Arne offers money to push districts to turn failing schools into charters, or have private managers.

madfloridian

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Fri Dec-25-09 01:02 AM
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Arne offers money to push districts to turn failing schools into charters, or have private managers.

I can not tell if this 3.5 billion to close failing schools and turn them into something else is part of the 4.3 billion Arne Duncan offered earlier. I think they might be separate. The 4.3 billion was for districts that allowed more charter schools to come into the state, for more testing of students tied to merit pay for teachers. So I am not sure.

This is in effect giving incentives to public school districts to NOT fix problem schools but instead to simply fail them. Look at the options. Two are actually privatization, and the others could lead to more compliance to do so.

From the Education Week blog this month.

Obama and Duncan launch NCLB 2.0

The U.S. Department of Education announced its plan to spend at least $3.5 billion to push local officials around the country to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals. At this time of fiscal crisis and budget cuts, districts are desperate for federal dollars. To qualify for these dollars, districts must do one of four things: 1) fire the principal and at least half the staff and reopen the school with new staff; 2) turn the school over to a charter operator or other private managers; 3) close the school and send the students to higher-achieving schools in the district; or 4) replace only the principal and take other steps to change the school.

Sounds just like the sanctions in NCLB. The Obama-Duncan plan might as well be called "NCLB 2.0."

Closing public schools to get the money at a time when the economy is in crisis, schools and families are under stress.

Arne Duncan is certainly familiar with school turnarounds. He closed down a number of schools in Chicago. Studies done by Chicago think tanks have shown that most of the brand-new, turned-around schools enrolled few of the students who previously attended "failing" schools. The Consortium on Chicago School Research produced a report revealing what happened to students when their "failing" school was closed: 80 percent of the students enrolled in low-performing schools transferred to other low-performing schools. There is no evidence that the turnaround strategy in Chicago has produced positive results. Catalyst, the first-rate independent group that covers education issues in Chicago, reported in September that high school test scores in Chicago were stagnant, even in the highly-touted transformation schools.

Charter school organizers and management companies must be licking their chops, waiting to scoop up the new federal dollars and new opportunities for market expansion. The charter movement began as an effort to strengthen public education, but it has turned into a movement to get rid of public sector unions and to turn public schools into private schools funded by public dollars.

Here's a really painful part for those of us who teachers when public education was treated with respect.

I wonder about the students in the 5,000 schools that Obama and Duncan want to close. Will they be shuffled off to other low-performing schools, as they have been in both Chicago and New York City? I wonder, too, about who will work in the 5,000 brand-new schools? Are there 5,000 super principals waiting in the wings to lead them? Where will they find the tens of thousands of "great" teachers who will staff them? Or will they play musical chairs with the principals and teachers from the schools that were closed?

The author says that what we are "witnessing now is the culmination of the plans of the education entrepreneurs who are driving national education policy at the highest levels. They are not educators.....I think that is called creative destruction."

Yes, it is destruction of public education, and it is being done creatively. So that would be correct.

This is already happening in Florida and other states. I heard that this year 18 Florida schools would likely be closed in this fashion.

California is offering up to 250 of its schools to "outside bidders."

The corporate charter school movement is getting ready to rear it's ugliest face as LAUSD prepares to action off 250 schools (with part of this process headed by former Broad Resident Parker Hudnut). Media outlets in LA have frozen out the voice of teachers, painted union members as totally crazy, and refused to take any kind of critical look at this rapid expansion of charter schools despite a growing body of evidence that should give us reason to pause.