ATLANTA, GA — “What is democracy?” Black, White, Latino protestors at rallies always chant in response —“This is what democracy looks like.” It is an event, a place, and even a school that has a diverse population and also has textbooks, teachers and staff that reflect that diversity. Democracy means that people have a voice in the governance of an entity such as public education.
Educators and others who believe in public education are battling the privatization of the schools in Georgia. In the legislative session this year Governor Nathan Deal proposed a constitutional amendment that creates a statewide “Opportunity School District.” This would give the state appointed school superintendent the power to fire principals, transfer teachers and change what students are learning at the so-called “failing” schools. The majority of the “failing” schools are in the poorer areas and are mostly schools that are attended by African American students.
It will go to the voters in a ballot initiative in 2016.
First of all, the criteria for a “failing” school are test scores. Classrooms are no longer interesting and “fun” for many students. Their day is spent with the teachers and students focused on curriculum geared to tests.
Michelle Rhee, the founder of StudentsFirst, spoke before the Georgia House’s Education Committee in February. StudentsFirst has ten registered lobbyists in the state and promotes school choice, charter schools and state intervention in failing schools. StudentsFirst paid for the trip to New Orleans by Governor Deal and his five staffers to look at how Louisiana administers “failing” schools.
Also, in this year’s legislative session there are bills that promote vouchers that undercut public education. With these bills, the legislators are actually encouraging parents to withdraw their children from the public schools with vouchers that amount to $4,000 a year and use these tax-payer cash subsidies to enroll their children in private schools.
The Georgia Constitution states: “The provision of an adequate public education for the citizens shall be a primary obligation of the State of Georgia.” Yet, public education has lost $7.6 billion in the last decade and furloughs for teachers have been administered in order to save money, thus the school year was reduced to below 180 days in some areas that lacked funds for 180 day instruction.
The Governor’s initiative for Education “reform” has four points to it:
Direct state management of the school
Shared governance with local school board
Conversion to a charter school
Closure of the school
Anyone can see clearly that the goal of the “Opportunity School District” is to create more charter schools for profit and privatize public education.
Yes, the public schools need to be improved. All the talk about improving public education is just talk. None of the bills address teacher qualifications, textbook quality, the amount of instructional days and other issues.
This is all about the state taking over the public schools in order to privatize them. This is not what democracy looks like.
What about the Atlanta teachers charged with racketeering and given prison sentences? wHAT IS BEING done to help them and protest this outragious charge? Who is protesting and how come it is not in mainstream media? Is this incident of obscene charges and sentencing related to privatization in GEorgia?
Hi, Marcia,
There were some protests and demonstrations against the sentencing of the Atlanta Public School teachers in the “cheating” scandal. There were also some demonstrations by parents that these teachers “cheated” their children by changing answers, etc. This was a big headline for days in the Atlanta Journal Constitution but I don’t know how far reaching the coverage was nationally.
The teachers are receiving much lighter sentences by the judge and I do think that just the fact that they are losing their jobs is punishment enough.
This case shows the pressure on educators to have their students perform well on high stakes testing. This is not a quality education the students are receiving to focus on these tests.
Gloria
The 1980 Battle for Public Education in Manning, SC
One of the litigants in Brown v. Board of Education was Clarendon County SC, where the racist response to that ruling — to avoid segregation — was to increase private/charter schools and to ostracize via ridicule the few poorest white students who did not attend one of them.
When i moved there in 1980 to replace the one-woman managing editor of their only county-wide weekly newspaper, a battle was raging over whether to replace the only public high school in Manning, the county seat, (a 75-year old structure then known to locals as “the n- school.”)
Determined to improve the quality of education for all students, which would depend on matching funds from the State of SC, I worked 72 hours/week during the school bond referendum campaign to back the public school board. I began by defending the Board’s leading spokesperson, Superintendent Carl Ramsey, from a baseless smear campaign.. I also took and attempted to publish photographs of the crumbling 75-year-old structure and the overcrowding, which made it impossible for a student to traverse the halls a.s.a.p.without contact with another student on each side.
When limitations were placed on my editorials, I spoke at public meetings to explain what modern high schools offered that the private schools did not: Science labs, libraries with microfiche, on-site typing classes, etc.. Additionally, as a sit-in member of the county development board, I explained that investors (like the Kean Corporation of Dearborn) were reluctant to move to Manning because their employees wanted and needed a public high school.
My efforts were discouraged by threats from key advertisers, and I was warned by the corporate owner of the chain that paid my salary (a subsidiary of the politically motivated right-wing corporation which later took over the Detroit News and Free press) that if I persisted and the voters approved the bond, I would be fired.
Even after it passed and I was fired, the fight wasn’t over. It was three years before the new Manning High School was solidly standing and ready to receive students.
NO, they didn’t name the library after me, but I was gratified at the dedication ceremony to see that in the interim, even the most adamant of those who had opposed the upgrade had come ’round and decided to enroll their kids! They didn’t want them or their (now unified) town to “miss out” on enhanced education any more than I had!