“School closings actually harm us in our communities,” said Brown, speaking this week at the Ford Foundation in New York City.
As a longtime organizer for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Brown was speaking from experience. Between 2001 and 2009, Chicago Public Schools closed 44 schools, decisions Brown argued were driven more by real estate prices in the surrounding communities than the educational needs of students. The results, he said, were a spike in school violence, the destabilization of schools receiving displaced students, and the awarding of several public schools to unqualified charter operators.
“They come into our neighborhoods with bad policy they force down our throats.” Brown said. “Schools are community institutions, not corporate craps games.”
In recent years, influential organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation—not to mention wealthy celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg—have given tens of millions to the charter and school turnaround movements, both of which are closely linked to the push for urban school closures.
Ahhh, the mantra of pro-local control, pro-public education, pro-child, anti-deformist, Rttt critics. Again, what do they know?
Monday’s discussion featured delegations from Chicago, Los Angeles, Newark, New York, and Philadelphia.Those know-nothings.
Brown and the Chicago contingent took on the role of grizzled veterans of closings and turnarounds, sharing stories and battle scars while critiquing, from a variety of angles, the recent history of school closures in their city.
Marisa de la Torre, a Senior Research Analyst at the Consortium on Chicago School Research, shared findings from a 2009 study of 18 Chicago schools that were closed due to poor performance or underutilization.
“Very few [displaced] students went on to schools that were academically successful,” said de la Torre.
Pauline Lipman, a professor of education policy studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, presented a series of maps bolstering her contention that “school closings are a way of clearing out a neighborhood for gentrification.”
And Karen Lewis, the recently elected president of the Chicago Teachers Union, reprised the message that she said she’s been delivering to the Chicago Board of Education for years.
“When we first started going to the board meetings about school closings, the decisions were already made. They were done deals,” Lewis said. “We came in said to the board this process is illegal and immoral. You have to make it more inclusive.”
A large contingent from Newark, N.J., was paying close attention.
Newark is currently in the throes of a significant restructuring of its public schools due to a combination of decreased state funding, declining enrollment, persistent poor performance, and the dramatic recent growth of the pro-charter and school choice movements.
“Public accountability is being removed, and we need a public response.”
Yea! What that guy said! We'll say it, we'll say it again, we'll keep on keepin' on, because eventually someone who matters will listen!
Click the link at the top of the post to read the entire article.
1 comments:
That's why I will be marching
in DC on July 30 with Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action.(www.saveourschoolsmarch.org). Our grassroots movement will not stop until we have put an end to this insanity.
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