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Indybay Feature
An Oakland Teacher Speaks on Privatization and No Child Left Behind
Manny Lopez speaks out on privatization and the No Child Left Behind Act. Manny teaches at E. Morris Cox Elementary and is a member of the Oakland Education Association’s Executive Board.
The privatization spider that spun the “No Child Left Behind” web knew that the public education fly was in the house and that it would only be a matter of time before it would trap its lunch. In a joint statement released late last October more than twenty national education, civil rights, disability, children’s, and citizens’ groups acknowledged the radical impact the law is having on our nation’s schools and urged Congress to make substantial changes to it. Among them: American Association of School Administrators, Children’s Defense Fund, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), and the National Education Association.
NCLB = Privatization? You be the judge. According to the Education Industry Association (EIA is an association of education entrepreneurs) education is a trillion-dollar industry representing 10% of the GNP, second only in size to the health care industry. EIA recognizes that the law’s punitive accountability measures represent a tremendous market opportunity for the private enterprises it represents, enterprises that are rapidly multiplying to take advantage of the public dollars that seemingly rain from the sky. These include private after-school tutoring providers, school improvement and management services, charter schools, educational content providers and suppliers, etc. The notion that one’s education should be tied up with the return on another’s investment is anathema to the hard won right of free universal public education, one that any concerned citizen must resist.
Regrettably, our neediest schools are taking the biggest hit. Meanwhile, district officials stand at the door and passively allow the business backed “education reformers” to march through to, according to Steve Jubb of Gates funded BAYCES, “interrupt the culture of acquiescence to failure”. The NCLB mandated and district imposed small schools reform choice violate the spirit of the Harlem reforms described in The Power of Their Ideas, a seminal work by reform movement leader Deborah Meier. These so-called reformers are well aware that small school reform should be a grassroots effort. They fail to admit that they are caught in a space between this reform (which seized their imagination in the first place) and the artificial, accelerated and coercive one we are currently witnessing.
Sadly, the sea change coming to our city schools will not only greatly impact the school community’s morale but it will destroy many existing teacher/student relationships, disrupt school’s long established traditions, and chip away at the stability that any parent would want in their child’s school. It will drive away our very best teachers and severely impact our teacher recruitment efforts as well. We must gain an understanding of the “No Child Left Behind” law that’s allowed all of this to occur, renew our commitment to our public schools, and do everything possible to save them.
Manny Lopez teaches at E. Morris Cox Elementary and is a member of the Oakland Education Association’s Executive Board.
NCLB = Privatization? You be the judge. According to the Education Industry Association (EIA is an association of education entrepreneurs) education is a trillion-dollar industry representing 10% of the GNP, second only in size to the health care industry. EIA recognizes that the law’s punitive accountability measures represent a tremendous market opportunity for the private enterprises it represents, enterprises that are rapidly multiplying to take advantage of the public dollars that seemingly rain from the sky. These include private after-school tutoring providers, school improvement and management services, charter schools, educational content providers and suppliers, etc. The notion that one’s education should be tied up with the return on another’s investment is anathema to the hard won right of free universal public education, one that any concerned citizen must resist.
Regrettably, our neediest schools are taking the biggest hit. Meanwhile, district officials stand at the door and passively allow the business backed “education reformers” to march through to, according to Steve Jubb of Gates funded BAYCES, “interrupt the culture of acquiescence to failure”. The NCLB mandated and district imposed small schools reform choice violate the spirit of the Harlem reforms described in The Power of Their Ideas, a seminal work by reform movement leader Deborah Meier. These so-called reformers are well aware that small school reform should be a grassroots effort. They fail to admit that they are caught in a space between this reform (which seized their imagination in the first place) and the artificial, accelerated and coercive one we are currently witnessing.
Sadly, the sea change coming to our city schools will not only greatly impact the school community’s morale but it will destroy many existing teacher/student relationships, disrupt school’s long established traditions, and chip away at the stability that any parent would want in their child’s school. It will drive away our very best teachers and severely impact our teacher recruitment efforts as well. We must gain an understanding of the “No Child Left Behind” law that’s allowed all of this to occur, renew our commitment to our public schools, and do everything possible to save them.
Manny Lopez teaches at E. Morris Cox Elementary and is a member of the Oakland Education Association’s Executive Board.
For more information:
http://www.oaklandea.org
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I agree that NCLB is a boon to the profiteering corporations who create the standardized testing that is a core part of the NCLB program (unmentioned in your critique).
