Friday, May 8, 2015

Big Lies and Big Plans Behind the Atlanta School Cheating Scandal


Demonizing Teachers, Privatizing Schools: The Big Lies and Big Plans Behind the Atlanta School Cheating Scandal

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Should we be wondering if the prosecution of cheating Atlanta teachers for racketeering was racist? Or should black parents and educators be leading a movement against high-stakes standardized testing as the gateway tool to privatizing public education in black and brown communities across the country?

When drama queen Fulton County judge Jerry Baxter demanded public post-conviction apologies from Atlanta teachers already convicted of racketeering lest he hand them double digit sentences, it struck raw nerves in parts of black America. Black pastors and community leaders called press conferences. They held rallies and issued stern statements. They denounced the judge for making “common criminals” out of black teachers. Inevitably, they wondered whether white teachers would have been prosecuted or subjected to post-conviction humiliation of this kind.

They're asking the wrong question. What they ought to ask is why the teacher perp walk is being served up in the first place. They need to ask who profits from the continuing crisis in public education in black and brown communities? The answers are not hard to find.

The whole thing, from the indictment of Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Beverly Hall, who died before the trial was complete, to the posturing of public officials and corporate media about “cheating the children” is the latest act of a long, long fake crisis. Judge Baxter's histrionics too, in which he called the cheating scandal “the sickest thing that's ever happened to Atlanta,” were a great contribution to the story our billionaire-owned media wants to paint about public education.
The one-percenters need us to believe public education in our communities is some new kind of sewer infested with incompetent teachers who are cheating children and the public every week they draw paychecks. The long, long crisis of public education has been designed, engineered and provoked by powerful bipartisan forces to justify their long game, which is the privatization of public education.

That's the Big Plan.

Since at least 2001, when George W. Bush's conservative Republicans teamed up with Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy's liberal Democrats to pass and implement the No Child Left Behind Act, it's been the policy of both capitalist parties implemented by the federal Department of Education to create, to provoke and to exacerbate a phony educational crisis. This program of crisis-creation has been backed by Wall Street, by banksters and hedge fund types, by giant corporations like Wal-Mart and powerful right wing interest groups like the US Chamber of Commerce as well as the so-called philanthropic tentacles of corporate America like the Gates, Broad, Heritage and Walton Family Foundations. The solution to the fake crisis has been the whole industry of testing experts, turnaround consultants, diploma mills for fake principals, lucrative charter school companies and their contractors, and the private but government sanctioned agencies that rate school districts. Even the agencies that rate school districts are staffed by the same “run the school like a business” experts approved by the US Chamber of Commerce who were employed to write President Obama's Race to the Top program, which punishes school districts that don't privatize or implement “run the school like a business 'reforms'” fast enough.

High stakes standardized testing, like the tests educators cheated on in Atlanta, is an essential tool in provoking the crisis, but it's a big lie. These kinds of tests don't reflect student progress or teacher competency. They track to family income, and family income in the US correlates largely to race. So as Glen Ford put it back in 2012
“The standardized tests were bombs, designed to explode the public schools and the teaching profession. Everyone involved knew that inner city kids would fail the tests in huge numbers, setting the infernal machine in motion for the closing of schools and the wholesale firing of teachers...”

The bombs were planted not just in Atlanta, but in thousands of school districts across the nation, with predictable results. A 2012 story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution revealed that the same suspicious patterns of radical test score improvement seen in Atlanta could be found in more than 200 school districts across the country, from Philly to Portland, and from Alaska to Alabama. Clearly, cheating teachers and principals in Georgia were and likely still are doing the same things the same way as their colleagues across the country.

