The Real Strategy Behind The School Closures And Turnarounds

From a comment at Gotham Schools on the announcement that 21 schools in NYC have been added to the "turnaround" list:

As other posters, especially teachers, have said over the past few months, many of these students arrive at their middle or high schools with poor reading and writing skills. The DOE does little to help them in the early grades, and next to nothing in later grades. So how on earth are they supposed to be able to handle the work at those grade levels? And what good will it do to just shuffle them around to other schools, except get those schools shut down? Of course, every time the DOE shuts down a school, it shakes up the status of the unionized teachers in those schools, so maybe that’s the real objective, and the struggling kids are the means to bring that about. Except now we have the DOE shutting down its own new schools already, rather than helping the kids, so go figure on that one.

Go figure indeed.

It really is all about just blowing things up, isn't it?

And if Rahm Emanuel gets elected mayor in Chicago, he plans to blow up most of the Chicago Public School System.

Until we shake things up ourselves, I think these policies are going to continue indefinitely.

Here is one way to shake things up.

That'll get their attention, you know?