A Plan for Parents to Shut Down Schools

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.

Power to the Parents

If Steve Barr is "the Instigator," as New Yorker magazine depicted him, he is the kind of instigator needed in every community faced with unsafe public schools that are dropout factories. The campaign that the education entrepreneur is leading in Los Angeles to organize parents is brilliant, and could well become a national model.("A Plan for Parents to Shut Down Schools," May 12.)

If a majority of parents use the power of petition to force school systems to shut down failing public schools and reopen them as charter schools, it could revolutionize American education. Teacher unions use their money and political clout to block school reform and parental choice. But a Parent Union such as seems to be coming to the fore in L.A. could shift the balance of power in favor of those who supply the schools with the children. Power to the parents, and hail to the instigators!

Robert Holland

Senior Education Fellow

The Heartland Institute

Chicago

'Bad' Students

Which students are the 'good' students and which students are the 'bad' students? With the belief that all students can achieve at high levels these labels should go away. If you don't believe this as an educator, possibly a carreer shift is in order.

A few things

About charters- in California at least, state law prohibits charters from picking and choosing, or 'skimming' students. They must accept everyone that applies, and if they have too many applicants they go to a random lottery to choose. At Green Dot, for example, 99% of their students are black and Latino, and 85% qualify for free or reduced lunch, a common measure of low-income status. Their demographics are the same, if not more socioeconomically challenged, than the public schools around them. And check out their results, or the results of Alliance- pretty impressive:

http://www.greendot.org/results

http://www.laalliance.org/comparison.html

Also, I'm not sure where the idea of charter management orgs as "corporations" comes from. The group talked about in this article, the Parent Revolution, firmly opposes any for-profit corporations playing in public education. The charter operators they work with are non-profits, and highly effective in taking kids that are stuck in completely failing public schools and giving them a real future, giving them the chance to go to college. Furthermore, Parent Revolution is not JUST about charters, as this article implies- rather, its about giving parents the power to force the district to fix their (literally) failing schools. If the district refuses, parents can then choose to engage the charter option.

Oh, and also there is a charter school operating right now as a "neighborhood" school that accepts every single child from the neighborhood... its Locke High School in Watts, which was recently transformed from a failing school with a 75% dropout rate that sent 4% of their students to college to a college prep school where violence on campus is no longer a daily occurrence. Pretty incredible- check it out: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-locke1-2008dec01,0,3516061.story

Every kid, no matter where they live, deserves this type of school. The status quo is unacceptable.

Charter schools

Charter schools are successful only because they can pick and choose students. They admit the good students and keep out the bad students who then go to a 'regular' public school. Make charter schools take all students and you'll see how good they are.

competition in schools

The thing about charter schools, small schools, academies -- whatever you want to call them --- is they lead to more competition, within districts and schools. Are we sure that competition is a good thing for schools? I recently posted an article about this on the education blog, Teacher, Revised. Here's the link: http://teacherrevised.org/2009/05/11/reader-poll-results-is-competition-the-force-or-the-dark-side/

When corporations

start "operating" multiple schools and leading the charge to "grass-roots" petition drives, YOU are about to be had with respect to your tax dollars.

Hey, I like charter schools. I do not trust an "operator" of several of them.

Schools are about individual people who teach in them. They are not a "corporate" playground.