Yesterday, fellow pro-public education blogger, Jersey Jazzman, wrote a great piece about the fact that a number of school districts in New Jersey – all populated by black and Hispanic citizens – have been under state control for years. (See:
Local Control of Schools: It’s a White People Thing.)
Diane Ravitch, in turn, picked up the piece on her national blog, noting that, “In many districts, especially where the population is non-white, privatizers insist on mayoral control or state control…there is no evidence that taking away popular rule improves the schools…It does make it easier, however, to privatize them.”
We certainly know that reality here, as Governor Malloy’s education reform associates like Mayor Bill Finch, “Education Reformer Extraordinaire” Paul Vallas, and corporate business organizations like Excel Bridgeport and the Council for Education Reform, are spending over $100,000 to eliminate Bridgeport’s democratically elected board of education and replace it with one appointed by the Mayor.
As Diane Ravitch also noted, Michelle Rhee’s husband, Kevin Johnson, a former
