"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Sunday, March 29, 2015

The ASD and IZone Plan to Bankrupt Public Education and Destroy the Teaching Profession

 The Commercial Appeal has a story today about the planned shuffling of schoolchildren to serve the needs of the corporate reform welfare artists who are lined up at the public school feeding trough in Memphis.
. . . . In three years, the ASD has taken 7,100 students and the $11,000 SCS would get each year for each student. Next year, ASD enrollment is projected to hit 9,200.

To fight back, the SCS board is expected to close South Side Middle and move its 300 students to Riverview K-8, more than three miles away. Riverview is already safe from ASD takeover because it is an iZone school. . . .
My comment left at the CA website:

My calculator tells me that 9,200 ASD students x $11,000 per student = $101,200,000 every year going from public schools to the ASD corporate reform school operators, which have no public oversight or input. This massive giveaway will result in more austerity measures for the surviving schools of SCS, tighter thumb screws on teachers, and more teacher pay based on test scores, all of which will NEVER attract the kinds of experienced, caring, and professional teachers that the neediest children require. All of the professional teachers are fired when the ASD or its homegrown version, the I-Zone, take over schools like South Side and Airways. And what professional teacher wants to teach where know-nothing school "leaders" have the authority to hire and fire for any reason.

Therefore, the rationale that the clueless Hopson uses for ending co-location is just blather. The real rationale is real estate and real dollars. He and the corporate school board (Bibb actually works for Green Dot Charter Schools) will never attract any teachers other than the desperately unemployed ones and those temporary beginners from Teach for America and its spin-offs. What teacher in his right mind would step into this cauldron of corporate corruption?! 

The Gates Plan for Memphis has shown itself for the anti-public and incompetent business efficiency scheme that it is. Fortunately, the parents and teachers of Memphis are not going to allow their children and students to be used as pawns in a billion dollar hostile takeover, whether it is labeled ASD or IZone. The SCS Board meeting at 5:30 on Tuesday. Be there.

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