Big Win Over KIPP in California Privatization Fight

Big, big victory in Los Angeles over proposed KIPP mega-charter:

By Jared Hamil |

April 8, 2019

 

Centro CSO press conference announcing defeat of KIPP charter school, victory for public education (Fight Back! News/staff) 

 

Los Angeles, CA - Centro CSO (Community Service Organization) along with teachers, parents and students from several East Area schools announced a historic victory, April 4. After months of struggle, corporate KIPP Promesa Charter school will not be building a new mega-charter school in Boyle Heights, at the location of the former Lincoln Hospital near 4th and Soto Street.

Rosario Bonilla, a mother who lives next to proposed site said, “I’m excited we obtained the victory against KIPP that I know would have affected the lives of my children and my community. Also, I feel proud to say that billionaires can't teach our kids!”

KIPP, which is the United States’ largest charter school corporation, operates in multiple states. In Los Angeles, like many other cities, charter schools are promoted in poor working-class neighborhoods that are primarily Chicano and African American. With the backing of real estate billionaires like Eli Broad, they build new private charter schools that pull students from already existing public schools. As student enrollment from public schools declines, funding also declines, causing layoffs for teachers and support staff. Those jobs are almost always unionized, with good benefits. Charter schools are also a part of the wave of gentrification responsible for rent hikes, evictions and displacements. With a population of over 100,000 who reside in Boyle Heights, there are currently over a dozen charter schools. KIPP Charter Schools already have one school in Boyle Heights and three in East LA.

When word spread that KIPP was trying open up another school the community sprang into action. On January 4, Centro CSO supported a lawsuit filed by Boyle Heights Neighborhood Association and longtime activist and resident Carlos Montes. The lawsuit against KIPP Promesa and LA City was based on the environmental damage to the already existing bad conditions and failure to conduct an Environmental Impact Report.

Carlos Montes, of Centro CSO said, “The proposed mega-project would have an adverse impact by adding more pollution, traffic and noise to the already harmful conditions.”
Centro CSO, along with teachers from nearby schools like Breed St. Elementary and the groups like East LA Padres Contra Privatizacion, went to LA city hall and through the planning commission’s long process demanding they not build the new charter school. But the LA city council voted to approve the project, with the urging of Councilmember Jose Huizar.

KIPP also got letters of support from LAUSD Board member Monica Garcia, LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis and Maria Brenes of Inner City Struggle, which the community strongly criticized. Centro CSO led protests several times at the proposed site, demanding an end to privatization of public education.

In late January, Los Angeles teachers, overworked with huge classroom sizes, lack of support services, plagued with charter school co-locations and budget cuts went on a historic week-long strike. Over 30 thousand teachers fought against the attacks on public education, as more and more public funding went to private charter schools. The attacks were led by billionaires like Eli Broad, the Waltons of Wal-Mart and the Gates Foundation with their sellout lackeys on the LA school board like Monica Garcia and former board member and money-launderer Ref Rodriguez. During the strike, the United Teachers of Los Angeles led a protest on the headquarters of the California Charter Schools Association demanding a moratorium on charter schools within the district.

After the strike, teachers and parents in Boyle Heights continued the fight against privatization. They continued with protests, and on February 28 they went to KIPP Promesa offices demanding, “No new mega-KIPP!”

On the afternoon of April 4, at Mariachi Plaza, mothers, students and teachers of Boyle Heights and East LA announced the huge victory. Lupe Torres, an ELA resident, teacher and UTLA Chapter Chair at Marvin Avenue Elementary school, fired up the crowd, chanting “No mega KIPP!” CSO announced that the LA City Planning Department issued a termination letter on the proposed project.

Eloisa Galindo of Eastside Padres Contra Privatizacion said, “The people united will never be defeated! The power and money will never defeat people united!”

Carlos Cerdan, a teacher from nearby Breed Street Elementary said, “This win was a huge victory for the community. Centro CSO’s commitment to Boyle Heights is clear yet again, defeating a corporate charter behemoth. The fight doesn’t end here. We need to continue to inform and mobilize the community because privatizers are not going away easily. Charter schools serve to divide communities at an early age in order to destroy unity through false pretenses of choices. Schools not profits!”

This historic victory shows that the wave of charter schools can be stopped if communities stand up and fight back. Teachers, parents and community members will continue to struggle against co-locations and the invasion of private charter schools on the Eastside. Community leader Carlos Montes states, “This victory against KIPP will inspire others to fight back against privatization.”

Time to end the racist triumvirate of Tuck, Huppenthal, and Horne

It’s a tale of white fragility and fear, really.—Imani Gandy

These two racist State Superintendents finally got what they deserved for shuttering ethnic studies in Arizona. However, right here in California, we have a candidate for State Superintendent that enacted the same policies in Los Angeles—shuttering ethnic studies, closing dual language programs, and killing heritage language programs. That bigot's name is Marshall Tuck. Let's show Tuck that California is not Arizona, and that we shouldn't have to wait for years for a court to rule in on his racist policies. Let's stop Tuck from repeating a Horne or a Huppenthal, by making sure he never holds a position of power in which he can harm school children again.

