State To Close 34 NYC Public Schools

The NYSED has placed 34 New York City public schools, many of them large high schools, on a hit list to be either closed or converted into charter schools.

This is of course the system Arne Duncan and Barack Obama have used in Chicago to destroy public education and turn it into a publicly-funded, privately-operated playground for hedge fund managers.

This is also the strategy they have taken national with their Race to the Top education competition.

I don't think I understate matters when I say that by the time Barack Obama gets finished with his first term in office, most of the New York City public school system will have been destroyed and turned into privately operated charters.

Now we'll see the kind of pushback the state gets on this move to transform, re-engineer and/or close 34 schools in New York City on top of the moves Bloomberg and Klein have made to close 20 schools (some are on both lists), but we're talking tens of thousands of students who will be affected by this "reform" who will be transferring to schools who will of course not receive the extra resources needed to handle them and their educational needs. And then those schools will be transformed, "re-engineered," and/or closed until the only non-charters left in the city will be Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech.

I do not see how people can look at this upheaval and destruction without wondering if the people bringing it about (i.e., Obama and Duncan, the NYSED) know what they're doing.

But so far the plan is going along swimmingly and the only wrench in it was when the Assembly and the Senate could not come to an agreement to lift the charter cap last week.

Once that cap is lifted, I suspect most of those schools that will be closed will be replaced with charter schools run by hedge fund managers

But of course the students considered most at risk will not be in those charters.

They'll be moved to other public schools where the test scores and grad rates will plummet and next year those schools will be closed.

And the cycle will go on until the shock syndrome is complete.

Of course, students will not be receiving a better education, nor will at risk students be getting the help they need.

But the hedge fund managers and the corporate whores in the White House, City Hall, and Tweed Courthouse will be grinning from ear to ear.

And the teachers union?

Well, it will be kinda small since there won't be many unionized schools left.