Portland School Board veers to the right

Portland School Board co-chair David Wynde has vehemently denied that the Portland Public School District's affiliation with the Broad Foundation is indicative of what some see as the district's rightward tilt toward privatization.  Neither the Broad Foundation nor its founder, Eli Broad, he claimed, are conservative or particularly right-leaning.

I wonder then how Wynde would characterize the Hoover Institution and its schools publication, Education Next, if not right-wing and pro-school privatization.

Back in 2001, Hoover fellow Paul Hill wrote an article in Education Next praising the Houston Independent School District for its efforts to raise student achievement.  (The so-called "Texas education miracle", the model for No Child Left behind, was later exposed as a massive fraud of manipulated test score results and phony dropout rates.) In his article, Hill singles out as heroes of school reform "...community activists like Don McAdams and Kathy Mincberg, and Rod Paige."

Paige is the former Houston superintendent and first Bush Secretary of Education.  He resigned in 2004 probably because of the revelations of fraud in Texas.

Mincberg, a Paige crony, is now Chief Operating Officer of Portland Public Schools.

And McAdams?  After writing a book extolling the "miraculous" turnaround in Houston (later exposed as a fraud), he became managing director of the Broad Institute for School Boards, which has trained Portland's own school board members.  Note that McAdam's book was praised lavishly by another Hoover fellow, Diane Ravitch, as a "...rarity in education: a real page turner."

But regardless of politics or underlying ideologies, there are two problems with a public school district like Portland relying on the support of private foundations for financial support.  One, as Barbara Miner points out, is that

"...the growing role of private money in public school reform raises concerns about democratic control of public education."

The other is this.  No matter how you look at it, whether conservative or merely neoliberal, Broad and similarly minded think tanks  undermine the very notion of public education.  They promote the "business model" of school governance, emphasizing accountability and parental choice in order to inject "competition" into what conservatives call the government's public school monopoly.    The one goal of Broad and like-minded school reform foundations is student "achievement" as defined, and measured, by scores on standardized reading and math tests. 

If schools were "simply" about literacy and numeracy,  Broad and other purveyors of the business model may --and I emphasize "may"-- be on to something.  But schools, public schools especially, are charged with a much greater responsibility --the education of the whole person.  And, more importantly, the   education and creation of a civil and democratic society.  It's the latter, I believe, that can only be "achieved" in truly "public" schools.

 

Comments

[Anne]

It is disgusting to watch the machinations of PPS to derail democracy within these PUBLIC schools.
Some examples:
The student council reps at Jefferson are appointed by the principal. This year they were children of PPS employees.
The site Council at Abernethy was appointed by the principal, not voted on as state law dictates.
The PTA at Jefferson was called on the carpet for having a meeting to ask students for their opinions on the reconfiguration proposals.
Most school site councils were not notified ahead of time when schools were up for closure or major reconfiguration.Phillips did choose to go over to Hollyrood several times to give them a heads up. Notifying site councils is part of PPS policy listed in the "Major School Change" document.
When Site council at King Elementary questioned PPS policy, PPS admin. brought security guards to the meeting and questioned the validity of the Site Council member's authority since they had not had "site Council training".
In 2003 when Edwards parents organized an independent parent group and published a newsletter about school closures that was mildly critical of PPS, parents were not allowed to distribute the newsletter on school property.

Don McAdams, Cathy Mincberg, Gates all talk about tactics for getting their corporate-based agenda put forth. This includes controlling site council membership, hiring public relations directors for the district with political clout, bankrolling sympathetic school board candidates and using parent anger to further their agendas to privatize our schools. The Houstonian tactics for controlling districts from PTAs to Superintendents can no longer be tolerated. Parents,students, teachers, and other workers have got to stand together to save our schools from this dictatorial takeover.