Teacher-proofing our education system, New York style

And despite the assurances from Liebman that an F grade would not be a death sentence for schools, 13 schools in areas like the Bronx and Brooklyn were identified for closure, some with D grades. (New York Times, December 8, 2007). For some working class and black communities this represented a loss of a community facility; for others it meant standing in the shade of the wings of vultures as privately-operated Charter School companies hovered over the pickings, opening privately-operated public schools in the same buildings as newly closed schools.

As one Australian parent who had children in New York schools observed: “In New York, the best schools are rewarded with more funding. Poor schools, if they don’t improve, are allowed to fail. The school closes, the teachers lose their jobs and the next year another school replaces it, using the same buildings.”

Gillard promotes this atrocity in education by saying that parents in New York City are “given everything there is to know about schools” (Advertiser, August 12, 2008). Actually, the comments by Robin Brown and Emily Horowitz (see above), are echoed across Klein’s landscape. Last December Liebman was “repeatedly interrupted by boos and hisses from dozens of parents” at a hearing before the City Council’s Education Committee whose members blasted his school grading system as “unfair, reductive and a maze of statistics” (New York Times, December 11, 2007).

On June 19, 2006 a group of 15 parents and parent leaders from Los Angeles, who had spent a week investigating the New York system said “We are back from the front lines of mayoral takeover of school … If we have seen the future, then it don’t work.”

One LA PTA President said: “In New York City under Mayoral Control there is no parental involvement or engagement in the process and direction of reform; parents have been marginalised, disenfranchised and disempowered! In the vernacular of the Big Apple: Parents have been ‘kicked to the curb!’… Parents in the NYC system have no voice.”

And it’s no wonder Murdoch’s Australian ran a glowing profile on Klein last weekend. Another Deng is closely involved with him on the Board of the Fund for Public Schools. She is Wendi Deng, aka Mrs Rupert Murdoch! Needless to say Rupert and Wendi’s two girls attend a prestigious private school.

And the Labor Party? The Labor Party should really rename itself the Business and Development Party and completely sever its ties with the working people on whose behalf it pretends to speak.

In Rudd, Gillard and Co we have politicians who use the electoral support of working families to get into office so as to better and more efficiently pursue the policies of the corporate elite that really governs the country. Gillard’s embrace of Klein’s agenda for closing poor schools, punishing poor neighbourhoods and privatising public education can’t be hidden behind a smokescreen of “like schools comparison” and “rich information”.

And there’s probably worse to come …