Attacks on public education

[Communist]

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Fight school closings, teacher layoffs! (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/public_education_0325/)



Capitalist crisis invades
public education
By Fred Goldstein (http://search.workersworld.net/local-cgi/search.cgi?m=all&s=D&q=fred+goldstein)
Mar 18, 2010

Capitalism is leaving tens of millions of workers without jobs. It is also abandoning millions of children to flounder in a chaotic education system, buffeted by school closings and teacher firings.

The capitalist government in Washington has sharply escalated its ongoing assault on the public education system. Using the budget crisis as leverage and seizing on the deteriorating quality of schools in impoverished districts, government officials have intensified the campaign for charter-school privatization, school closings, and the firing of teachers and staff across the country.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/rochester_0325.jpg
Students in Rochester (http://prometheus.scp.rochester.edu/ursds/) protest during March 4 nationwide
actions to fight tuition increases & defend public education.
WW photo: Lydia Bayoneta (http://search.workersworld.net/local-cgi/search.cgi?m=all&s=D&q=Lydia+Bayoneta+)

But the attack is not on all public education. Virtually all the target schools and school districts are in impoverished communities marginalized by capitalism, especially those that are heavily African-American and Latino/a.

The ax falls on Kansas City

The Kansas City, Mo., school board announced on March 10 that it will close 29 of its 61 public schools. About 700 jobs will be cut, including 285 teachers. The targeted school district is majority African-American.

This school district has long been drained by redistricting and the flight to private schools and charter schools. It has been sued for racial discrimination. Its school population has gone from 77,000 to 13,400. The drop in enrollment, caused by poverty and privatization, and the budget crisis are being used as a pretext to further victimize children and their families by these brutal school closings.

The crisis goes beyond Kansas City. On Feb. 23, the school board in Central Falls, R.I., announced that all its 93 teachers, administrators and support staff would be fired. The Central Falls school district is majority Latino/a. Other schools in Rhode Island are also under threat, including in Providence.

On March 4, Boston school officials announced that all the teachers and staff at six public schools would have to reapply for their jobs. These six schools are among 35 on a target list as “underperforming.” The schools on the list face closures, firings and state takeovers.

Cleveland plans 13 school closings. This includes breaking up high schools into “academies,” leaving a big opening for charter schools to move into the vacuum and get public funds.

These examples could be multiplied many times over, from Detroit to Atlanta, Reno, Los Angeles, New York City — virtually across the country.

Rat race to the top

The immediate trigger is the $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund established by the Obama administration. President Barack Obama publicly praised the drastic firing of all the teachers in the Central Falls high school as an example of progress in education reform.

The Race to the Top is a continuation of the No Child Left Behind program initiated by George W. Bush. Bush promoted charter schools, school vouchers and breaking union contracts — using merit pay and other devices — under the guise of improving teacher performance.

The Race to the Top goes further. It specifies that states can apply for grants if they adopt one of the models specified by the program. These models include moving toward charter schools; firing the teaching staff and then allowing them to reapply for their jobs, but not hiring back more than 50 percent of those fired; and closing “underperforming” schools.

This has touched off a rat race among government officials to get grant money by attacking teachers, closing schools, opening up to charter schools, using school vouchers to pay for private schools, and taking other measures to undermine public education and teacher organization.

This reactionary development is an attempt to select out a small percentage of students for exposure to a superior education while leaving the vast majority behind. Those left behind are overwhelmingly children of the poor and the oppressed. This reality is exactly the opposite of what these programs promised.

It is also important to note the motor force for charter schools: handing over the education system to private companies. It is not about these schools’ level of achievement.

To date, the most authoritative study of charter schools was conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University in 2009. The report is the first detailed national assessment of charter schools. It analyzed 70 percent of U.S.-based students attending charter schools and compared the academic progress of those students with that of demographically matched students in nearby public schools. The report found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools; 46 percent showed no difference from public schools; and 37 percent were significantly worse than their traditional public school counterparts.

The authors of the report considered this a “sobering” finding about the quality of charter schools in the United States. Charter schools showed a significantly greater variation in quality as compared with the more standardized public schools. Many charter schools fell below public school performances and a few exceeded them significantly.

Privatization: ‘The Big Enchilada’

Jonathan Kozol, a well-known authority on public schools and author of the book “Death at an Early Age,” wrote an article entitled “The Big Enchilada” for Harper’s magazine of August 2007. It was about reading a stock market prospectus.

Kozol wrote:
“A group of analysts at an investment banking firm known as Montgomery Securities described the financial benefits to be derived from privatizing our public schools. ‘The education industry,’ according to these analysts, ‘represents, in our opinion, the final frontier of a number of sectors once under public control’ that ‘have either voluntarily opened’ or, they note in pointed terms, have ‘been forced’ to open up to private enterprise. Indeed, they write, ‘the education industry represents the largest market opportunity’ since health care services were privatized during the 1970s.

