Greeley Colorado District 6 has been championing expanding Charter Schools, as has, to be fair, the Obama Administration. For me Charter Schools are usually (not always) a political bone to throw to the predominantly wealthier classes to segregate their kids from those "not like us". Greeley's District 6 "dramatized" cuts are falling predominantly on the minority and poorer schools in Northern Colorado.
Let's face it the poor just don't vote or are easily misled to vote against their own interests. Greeley's School Board isn't the first to be swayed politically, whether consciously or unconsciously, and won't be the last.
But this article caught my eye this morning. A leopard changing spots? A product of conservative "balance the checkbook and ignore long term consequences" policy think tanks is learning from long term outcomes? If true it is a bright spot in a long dark tunnel. There is a reasonable place for both short and long term perspectives.
I don't think I was the only child who heard their grandmother experienced voice reflect, "Moderation in all things, Baby-doll."
Okay, maybe not the "Baby-doll" part. That's mine.
Yet we stake out our polar positions and hold on for dear life it seems even when we realize the crowd has passed us by and isolation and rot is creeping in. Here Dr. Ratvich, a 'leading' educational policy maker steps out of her mold. Politically well timed to be sure but there is obvious progress being made and that is just terrific from my viewpoint.
Schools belong to their communities. Public goods, like education, fail in the free market ideals of America and should not be thrown into the private sector like chump change. They are simply too important to be left to corporate America and the "you-get-what-you-can-pay-for" feudal ethos.
It is a great article. I encourage those on both sides of the Charter School article to read it. It will take a long time before the middle-classes let go of their indoctrination on testing and privatizing schools but it is a start. I've haven't posted general articles for a while but this one is really a bright spot to see coming forward.
"These and other experiences left her increasingly disaffected from the choice and accountability movements. Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself.
"...“The new thinking saw the public school system as obsolete, because it is controlled by the government,” she writes. “I argued that certain managerial and structural changes — that is, choice, charters, merit pay and accountability — would help to reform our schools.”
In January 2001, Dr. Ravitch was at the White House to hear President George W. Bushoutline his vision for No Child Left Behind, which Congress approved with bipartisan majorities and which became law in 2002.
“It sounded terrific,” she recalled in the interview.
There were signs soon after, however, that her views were changing. She had endorsed mayoral control of New York City schools before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg obtained it in 2002, but by 2004 she had emerged as a fierce critic. Some said she was nursing a grudge because close friends had lost jobs in the mayor’s shake-up of the schools’ bureaucracy.
In 2005, she said, a study she undertook of Pakistan’s weak and inequitable education system, dominated by private and religious institutions, convinced her that protecting the United States’ public schools was important to democracy.
She remembers another date, Nov. 30, 2006, when at a Washington conference she heard a dozen experts conclude that the No Child law was not raising student achievement.
These and other experiences left her increasingly disaffected from the choice and accountability movements. Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself."
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