During the Newark mayoral election, Bob Braun, former columnist for the Star-Ledger and currently N.J.’s most prominent anti-reform blogger, was candidate Ras Baraka’s biggest booster. But now Braun is outraged that Mayor Baraka is refusing to support a boycott of the city schools.
It’s hard to think of a less civic-minded stance: the leader of N.J.’s largest city urging parents to unlawfully keep their children home from school. To his credit, Baraka isn’t listening and says that he is monitoring the (rocky) implementation of Superintendent Cami Anderson’s One Newark plan, which creates a universal enrollment registration for Newark’s charter and traditional schools. In other words, Baraka is acting like a mayor.
But this week Braun wrote,
Hey, Ras–remember that video that Jeffries [Baraka’s opponent in the mayoral campaign] thought would sink you? The one in which you faced down the gang leaders on a cold winter night? You looked like a leader then, big time. Angry but righteous.
That’s what you need to do and to be now. Righteous and angry.
Face down Christie’s gangbangers before they do even more harm to the children of Newark.
That video, by the way, was first picked up by the Daily Beast and described thus:
In it, Baraka indicates that whites are the “enemies” of blacks and suggests “We got to plan to remove them and then we got to seize power.” He was apparently addressing gang-affiliated teenagers and trying to impart a message of black empowerment, but even in context the language is extremely inflammatory.
Now Braun is the one who’s inflammatory (not to mention sexist: in a subsequent post called “Boycott the Cruel One Newark Plan” he labels Cami Anderson as “frigid,” surely not an adjective applied to men). More importantly, he exposes his true intentions, which have nothing to do with children and effective schools and everything to do with promoting a political agenda infused with paranoid Ravichy fantasies about “corporatization” and greedy hedge-fund managers.
Kids belong in school. Braun would rather that they stay home in order to boost his personal agenda. Talk about outrageous.
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Where's YOUR line, Laura?
"...paranoid Ravichy fantasies..."
You mean like Bill Gates spending $200 million to 'buy' the CCSS????
Kallikak,
It's legitimate to argue that rich backers of education reform are misguided. It's legitimate to argue that the rich wield undue influence over education policy.
But when anti-education reform person and organizations start to accuse all rich people, including Bill Gates, of only supporting education reform (i.e., "investing"0 so they can personally profit you cross into crazy town. Why can't someone support charters for idealistic reasons?
You likewise distort the education reform issue when you focus on only rich people who support charter schools, and forget that many parents and students, elected officials, and policy analysts also support charters.
Many of the parents and students who support charters do so because their options in conventional public schools are inferior and/or shrinking due to the conscious actions of (typically) state education officials or their local minions.
There's a big difference between a free-will choice and one more-accurately deemed a default.
As for NJ elected officials and their understanding of public education, don't go there.
In case you hadn't heard, money monopolizes the conversation in America, so focusing upon rich people and their influence on public education is entirely appropriate. I have no idea as to Bill Gates' true motivation re: CCSS. I just know he owns 'em.
I've got my own ideas regarding education, and they may be better than Gates'. Anybody care to lend me $200 million so i can sit at the grown-ups' table?
I think kallikak is missing the argument on a few points. First, we all agree educational outcomes in Newark and Camden, as well as other poor cities is terrible. The solution hasn't been money - there is more per pupil funding here than virtually anywhere in America. Charters are not an answer in and of themselves, but the ones who are well managed demonstrate that these students can be remarkably successful. So we should try to understand why they are working when so much is failing.
As for money, the dollars of influence that unions wield far dwarfs all other spending by all other groups. So yes, someone is always trying to influence education. Rich donors are trying to make a change with philanthropic investments. There is no corporate conspiracy, there is no personal end game. No one complains like this when these people make donations help medical research, poverty, food banks, etc. but here it is a conspiracy? You can disagree with the programs but please don't smear the motives.
Lastly, in response to your comment on tenure on August 8th - yes it can have that great of an impact. Poor teachers can't been fired but principals and superintendents know how to move them out of better schools and they disproportionately wind up poor economic areas. But this is a two front war, because only teachers are the solution so while ending tenure we need to find a way to reward and elevate the stars and properly develop young talent.
I'm not missing anything.
Educational outcomes are terrible in Newark and Camden because social outcomes are even worse. Those two cities have been abandoned to their fates by the collective actions of the state and federal governments over the last fifty years. Putting money into schools without stabilizing the social fabric of the community is likely a waste.
Successful charters have been (rightfully) accused of cherry-picking their student bodies. The real test of a charter is to absorb the entire student roster of the nearest "failing" public school. Has anyone ever done that?
Union influence is increasingly concentrated in a dwindling number of states (including NJ). It has largely been supplanted by the kind of focused big-money spending that seeks to influence both federal rules and those in right-to-work states. To say this tactic has not paid off handsomely is to ignore reality.
