I thought this blog post was well done and spells out what is happening throughout the country.
From further down in the article:
Previous to becoming Secretary of Education, Duncan was head of public schools in Chicago where he closed 75 schools. And throughout his first year of service in the Obama administration he has championed his Chicago strategy nationwide. But research following up the effects of school closings in Chicago has found that Duncan's strategy "had no significant impact on performance for most students". The vast majority of the students affected by school closings were sent to schools that were low performing, just like those they left behind. Forty percent of the students were enrolled in schools that were on academic probation, 42 percent were enrolled in schools with test scores in the lowest quartile in the city, and just 6 percent ended up in schools that out-performed the schools where the students came from.
In addition to having dismal academic results, Duncan's school closings led to considerable social and economic problems for the families affected. Working-class families, many living in poverty, were thrown into disruption. Closings "led to a surge in violence" as reassignments sent students across gang lines and heightened long running disputes between neighborhood teens. And as students found themselves in chaotic, alienating surroundings the number of school expulsions soared to unprecedented heights.
Despite the dismal results of the Chicago school closings, the creative destruction of schools is now rolling out across the entire nation. In New York, just prior to Duncan's Katrina remark, "the New York City Department of Education pushed through a decision to close 19 high schools." At the prospect of winning the competitive grants being promoted by Duncan's Race to the Top funds, school and civic leaders are decreeing disruptive school turnarounds in districts around the country. "Minnesota expects to remake 34 schools by the time students return next fall. Philadelphia plans on transforming dozens in the coming years, and New Haven, Conn., has targeted some of its schools as well." Teacher unions are being coerced to accept these changes or face mass firings as they were in Rhode Island.
In Los Angeles, the creative destruction of public schools took another form. Last month, city leadership, instead of closing schools, enacted a "new school choice policy, which will open up the management of dozens of the district's existing and yet-to-open campuses to outside operators, as well as district insiders." Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines posted the list of "prospective bidders" for the first 36 schools shortly after the decision.
What's also extraordinary about the creative destruction of our nation's public schools is that it is taking place with virtually no input from the public. As Diana Ravitch writes, "Under normal circumstances, the Department of Education would need congressional hearings and authorization to launch a program so sweeping and so sharply defined. Instead, they are using the 'stimulus' money to impose their preferences, with no hearings and no congressional authorization." In both New Orleans and Chicago, the sweeping edicts that closed schools and made teachers jobless were enacted without participation of the communities affected. And reforms carried out in New York and Los Angeles were overwhelmingly top-down driven decisions.
That is because either the media are keeping quiet about it or they are cheering it on.
Much more
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