What the California state authorities and federal government are calling “school reform” is in reality an all-out assault on public education.
 Student protest for education |
This was demonstrated clearly on March 8, when the state announced that 188 schools would be required to begin a process consisting of four choices: firing half the staff and the principal, firing the principal, becoming a charter school or closing altogether. Tens of thousands of teachers, administrators, students, families, secretaries, janitors and others will suffer as a result of these “reforms.”
When California announced its latest reforms, Susan Boshoven, a high school teacher in San Francisco’s Mission District, told PSLweb.org that the staff reacted with “confusion and depression,” while trying to stay positive.
A week later, on March 15, the state issued 21,905 pink slips—notifying 7 percent of the state’s teachers that they face layoffs this year. Another 100,000 other school workers are to receive layoff notices within the week.
The state is required to notify workers of the layoffs, but they will not be official until a state budget is passed. Last year, 60 percent of layoff notices resulted in firings. A determined struggle will be needed to prevent another round of drastic cuts.
The 188 schools slated for drastic cuts are grouped in the bottom 5 percent of “low-performing” schools. This label is generated first by math and English-language arts scores on standardized tests and then by graduation rates.
Standardized test scores a false measure
Standardized test scores are a false measure of teacher performance, student ability or school achievement. The real explanation for low test scores are socioeconomic status and the institutionalized racism of U.S. capitalist society.
In San Francisco Unified School District, six of the 10 schools targeted for reform are in the Mission district. They serve a population of working-class students that includes a high number of English-language learners. While these students are perfectly capable of academic success, they historically score lower on standardized tests at their grade level.
Firing teachers does not solve these problems; if anything, it makes them worse. Four of the five Oakland schools on the list of 188 opened less than four years ago, after firing their staff under a similar “reform” effort.
Boshoven, a teacher for 16 years, has previously experienced the dislocation of school closings and restaffing. She said this reform “is more of the same”:
“It means that we once again will be a dispersed as a community because we are threatening to the status quo of the wealthy and powerful [who are] gaining at the expense of the middle class and working poor. It means that the political consultants, CEOs of corporations, and the SFUSD superintendents and associates will continue to take at the cost of our learning community. They will keep their jobs while teachers lose theirs, and our students lose their teachers and have less individual attention to their needs.”
The four different “reform” choices have misleading titles like “transformation,” “restart” and the “turnaround” model. Each, however, really spells more work for less pay for school workers and undermines the union by moving toward charter schools. Each means total disruption for students and their families, either through school closure or through mass firings and staff turnover.
Teachers and staff at all of the threatened schools work hard on programs to close the achievement gap, train new teachers, and educate children. Real reform does not mean firing these teachers and closing vital schools in working-class communities. Real reform does not consist of pitting teachers against one another for a few overworked and underpaid jobs. Real reform means investing in the kind of resources our students and teachers need to make sure that quality education is a right for all, not a privilege of the few.
The state is trying to solve the budget crisis—the result of capitalist crisis and prioritizing corporate profit and prisons over people’s needs—by penalizing students and state workers. While working-class families suffer through all the hardships of the cutbacks, the politicians and corporations see in the recession an opportunity to privatize education and break the teachers’ union.
Tens of thousands of teachers, students and others took to the streets March 4 to defend public education. From college campuses to elementary schools, we marched and rallied in a show of force against the attacks on public education. Now that the latest cutbacks have been announced, it remains imperative that we build a fight-back movement that can stop the ruling class in its tracks.
