Democracy Now: Ravitch says we will see a massive privatization, particularly inner city.

[madfloridian]

Run time: 08:27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm7wnR0D4HM   Posted on YouTube: July 30, 2010 By YouTube Member: knickerbockervillage Views on YouTube: 69   Posted on DU: August 03, 2010 By DU Member: madfloridian Views on DU: 1024

 
Here is more from the Juan Gonzalez interview with Diane Ravitch and Leonie Haimson over the new education reforms.

Obama defends sweeping education reform

AMY GOODMAN: Diane Ravitch, you were Assistant Secretary of Education under President George H.W. Bush. You were a supporter of charter schools; now you are not supporting them. How does this picture feed into President Obama’s plan?

DIANE RAVITCH: Well, President Obama has proceeded with the belief that charter schools are some kind of a miracle cure. And, in fact, Secretary Duncan says, "Well, we recognize that there are some bad charter schools, but we’re only going to encourage good charter schools." Well, that’s sheer nonsense, because what we will see in the next few years under Race to the Top is hundreds, if not thousands, of new charter schools, and the research is very clear that the overwhelming majority of charter schools are not excellent charter schools. And the interesting thing that happened with the score collapse in New York City was that the charters saw a bigger decline in their test scores than the regular public schools. And now, in reading, charters don’t outperform public schools at all; they’re at exactly the same point. And they barely outperformed them in math.

So, what we’re going to see is—under his plan, is a massive privatization, particularly inner city. These are communities of color that have been targeted for the charter school invasions, where public schools will be converted to charters, where public schools will be closed in large numbers and replaced by privately managed schools. Some of them will be opened by greedy entrepreneurs. Some of them will be opened by incompetent people. And this is not educational improvement. It’s really—it’s really tragic, because the Secretary and the President are using Chicago as their template, and yet no one looks at Chicago and asks is Chicago a successful city. And the answer is no. If you talk to anybody who lives in Chicago who doesn’t work for Mayor Daley, Chicago is not an example of school reform. It’s an example where communities of color experience all the things that I’ve just been describing—school closings, indifference to parent views about anything, and opening lots of new schools, opening lots of charter schools, massive infusion of money from the Gates Foundation, and yet Chicago remains today one of our lowest-performing urban districts. And that, unfortunately, is the model for the nation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Leonie, what’s going to happen now here in New York State? All these parents that had been told that their children were doing well, were meeting state expectations, are now suddenly—will suddenly discover in the next few weeks that their kids are in need of help, that their scores were not what they were before. What is going to happen in terms of the kind of remediation that New York City and New York State are going to have to now do for students that they weren’t recognizing before?

LEONIE HAIMSON: Well, I think parents are rightfully going to be devastated when they find out that the whole thing was a fraud and that their children are not doing well and not succeeding and not learning. Unfortunately, I don’t see any evidence, either on the state level or the city level, that they’re prepared to give any more help to these kids to really make sure that they succeed. Our budgets are being cut back radically. Class sizes are going to go up hugely in the fall. A lot of the support systems, the after-school programs, the tutoring, the interventions programs, are being cut. So it’s going to get worse, not better. And the only policy that this administration has in order to supposedly help these kids is holding them back. And the overwhelming research shows that holding back kids does not help, it hurts, and it leads to higher dropout rates in the end. So, we have no culture of helping to support schools in this city, and it looks like, across the nation, we again have no culture and no expectation that the Obama administration really wants to help our schools improve. They just want to shut them down, fire the teachers, privatize them, and impose other sort of test-based accountability reforms that simply don’t work.

[laughingliberal]

1. K & R nt

[snot]

2. I'm v. worried about this . . . the looting of public property.

[madfloridian]

6. I wonder why more people are not worried about that.

Some charter management companies like White Hat are filing suit saying they own the buildings and all the stuff on the property, though it was paid for with taxpayer money.

[Jakes Progress]

13. Because Obama is doing it.

No republican could get away with this.

[bbgrunt]

3. this is so not right. But I guess, if you want

a servile population with minimal skills to serve in your wage slave economy, there is no point in spending all that money to edjamacate them......just hand out the shackles instead of social security numbers when they are born. (not to mention the profits we can make from it)

[madfloridian]

8. Good point.

Get government out of it, let private companies run the agenda....cheaper that way.

[rexcat]

4. Just come to Ohio and look at the charter schools...

rampant corruption, wasted tax dollars and ineffective schools! The test scores of kid who go to the charter schools in Ohio have not improved and have stayed below state average. Several schools have lost their charters in Ohio. Most if not all of the charter schools were set up during the Taft and Voinovich administrations (both Republican).

For kids to graduate from high school in 2014 new standards have been put in place in Ohio: four years of language arts, four years of science, four years of math and 3-4 (can't remember) years of social sciences. My kids are in the class of 2014. About the only thing good where we live (SW Ohio) is the school system. A lot of the kids take summer school to get some of the required classes out of the way (PE, speech or whatever they call it) and 2 other classes at the junior and senior level . This opens up there schedules to take more math, science and electives.

[madfloridian]

7. Thanks for sharing that. They are pushing things that are not proven to work.

And bribing states to do them to get the billions that Arne has to use at his discretion.

[aquart]

5. Which will lead to more dead Americans.

Privatization is a license to steal.

[Bullet1987]

9. Charter schools are a disastrous education policy.

[madfloridian]

10. I agree. Enrich and fund the traditional public schools.

:hi:

[KamaAina]

11. The problem is that national chains are moving in.

The original intent of charters was to augment the range of oferings in a given school district. An example is Hawai'i, where about half the charters offer a Hawaiian language and cultural curriculum.

But like with seemingly everything else in our society, the big money found a way to commodify education, just like they did health care. :grr: :banghead:

[paparush]

12. This is what I keep saying to TeaBaggers - Do you REALLY want.

companies like Halliburton, KBR, TransOcean, Goldman Sachs in charge of your water, sewer, roads, schools, etc???

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. They took the pencils out of my kids' hands

I'll never forget it. I worked in a charter one summer and while I was there the management company changed hands. Some men came into my classroom to pack up the books, etc that were purchased by the original management company. And they actually tried to take the pencils out of my students' hands while they were working.

I threw them out of my classroom and told them to never come back. And if they didn't like it, I didn't care.

Still gives me chills at the memory. Just what kind of a heartless son of a bitch takes a pencil away from a kid who is using it to learn???