Eli Broad's California Strategy, Part 2: Shrinking Organized Labor and Increasing Control of Parents

Broad's plan to claim half of Los Angeles schools over the next 8 years for corporate welfare charter companies is specific in its grandiosity.  See Part 1 here.

The first chart below shows the Broadie vision for how paternalistic "no excuses" charters will replace the most vulnerable public schools. 

By 2023, Broadies expect the number of charter students in corporate reform schools to outnumber those students in public schools.

As apartheid charter schools replace highest poverty and lowest scoring publics, the number of union members will also decline, as the chart below shows.  Notice that maintaining both poverty and standardized testing are critical for this strategy to work.

And as the number of charter parents increases, their gathered bodies will become useful tools for the charter public relation machines for exerting political pressure.  Note that parental participation "will be expected."

Marshall Tuck's white male friend Dax Shepard 'splains that cultural sterilization isn't "real racism"

When I taught in the Los Angeles Unified Schools, I openly opposed the Vietnam War and was critical of the system’s race policies.  Fortunately, I was never threatened with dismissal, I belonged to a union. — Professor Rodolfo F. Acuña

Students Protesting Marshall Tuck's racist decision to kill Ethnic Studies. Photo by Robert D. Skeels.

Eli Broad's California State Superintendent of Public Instruction hopeful, corporate banker Marshall Tuck, has a long history of fostering institutional racism. It's well documented that he closed down Ethnic Studies Programs, Heritage Language Academic Programs, and research proven Dual Language Immersion Programs. It's also documented that he has been willing to target teachers of color who get too "uppity" for him and the wealthy white elite he works for.

As a white male myself, I cannot speak on behalf of oppressed students and faculty who suffered under Tuck's racist leadership. However, as a student of Freire, a founding member of the Southern California Immigration Coalition, and a member of many groups that are led by various Central American, South American, and Indigenous Peoples, I have had a lot of exposure to the concepts of colonialism and institutional racism. I was endorsed by both Unión del Barrio and Association of Raza Educators (ARE) Los Angeles during my school board run for a reason. It is my moral and intellectual responsibility as a scholar and an activist to challenge white supremacy at every opportunity.

So imagine my surprise when wealthy white Hollywood actor Dax Shepard (I didn't know who he was until I checked Wikipedia) decided he needed to 'splain me about racism and such. I was able to preserve this one exchange, but unfortunately he deleted the rest of the conversation. He had seen the title of my carefully researched polemic Marshall Tuck's Legacy of Bigotry and Failure and said I couldn't be more wrong on the bigotry thing. I responded by asking for an explanation of that stance in the light of Tuck's abject record:

@daxshepard1 Closing down Ethnic Studies, Heritage Language, and Dual Language programs isn't bigoted?

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

@daxshepard1 Deliberately taking down all the bilingual signage at schools with monolingual Spanish parents isn't bigotry?

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

Finally I asked Shepard directly about his personal beliefs on culturally appropriate pedagogy:

@daxshepard1 I'm asking the wrong question. Do you support providing students of color access to classes about their cultures and history?

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

To which he replied (I'm paraphrasing since he deleted his tweet): "Given a choice I believe math and science are more important." To which I responded with an excerpt from Cheryl Ortega's powerful narrative within the Tuck piece:

@daxshepard1 At the end of the day this is racist and ethnocentric. Your friend did this, he can't hide from it. pic.twitter.com/nhzhYMSWEK

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) June 3, 2014

Shepard's response is nothing short of breathtaking:

@rdsathene I can't think of anything more irresponsible than the way you are using the word "racist." It undermines real racism.

— dax shepard (@daxshepard1) June 3, 2014

I know he probably didn't realize what he was saying, but let's be clear — I want to undermine all forms racism, including what Shepard believes is the "real" kind. For a white male to deny that oppressions like cultural sterilization, colonialism, and denial of language rights are forms of "real racism" is not unlike males that have taken upon themselves to define what "real rape" is. Colorado activist and former Denver Board of Education member Andrea Mérida spoke some serious truth to Shepard's white power.

@daxshepard1 @rdsathene Ever experience it yourself? No? Then you don't get to define it. Ever hear of institutional racism?

— Andrea Merida (@andreamerida) June 5, 2014

We need more people like Merida calling this out for what it is. While the cartoonish racism of buffoons like Donald Sterling dominates the headlines, the more subtle, insidious racism of Tuck and Shepard pervades our society. In the case of Tuck, it become the established institutional kind that corrodes students of color from the inside out. We can only hope that his billionaire backers don't get him elected, because we've already seen what Tuck's type do when in power — just look at Arizona!