“Referring to private education companies as ‘EMOs’ (Education Management Organizations), they note that college education also offers some ‘attractive investment returns’ for corporations, but then come back to what they see as the much greater profits to be gained by moving into public elementary and secondary schools. ‘The larger developing opportunity is in the K-12 EMO market, led by private elementary school providers,’ which, they emphasize, ‘are well positioned to exploit potential political reforms such as school vouchers.’ From the point of view of private profit, one of these analysts enthusiastically observes, ‘the K-12 market is the Big Enchilada.’” (See FIST (http://fistyouth.wordpress.com/fist-program/) statement, “Defend Education from ‘Disaster Capitalism (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/defend_public_education_0311/index.html),’” in the Workers World (http://www.workers.org/) of March 4 - PDF here (http://www.workers.org/pdf/2010/08ww4march2010.pdf).)

These two items speak volumes about the Race to the Top program. It is an attempt to put a big part of the public school system on a corporate model of cutthroat competition. The funds for the education of poor children are the object of this competition.

This model has public school officials marketing their schools to the community to fend off the competition of charter schools. New York’s Harlem is a prime target of charter schools and has put the public schools under enormous pressure.

For example, “River East Elementary on East 120th Street draws students throughout Harlem and typically has more applicants than seats. But at this time of year, staff members spend hours scurrying to day care centers, churches and apartment complexes to find prospective parents, said Katie Smith, the assistant principal. ‘We have to be out there constantly representing ourselves,’ Ms. Smith said.” (New York Times, March 10)

The net result is that the capitalist establishment is using the economic crisis to accomplish three things: to wring profits out of the public education system; to solve its budget crisis on the backs of the people by closing schools; and to open up an anti-union campaign against the teachers by driving them into non-union charter schools and weakening the contracts of those who remain in the public system.

This crisis demonstrates many things about the capitalist system at its present stage of crisis, when the opportunity for profitable investment in the real economy of production is narrowed by the crisis of overproduction and the saturation of markets.

It shows that the vultures of finance capital will find every avenue possible to raid the public treasury in pursuit of profit, including forcing a crisis on the education system.

This hurts students, parents, teachers and communities. This is the basis on which to unite against this plan of divide and conquer. It calls for a united mobilization to defend public education and make the bankers and bosses pay for a quality education for all.

This is the richest country in the world, with a $14 trillion economy. There are hundreds of billions available for the schools. But these funds are being pocketed by the banks, the Pentagon, the corporations. There is enough money to give everyone a quality education.
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© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/) Copying of article is permitted in any medium without royalty if this notice is preserved.

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[Communist]

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Want Excellent Schools?
Don’t Wait on Politicians (http://www.the-spark.net/np865101.html)

Having finished Bush’s commitment of trillions to the big banks, and added trillions to private insurance companies, private pharmaceutical companies and other “medical providers,” Obama has now turned his attention to education.

He says he is going to “overhaul” Bush’s “No Child Left Behind,” (NCLB) the program responsible for creating chaos in big city and rural school systems.

The main “accomplishments” of “No Child Left Behind” were to drain more money from the public schools into the pockets of private companies that benefitted from the testing regimen done under “No Child Left Behind”; and to drain more money from the public schools into the grasping hands of private individuals, profit-making companies and universities that set up charter schools as a way to carry out their own agenda, often for their own monetary benefit.

It ended up making teachers “teach to the test” – that is, to prepare students for one thing and one thing only: passing the tests on which the schools themselves were graded. To the exclusion of all else! No credit was given to the schools for the “extra” science and “extra” history they offered; no credit given for languages, arts, drama, athletics. No credit given for all those various subjects and interests that help develop a fully educated and well-rounded child.

Not only no credit. No money was given to carry out the wide range of mandates set up under No Child Left Behind. Schools systems were required to keep more records, make more reports, buy more testing materials – but they got no extra money to do it. Something had to give – and what gave was education.

“No Child Left Behind” needs to be junked.

But that’s not what Obama is proposing. He would continue the annual testing – he simply exchanged one platitude for another. Under Bush’s plan, testing was designed – supposedly – to help every child reach “proficiency” in math and reading. Under Obama’s new plan, testing will be designed – supposedly – to get all students to graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.

Of course, both are goals that should be fought for in this country. But they won’t be accomplished unless practical goals are also pursued.

Practically, this is what is required: enough, well-prepared teachers, so they really know their subject and have enough time to pay attention to the development of each child.That means, in the primary grades, 10 or 12 in a class. Maximum. It means really well-prepared books – available to everyone. It means full access to a well-stocked library. It means supplies so that science experiments can be performed. It means learning laboratories, where children can be immersed in other languages from an early age – which is one of the best ways to help a child understand his or her own language. It means computer labs where children can be immersed in the latest technology.

