Obama wants to turn around 5,000 failing schools

[Thrill]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama intends to use $5 billion to prod local officials to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals.

The goal is to turn around 5,000 failing schools in the next five years, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Monday, by beefing up funding for the federal school turnaround program created by the No Child Left Behind law.

Obama doesn't have authority to close and reopen schools himself. That power rests with local school districts and states. But he has an incentive in the economic stimulus law, which requires states to help failing schools improve.

Duncan said that might mean firing an entire staff and bringing in a new one, replacing a principal or turning a school over to a charter school operator. The point, he said, is to take bold action in persistently low-achieving schools.

"Our students have one chance - one chance - to get a quality education," Duncan said in a speech Monday to the Brookings Institution think tank.

"If we turn around just the bottom 1 percent, the bottom thousand schools per year for the next five years, we could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children," Duncan said.

In particular, the administration wants to fix middle schools and high schools, focusing on "dropout factories" where two in five kids don't make it to graduation.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBAMA_FAILING_SCHOOLS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2009-05-11-11-11-00

[w4rma]

1. "turning a school over to a charter school operator"? That sounds like an incentive to fail. (nt)

[Dinger]

2. No Shit

Go away arne, just go away.

[Riley18]

3. This is not the change I voted for in November.

[proud2BlibKansan]

4. No School Left Unreconstituted

:eyes:

[MichiganVote]

5. The only way to really change a school is to stop ignoring the teachers

[LWolf]

6. Because "turning around" a "failing" school

has nothing to do with changing the dysfunctional system; it's about firing all the teachers and admins and taking over from the top-down. It's about authoritarianism and privatization.

<final comments edited to comply with site rules>

[Dinger]

7. When arne Was "CEO" Of Chicago Schools They Were The Most Militarized In the Country

And when I see that some want to tear down schools and then "build them up", that sounds an awful lot like a militaristic "solution" to me. Yes Lwolf, it IS indeed about authoritarianism and privatization. We have a right to an unrestricted public education, don't we? Privatization, charters, and virtual schools get public money, but not the accountability that public schools do. They TAKE from public schools. That being said, I do believe that there are excellent private, voucher, and virtual schools. Most likely, these schools follow the same guidelines and have the same accountability as excellent public schools do.
This is from 2003 (Wi.), but it addresses some of what I've posted about here.

http://homeschooling-wpa.org/issues/cyber_charter/Charter-Schools-Factsheet.pdf

" Virtual charter schools undermine the funding of conventional public schools, take the public
out of public education, increase the privatization of education at the expense of public schools,
and turn state tax dollars earmarked for public education into profits for out-of-state corpora-
tions. In addition, although virtual charter schools are being aggressively marketed as the solu-
tion to school districts’ current financial woes, they actually create long-term financial liabilities
for districts that grant charters.
Please read the following, copy this fact sheet, and share it with others. Many public school
parents, teachers, administrators, and supporters are as yet unaware of this issue. . . "


Not sure what this has to do with homeschooling, but I found it interesting.



Here's another one from 2006, not from a homeschooling website.

http://www.saveourschoolsdc.org/pdf/ChartersSchools_vs_PublicSchools.pdf

"Charter Schools vs. Public Schools
Prepared by Save Our Schools, [e-mail], March 2006
What are charter schools, and how are they different from DC public
schools?
 Charter schools don’t charge tuition and are funded by tax dollars.
Unlike public schools, however, charters are privately owned and
operated and governed by self-appointed boards of trustees.
 Charter schools are not neighborhood schools. To attend a charter
school, the student must fill out an application and compete for a seat
through a citywide lottery process.
 Charters come in all shapes and sizes and range in quality from
excellent to horrendous. But no matter how well intentioned or
successful, charter schools are part of a national conservative agenda
to take public education out of citizens’ hands and put it in the hands of
powerful individuals and corporations. . . . "

[LWolf]

8. I'd like to emphasize this part of your post:

Charters come in all shapes and sizes and range in quality from
excellent to horrendous. But no matter how well intentioned or
successful, charter schools are part of a national conservative agenda
to take public education out of citizens’ hands and put it in the hands of
powerful individuals and corporations. . . . "

We've been saying it for decades now. Who's been listening?

Issue after issue, it is abundantly clear that those in power "hear" what they want to, and ignore what they don't.