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Tuesday, March 11, 2014

No Struggle, No Progress — I had a six-minute debate last night with James...

No Struggle, No Progress — I had a six-minute debate last night with James...:



  • I had a six-minute debate last night with James Merriman of the New York City Charter School Center on the show, “All In With Chris Hayes”.
You can watch the whole thing online here:

MSNBC: Battle wages over NYC charter schools
Of course there are a bazillion things I wish I had said (or said differently). In New York City, charter schools only enroll about 6% of the student population. Still, they have become a major source of controversy because (as Hayes suggests) the largest charter school leaders are part of a general movement for privatization. Merriman and others deny this repeatedly, but they cheered for public school closures — even when public school parents objected — because those closures created a market for their product. Likewise, they claim to be advocates for public education, but colonize public school space with little regard for the consequences to public school students in those buildings.