For example, can you seriously argue that PARCC testing yields a substantive benefit to anybody other than Pearson, LLC and vendors of necessary hardware and bandwith (and, of course, Microsoft)?
I agree there is no corporate conspiracy: corporations and the wealthy openly spend money to gain access and advantage. Why would anyone expect them to do otherwise? The fruits of their spending can be seen (for those not in denial)in the growing gaps between corporate profits and workers' wages and in the chasm separating the 1% from the rest of us.
As for "elevating the stars", when will people recognize we need to elevate the daily practice of ALL teachers? Wall Street-type incentive systems will induce knowledge-hoarding (just as they did successful scheming on the Street) to the detriment of the system as a whole.
More importantly, an Eastern Airlines ("We earn our wings every day.") protocol for job security---or lack thereof---is the best way* I know to kill the attraction of teaching as a stable, fairly-paid middle-class career path for young people.
But then the destruction of the middle class---and its greatest enabler, the unions---has been the agenda all along.
The countervailing force to self-serving corporate spending is not union spending but the votes of an informed public that fully understands its own self-interest.
Stay tuned on that one.
*along with sharp reductions in pensions
Again, your facts are incorrect on a number of points. The KIPP schools, for example, do not cherry pick and have never pushed out a student, yet they get the same educational outcomes as well-off suburbs. They have proved that social fabric does not determine outcomes. So don't presume it doesn't exist, go visit one of their TEAM schools in Newark or the new one in Camden.
We do not have the luxury to fix the social fabric first, since no one has yet been able to do it. I actually think the most controllable way to address that fabric is to change the world for these kids. Since this is demonstrated as working, then learn about it and figure out how it can be replicated.
Teacher union influence has not waned in any location and they remain the most powerful force in local politics in America. The challenge is that the work rules they stand by make it virtually impossible to differentiate between quality and failing teachers. Most of my family teaches in public schools and they would appreciate getting rid of the laggards, being recognized and rewarded for superior work, and elevating the professionalism of their world.
Lastly, show me where any philanthropist makes money supporting ed reform. Just one example. Then look at the immense dollars invested to try to give at risk kids a better life. That's usually something we admire.
This is a complex issue but I dislike when people make statements like fixing the fabric first, or no charters do it properly, or invoke corporate conspiracies where they do not exist. The present situation is horribly broken and we should follow models that work.
My facts are spot on. KIPP schools use entrance lotteries among those who apply. They do not wholesale convert existing public school student populations to their own.
Selection among those motivated to apply IS cherry-picking. Social fabric DOES determine outcomes. Research has consistently shown that reinforcement of learning at home is a crucial determinant of academic achievement (more important than teacher quality).
So if we want good outcomes for everybody, radical changes are necessary on the home front. Too bad folks like you view that as a 'luxury' we can't afford.
If your family actually does teach in NJ public schools, they might want to review the state Constitution which mandates a 'thorough and efficient system of free public schools' for all students, including those they deem 'laggards'.
As for "philanthropists" making money from ed "reform", look no further than Paul Singer who has parlayed fund-raising for Chris Christie and his Republican cronies into a very lucrative contract to manage NJ's public pension fund assets.
Oh, yes, he's a big booster of charter schools, too, along with his fellow hedgie (and pension manager) Dan Loeb.
Sorry, but reality bites.
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Kallikak,
Charter schools promise students a longer school day, a longer school year, a stricter discipline policy, and a tougher curriculum. How could anyone expect them possibly to have the same kind of students as other schools when the students opting into them are ones who are volunteering to do a lot more work?
The point of charter schools isn't to educate every single child in a city; the point is to educate the more motivated ones who are willing to accept an extra challenge to beat the odds and succeed in college.
And yet, when charters do things to simplify their admissions processes and expand to serve more students, you and affiliated groups still oppose that too.
You and other anti-charter people should just admit that you believe that since we can't help all kids, we should help none of them.
You use poverty as a way of distracting from the problems that exist in schools themselves. You think that since poverty is a bigger factor in school failure than schools themselves that we should ignore the problems of the schools. You think that since low-incomes are more harmful to kids than tenure is, that tenure is not a problem. You don't understand that the government can't legislate an end to poverty.
Shorter Kallikak,
"A cannot be bad because B is worse."
If you want a seat at the table but don't have $200 million to give away there is still a way for your to have influence. It's called politics. Get elected.
I have been elected. Three times.
Who voted for Broad, Gates, Singer and Loeb??? Shouldn't they have to run too, or is public policy just another commodity to be auctioned to the highest bidder?
P.S. I am not "affiliated" with any anti-charter group. I am a believer, however, in Albert Shanker's vision for charter schools enunciated some years ago.
P.P.S. You need to get straight with ZZ: your comments above are the textbook definition of "skimming".
Do you care about the students left behind in the now-eviscerated conventional public schools? Do you think their performance may be impacted by the disappearance of their more-motivated former classmates?