It's No Coincidence that the Public Education and Poverty Crises are Happening at the Same Time

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/education/us-department-education-releases-study-schools-and-poverty-rate



In the great American debate over education, the education and technology corporations, bankrolled politicians and activist-profiteers who collectively comprise the so-called “reform” movement base their arguments on one central premise: that America should expect public schools to produce world-class academic achievement regardless of the negative forces bearing down on a school’s particular students. In recent days, though, the faults in that premise are being exposed by unavoidable reality.

Before getting to the big news, let’s review the dominant fairy tale: As embodied by New York City’s major education announcement this weekend, the “reform” fantasy pretends that a lack of teacher “accountability” is the major education problem and somehow wholly writes family economics out of the story (amazingly, this fantasy persists even in a place like the Big Apple where economic inequality is particularly crushing). That key — and deliberate — omission serves myriad political interests.

For education, technology and charter school companies and the Wall Streeters who back them, it lets them cite troubled public schools to argue that the current public education system is flawed, and to then argue that education can be improved if taxpayer money is funneled away from the public school system’s priorities (hiring teachers, training teachers, reducing class size, etc.) and into the private sector ( replacing teachers with computers, replacing public schools with privately run charter schools, etc.). Likewise, for conservative politicians and activist-profiteers disproportionately bankrolled by these and other monied interests, the “reform” argument gives them a way to both talk about fixing education and to bash organized labor, all without having to mention an economic status quo that monied interests benefit from and thus do not want changed.

Meanwhile, despite the fact that many “reformers’” policies have spectacularly failed, prompted massive scandals and/or offered no actual proof of success, an elite media that typically amplifies — rather than challenges — power and money loyally casts “reformers’” systematic pillaging of public education as laudable courage (the most recent example of this is Time magazine’s cover cheering on wildly unpopular Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel after he cited budget austerity to justify the largest mass school closing in American history — all while he is also proposing to spend $100 million of taxpayer dollars on a new private sports stadium).

[Laelth]

1. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[GeorgeGist]

2. Another reminder of Reagan's legacy.

[byeya]

3. Reagan's legacy? Sure, But nothing is stopping 0bama from reversing course and inviting

groups of school teachers to the WH and asking for more funding for public schools and getting rid of Arne Duncan, an enemy of public education.
Universal public education is a great American success story and it's being ruined for the profit of a few with middle and lower income students bearing the brunt of the coordinated attack.
Reagan, Yes. 0bama, also Yes.

[savebigbird]

4. Hear hear!!!

[sulphurdunn]

7. You are correct.

The struggle to preserve public education is the real civil rights issue of our time. Public schools, churches and unions are the incubators of our democracy and the only vehicles that remain to further social justice and organize communities for their own interests. That is why the financial elites need to take control of them. If unions are eliminated and school privatized, churches will be next on the menu. Count on it.

[byeya]

9. What you mentioned was the genius behind the Chicago Teachers Strike. The new leadership

embraced social unionism and went, as far as possible, to a bottom up loca,l and involved parents, students, supportive groups like some unions and churches. The union wasn't allowed by law to bargain on things like class size and enrichment programs but they made sure that the people knew this was their view and they, the teachers, were fighting for good schools and not just for pay and benefits which they were allowed to bargain over.
The days of business unionism should be ending because there's been no good faith on the part of the owner class and union officials have been busier at protecting their jobs than the jobs and pay of the membership.

[grahamhgreen]

5. Kick

[DCKit]

6. Duh. Shock Doctrine. nt

[jopacaco]

8. Not a Good Time to be an Educator

I am a teacher who is thankful to be nearing retirement age. I used to love teaching. I was a special education teacher working with students with mental retardation or severe learning disabilities. My students were successfully getting jobs by building relationships with local employers through on the job training. But then NCLB came along. My students needed to take classes like algebra to take the SAT which Maine uses as its high school test. A percentage of my students could take alternate assessment but we had more students with handicaps than average so basically those who could read, even at a 3rd grade level, were in. I spent all year pointing out student strengths and encouraging to watch it all evaporate in one day.
I began teaching in the middle school working with all of the students. The deterioration continues. Teacher morale is non-existant and yet we come to work and do our best everyday for our students. We have been offered a contract with no raise or steps for 3 years while paying 25% more of health insurance costs. Retiring teacher's are not having their positions filled along with additional job cuts this year. Charter schools are not being asked to take any cuts. My school's free and reduced hot lunch numbers (a poverty indicator) are above 80%. Teachers regularly bring in non-perishable food items to fill up backpacks to send home to get students and their families through vacations. Our Tea Party Governor wants to throw teacher retirement costs back on to the local communities and even though I am eligible to receive Social Security benefits, I am unable to collect them due to law (14 states do this). Our Governor created a report card for schools and we got a D. Of course, there is a direct correlation with poverty but he doesn't want to make that connection.
Most teachers are caring people who truly want to do what is best for their students. Their are a few who I think are ineffective but they are in the minority. Education is being directed by wealthy non-educators with their own agenda. I do not think that it is in the best interest of our children.

[byeya]

10. Most teachers are caring. They are in it for more, much more, than their salary. I never thought I'd

see the day when public education and public educators were under attack from a Democratic White House but that's the case.

Charter schools and the like are pretty much failures - that's been shown. So instead of shoring up public schools, this administrations blunders forth with privatization schemes for public education. It's a disgrace.

[sulphurdunn]

11. What really disturbs me

is how few people pay any attention to education issues, even here. Well, I suggest they brace themselves, because public education, up to and including the university system, is the prize upon which Wall Street and it's rightist fellow travelers from both political parties have set their sites. If they succeed it will only take a single generation to raise up a populace that knows war is peace, freedom is slavery, treason is patriotism and ignorance is strength. Please wake up.