Cases Against Charters
Waukegan residents were not allowed to attend LCU’s charter school planning sessions unless they happened to be a member of LCU. The public “informational” meetings they did allow the commoners to attend were nothing more than LCU pep rallies, with no real questions being answered and no real information. I have nothing against charter schools. I had a problem with THIS charter school proposal and the tactics used by the group pushing for it.
As an Education professor who has written and edited eight books on public school privatization I found Emily Krone’s article to be a stunning case of mildly disguised right-wing pro-privatization propaganda. She paints a misleadingly favorable picture of the charter school movement by cherrypicking from studies. In fact, both nationally and in Chicago there is no evidence that charter schools have improved student performance traditionally defined.
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Lastly, we do not learn from Krone’s article who created and wrote Chicago’s charter-happy Renaissance 2010 plan for Mayor Daley. It was commissioned by the Commercial Club of Chicago to corporate consultant A.T. Kearney that wrote on its website that it was taking a “private sector approach” to school reform. The funding arm of Ren2010, the Renaissance Schools Fund, operates out of the Commercial Club. The point is that the charter movement despite starting out as a progressive and grassroots movement for alternative school models and innovation has been thoroughly hijacked by business. And while there is presently no good evidence for charters and plenty of problems, a lot of investors with a lot of capital stand to make a lot of money by undermining public schooling, busting teachers unions, and destroying democratically elected local school councils.
DePaul University
For every instance of tasering the question should be asked: would shooting the subject be justified? If the answer is no, we must then consider: can we trust the police to use field electrocution responsibly? Just last week, correctional officers were reprimanded for tasering children at a take your kids to work day. I think we can safely answer no to both questions.