Arne Duncan, Extortionist

extortion |ikˈstôrSHən|nounthe practice of obtaining something, esp. money, through force or threats.
In California, where corporate legislators have decided to suspend NCLB testing for one year while they implement a new generation of racist tests using the new testing delivery system, the Common Core, Arne Duncan is on the scene, threatening to withhold Title I money if California moves forward:

The lack of test scores attracted Duncan's criticism.

"Letting an entire school year pass for millions of students without sharing information on their schools’ performance with them and their families is the wrong way to go about this transition," he said in a statement. "No one wants to over-test, but if you are going to support all students’ achievement, you need to know how all students are doing."

Duncan declined to specify what action he would take, and in fact, the federal government has no direct authority over state school systems. But the department controls billions of dollars in federal funds, which can make up about 10% of a school district's budget. This money adds up to about $600 million a year for Los Angeles Unified, according to the district.

"If California moves forward with a plan that fails to assess all its students, as required by federal law, the department will be forced to take action, which could include withholding funds," Duncan said.

Can you imagine, a year without the annual cranial vice attached to everyone’s head?  Could people start to remember what it was like just a dozen years ago, before the annual ritual to kill imagination and thinking? 

Can’t have that.

Jerry Brown Rebukes Attempts at Another Generation of More Testing

Jerry Brown's rebuke of the testing industrial complex on October 8 has sent shockwaves through the boardrooms of Pearson and the other predatory corporations whose CEOs are poised to cash in on a whole new generation of education testing mania introduced by RTTT.  Ostensibly as a way to get out from under the burden of testing, a state version of Arne Duncan's deal that Brown vetoed amounted to an extortion plot that holds a loaded testing gun to governors and superintendents with the promise of certain death if they refuse a waiver or, if they play the waiver game, then death by testing is exchanged for a life sentence of testing in every subject and at every grade level.  Oh yes, if you accept this life sentence of testing, your food ration promises to be cut severely.

Meanwhile, any semblance of humane learning environments has been erased in U.S. urban schools, as children are inflicted with increasingly draconian and constant test prep in what can only be accurately described as penal school environments, whose guards are often white girls recruited from Ivy League colleges to satisfy their "service learning" requirement to get into Harvard Law.  This is the way that a brand of remorseless neo-eugenics social control and resegregation is born, bred, inculcated, and spread into all public schools serving the poor--all in the name of civil rights (see Kevin Huffman as the proto-fascist calendar boy).  And now we see media stooge for corporate ed, John Merrow, urge teachers to adopt the abusive KIPP total compliance regime as a way to improve teaching and "honor teachers:"

"So do not be mad about schooling's failure to dramatically improve the lives of all 15 million children living in poverty. Instead, imitate the successful places, people and practices. Find out what's keeping educators from imitating success. Eliminate the obstacles and -- here's where you should get mad -- get rid of the educators who refuse to be copy-cats."

Yes, more copycats to mirror Merrow's spineless guzzling of the corporate kool-aid.  Work hard, be nice, don't think, and keep your mouth shut.  That's the way to build a better teacher, who just copies and follows orders.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the self-serving corporate education reformers would go after Brown, in this case through the editorial pages of the dependable and desperate corporate rag, the LA Times. A clip from para 1 shows the level of duplicity and lying that provides the foundation for this idiot editorial:

. . . by pressuring schools to raise achievement, it [high-stakes measurement of student progress through annual standardized tests] also has ensured that more students reach high school able to read books more sophisticated than those by Dr. Seuss — which, sad to say, was a major problem a decade ago — and tackle algebra by ninth grade.

Cute.  But like the other cute corporate propaganda to support 25 years of failed testing polices, it's a lie.  From Ravitch, Education Next, in 2009:

. . . . NCLB has produced meager gains in achievement. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assesses student achievement in reading and mathematics every other year. Despite the intense concentration on reading and mathematics required by the law, the gains registered on NAEP since the enactment of NCLB have been unimpressive.

In 4th-grade reading, the gains after implementation of NCLB, from 2003 to 2007, were small (three points) and exactly the same as the gains from1998 to 2003. Fourth graders in the bottom10th percentile of performance had a five-point gain after NCLB, but this did not compare to the 10-point jump in their scores from 2000 to 2002 pre-NCLB (see Figure 1).

In 8th-grade reading, there were essentially no gains from 1998 to 2007. Student performance was a flat line both before and after NCLB.

Mathematics was tested in 1996, 2000, 2003, 2005, and 2007. The gains preceding the adoption of NCLB were larger than those posted after NCLB. From 2000 to 2003, 4 th grade students recorded a nine-point gain in mathematics, compared to a gain of only five points from2003 to 2007. Among 4th-grade students in the lowest decile, there was an astonishing 13-point gain from 2000 to 2003 pre-NCLB; the same group saw a gain of only five points from 2003 to 2007. The same deceleration of student improvement was seen at all performance levels, from top to bottom.

In 8th-grade mathematics, gains also slowed after the passage of NCLB. Eighth graders saw a five-point gain from 2000 to 2003, but only a three-point gain from 2003 to 2007. . . . .

Want more evidence?  See FairTest's analysis from 2009 here.