The Myth of Charter Schools and Waiting for Superman

I found this on Daily Kos:

Waiting For SuperFraud 

By Michael T. Martin

Public schools have to fail. There is no alternative. So give up trying to argue otherwise with facts and logic.

The mockumentary Waiting For Superman made this clear. Funded by millionaires, the movie told the story of some privatized schools in Harlem portrayed as saviors of children otherwise condemned to public schools. Privatized schools mostly funded by hedge fund millionaires on Wall Street. They spent two million dollars to promote the film nationally. Another major film titled "The Lottery" told a similar tale: children in Harlem desperate to escape public schools. Funded by more millionaires.

State Senator Bill Perkins, who represents the people of Harlem, tried to put profit restrictions on these privatized schools. So the millionaires spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to run an opponent against him in the November, 2010, election. The people of Harlem voted overwhelmingly to re-elect Perkins.

One of the supposed heroes in the mockumentary was Michele Rhee, the caustic head of Washington, D.C., schools. She subsequently was the focus of the November, 2010, mayor’s election in D.C., campaigning for the existing mayor who appointed her, promising to resign if he lost. The people of D.C. voted him and her out.

The little people in Harlem and D.C. who see the truth on the ground voted against the millionaires. But the big money people still rate Rhee as a hero and keep pouring money and propaganda into charter schools. Ever wonder why? Brooklyn city councilman Charles Barron laments the situation in New York City: "Our public schools need to be in the control of parents and the community, as opposed to businessmen who see the $23 billion budget as a means to giving no-bid contracts to their cronies."

In April, 1999, the Wall Street financiers at Merrill Lynch published a 193 page "In-depth Report" titled "The Book of Knowledge, Investing in the Growing Education and Training Industry." Early in the report they noted: "The K-12 market is the largest segment of the education industry with approximately $360 billion spent annually or over $6,500 per year per child. Despite the size, the K-12 market is the most problematic to invest in today. Entrenched bureaucracies and personal and political interests contribute to the challenges facing this sector."

Public schools HAVE to fail in order to crack open this egg and give these financiers access to the $360 billion they are after (estimates are that it is around $700 billion today). No matter what logic you use to explain the problems or successes of public education, it will be of no avail: public schools HAVE to fail. Whatever it takes. In a 2007 appellate court decision ruling that Merrill Lynch could not be sued by Enron stockholders for facilitating the fraud of Enron, the dissenting third member of the judicial panel wrote: "The majority immunizes a broad array of undeniably fraudulent conduct from civil liability."

Big money wants the public schools to fail and they are quite willing to engage in "undeniably fraudulent conduct" to ensure it. One prescient book titled "The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, And The Attack On America’s Public Schools" told the tale back in 1996 but logic and facts won’t stop big money.

Back about the time NCLB was promulgated, Ron Susskind, a New York Times reporter, related a conversation with a senior aide to President George W. Bush in the summer of 2002: "The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore.’"

Big money is "the way the world really works anymore." Enough money to buy political influence. A lesson well taken from the experience of the tobacco industry in fighting the truth of lung cancer. A lesson perhaps best exemplified by the Tobacco Institute’s "Powell Memorandum" that exhorted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to establish a conspiracy to counter the environmentalism and consumerism of the public schools. The author of which was soon afterward appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The current leadership of the Republican Congress in the House and Senate both have long established economic ties to the tobacco industry. House speaker Boehner was criticized several years ago for handing out tobacco lobby checks on the floor of the House during a crucial vote on tobacco regulation. People whose self interest depends on addicting children to a poisonous product now claim to have the best interests of children in mind.

The overarching thrust of the mockumentary Waiting For Superman is that teachers’ unions are responsible for the faux failure of public schools. That teachers have their own self interest rather than that of children in mind. The teachers’ unions that have been major supporters of the Democratic Party since the Civil Rights era. So the Republican Party will stop at nothing to undermine public education.

After President Clinton was elected in the early 1990s, Reed Hundt, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (1993-97), asked H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Education Bill Bennett to support legislation that would pay for internet access in all classrooms and libraries in the country. "I asked him to support the bill in the crucial stage when we needed Republican allies. He told me he would not help, because he did not want public schools to obtain new funding, new capability, new tools for success. He wanted them, he said, to fail so that they could be replaced with vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, and other forms of private education."

Grover Norquist, a major political leader in the Republican conservative movement, was asked by writer Ben Adler of The New Republic "How evolution should be taught in public schools." Norquist responded "The real problem here is that you shouldn’t have government-run schools." Norquist is better known for his patriotic comment that he wants to shrink the federal government to where he can drown it in a bathtub. His words; somewhat evocative of drowning a child.

