People sure have short memories around here.
"There is a massive experiment being performed on thousands of primarily African American children in New Orleans. No one asked the permission of the children. No one asked permission of their parents. This experiment involves a fight for the education of children.
snip
....This experiment was started and approved while students and parents were not around to participate in the decision. Before Katrina, the process of creating a charter school was legally required to first have the approval of parents and teachers. Supporters of this experiment, many if not most of who do not have children in public schools, repeatedly argue that this experiment creates “choice” for at least half the parents and students. The irony is that few parents had any choice at all in creating the experiment involving their children.
The very first public school converted to a charter was done on September 15, 2005, while almost all the city remained closed to residents. The school board did not even hold the meeting in New Orleans.
While President Bush may have been slow to react in other areas after the storm, he made a bold push right after Katrina to help convert public schools to charters.
On September 30, 2005, the U.S. Department of Education pledged $20.9 million to Louisiana for post-Katrina charter schools. The federal government offered no comparable funding to reestablish traditional neighborhood or district schools."
http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley08062007.htmlAnd this greedy decrepit geezer couldn't wait to swoop down and promote one of his neo lib pet projects.
The Promise of Vouchers
Milton Friedman, Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2005
Most New Orleans schools are in ruins, as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity to radically reform the educational system.
The schools that were destroyed were not serving their students well. As Chris Kinnan writes, "The New Orleans public-school system has been failing its kids for years. Fully 73 of its more than 120 schools are considered to be 'failing' according to the state's educational accountability standards." ("Vouchers for New Orleans," National Review Online, Sept. 15, 2005.)
New Orleans schools were failing for the same reason that schools are failing in other large cities, because the schools are owned and operated by the government. Government decides what is to be produced and who is to consume its products, generally assigning students to schools by their residence. The only recourse of dissatisfied parents is to change their residence or give up the government subsidy and pay for their children's schooling twice, once in taxes and once in tuition. This top-down organization works no better in the U.S. than it did in the Soviet Union or East Germany.
Rather than simply rebuild the destroyed schools, Louisiana, which has taken over the New Orleans school system, should take this opportunity to empower the consumers, i.e., the students, by providing parents with vouchers of substantial size, say three-quarters of per- pupil spending in government schools, usable only for educational expenses. Parents would then be free to choose the schooling they considered best for their children. This would introduce competition, which is missing from the present system. It would be a move to a bottom-up organization, which has proved so successful in the rest of our society.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/resources/part7/chapter20/friedman-promise-vouchersIt's a money making business scam. One long sleazy infomercial selling the destruction of public education to the willfully ignorant. Hit them when they are down and out, shell shocked and vulnerable, then take them for all their worth.
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