Very stirring post on why teachers are pissed that Obama praised Jeb Bush on. stage in FL

erodriguez

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Sun Mar-06-11 12:14 PM
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Very stirring post on why teachers are pissed that Obama praised Jeb Bush on. stage in FL

Edited on Sun Mar-06-11 01:40 PM by erodriguez

We are not opposed to education reform and improvement. What we are opposed to are models that call themselves "reform" but which are really nothing more than an agenda of privatization--a push to take money away from the public schools that serve all children, rich or poor; black, white, Hispanic or Asian; gifted, average, or with special needs; with involved parents or absent parents or no parents at all; and to place it in the hands of very rich, very powerful corporate interests.

This is why we are disappointed by your standing on stage with Jeb Bush, and most especially by your praise of his "reforms" and "commitment to public service."

Jeb Bush's Foundation for Florida's Future has been one of the biggest advocates of charter schools in this state, including for-profit charter schools. They have ensured that it is very easy to open a charter school in Florida and very difficult to close a failing one. They have done this despite the lack of evidence that charter schools are a superior option to public schools, and indeed in face of the evidence that, on the whole, traditional public schools outperform charter schools. The Stanford University CREDO Study showed that only 17% of charter schools provide superior academic results than traditional public schools, while 46% were equal and 37% were significantly worse. This, despite the incontrovertible fact that charter schools are allowed to (and do) "counsel out" or expel their lowest performing students, their students with behavioral issues, their students with attendance issues. The students that charter schools expel (AFTER taking in the state funding for those children for the year) are sent back to traditional public schools--without the state funding. We not only accept them, we embrace them, and do the best we can for them, even when they have only been in our classroom for a month or two--or perhaps a few days--at testing time. To top it all off, Florida is listed in the report as one of the states with the worst performing charter schools. Further, the Office of the Inspector General of the US Department of Education has opened more than 40 criminal investigations against charter school operators, resulting so far in convictions of 15 charter school officials with 24 cases still pending. The government has recovered more than $4 million stolen by charter school operators. There is absolutely no compelling evidence that charter schools are a viable alternative to public schools or that they should be opened or expanded at the expense of public schools--yet that is exactly what Jeb Bush's foundation pushes for. Why?

Money.

Many charter schools, including Imagine Schools, are for-profit and are run by millionaires who bankroll Republicans like Jeb Bush in return for legislation favoring their enterprise.
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More at

http://www.examiner.com/dade-county-education-policy-in-miami/president-obama-shares-the-stage-with-jeb-bush-miami