These are some of the things the best schools provide – the ones set up to serve the children of the wealthy. But these things cost money. And that’s exactly what Bush didn’t provide, exactly what Obama is not proposing to provide. A few hundred millions, perhaps. Even ten or so billion dollars.

But what’s that on the scale of what was provided and set aside for the big banks, 14.4 trillion dollars?

As the saying goes: Put your money where your mouth is!

Obama, just like Bush before him, puts his money with the banks and with the schools for the wealthy, while his mouth spouts platitudes about an excellent education for every child.

Children of the working class will have an excellent education when the teachers, the parents and the students fight for it!

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[Jimmie Higgins]

Obama's plans for education are disgusting. The attacks on teachers (unions) as well as the attacks on public higher education are incredible.

This is a really hard fight because if we just take a defensive stand then the right-wing will win. We actually need to convince people that schools need much much more and better funding and an end to teaching to the test BS. I think it will be easier to win this for higher education, but for regular public school, things have been in decay for so long that a lot of people buy into the right-wing rhetoric about the teachers unions and public education being inherently dysfunctional because it's not a for-profit system.

[Barry Lyndon]

My mother works in a public school as a librarian. Where I live in Chicago, this creation of charter schools and closing down of private ones is causing total pandemonium. All the charter schools are conveniently non-unionized, and the Illinois taxpayer has to PAY for them. What it comes down to is that the public school teacher's union is one of the few strong unions left in Chicago and Daley's gangsters intend to crush them. The teachers are not stupid and they are trying to fight back, but they are saddled by all these goddamn lies that the capitalist media spreads about their work, and also by their wimpy reformist union leadership that insists that they should beg for crumbs. Note, this is the public school system that the current United States secretary of education, Arne Duncan, used to manage. We can get a glimpse of what Obama wants for the country by seeing what is happening in Chicago.
There was an incident that made national news, in which this Chicago public schools student by the name of Derrion Albert was beaten to death on camera by students from a rival gang. The media coverage focused on the sensationalism of the incident itself. It only rarely mentioned the fact that since dozens of public schools have been shut down, the students have been forced to go to the new charter schools by traveling through different neighborhoods-often controlled by rival gangs. Since the push for the privatization of schools began in 2006, the number of Chicago public school students beaten or killed in gang violence has tripled. Arne Duncan, members of the city council, Mayor Daley were all warned that this would happen months in advance by teachers, community activists, parents, and students. The bastards just ignored it. Then Arne Duncan hypocritically wrote an Op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, I think, bemoaning 'what has happened to our children?', knowing full well the blood on his hands.

[vyborg]

Thanx for the information. Does in the US exist a national student organization? Possibly a left wing one...

[Usui]

Thanx for the information. Does in the US exist a national student organization? Possibly a left wing one...

Knowing the US? Probably not. And if there are, they don't have much reach. I think the APL should take a shot at organizing teachers and kids, but... it's a hell of a shot.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm pretty ingnorant unfortunately when it comes to American education system, so could someone explain to me what are exactly charter schools and how are secondary schools funded, as well as "community colleges"...?

[Red Commissar]

Thanx for the information. Does in the US exist a national student organization? Possibly a left wing one...

No. Sometimes at the university itself it may have some groups like SDS, but they tend to be more activist in nature. The closest thing we would have to that is maybe a youth wing of some of our parties, but again as with the general state of the left-wing in the USA, there's none to the scale of what they have in other countries.


I'm pretty ingnorant unfortunately when it comes to American education system, so could someone explain to me what are exactly charter schools and how are secondary schools funded, as well as "community colleges"...?

They're mainly funded at the state level. The Federal Government kicks some of their budget back to the state, but all-in-all it's done at the state level. It may vary from state to state as well.

In Texas where I live, primary and secondary schools are primarily funded through the city's property taxes. Community colleges are funded by the state (but in Texas they are reliant on local property taxes). Community colleges are generally used, at least in my area, for people who want to go through standard college courses at a far cheaper price, and then transfer into a proper college or university to get their 4 year degree.

Charter schools are a concept that have been used in some areas, particularly urban areas, to compete with private schools. They receive public funding but are allowed to have more leeway over how their school is run, managed, and what courses it gears itself towards. Usually they will try to get the brightest students in the area who will otherwise not benefit from the dismal state of public schools in many urban areas.

Anyways, the thing I love with the coverage of these events is that the media tends to overlook the funding problems rampant in the educational field, and rather focuses populist rage on the unions.

I know among Texans and other right-wing types they tend to blame educational problems on teacher unions but rarely accuse the state.