But charter schools? Please make the distinction that not all charter schools are for-profit, in fact most represent the kind of bottom up, grassroots effort you support. As someone who's followed charter schools over the last 10 years and written about them, and as a strong supporter of public schools who sends his children to a charter school, I think the OEA is a little off-base in attacking charter schools as part of the critique of NCLB as a route to privatization. Just look at the demographics of charter schools and check out the commitment that most of the teachers and staff have to education and you'll see that charter schools are not part of some plot by GW Bushit.
The knock on charter schools is that they attract families who may be more involved in their school and their kids' education than in other public schools and those schools are 'left behind' with less resources, and that since charter schools are funded on a per-pupil basis they drain funds from other schools. Obviously, the funding formula is the problem as well as the inequalities in funding and the loss of funding after Prop. 13. The campaign to tax the rich and corporations to benefit public schools is a step in the rght direction and can benefit all public school students, including charter schools.
The other issue unmentioned by the OEA rep here is that charter schools don't have to have a union contract. But why can't the OEA or some other union(s) organize them? I don't think they are precluded from joining a teachers union if the union has something to offer them. I know that there is some interest in unions at at least one charter school in Oakland. What a great opportunity to assist fellow teachers and get beyond the false dichotomy of charter vs. other public schools.
And as a parent, I certainly would prefer to send my child to a small school of 100 - 200 students where there is an opportunity for creativity, individual attention, and quality staffing rather than a school of 800 kids. I'm sure there's alot of literature out there supporting small schools.
Just because Jerry Brown has wasted resources on his ridiculous military charter school and the city may throw away money restoring the Fox Theater for Brown's Arts high school, doesn't mean all charter schools are bad. Supporters of charter schools can also be supporters of public education in general, improving education, a well paid and unionized staff, and taking the profit motive out of education.
But charter schools? Please make the distinction that not all charter schools are for-profit, in fact most represent the kind of bottom up, grassroots effort you support. As someone who's followed charter schools over the last 10 years and written about them, and as a strong supporter of public schools who sends his children to a charter school, I think the OEA is a little off-base in attacking charter schools as part of the critique of NCLB as a route to privatization. Just look at the demographics of charter schools and check out the commitment that most of the teachers and staff have to education and you'll see that charter schools are not part of some plot by GW Bushit.
The knock on charter schools is that they attract families who may be more involved in their school and their kids' education than in other public schools and those schools are 'left behind' with less resources, and that since charter schools are funded on a per-pupil basis they drain funds from other schools. Obviously, the funding formula is the problem as well as the inequalities in funding and the loss of funding after Prop. 13. The campaign to tax the rich and corporations to benefit public schools is a step in the rght direction and can benefit all public school students, including charter schools.
The other issue unmentioned by the OEA rep here is that charter schools don't have to have a union contract. But why can't the OEA or some other union(s) organize them? I don't think they are precluded from joining a teachers union if the union has something to offer them. I know that there is some interest in unions at at least one charter school in Oakland. What a great opportunity to assist fellow teachers and get beyond the false dichotomy of charter vs. other public schools.
And as a parent, I certainly would prefer to send my child to a small school of 100 - 200 students where there is an opportunity for creativity, individual attention, and quality staffing rather than a school of 800 kids. I'm sure there's alot of literature out there supporting small schools.
Just because Jerry Brown has wasted resources on his ridiculous military charter school and the city may throw away money restoring the Fox Theater for Brown's Arts high school, doesn't mean all charter schools are bad. Supporters of charter schools can also be supporters of public education in general, improving education, a well paid and unionized staff, and taking the profit motive out of education.
The Oakland Education Association (OEA) Representative Council, nearly unanimously, passed the following motion yesterday. Please have your organization endorse the following demands and mobilize its members out to the rally that we are holding at 4PM on Wednesday, December 15th, prior to School Board meeting where State Administrator Randy Ward will attempt to push through the closure of 5 more Oakland school and the creation of charters at countless others. The rally and School Board meeting will occur at Oakland Technical High School, 4351 Broadway (accessible from BART and Bus Route 51).
The OEA supports and will encourage our allies to endorse the following
demands:
1. No School Closures
2. No Transformation to Charter Schools
3. Support Small Classes, Retention of Quality Teachers, and Adequate
Resources and Facilities for Our Students.
4. Full Union Rights for All Union Members and Any New Schools. (Ward's
proposal does not give full rights to new teachers and staff)
5. Fair Contract for All Oakland School Employees
To endorse e-mail Jonah Zern at jzern1 [at] yahoo.com; please include you or your organization's contact information and number of people you expect to turn out for December 15th's mobilization.
We will likely be holding a meeting at the OEA to prepare for the 15th.
Please keep an eye out for an announcement about this meeting. Those who endorse will be notified.
More information at
http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=2705&category_id=30
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