Obama's Charter School Policies Spread Segregation & Undermine Unions

[Reader Rabbit]

A University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA) Civil Rights Project study, “Choice without Equity: Charter School Segregation and the Need for Civil Rights Standards,” reported that charter schools, particularly those in the western United States, are havens for white re-segregation from public schools. “The charter movement has flourished in a period of retreat on civil rights,” stated UCLA professor Gary Orfield, co-director of the project.

Charter schools are often accused of “cherry picking students” to build higher test scores, leaving low-income and difficult-to-teach students in inadequately funded public systems. Obama’s secretary of education, Arne Duncan, closed seventy neighborhood schools while he was Superintendent of Schools in Chicago, resulting in a loss of six thousand Chicago teachers’ union members.

On July 30, 2009, the US Senate Appropriations Committee voted for a $40 million increase in federal charter school program (CSP) funding, bringing the total to $256 million for fiscal year 2010. Also included in the bill were significant educational reform investments strongly aligned with the Obama administration’s priorities. The unprecedented payout takes a bead on the teachers unions: money will flow to districts that alter pay and seniority provisions in union contracts and states that roll out the carpet for (mostly non-union) charter schools.

The Obama administration’s actions, in tandem with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is part and parcel of typical neoliberal policy making: wielding federal stimulus funds as a financial weapon to force all states to increase the number of charter schools they host, as well as to force states that do not have them to pass legislation authorizing their creation...Using government to create market opportunities for business interests is at the heart of neoliberal economic policies; as a result, market adherents both need and relish government for its role in legislating and unleashing favorable public policies that benefit businesses’ ability to maximize private capital while charging private costs to the public.

Read the whole article at Project Censored:

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-obama%E2%80%99s-charter-school-policies-spread-segregation-and-undermine-unions/

[Starry Messenger]

1. k & r

[Reader Rabbit]

4. Thanks!

:hi:

[Starry Messenger]

6. You're welcome!

This story is so important, thank you for posting it!

[Fire1]

2. To UCLA: Ya think?! n/t

[blindpig]

3. k&r

[Reader Rabbit]

5. The "Un-rec" posse is out and about, it seems.-n/t

[Dinger]

7. To Da Greatest Page!

For the truth!

[Reader Rabbit]

10. Thanks, Dinger!

:hi:

[Dinger]

11. No Problem RR!

:)

[leftstreet]

8. The Predator Class is going for the last spin of the wheel

There's not much more for them to take here in the US

Education
Social Security
Medicare

All Ur Public Monies R Belong to Us!


K&R

[Hannah Bell]

9. nothing left to steal but the public sphere. k&R

[Dinger]

12. This Needs To Be Kicked Till This Horseshit Ends

That is all.

[TheKentuckian]

13. Kick

[LWolf]

14. Too late to recommend, but I'm glad for the chance to read.

Thanks for posting.

[Panaconda]

15. Kicking