The Black and White of School Closures

By Candi Peterson

As 2012 comes to an end,  two unmistakable trends have emerged from studies that public schools are being sold down the river to private interests and the rush to close schools has not resulted in any measurable improvement in standardized test scores. The Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) just issued The Black and White of Education in Chicago’s Public Schools report on the “underutilization crisis” in the Chicago Public Schools system. CTU contends that this crisis that has been manufactured largely to justify the replacement of neighborhood schools by privatized charters.

“When it comes to matters of race and education in Chicago, the attack on public schools is endemic,” said CTU President Karen GJ Lewis.  “Chicago is the most segregated city in the country, and our students of color are routinely deemed as second-class by a system that does nothing but present one failed policy after the next.”

More specifically, Chicago Teachers' Union highlights what  the policy of neighborhood closings and charter openings has led to:

- Increased racial segregation
- Depletion of stable schools in black neighborhoods
- Disrespect and poor treatment of teachers
- Expansion of unnecessary testing
- Decreased opportunities for deep conceptual learning
- Increased punitive student discipline
- Increased student mobility
- Minimal educational outcomes

Locally, DC Action for Children, a non-profit advocacy organization came to a similar conclusion that educational outcomes have been minimal in the District of Columbia.  Their newly released study, DC KIDS COUNT, Third Grade Proficiency in DC: Little Progress (2007-2011) , looked at five years of third grade reading and math test scores from the DC Comprehensive Assessment System, (DC CAS) for insights about citywide proficiency, the achievement gap and neighborhood disparities.

Their results? “We could not prove any statistically significant citywide progress from 2007-2011 in reading or math proficiency. The same held true when we broke scores down by race, by DCPS schools, DC public charter schools, students from economically advantaged or students from economically disadvantaged families."

This study neutralizes the rationale used by Chancellor Henderson and her predecessor Michelle Rhee which is embedded in the first goal of the five-year plan DC Public Schools ) which is: “To improve achievement rates.”

I personally don’t believe that Henderson's under-utilization argument makes any sense. What we know is that the policy of closing schools has not saved DC Public Schools (DCPS)  any money. The evidence shows us that closing our schools has driven more parents out of our public schools to charters and elsewhere. It's a no brainer that less students in our public schools equals less money for DCPS.  

DC Public Schools cannot demonstrate that their continued failed policy of closing 20 plus schools every 4 years, is not achieving its number one goal of improving test scores. So why then is Henderson and other heads of school districts stuck on stupid nationally, one might ask?

The answer lies in CTU's report, "A crisis has been manufactured to justify the replacement of neighborhood schools. There  is a real economic benefit to real estate investors, charter school operators, philanthropists and wealthy bankers."

An August 2012 Reuters article spells out the reason for the national push to privatize. " The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from 5-18. The entire education sector represents 9 percent of the gross domestic product, more than energy or technology sectors. Traditionally, public education had been a tough market for private firms to break into- fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy..... Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They're pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education."

When the smoke clears in 2013 and all the policy arguments are made, DCPS will close another 20 schools give or take a few concessions and 12,000 students and an estimated 1,200 teachers and school staff members will be thrown under the bus.