It's also very true that Atlanta's teachers were singled out. Other teachers in other states were merely stripped of their jobs and professional licenses. Teach For America alums Michelle Rhee and Kayla Henderson both headed Washington DC's public schools when massive cheating scandals occurred, but unlike Atlanta's Beverly Hall, neither they nor their subordinates are in any danger of prosecution. Atlanta on the other hand, is closely associated with the notion of African Americans running big cities, so making the example of black educators in Atlanta makes perfect political sense for those orchestrating the crisis. Still we shouldn't feel too sorry for the Atlanta teachers. Beverly Hall turned big chunks of Atlanta's public schools over to privatizers, and even helped divert $140 million a year for more than 20 years away from Atlanta's public school children to line the pockets of developers and gentrifiers in a lucrative boondoggle Atlantans know as “the Beltline.”

If the black political class and black educators really stood for the interests of their students and communities they would be educating black parents and students across the country about their right to opt out of tests that serve no legitimate educational purpose, as teachers in Chicago and Seattle are already doing.
But that's problematic too. Opposing standardized testing would place the black political class in conflict not with the slippery nebulous demons of institutional racism, but biting some of the very real and easy-to-find hands in corporate America that feed it. Taking issue with standardized testing, Common Core and the drive to privatize education would put black educators in opposition to corporate America, to the Gates, Walton Family (Wal-Mart), Eli Broad and other foundations, and to Republicans and Democrats including President Obama and Arne Duncan, his Secretary of Education. This is not an easy thing to do when national black “civil rights” organizations from the National Action Network and the National Urban League have eagerly accepted corporate-engineered school reform with corporate dollars, and President Obama is deeply beholden to the charter school sugar daddies.

So it looks like we can count on our black political class to stick to the script on the Atlanta teachers cheating scandal. They'll talk about whether the prosecution was racist, and they'll wring self-righteous hands over teachers “cheating the children.” But they won't question those who set up the rigged game of high stakes testing or why.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and serves on the state committee of the GA Green Party. Contact him at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.

3 comments:

  1. so happy to read this post, i have been advocating on these same prinicpals for some time. sad part is charter schools just deepens the divide and conquer tactics in low income communities. the black political members who support privatizing our schools are in bed with those rigging the game of high stakes testing. sharing an email i recieved about creating a charter school in my coummunity, which by the way our gov. tom wolf told the philadelphia src not to grant any more charters and they ignored our governor and issued five new charters. here is the email i recieved showing the elected officials in the bed with corporate america. sad how they make their agenda community driven,
    on our may 19th ballot we ask to get rid of the philadelphia school reform commission, aka src and to end high stake testing with the #optout campaign. hopefully this charter school genocide will end sooner than we hope!!

    "Subj: IMPORTANT ACTION NEEDED!!! Fwd: 2/5/15 Charter Call Takeaways
    We were invited to be on a conference call this afternoon with leadership of the Philadelphia School Partnership and with school leaders of operating charter schools in their "portfolio" (meaning those schools they've funded and consider high performing). There has been incredible activity this week with regards to advocacy efforts from PSP with SRC members, Bill Green, William Hite, the legislature and their leadership and the governor's office.

    With PSP pledging to erase the financial impact on charter approval they believe that there is room for the district to potentially approve 11 - 12 charters in February. They provide their advice re: follow up in the forwarded email below.

    Our task in the next ten days is to make sure that WE are one of the 11-12. How do we do this??

    1. We need to get our community members - meaning you and your constituents - to call and write to members of the SRC. They need to hear that the community wants Germantown Community Charter School in Germantown. We need to give them a strong reason to accept our proposal and having the strong community backing is what sets us apart from the rest. The next ten days are critical for our charter chances.

    I have attached a script that your folks can use but it always helps to give it your own individual flair. If we could get each coalition member to get three people to make a phone call or email the SRC we will be making headways.

    2. We need our elected officials to reach out to the SRC again and reiterate their support of our school and the importance to the community - particularly Sylvia Sims and Farah Jimenez.

    3. We need some folks to call in to Radio Times tomorrow per the instructions in bullet 3 below and represent for GCCS. Mention our school name and our frustration at having educational options stripped from our community. We want a community driven school back in Germantown. Please call - that is a key initiative.

