Obama's 'Race To The Top' Drives Nationwide Wave of School Closings, Teacher Firings [View all]

[HiPointDem]

Last edited Tue Jan 15, 2013, 05:49 PM - Edit history (1)

A nationwide epidemic of school closings and teacher firings has been underway for some time. It's concentrated chiefly in poor and minority communities, and the teachers let go are often experienced and committed classroom instructors, and likely to live in and near the communities they serve, and disproportionately black...

The current wave of school closings is latest result of bipartisan educational policies which began with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and have kicked into overdrive under the Obama administration's Race To The Top..Under Race To The Top states and school districts are forced to bid against each other for many of the same education dollars they used to receive as a matter of course. The winning districts are those who apply Race To The Top's four official solutions to their so-called “failing schools.” Race To The Top's four federally mandated “solutions,” which are never spelled out by corporate media news outlets, are “school transformations,” “school turnarounds,” “school restarts,” and “school closures.”

Race to the Top defines a “school transformation,” its first remedy, as firing the principal and up to 50% of teachers...

Race To The Top calls its second remedy “school turnaround.” Turnarounds are exactly the same as school transformations...except that transformations fire up to 50% of school staff, but to be called a turnaround schools must fire at least 50% of school staff.

“School restarts,” are the third Race To The Top solution. In a “restart” you close the public school and reopen a new school with new staff...

Race To The Top's fourth remedy is “school closure.” You fire the staff, padlock the school doors and let families take their chances on the free market... The states and school districts quickest to carry out the most transformations, turnarounds, restarts and school closings are the ones who get to keep or increase their levels of federal funding. Those who drag their feet lose federal education dollars. That's why it's a race, but not exactly to the top...

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/obamas-race-top-drives-nationwide-wave-school-closings-teacher-firings


Just to make it clear how it works: to get rttt funds districts must identify their lowest-achieving schools & use one of the 4 plans above to 'fix' them, all of which involve firing teachers a/o closing schools.

they must do this every time they apply for rttt funds. and since once the first group of 'low-achieving' schools are shut down, that means a new group of schools become the 'low-achieving schools,' the process goes on indefinitely.


The people criticizing this OP don't address the specifics of RTTT (because it does exactly what's claimed.)

They resort to smearing me or smearing the person who wrote the OP.

They got nothing but smear.