Obama talked a lot of jazz about fixing education. Every president does when they try to run for re-election. This is idiotic that people fall for this, because most educational powers lie with at the state level, rather than the national level. A genuine drive to fix education would have to begin at the local levels, working with teachers like the posted news articles, with fellow citizens, to get the city and state authorities on it, because that is where the majority of taxes that most American citizens pay for goes to- to your city or state.

Of course it'll still be tied to a capitalist system in the end, but it's better than having no education.

[Communist]

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School Budget Cuts (http://www.the-spark.net/np865202.html)

Prince George’s County in Maryland has approved huge cuts in education: eliminating 800 positions including 355 in the classroom; five-day furloughs; increasing class sizes; slashing bus services; gutting liaisons to parents (that is, translators/interpreters); increasing school lunch costs by 50 cents.

In other words, Maryland’s second largest school system is being left high and dry.

Workers’ children – who are most of the students in Prince George’s public schools – are not going to get the education they need and deserve.

The cuts supposedly reflect a 23-million-dollar drop in federal stimulus funding and a 37-million- dollar drop in state funding.

There are trillions of dollars to bail out Wall Street with our federal tax money.

AND Maryland can afford to give millions of dollars in state tax breaks to corporations – like the Delaware holding company loophole – which amounts to the state losing 24.7 million dollars in tax revenues.

But somehow there is no money to educate our children? This is a huge lie – at the expense of workers’ children!


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[Communist]

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Just How Nutty is the
Texas Board of Education?

Turning "Texas education" into an oxymoron. (http://www.alternet.org/story/146156/hightower:_just_how_nutty_is_the_texas_board_of_ed ucation)

by Jim Hightower
Alternet.org
March 25, 2010

In the good-and-good-for-you department, food scientists
are now touting the health benefits of enjoying a
handful of nuts every day.

I, for one, am glad, because I love nuts -- pecans,
hazelnuts, pistachios, almonds, you-name-'em. But my
favorite nuts, by far, are the homegrown natives that
have taken root in one particularly fertile area of my
state: the Texas Board of Education. You just can't get
any nuttier than this bunch!

This board, little-known even to us Texans, has lately
risen to national notoriety, making our state's
educational system a punch line for comedians
everywhere. That's because a handful of ultra-right-wing
nutcases have taken over this elected overseer of Texas
educational policy, and they're hell-bent to supplant
classroom education with their own brand of ideological
indoctrination.

Their way of achieving this political goal is to rewrite
the state standards that textbook publishers must follow
to get the lucrative contracts for providing teaching
materials for every student in the state, from first
grade through high school.

Their latest exercise in ideological correctness comes
at the expense of the social studies curriculum. They
spent last week going through guidelines for history,
government, economics and sociology textbooks, purging
references that offend their doctrinaire sensibilities
and substituting their own nutty biases and ignorance.

How nutty? Take Thomas Jefferson. They did! They
literally did take Jefferson off a list of revolutionary
political thinkers from the Enlightenment period,
replacing him with a favorite of Christian
fundamentalists, John Calvin. Thus, the prime author of
our Declaration of Independence -- poof -- disappeared!
Jefferson's unpardonable transgression? He coined the
term "separation between church and state."

Any concepts that might spur progressive thoughts in
young minds were also expunged. "Justice," for example,
was stripped from a list of virtues meant to teach
grade-schoolers the characteristics of good citizenship.
No doubt the board majority would love to get its hands
on the Pledge of Allegiance's assertion of "justice for
all," but luckily, the pledge doesn't come under the
members' purview. Yet.

The nuts were able to strike "responsibility for the
common good" from the citizenship characteristics list,
however, and they just missed deleting the American
ideal of "equality." They also narrowly lost on a vote
to impose a new requirement that students be taught that
the civil rights movement created "unreasonable
expectations," but they did manage to balance the
positive impact of Martin Luther King Jr. with an
insistence that the "positives" of Joe McCarthy's witch-
hunt for commies and of Jefferson Davis' secessionist
government also be taught.

Likewise, the full-tilt rightists expelled Delores
Huerta, the much-admired farm worker leader, from a list
of "good citizenship" models, airily dismissing this
courageous champion of justice as a socialist. On the
other hand, they mandated that Phyllis Schlafly, the
Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich's Contract With
America be taught as historic icons of a "conservative
resurgence" in America.

One especially delicious moment came when the board
considered a listing of world leaders who fought
political repression. On the list was Archbishop Oscar
Romero of El Salvador, who led an indigenous poor
people's movement in the 1980s before the country's
right-wing death squads assassinated him as he was
celebrating mass.

The board cut Romero from the list, declaring that he
lacked the stature of such other repression fighters as
Gandhi. After all, one board member explained, unlike
Gandhi, Romero had not had a movie made about his life,
so how important could who've been? But -- oops! -- there
was a popular 1989 feature film called "Romero" about
the archbishop's exemplary life. The board was
embarrassed, but it axed him anyway.

