A Plan for Parents to Shut Down Schools
It might be the next school movement to sweep the country. Emboldened by charter school operators, parents of children attending failing schools in Los Angeles are signing petitions that could force the nation's second-largest school system to shut down those schools and reopen them as charters. Steve Barr, the founder of Green Dot Public Schools, a charter school operator, is one of the forces behind the grass-roots campaign. It is being called the "Parent Revolution," the Los Angeles Times reports. (Barr's organization operates 10 charter schools, including Animo Leadership Charter High School in Inglewood, Calif., which U.S. News ranks among the 100 Best High Schools in the nation.)
Barr, who was dubbed "the Instigator" in a recent New Yorker profile, is known for employing headline-grabbing tactics to drive reform within the L.A. Unified School District. He is perhaps best known for engineering the controversial takeover of Locke High School, one of L.A.'s worst-performing schools. Barr was able to pressure the district into giving him control of the embattled school after collecting enough signatures from teachers there who said the change was necessary. It was the first time that the district ceded control of a public school to a private operator.
The latest effort to improve the city's schools envisions at least 51 percent of parents signing a petition at every failing school. These petitions would give the organizers of a parent organization known as the Parent Union leverage to convert those schools into charter schools. The parent union says the charter schools would be smaller, safer, and better at preparing all students for college. Principals would also have the authority to dismiss bad teachers swiftly, which rarely is an option at traditional schools. If the district ignores these petitions, Barr's organization or another charter school operator could threaten to open charter schools in the neighborhood where a bad school exists. These charter schools could drive students away from the failing neighborhood school, depriving the district of state funding that follows students.
"Now I know this sounds a little crazy, but it's very real," Ben Austin, an attorney and political consultant who is heading up the parent petition drive, says in a promotional video. Ramon Cortines, the superintendent of L.A. Unified, seemed surprisingly open to the idea of converting the worst schools into charters. But he emphasized collaboration over a hostile relationship. "I think that competition is healthy, but I don't think any of us have all the answers," he told the Los Angeles Times .
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan probably is carefully watching what happens in Los Angeles. He has said publicly that turning around the nation's worst-performing schools—1,000 each year for the next five years—is one of his top priorities. So far, Duncan has been encouraged by the work of Barr's charter school organization. According to the New Yorker , the two men had a meeting in March in which Duncan seemed to place confidence in Barr's model of closing failing schools and then letting private management organizations take a stab at fixing them. As CEO of Chicago Public Schools, Duncan followed a similar strategy.
If enough parents demand change in their schools, will local politicians listen to them? Or will they side with charter school opponents, including teachers unions, which have long argued that charter schools rob traditional schools of the best students and the funds to train teachers? Speaking at a Washington think tank this week, Duncan called some traditional schools "dropout factories" and said that closing them down will take "real courage" on the part of elected leaders. It sounded as if he were channeling Steve Barr, "the Instigator."
Tags: California | Los Angeles | public schools | education | charter schools | Arne Duncan
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re: A few things
Looks like the whole skimming issue is being exposed for what it is:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-locke28-2009may28,0,2177606.story
Now that neoliberal Green Dot has to take students they don't want, the numbers are beginning to look like, well, LAUSDs. The difference is that LAUSD doesn't have millions from the Waltons, Gates, and Broad pouring in.
Antonio Villaraigosa, Steve Barr, Marco Petruzzi, and Ben Austin were promising passing APIs at Locke in short order. Now a year later we are hearing something entirely different. Having to deal with the same conditions as LAUSD got you in a quandary rich boys?
Your union busting, community robbing, frat-boy tactics will start to unravel as you continue to try ruin our neighborhoods with your failed "free market principles." We've been marching along with our UTLA sisters and brothers, and we will keep the public in public schools.
May the best lobbiest win
It is already to late for those kids in the system. The teachers already have been told there are no jobs for them in charter schools. Only the union has the jobs. Good teachers jobs are only in public schools. The teachers must believe this crap, they keep vetoing for the union overlords. Only the good teachers, as measured by success not awards, would vote out these power brokers, but alas, a majority is needed.
All hail the six digit salaries!
L.A. Parents Union, effectively an astroturf front group for Green Dot, is funded for the most part by Eli Broad and William Gates. Hardly advocates of progressive education or social equality. What the 'Parent Revolution' (have love the extreme right wing appropriation of terms once reserved for the social justice struggle) does do is it dupes parents into supporting 'non-profit' organizations like Green Dot which pays massive six digit salaries to Steve Barr, Marco Petruzzi, and Ben Austin. These same fat cats drone on about how UTLA rank and file are overpaid.
An end goal to their union busting efforts, will be to apply 'free market principles' like competition to privatized schools. That's right, the same thinking that brought us the dot.com disaster and the housing bubble fiasco. How apropos, considering Steve Barr Silicon Valley roots, and connections to super-rich venture capitalists. While he's not lounging around his opulent Silver Lake home insinuating UTLA bureaucrats have carnal relations with sus domestica, he is working with some of the most reactionary elements in Los Angeles to destroy the last vestiges of public eduction.
Private institutions, answerable to know one, will replace schools as we know them. Once they have displaced public schools, the impetus to improve education will give way to their true motive. Like all efforts to maximize profits (yes Green Dot is a non-profit, but read the rules governing non-profits, especially those for salaries), the downward pressure on spending per student and teacher salaries will increase Mr. Barr's and his cronies' incomes substantially.
Far from the 'revolutionary instigators' their right wing libertarian admirers call them, Mr. Barr and his highly paid wrecking crew will join the pantheon of crooks like the Waltons, Gates, and Madoffs.
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