No Way, ESEA!
Rubber-Stamping Charter Districts
By Cynthia Weatherly, 3D Research Group
Last week it was my distinct displeasure to open
our local paper, The Athens Banner-Herald
of February 10, 2015, and read “Draft of Clarke charter plan calls for schoolhealth clinics, streamlined teacher evaluation, local governance teams—andbetter performance.” Clarke County’s recently elected “Outstanding School
Superintendent of the Year for Georgia,” Philip Lanoue, announced that he is
proposing that Clarke County (Athens) become a charter district.
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| Clarke County Schools Superintendent Phil Lanoue |
Under a recent state law
going into effect this year, every school board in the state must declare by
June 30 whether they plan to become a charter district, remain status quo, or seek “Investing in
Educational Excellence” status (which parallels the “Opportunity School
District” amendment that our governor wants passed to be able to create a New
Orleans/Tennessee-style, state/governor’s office-run school district of
takeovers that don’t meet designated criteria in three years). If “approved” by the Clarke County School
Board, it will submit its charter for State School Board rubber stamp.
Some
of the characteristics of a charter system are as follows:
· “Local School Governance Teams” would have real but
somewhat limited authority at each school;
· The county would devise its own teacher evaluation
system;
· School-based health clinics would be created;
· There would be increased community and neighborhood
involvement in schools through parents, businesses, non-profit and other
neighborhood agencies, and
· The Clarke County School District will be renamed “The
Athens-Clarke County COMMUNITY SCHOOL District” with all that that name
implies. [See Ruth Feld’s “Community Education Exposè”]
Because charter school
districts must submit plans for how they will meet the terms of a performance
contract with the State Department of Education in order to get waivers to do
the things outlined above, Clarke County has proposed to
· Install innovative programs that will produce
above-average performance on “college and career readiness” measures;
· Change the way course credits can be allowed—a student
can be allowed to gain academic credit for a part-time job with an automobile
mechanic shop or other trade, and
· Do away with the “Student Learning Objectives” (SLO),
a series of pre- and post-tests to measure student progress.
Stating
that “Clarke County’s elected school board would retain final authority in
decisions” (which waste management company to hire?), Lanoue outlined how the
school governance teams would be chosen, and that they would begin “training”
this summer.
 |
| Judia Jackson Harris Elementary School |
The
governance team members would be selected by teachers, and some by parents—3
each. The Athens-Clarke County police chief will appoint one police officer to each team or school.
All
of those team members from each school
would pick two more members from the
neighborhood or local organizations. There would be an option to choose one or
two more at-large members, and in the middle and high schools the principals
would choose one student to serve on each team.
Lanoue said, “This is the very beginning of
the process,” and details could change when public hearings (two are planned)
are held..
This
is all happening as Congressional committees are making changes to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of
1965 reauthorization—Every Child
Ready for College or Career Act of 2015 in the Senate and the Student Success Act in the House. Many
of those changes are placing into Federal law opportunities for states and
locales to initiate and solidify these very proposals—with Federal backing.
Georgia’s
Republican governor, as mentioned earlier in this article, has proposed a state
constitutional amendment to form an “Opportunity School District” that would
allow the governor to appoint a superintendent to take over the direction of
schools that are identified as “failing” for three years in a row. This would put the control of those
schools—20 per year can be stipulated as needful, up to 100 overall—in the
hands of the governor’s office and appointees. They would report progress to
the state board, but the board would not have governance over them. They could
be turned into charters, closed, or given over to some other form of selective
management. These types of proposals are being dealt with all over the
country—Louisiana, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, just to name a few states—and
are presented in various forms and with different names. But the aims are the
same—remove the control of schools from locally elected officials.
While
locally elected officials are not always the most informed, having been
forcefully trained to abide by the guidelines of the National School Board
Association, they still are the closest representatives of local taxpayers and
parents. There are efforts afoot to do away with local boards and districts under
the auspices of ridding them of Common Core Standards. This is a ruse to change
the governance structure and tax structure in order to have the funding follow
the child as a voucher only slightly disguised as an Educational Savings
Account (ESA). This is especially
promoted by the Heritage Foundation, Heartland Institute, American Principles
Project and other neocon organizations.
Even Home School Legal Defense seems to
have lost sight of why families want to home school—to do something different
from what is happening in public school.
Michael Farris’s organization has been promoting legislation that would
have homeschoolers using standardized tests—the SAT, ACT and PSAT—based on
Common Core material, as indicators of annual academic progress. He has also
engaged purportedly conservative Senator Grassley of Iowa (R) and Senator David
Vitter of Lousiana (R) in putting forth S.
100, Home School Opportunities Make
Education Sound Act of 2015, which would amend the Internal Revenue Code to
allow homeschoolers to become involved in the ESA game in order to deduct their
expenses for homeschooling. As anyone who has itemized one’s taxes knows, in
order to claim a deduction for an item one has to have that item meet a
standard set by the IRS. Since when have homeschoolers been anxious to have the
IRS or any other Federal entity setting and measuring deductibility standards
for what they are doing as homeschoolers? Since when has Michael Farris not
understood that HSLDA is heading down the wrong path to promote such a thing?
 |
| http://www.hslda.org/Legislation/National/2015/S100/default.asp |
We’ve
allowed these plans to take precedence and are embracing Educational Savings
Accounts (ESAs)/vouchers to pay for the dissolution of a system that has
educated some of the finest and most productive minds in our country when we
focused on academics and ethical behavior, the arts and physical education, and
introductions to the applied arts. We educated citizens who had an appreciation
for the freedoms we enjoyed in our society, and learned to get along with
others in the process. We enjoyed a culture that was shared.
None
of those things are accomplished by the propositions on the table at present. A
system that calls its participants “human capital” and “assesses” its students
to determine their worth to society cannot teach young people to respect
themselves and others—something essential to a real, productive civilization.
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