Words were banned, too. The phrase "democratic
societies," for example was replaced by the cumbersome
"societies with representative government." And even the
term "capitalism" was censored for having a negative
connotation. Instead, the board decreed that "free
enterprise" be used throughout all social studies
courses. In addition, all references to the Age of
Enlightenment were dropped, because ... well, because
these full-fledged political purists don't want any
concept based on reason getting into the heads of our
school kids.

Texas education wasn't that great before all this
folderal, but these doctrinaire morons are turning
"Texas education" into an oxymoron.


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[Communist]

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Georgia students fight back

Mar 25, 2010

Reacting to reports that hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts are under consideration by Georgia lawmakers, over 400 students from across the state’s university system marched and rallied at the State Capitol in Atlanta on March 15.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/ga_students_0401.jpg (http://www.workers.org/2010/us/georgia_0401/)
Photo: Al Viola

Armed with colorful signs and multiple bullhorns, their chants echoed off the buildings. “Education is under attack — What do we do?” called out the members of the newly-formed Georgia Students for Public Higher Education. “Stand up, fight back!” roared the crowd.

The state’s universities and colleges have already enacted fee hikes and higher tuition in response to previous cuts in state funding for education.

Besides the increased costs, students fear the elimination of programs and majors, staff layoffs and furloughs, and overcrowded classrooms and labs, all of which will undermine the quality of their education.

Following a spirited strategy session held in the park adjacent to Georgia State University, these fired-up student activists returned to their campuses determined to safeguard access to public higher education as a right for all.

— Dianne Mathiowetz
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© 1995-2010 Workers World (http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/pmwiki.php/Main/Background). (http://wwppitt.weebly.com/) Copying of article is permitted in any medium without royalty if this notice is preserved.

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[Communist]

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Students and Community Members Lead
Sit-in, Protests against Resegregation
of Wake County Schools (http://raleighfist.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/students-and-community-members-lead-sit-in-protests-against-resegregation-of-wake-county-schools/)

by raleighfist (http://raleighfist.wordpress.com/) March 24, 2010

Students and alumni of the wake county school system led a sit-in today during a meeting of the Wake County School Board, demanding ALL students receive a quality education.

Raleigh, N.C. – This evening the Wake County School Board is scheduled to take a final vote on dismantling the system’s nationally recognized diversity policy. In response, an organized group of Wake County students, alumni, and their supporters began chanting “Shut it Down, No Segregation in our Town.” Demonstrators were forced from the building where they continue to rally outside.

The policy is a measure that seeks to ensure socio-economic diversity in all schools as a statistically proven way to bring more equity to the education system by avoiding low-performing high-poverty schools. Demonstrators, who believe this vote will move the community toward re-segregated schools and a two-tier system of education, attempted to enter the meeting en masse and declared the new school board majority was violating both legal and moral laws by continuing to operate as it had been.

Concerned parents, students, and community members have been packing the school board meetings for months, trying to stop these measures by the new majority, who were elected by less than 5% of the voters in the county.

“Separate but equal didn’t work then and it wont’ work now. This is a right-wing agenda being pushed on the people of Wake County and its being bank-rolled by some of the richest conservatives in our state – Art Pope, and the chair of Civitas, Robert Luddy, who runs several private and charter schools,” stated Andy Koch, a junior at UNC Chapel Hill and alum of Wake public schools.

Demonstrators and the public were also outraged by new procedures that sought to further limit public input on the measure by limiting attendees to only those who could pick up tickets at 10:30am for the 3pm meeting.

“How are students or working parents able to meaningfully participate and have their voices heard if the only people who attend are those who can afford to show up at 10:30 on a Tuesday morning? This is a clear maneuver to limit participation by working class people, who happen to be the people who will be most affected by this decision,” said Alicia Sidney, a single mother of two.

In addition, the school board was slated to vote on a new policy that threatened suspension for any student who picketed or protested the new policies.

“This is a violation of our human rights – what kind of civics lesson are they trying to teach us by threatening to suspend students for using their voice as we attempt to exercise our First Amendment Rights?” stated an outraged Jacob Ehrlich, a Wake County high schools student.

Demonstrators demand: that all following school board meetings be held at a time and place that allow for meaningful public participation, that the school board not move forward on any radical alteration of its policies until a full review of the data and fiscal implications, to drop the so-called “student disruption” policy that seeks to limit student’s First Amendment Rights, and finally, a re-call election to allow the people of Wake County to determine if these members truly have the support of the community.


