Edumacation Archive

I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from Washington, DC lately on both of my blogs because of the writing that I’ve done on Michelle Rhee.   To my mind, Washington is definitely ground zero in the battle to privatize our schools.   What Michelle Rhee has done with her summary firings in our nation’s capital should be known to teachers far and wide.  However, we make a big mistake if we don’t see that the same forces that have hit Washington hard have also been at work in Chicago where mayoral control has displaced many teachers and despite a growing unrest by the parents and students of the city, charter schools continue to open leading to a huge uptick in teen violence.   In Milwaukee, the mayor is trying to take over the city’s schools.   In Detroit, they are trying to blackmail teachers into an agreement where each teacher would loan the school district $1,00o.  New York is threatening to tie tenure into test scores and let’s not forget the Race Off the Cliff coming from our federal government.

I really hope that each and every school district is able to fight off the threat to their districts, but if we are really to be successful we must unite together nationally because the threat that we face is national.   The people who are trying to bring corporate technique to the public schools are the same people who have joined together to ruin our economy.   It would make a lot more sense for the corporations to hire teachers to try to bring the classroom to the board room.   After all, our schools continue to lead the world in producing Nobel and Einstein Prize Winners even as our country has become a spending economy instead of a producing one.    For all of the Gates Foundation’s money, the American people would rightfully react with such horror, if they sent their children to schools that failed as often as any Microsoft Windows Operating System.

I’ve mentioned some big school districts, but I’d love to hear how your particular district is being privatized.  I won’t yell at you if you think it’s a good thing, but I want to know how are charters and corporate “accountability” moving into your schools.   What’s happening where you live?