Magazines: New Yorker Digs Into Newark Reform Backlash
"In 2010, Zuckerberg pledged a hundred-million-dollar challenge grant to help Booker, then the mayor of Newark, and Christie overhaul the school district, one of the most troubled in the country.
"Four years later, “improbably, a [school] district with a billion dollars in revenue and two hundred million dollars in philanthropy was going broke,” and Newark is at war over its schools."
Closing quote:" Shavar Jeffries believes that the Newark backlash could have been avoided. Too often, he said, “education reform . . . comes across as colonial to people who’ve been here for decades. It’s very missionary, imposed, done to people rather than in coöperation with people.” Some reformers have told him that unions and machine politicians will always dominate turnout in school-board elections and thus control the public schools. He disagrees: “This is a democracy. A majority of people support these ideas. You have to build coalitions and educate and advocate.” As he put it to me at the outset of the reform initiative, “This remains the United States. At some time, you have to persuade people.”
Check it out and let us know if it's interesting, fair, etc.
When I first saw the author's disclaimer that he's the parent of a KIPP teacher, I thought jeez, they couldn't get someone without a pro-"reform" bias? But on reflection, it really gives the article credibility -- since it overall does not reflect positively on the Newark "reform" efforts, its author would otherwise be subject to the usual "teachers' union lackey"/"defender of the failed status quo" stuff. I did roll my eyes at one word, when he said that co-locations mean putting charters in "unused" space in public schools -- that's going to make some heads explode.
Posted by: CarolineSF | May 13, 2014 at 13:48 PM