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[Communist]

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DPS: Can You Say Kickback? (http://www.the-spark.net/np865201.html)

While each Detroit Public Schools teacher gave up $10,000 a year; while each teacher works more hours, with no overtime pay; while teachers buy supplies for their classroom, and kids don’t have books, and classrooms are overcrowded – Robert Bobb, the “emergency financial manager” of the Detroit Public Schools, just got an $81,000 raise.

Most of it is paid by private foundations that support charter schools.

Overall, he’ll be paid $425,000, up from $344,000 dollars last year.

Bobb’s “base salary” of $280,000 will come from the school district. Since he was appointed by Governor Granholm, she’s the one who okayed the publicly-funded portion of his raise – even though the school district is the one that will have to pay it.

On top of that, fully $145,000 will be paid by private foundations run by businesses – up from $84,000 last year. Granholm’s office supports this, too.

Most of these foundations are being kept secret so far–but the biggest one, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, is a big supporter of charter schools. Bobb graduated from their “Superintendents Academy,” which is nothing more than a training ground for pro-business, pro-charter administrators.

Since coming to Detroit he’s been pushing charter schools hard, closing dozens of public schools in the district and handing many of them over to organizations to form charter schools.

Clearly, these foundations – and the businesses behind them – see something in it for them!

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[Communist]

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Chicago Schools: Big Cuts Proposed (http://www.the-spark.net/np866201.html)

Mayor Daley’s hatchet man in charge of the schools, Ron Huberman, proposed a budget with 700 million dollars in cuts, citing the fiscal crisis as the reason. Programs cut would include sports team coaches and after school programs.

Mayor Daley and many politicians have said that one of the best ways to prevent violence is to have after school programs where kids can learn something.

But that didn’t stop his man in charge of the schools from cutting these programs.

Education research has always shown that fewer students in classrooms makes it easier for children to learn. But this new plan will put as many as 37 kids in a classroom. And behind all these changes are new attacks on teachers – eliminating raises and lowering pensions for new teachers – making it harder for teachers to focus on teaching.

They claim there is no money. False. Huberman – like Arne Duncan before him – handed out multi-million dollar contracts for software systems that don’t work. Useless for students – good for the profits of the companies that drain money from the schools.

The city of Chicago itself continues to hand out big subsidies to business. United Airlines got 35 million dollars when it wanted to move its headquarters downtown. MillerCoors beer got 20 million dollars for its headquarters.

Over the last number of months there have been large protests in front of board of education meetings. A still larger and louder protest would be a good idea.

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[Communist]

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DPS: Here We Go Again (http://www.the-spark.net/np866203.html)

Robert Bobb, the governor-appointed head of the Detroit Public Schools, has announced plans to close up to 44 additional schools after this year, and he already plans to close another 13 after next year. That’s after he closed 29 schools last year.

That will make more than 100 schools closed in the district since 2006.
Bobb expects enrollment to drop from 84,000 this year, to 56,000 by 2015, and says this “consolidation” of schools is necessary to accommodate that drop.

What crap! The closure of schools is a big part of what drives that drop! A number of families have gone through two school closings already; each time a new round of schools close, more families leave the district for neighboring districts or charter schools – or they just drop out and disappear from the records.

With previous closings, many parents had no idea where their children were supposed to go to school – and even the district couldn’t tell them! Every time they close more schools, more students disappear.

In fact, Bobb flat-out plans to turn DPS students over to charter schools. The proof of that is that he also announced an agreement with charters – to bring 70 new schools to the city. That’s almost exactly the number he’s already closed or plans to close.

Last year Bobb pushed a 500-million-dollar bond initiative to renovate 22 specific schools, and Detroit residents passed it, believing it would keep those schools open. Lo and behold, a large number of those schools are now slated to be closed. It was a classic bait and switch!

Bobb says the district will still reconstruct and renovate 22 schools with that money – but will they just be closed only to be handed over to charters, just like others before them? All bought and paid for by Detroit taxpayers.

This is not just happening in Detroit – it’s part of a nationwide privatizing attack on the public schools. Just last week, the Kansas City school board announced plans to close nearly half of the schools in their district.

Somehow, Bobb says he aims to have an over 98% high school graduation rate by 2015. Apparently he plans to reach it by pushing students to drop out while they’re still in elementary school!


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[Communist]

.
Irish bank declares Wis. school trusts in default (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gPP1DqNOSZOF03Wpsl6fkX9qVv2wD9EL89LO0)

By RYAN J. FOLEY
Associated Press Writer
March 2010

MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- An Irish bank that loaned $165 million to five Wisconsin school districts for investments that went bust said Wednesday it is moving to reclaim what is left in the accounts and speed up repayment.

Bill Broydrick, a lobbyist for Dublin-based DEPFA Bank, said the bank declared the districts' trusts in default and was seizing the $5.6 million left in them. He told an Assembly panel the bank took the action "after it became clear that they were unwilling to meet their obligations."

