe that poverty matters, that race matters, that the presence of a stable home life matters, that parent’s education level matters, and that community matters. I believe these things for the sensible reason that I am empirically justified in believing them. But do I believe that school quality means nothing? That teacher quality means nothing? That there is no room for positive impacts on education because uncontrollable variables are too powerfully determinative? I do not. Nobody I know in the academy does. Nobody I know of, at all, does.
The fact of the matter is that you can at once believe that socioeconomic factors and other input-

Three Main Things that Always Fail in Education « MomsRising Blog

Three Main Things that Always Fail in Education

by Lily Eskelsen

I’ve just finished one more article on what essentially becomes “The Three Main Things” that we need to do to improve our schools. They aren’t bad things. Well, sometimes they are. But, basically they sound essentially reasonable.

And I hate, hate, hate to argue with something that sounds reasonable because it puts you in the position of sounding unreasonable when you question what often seems like pure common sense, so I hate, hate, hate to say this, but…

Three Main Things will always fail. Three Main Things are doomed. They are doomed when you are trying to fix a system.

It doesn’t matter if you are trying to fix the toughest problems in our toughest schools or the easiest problems in our easiest schools. They are doomed because a system is not like furnishing my living room.

Stay with me. When I was a young, married kid, we couldn’t afford much in the way of furniture unless it consisted of an overturned milk crate that I could pretend was an end table. We were putting ourselves through

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Arne's army kicking in doors of parents to collect on student loans

Arne's army kicking in doors of parents to collect on student loans

by Mike Klonsky

Back in March of 2010, I responded to a WaPo story about Duncan's DOE purchase of 27 new military-order, Remington Model, 870 police 12/14P Mod GRWC XS4 KXCS SF. RAMAC #24587 GAUGE: 12 BARREL: 14" - Parkerized choke: modified sights: Ghost ring rear, WILSON COMBAT shotguns.

I mistakenly assumed the Duncan's militia was about to invade Rhode Island to enforce the mass firings of teachers at Central Falls High School. I was wrong. Duncan's troops (I can only assume, with new assault rifles in hand) instead invaded the Stockton, CA home of Kenneth Wright at 6 a.m. Tuesday morning.

According to ABC News10 in Stockton:

Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts as the officers team barged through his front door.

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011