A pro-charter parent group is calling on state leaders to reject the "defenders of the bureaucracy" by taking "bold" action to fix New York's broken education system.
Families for Excellent Schools, which was created in 2011 by several Wall Street bankers and other business leaders,, sent a letter Tuesday to Gov. Cuomo, Senate GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Democratic Speaker Sheldon Silver that seeks to flip the argument made by anti-charter forces that the real problem with the system is the funding inequity between poor and rich schools.
The non-profit group's letter, which comes a day after several hundred public school parents, teacher union leaders and Democrat lawmakers rallied at the Capitol against charter schools and for more school funding, speaks of "unprecedented education suffering across New York State."
"What's worse, this is an education crisis that hurt sour highest-need students the most," the letter says. "Students from our inner cities, our students of color, our families near the poverty line."
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"As Governor Cuomo said so eloquently in his inauguration address, public education in New York today has truly become the “great discriminator.” Our education system steals possibility from our young people every day. This cannot continue," the letter states. "The depth of the failing schools crisis requires bold, structural change at the state level. For decades, New York State has failed to deliver the substantive changes our students deserve."
Attacking anti-charter forces, the letter charges that "defenders of the bureaucracy will deny that our schools are failing or they will merely propose incremental changes that tinker at the edges of the problem: smaller class sizes, minutes added to the school day, and mandatory professional development. But incremental reform will not do. To fix a structurally broken system that for decades has failed to deliver for children will take more than a few tweaks."
What do these selfless advocates for the poor and powerless stuck in "failing" public schools want?
More school closures.
More charter schools.
Vouchers for private schools.
Fewer public schools.
Money taken from the public schools and given to charter schools.
In short, they want what Governor Cuomo wants - or perhaps I should say, Cuomo wants what they want since they own him after all they cash they've showered on him.
Want to bet the governor's State of the State address on January 21 shares some of the same rhetoric that this letter has in it?
Want to bet the governor's budget proposal gives the charter deformers exactly what they want?
Want to make a bet the teachers union leaders half-ass what is quickly becoming a fight to kill off public schools in New York State?
Think I'm being extreme in my rhetoric here?
I'm not.
The rhetoric out of Cuomo and his charter school donors/Wall Street owners is extreme without any gloss from me.
Cuomo wants to "break" the public school "monopoly."
Cuomo's charter school donors/Wall Street owners says the state is in "a public education crisis" that requires "bold, structural change at the state level" to solve:
"New York State is poised to lead the nation in boldly tackling this crisis," Families for Excellent Schools says in its letter. "Governor Cuomo and other leaders in education have started an important dialogue. You have asked the right questions and identified many of the right solutions. You now have the power to act. If our state is to take bold action that radically reduces the number of failing seats and expands access to excellent ones — be they district, charter, or parochial — we will all need your collective leadership.
"With your commitment to reform, New York can be the first state in the nation to address and solve its pervasive failing schools crisis. The forces of opposition will be great, but children and families in New York and across the nation have suffered for far too long. Our children cannot wait, our state cannot wait, and our nation cannot wait."
They want the public education system destroyed - Cuomo, Tisch, and the Wall Streeters and charter supporters who own them.
This is the End Game, folks.
If NYSUT does not pull out all stops to hold a huge counter demonstration on Feb. 3rd in opposition to the Charter School lobbying effort then stop paying your dues...it will be over for public education! Cuomo should be invited to put him on the spot...when it comes right down to it he needs to choose where he stands--we know who is putting up the money...so lets expose Cuomo, Skelos, Flanagan and ask them are they going to stand with public educators or are they going to subvert a system that has made this the greatest nation in the world!
ReplyDeleteThese "Families", led by Andrew Cuomo, sound like they stand with Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and the like.
ReplyDeleteInteresting bedfellows.
ASTROTURF MANIPULATION: As an inner city public school teacher of impoverished children of color, I see the idea that a kid is "highest need" just because they are poor and minority is exploitation and borderline racism. Truly "highest need" kids have many more burning issues, the most obvious being home-based issues, or a demonstrated track record of educational crisis.
ReplyDeleteThe truly highest needs kids have easily definable demographic markers - for example, their parents are not involved in their education, and are not savvy enough to apply to charter schools. Other considerations include uncertain food or housing, teen parents, incarceration or gang activity in the family, abuse, neglect, forced labor, long-term absence, unevaluated disability, drugs in the home, overaged two years or more, etc.
Charter school salesmen like FES are desperate to shoehorn the definition of "at risk" or "high needs" to mean black or hispanic kids that qualify for free lunch. That's because the NY charter Law requires charters to focus on "at risk" students. But more than 50% of public school kids are in poverty now, so this is beyond common, it's the new normal. So many Americans grew up poor and made it into the middle class in decades past, so this is an unscientific, poorly supported definition of "high needs".
This leaves only the color of their skin.
The press is letting folks like Eva Moskowitz, Mike Petrilli, Jeremiah Kettridge and Jenny Sedlis get all kinds of air time saying that charters serve "at risk" kids, without an honest discussion of how charters attract the most responsible, supportive families and dilute the district schools.
The narrative they try to paint is that the reason public schools are unruly is because the teachers are bad (as they quietly try to hire us away). But it's actually because they cherrypick the most motivated families in poor inner city neighborhoods, leaving high concentrations of multi-issue, high needs, at-risk kids that are inevitably the most disruptive, resource-draining and oppositional in the community.
If you have even one parent effectively supporting you through your school career, you are far better off than others, and you can even become President one day. So charters have the LEAST amount of high needs, at-risk kids in the neighborhood and this, they even admit, is by design.
So we need lawmakers, the major media, the Board of Regents, parents and taxpayers all to understand that income and color alone do not make kids "at risk" or "high needs", this is the charter's loophole to be in compliance with the law. The most at-risk, high needs (or high-EST needs) kids are extremely easy to identify, if we do not clench our eyes shut trying to abandon them like charters do.
Its nearly been of great interest to regard about each and every part of and as we have seen in the past those of the ideas are almost proving to be of some interest.
ReplyDelete