Group forms to block voter-approved charter schools
The election results are barely certified for voter-approved Initiative 1240, the most hopeful education reform passed in Washington in decades. Opponents have formed a group to prevent children in need from attending a charter school. A new group called Protect Our Public Schools (POPS) has announced its creation as an affiliate of a national group that works against education reform in the states (see announcement below).
I-1240 is already under threat. Its implementation will require careful monitoring, to make sure it isn’t undermined by powerful status-quo interests before the children in the state’s first charter school even have a chance to open their books. This just shows that the fight to help school children is never really over.
Here is the anti-charter school announcement:
Press Conference at Noon Today for New Public School Group
A new group has formed for the protection of Washington State public schools. It is - not surprisingly - called "Protect Our Public Schools."
They are having a formal announcement/press conference today at noon at the Seattle Center Armory, Room 311 (formerly the Center House at Seattle Center). They are encouraging all who can to attend. (Room 311 is balcony level on the west side of the building across from the glass elevator.)
Comments
What these people really want
What these people really want to protect is the monopolistic system that uses our children as the ransom to line their own pockets. They continue to promote an agenda that only meets the needs of a few and leaves a huge number of students ill prepared to do anything in this world. If they really cared about children they would welcome any and all help to solve our continuing education woes.
Open your eyes up, Bob. It's your state too!
When you have to pay over $3 Million---$6 per paid signature---just to Purchase your ballot access, and then you have to blanket the airwaves with "say nothing/feel good" deceptive TV spots and outspend your opponents by 17 to 1---an all-time record for any state, anywhere---and then only draw to a statistical, statewide tie, you can't say that 1240 was exactly "popular".
In fact, a subsequent survey now shows that among people who were aware of the dangerous "Trigger" provision---which would allow a company to get the signatures of 51% of the parents or teachers at ANY school in the state, in secret, and takeover the school, converting it to a charter---before they voted, 1240 lost 78% of those votes!
Imagine how badly 1240 would have done if every voter was aware of just how many horrific things were in it, PRIOR to Election Day.
It wouldn't have even been close.
That's why, when the news gets out about 1240, it will evaporate...with no elected official willing to touch it with a 10 foot pole.
I’m no “status quo interest.”
I’m no “status quo interest.” I’m a public school mom. I have had my kids in a variety of private schools as well as wildly diverse International/British schools in Africa. I myself attended a grindstone, Ivy-or-bust prep school. I have much to compare.
I see our public schools as needing a whole lot of tlc. Instead they're getting spanked upside their heads. They’re told to do more with less (excoriated by WPC, Finne in particular, for spending too much per student and on teacher salaries), constantly told they’re failing while the job gets ever more difficult. Assaulted by this great public venom toward teachers, the lust for winnowing and punishing. It breaks my heart.
But it’s not just that I know choice for its own sake, privatization (charters) and business-model competition have nothing to do with improving our school system. It’s not just that I resent such reforms being imposed by the insular wealthy in our most unequal nation upon those of us who have the smallest voices and the most at stake: our own children. It’s not just that many of the same people who go about slagging off our schools also do their utmost to deprive them of the funding, rich curricula and small class sizes they give to their own children.
What really kills is the long, screeching assault on reason. All of this wrong-headed reform is rationalized by a priori premises, arguments from assumption, ideological fallacies, overvaluation of anecdote and of self. I study and study and look at numbers and outcomes and talk to my children, to teachers and principals, walk around schools and volunteer and teach. We’re rocketing along a path that makes no sense.
I saw this slide put up a couple years ago at a neighborhood charter advocacy session: “The ‘facts’ don’t matter.” Yes, even the word “facts” was in quotation marks. This message was repeated to us throughout the evening as we were encouraged to open our hearts to charters. We performed various team exercises, always told not to worry about facts, but focus only on our “values” (?). I was dazed.
I’ve been re-reading “Master and Commander” and Stephen Maturin just said, regarding his designation as “surgeon” rather than “doctor,” “It is a false description; and a false description is anathema to the philosophic mind.” Oh, indeed.
Yet you all get to call yourselves “think tanks.” It hurts.
It's just a bunch of unions...
This is the same group that fought Referendum 55 for charter schools back in 2004. It's simply a front for Unions selfishly trying to protect their power, not improve education...
http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/committee.phtml?c=1233
Actually, this is not the
Actually, this is not the same group at all as the one in 2004. Most of us are concerned that with the implementation of charter schools, many kids will be left out. Most charter schools under enroll special needs kids. Also, if these parents of kids at under-performing schools are not now enrolling their children at better performing schools, then what makes you think they will enroll them in charter schools?