I have friends from New Orleans who are sitting in a hotel room 200 miles from home today whose daughter should have begun her sophmore year in high school yesterday. So this will be a little personal. Their house, though spared flooding, took a direct hit from a tree, was open to the storm. My friend described it as “one big stench.” They are not sure what to do next, and they have many concerns. A big concern is their child’s education, a concern many victims of Hurricane Katrina must share.
So it was with shock and awe, and a stench, that I saw the website of the National Council of Education Providers declaring they have “teamed up with state and local agencies tohelp children displaced by the hurricane get settled into safe and caring school situations while families rebuild.” (As opposed to the unsafe and uncaring school situations they are in now?) The group is composed of the usual suspects: Edison, White Hat Management, ImageSchools, et. al. whose record in providing services is debatable at best but whose speed in acting in this disaster, compared to that of many local, state and federal officials is astonishing and even admirable from a business sense.
Of course there’s a political agenda already surfacing. They’ve drafted an “Emergency Public School Charter Act” for changes in many state restrictions on charter schools–changes that will benefit them monitarily. Some will say they are taking advantage, others seeing an opportunity.
What is disturbing, along with all the other disturbing disorganization of the response is the fact that this anti-public school Bush adminstration, which decides when and where they should get involved in education based upon ideology and a dubious agenda may give in to their demands while education remains low on the public’s radar screen.
Instead our government should be helping the school districts with money, and supplies to absorb these children instead of diddling over questions of NCLB’s AYP Accountability Formulas Flexibility, while local school district officials have already begun to fret over the challenges absorbing these students will present.
I wonder, is anyone from the federal government working with local and state governments to get into the Astrodome and other places to provide information to parents ahead of the privateers with their offers of laptops and assistance? How much badly needed federal funds will this administration channel off to the for-profits as they privatize this disaster as they tried to privatize the Iraqi war with disastrous results?
On a more practical note: As someone who oversaw the tons of supplies and donations that teachers, students, union locals, school districts and individuals from around the world generously sent to the UFT in the days following 9/11 for distribution to the students affected by that tragedy please think twice before you send books, teddy bears, toys and pencils. Although it sounds uncaring, most of all money is what’s needed so the schools can buy what they need for the needs of their newest student/guests. So make a donation to the charity of your choice.
And, did anyone see the photo in the Sunday NY Times Style section of Chancellor Klein, Chris “Edison Schools” Whittle and Rudy Giuliani at a book signing in the Hamptons this past weekend?
4 Comments:
1 institutional memory
· Sep 10, 2005 at 11:19 am
For a poor kid from the projects, as Joel Klein likes to characterize himself (despite the fact that his “project” was a middle-class development in Queens), our Chancellor has fashioned quite the success story.
The next thing you know, Hardscrabble Joel will be talking about long, cold evenings of doing homework on a slate in front of the fire, and six-mile walks to school in the snow.
Yes, he’s truly a shining example of how by hard work, anyone can go from rags to riches. Only in America!
2 JennyD
· Sep 10, 2005 at 3:37 pm
IN my state, we are taking in the few students affected by the hurricane. No qustions asked. Your friend should go enroll his or her daughter in school. Period. What help do they need from the government to do this, save for vaccination records?
Since the bullk of school funding comes from local sources, the feds really aren’t involved. I think your beef is with state government. Education is a state responsibility. It says so in the US Constitution. IN fact, in many places, like Utah and Connecticut, federal intervention is actively shunned. So I don’t think this is really a federal situation.
As for Whittle, his book is awful. But because he’s rich, people will read it.
3 riskybiz
· Sep 12, 2005 at 1:32 pm
Whether one calls it taking advantage of an opportunity or exploiting people in dire need, the education management companies have certainly jumped at the chance to cash in on whatever public dollars they might be able to direct their way by enrolling students flooded out of their home districts….They’ve even proposed establishing a “national virtual charter school” and said “once students have access to computers and connectivity – borrowed, donated or shared – companies are standing by to wave state restriction and log these students on.” No word on whether politically-connected companies like Bill Bennett’s K12 will be contributing computers, internet hook-ups, etc to students themselves!
4 shouldhavegonetomeds
· Sep 24, 2005 at 7:47 pm
Thanks for noting the photo of Giulianni. I am an addicted NY Times reader but as the paper has grown over the years you can’t see everything in there. Giulianni was the mortal enemy of teachers at least theose in public government funded education. He sent his own children to elite 20K a year plus private schools.
Yet, many of us particularly white catholic men identified with him and voted for him. Frankly, I see attack after attack on Randi on these blogs and very little mention of the cancerous, adulterous, erstwhile mayor and how greatly he screwed us up. More interestingly there are essentially no “mea culpas” “i voted for Guilianni how could I have been so stupid…… I see how screwed our union is now”
I just hope everyone wakes up and votes for Freddy.