"We're basically saying 'We've asked you to pay, you've violated the covenants of the bond issue, and therefore we're accelerating the payments'," he said in an interview. "All of the assets of the trusts have been scooped up by DEPFA."

The Kenosha, Kimberly, Waukesha, West Allis-West Milwaukee and Whitefish Bay districts set up the investments known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, to help pay for health and pension benefits promised to retirees.

They used the $165 million loan from DEPFA and $35 million in tax dollars for the investments, which lost nearly all their value during the global economic crisis. The districts are suing Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. and the Royal Bank of Canada, which put the deals together, claiming they were fraudulently sold as safe investments.

CDOs are securities backed by pools of mortgages or other assets. They plummeted in value after the credit crisis erupted in 2008 as investors fled all but the safest forms of debt.

A Milwaukee County judge in January allowed the case to proceed by denying motions to dismiss by the defendants, which argued the districts were informed of the risks and hadn't proved fraud. In the meantime, DEPFA, a subsidiary of Germany-based Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, has been pressuring the districts to pay the loan back.

The West Allis-West Milwaukee district has paid back $10 million, but Broydrick said the bank is still owed roughly $150 million. Broydrick said DEPFA wants to negotiate repayment agreements with the districts, but four of out of five of them have refused to meet.

District representatives have said they intend to repay DEPFA, which was not involved in creating the CDOs, if they win the lawsuit.

C.J. Krawczyk, a Milwaukee lawyer who represents the districts, said DEPFA'S seizure of the money was expected for some time and downplayed the impact on the districts' finances.

He said the bank's demand for repayment will require each district's business manager to include a line item in their budget proposals later this year with the amount of their outstanding loans. It will be up to each school board to decide whether to pay them, he said.

The news came as the Assembly financial institutions committee heard testimony on a bill that would give additional protections to school districts that enter into such investments.

The bill would make clear that districts are not sophisticated institutional investors, which would require brokers and investment advisers that sell them investments to be regulated by the state. Sponsor Rep. Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, said the goal was to protect taxpayers and prevent more districts from entering into risky investments.


© 2010 The Associated Press.

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[Comrade Akai]

COOL STORY, BRO

No seriously, I like this thread.:) Here's what needs to be done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFRT9JKGPcI

[Sendo]

As a teacher, I think all standardized testing should cease immediately. Whatever test remain should be essay and short-essay based (excepting math). No more multiple choice.

Korea is HEAVILY standardized and it doesn't work at all. No one knows any English (no, not even grammar, like they all brag, 98% couldn't comprehend the instructions on a Pop-Tart box or a story with more than one paragraph). They don't know anything about history. They all forget. They just get tired bits about who or what is evil. There are no remedial classes. You just carry on with your shit scores until you're done.

And the young teachers really want to change all this, which makes this go from a warning to a tragic tale.

I never want to see America like this. They DO keep public schools for all in Korea, thank god, and awesome job security, but other than that, it all sucks. Money is squandered students are miserable and forced to study (in high school) 16 hours a day or more if they want to get into college. It just fries their brains.

America will look like this if the trend doesn't stop. Obama is a son-of-a-***** who's bribing public schools to fire teachers. If America becomes like S Korea it will be far worse, because we will see school privatization, and extreme racism in budget policy.

I never want to be a college-level educator until things change dramatically. Until things like a history with controversy and discussion is available to the masses. I owe it to the people to take my luck in being able to go to college, travel, and chances to read so muchand bring it to as many as possible. K-12 is most people in America. Many get a college degree, but they often specialize. The vast majority will not take foreign-language study beyond a course, literature at all, history beyond maybe 1-2 courses, etc. If you look at the K-12 education, Christ almighty, it sucks.

[Communist]

.
The Death of Public Education

(http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/06/the_death_of_public_education/)Lack of money is killing our schools (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/06/the_death_of_public_education/)

By Derrick Z. Jackson
April 6, 2010


THE NEWS says we are watching the death of public education
before our eyes. Detroit is closing more than 40 schools,
Kansas City wants to close more than 40 percent of its school
buildings. Other cities have been closing schools over the
last decade. Boston avoided closings in its most recent
budget deliberations, but still must slash custodial staff
and postpone building repairs.

It is no secret that American education is at a great divide,
unrivaled in most of the developed world. The United States
spends $9,800 per public primary and secondary education
student, which is technically high by global standards.

But meanwhile, children of the wealthy are being trained at
private schools at more than triple the expenditures. In the
Boston area, day school tuition rates are closing in on
$35,000.

Our investment in public school teachers is paltry for the
wealthiest country in the world. According to the National
Center for Education Statistics, the United States ranks in
some measures behind England, Italy, Japan, Scotland and way
behind Germany in starting teacher pay. The average
expenditure on college students in the United States amounts
to $24,400 per college student, two and a half times more
than the $9,800 per-pupil spending in the public schools.