    Please let me know what you can do to help this effort. Every little bit helps!

    Thanks as always.

    Julie"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. here is another email: "here is another email on the same topic: "

      Thank you for your participation today.

      Based on recent conversations, these are our main recommendations for encouraging a large number of charter approvals from the SRC:

      1. Be flexible. It is possible that the SRC may ask you to make changes to your application concerning catchment area, enrollment phase-in, and opening dates. It is critical to be open-minded in this regard.

      2. Mobilize supporters to contact the SRC. Try to have parents send personal letters—not form letters—to the members, particularly Sylvia and Farah. Encourage your board members, advocates, and funders to do the same, though focusing on Bill and Feather.

      To contact the SRC, email Nicky Charles (ncharles@philasd.org) and Claire Landau (clandau@philasd.org) and specify which member(s) you want to receive your message. The phone number is 215-400-4010.

      3. Call in to Radio Times tomorrow morning. Parents would be ideal, but principals, board members, or any other charter supporters should feel free as well.
      · The show is from 10:00 AM -11:00 AM tomorrow; it can be heard on either 90.9 FM or online at http://www.whyy.org/91FM/live.php

      · Typically they will start asking for people to call in starting at around 10:20

      · The call-in number is (888) 477-9499. If you can’t get on air, you can also tweet questions to @whyyradiotimes.


      Thank you all again for both your open-mindedness and dedication to this effort. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any further questions.

      Best,
      Jacob

      --
      Jacob Waters
      Philadelphia School Advocacy Partners
      150 S. Independence Mall West, Suite 1200
      Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106"

      Delete
  2. so happy to read this post, i have been advocating on these same prinicpals for some time. sad part is charter schools just deepens the divide and conquer tactics in low income communities. the black political members who support privatizing our schools are in bed with those rigging the game of high stakes testing. sharing an email i recieved about creating a charter school in my coummunity, which by the way our gov. tom wolf told the philadelphia src not to grant any more charters and they ignored our governor and issued five new charters. here is the email i recieved showing the elected officials in the bed with corporate america. sad how they make their agenda community driven,
    on our may 19th ballot we ask to get rid of the philadelphia school reform commission, aka src and to end high stake testing with the #optout campaign. hopefully this charter school genocide will end sooner than we hope!!

    "Subj: IMPORTANT ACTION NEEDED!!! Fwd: 2/5/15 Charter Call Takeaways
    We were invited to be on a conference call this afternoon with leadership of the Philadelphia School Partnership and with school leaders of operating charter schools in their "portfolio" (meaning those schools they've funded and consider high performing). There has been incredible activity this week with regards to advocacy efforts from PSP with SRC members, Bill Green, William Hite, the legislature and their leadership and the governor's office.

    With PSP pledging to erase the financial impact on charter approval they believe that there is room for the district to potentially approve 11 - 12 charters in February. They provide their advice re: follow up in the forwarded email below.

    Our task in the next ten days is to make sure that WE are one of the 11-12. How do we do this??

    1. We need to get our community members - meaning you and your constituents - to call and write to members of the SRC. They need to hear that the community wants Germantown Community Charter School in Germantown. We need to give them a strong reason to accept our proposal and having the strong community backing is what sets us apart from the rest. The next ten days are critical for our charter chances.

    I have attached a script that your folks can use but it always helps to give it your own individual flair. If we could get each coalition member to get three people to make a phone call or email the SRC we will be making headways.

    2. We need our elected officials to reach out to the SRC again and reiterate their support of our school and the importance to the community - particularly Sylvia Sims and Farah Jimenez.

    3. We need some folks to call in to Radio Times tomorrow per the instructions in bullet 3 below and represent for GCCS. Mention our school name and our frustration at having educational options stripped from our community. We want a community driven school back in Germantown. Please call - that is a key initiative.

    Please let me know what you can do to help this effort. Every little bit helps!

    Thanks as always.

    Julie"

    ReplyDelete