So there are powerful forces who will ensure that public schools fail. There is no sense arguing to the contrary, there is over $700 billion to believe otherwise. The same greed by the same people that left the U.S. economy in ruins, with millions of ordinary people unemployed and in bankruptcy, will ensure that the U.S. education system is soon in the same condition. Public education has to fail, because that is "the way the world really works anymore."

Jindal and the Destruction of Louisiana

Here is a piece in the Advocate that helps explain the the new Census results. LA has the lowest population growth of the South. This is directly due to Jindal's selfish ambitions. I know he wants to get on the National stage, but, like most Republicans, he is hopelessly deluded. The Neo Cons don't like Gays or Latinos, and they are not big on women (except for scandals), and they hate the poor and the working class.
His book is not doing as well as Palin's second work of fiction--perhaps the title?--and he is allegedly gearing up to run for re-election next Novembre.

But the roof is about to fall in on him: cutting taxes on the wealthy to foment a budget crisis is not a good economic plan. When his house of cards falls, will he still be able to tout his tax cutting strategy to the Conservative faithful?  I think not, he is BROWN, lest you forget, and those tea partiers seem partial to white folks. Happy New Year!

Christmas Dinner

I had a nice Christmas dinner last night, roasted game hens, dirty rice, roasted sweet potatoes, very good.

Susan Cowsill

I didn't watch much TV as a kid, Marine sergeants make for strict parents, so I did not know much about the Cowsills, but I was so happy when Susan moved here in the late 70's. She is ever a delight to hear.



I include this because Jimmy Robinson is so fabulous

Jim Crow through rose-colored specs

Some folks in South Carolina celebrated the 20^th as the 150^th anniversary of the signing of the Bill of Secession  with a ball (they danced the Virginia Reel, choreography courtesy of Gone With the Wind). On the same day, Gov. Halely Barbour gave an interview with The Weekly Standard, wherein he dissembled about segregated life in Yahoo City, MS, his attending integrated schools, and downright lied about the White Citizens Council fighting for civil rights.

The Neo-Con (or Neo-Confed) script on this is that the War of Northern Aggression was a States Rights issue--NOT SLAVERY.  But 7 of the 13 states cited Slavery as the reason in their Acts of Secession, the other 6 cited Lincoln's being an illiterate incompetent as the reason. While it is true that the majority Southern Whites were not slave owners, the secession was the act of wealthy landowners--planters who owned slaves.

My Father's Mother's Grandfather, he was Scotch-Irish with a big estate near Winchester, Tennessee, he owned slaves. I have no idea of how many or their names or what became of them. My Grandmother told me stories about him and his children, seldom about the slaves. They rarely entered the narrative and when they did, only in humorous episodes. I might have asked about them, but I never thought of it. I had been raised not to think about slavery--that was long gone and now Negros were all happy and contented.

Haley was born in 1947, 7 years before me. He "experienced" desegregation in his senior year at the University of Mississippi; I attended 8^th grade at S. J. Peters Middle School, which was fully desegregated. Of course, New Orleans is much larger than Yahoo City, and it was much harder for Blacks in his time to get into college, so that may not be relevant.
       Here is the thing, we were both taught history through a Southern prism, and that is why I did not ask my paternal Grandmother about the slaves in her stories: I had been ham-strung by my education.

The real story is the culture that produced both Halely and me. The entire White South believed that the Civil War was about preserving our great heritage, that Blacks had been happy as slaves--no farmer would abuse his animals, why would a slave-owner abuse his slaves? The hated Yankees wanted to destroy States Rights!

That argument doesn't hold water. Yankees had States, so why would they choose to destroy States Rights? Why do we hear now and then of farmers convicted of animal abuse (just think of those factory chicken farms, factory hog farms and cattle feed lots)? The majority of White Southerners didn't own slaves, so how could they be hijacked by the 2% who owned slaves and controlled the political power? Why did Congress just pass an extension of an obscenely huge tax for the wealthiest 2% of our time?

It was strictly about keeping the right to own humans as chattel. Not slavery.

Lunar Eclipse and Winter Soltice

The Druids must be going bananas, the moon is full tonight and there will be a total lunar eclipse at 7:40 GMT (1:40 New Orleans time) on the 21st, which is the winter solstice. I'll bet there is a huge crowd at Stonehenge, and they are having a dreadful snow storm.

Gay Olde Army

I forgot to mention, I am over the top about the Senate passing the repeal of DADT. Screw you, McCain! And those whinny NeoCons who rail about emasculating the military? Tell that to the Spartans, or have you forgotten about their military prowess and their homosexuality? One baby step towards a better society.