Beneath the numbers is the resegregation of children on the
basis of class, race and immigration status. Prison spending
soared so much, that by 2007, five states spent as much or
more on corrections than on higher education, according to
the Pew Center on the States.

In monetary terms, we have given up on millions of children.
'I don't think necessarily that public education is dead, but
certain parts of it are dying," said Linda Darling-Hammond,
a Stanford University professor who headed President Barack
Obama's education transition team. 'The programs of the 1960s
and 1970s that helped make education more equitable were
mostly eliminated in the 1980s and never put back.

'We're disinvesting in a significant way. With the huge
decline in America of manual labor jobs that are being off-
shored or digitalized, the vast majority of jobs are
knowledge based. If we do not invest that way, we really
can't survive as a nation. To deeply underfund public
education as we are doing does not make any sense."

Author of the 2009 book, 'The Flat World and Education,"
Darling-Hammond says neither poverty, nor the diverse nature
of the American population are excuses not to educate
everyone. Several countries were behind the United States
decades ago in education and now have passed us.

She cites the example of Korea, which 'in the space of one
generation . . . moved from a nation that educated less than
a quarter of its citizens through high school to one that now
ranks third in college-educated adults."

She noted how Singapore, where 80 percent of families live in
public housing, was tops in the world in fourth-grade and
eighth-grade math assessments in 2003. 'When children leave
the tiny, spare apartments they occupy in high-rises
throughout the city," she wrote of Singapore, 'they arrive
at colorful, airy school buildings where student artwork,
papers, projects, and awards are displayed throughout,
libraries and classrooms are well-stocked, instructional
technology is plentiful, and teachers are well trained."

It is enough to make one consider whether America needs to
start from scratch. Whatever we are doing, it is not working.
For instance, Darling-Hammond said Obama has an education
platform that could rival the last serious education
president, whom she considers to be Lyndon Johnson, but 'to
date has not squarely embraced the idea of equity. He did a
great job coming out of the box on higher education, but
inequity in elementary and secondary education is continuing
to widen."

Johnson once said you cannot 'take a person who for years has
been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the
starting line of a race and then say, You are free to
compete with all the others.' " Today millions of American
children once again need our help to get to the starting
line.

_____________________________________________

[Comrade Akai]

COOL STORY, BRO

No seriously, I like this thread.:) Here's what needs to be done:

RFRT9JKGPcI

Comrades, I cannot emphasize this enough. Education, I feel is the single most important social program for a socialist government to spend its tax money on. We need a democratic education system, and a paternal and authoritarian system will do nothing for our movement. We need the people, everyone to be critical thinkers. We need everyone to be a leader themselves, capable of making their own decisions without relying on government. A socialist government is supposed to teach the people to govern themselves, so democratic education is imperative to our movement. This doesn't get talked about enough, please, watch this video and Part 2 after it.

[cska]

We spends hundreds of dollars a piece on textbooks that aren't worth a penny. Then we buy licenses for bundled software. Not to mention a few workbooks and what not to go with it.

Why don't we take all this money that we are throwing at education companies and use it to pay a decent wage to teachers? Right now talented people are taking jobs in industry instead of teaching because teaching jobs don't pay a living wage. It is as simple as that.

Oh and to hell with that "no child left behind" which is really "every child held back".

[Zeus the Moose]

Obama's plans for education are disgusting. The attacks on teachers (unions) as well as the attacks on public higher education are incredible.

This is a really hard fight because if we just take a defensive stand then the right-wing will win. We actually need to convince people that schools need much much more and better funding and an end to teaching to the test BS. I think it will be easier to win this for higher education, but for regular public school, things have been in decay for so long that a lot of people buy into the right-wing rhetoric about the teachers unions and public education being inherently dysfunctional because it's not a for-profit system.

Have students and teachers in California been able to keep mobilisation up after March 4th? Here in New Jersey a coalition has recently been formed to oppose all budget cuts in the public sector, and some of the impetus for it came out of the March 4th protests around education. I'm curious to know if similar things are happening in other states.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Have students and teachers in California been able to keep mobilisation up after March 4th? Here in New Jersey a coalition has recently been formed to oppose all budget cuts in the public sector, and some of the impetus for it came out of the March 4th protests around education. I'm curious to know if similar things are happening in other states.
March 22nd there were over 5000 people at the capitol. here are some organizations i recognized there.

PSL
SDS
ISO
people from The Militant
also, there were anarchists, i saw a Red and Black flag.

in California there is a political campaign to pass Assembly Bill 656 which will put a 12.5% tax on oil companies operating in CA. roughly 2bil will be made from that if it is passed, and that money will be prioritized for education.