In addition to sharing the writers skepticism about billionaires
reshaping the country's educational agenda, I wonder why anybody takes
the pronouncements on education by mediocre students like Bill Gates
and George W Bush seriously.
Weekend Edition
April 15 / 16, 2006
Oprah, Bill Gates and the Privatization of Public Schools
What Billionaires Mean by Education Reform
By SETH SANDRONSKY
Recently, talk show host Oprah Winfrey focused on "America's Education
Crisis." Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, and his wife, Melinda, were
guests. Stand Up is their national campaign to improve education for
youth.
Does Oprah know that the $27 billion Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
also gave $4 million dollars to the Sacramento City Unified School
District for "educational reform?"
For the context of this donation we turn to the district's Sacramento
High School. There, students, scores on standardized tests were low.
Officially, such exams are the best measure of what modern education
can provide to the nation's youth. Crucially, the SCUSD had taken
state funds to improve SHS students, test scores. Subsequently, the
scores lacked the desired improvement.
SHS risked becoming a "failed school." Later to avoid state sanctions,
the district decided to close SHS, located in the low-income, largely
nonwhite neighborhood of Oak Park.
Against that backdrop, Starbucks Corp. and inflated home prices are
sprouting in this gentrifying area.
Meet former NBA star Kevin Johnson of the Phoenix Suns, a SHS grad,
and a guest on Oprah's recent show. Retired from pro hoops, he was
tapped to improve the education of SHS students, heading up the St.
Hope Development Corporation. SHS was re-opened by KJ's corporation,
which has run it as a charter school, praised on the Winfrey show.
Significantly, many SHS parents and labor union members opposed the
school's privatization. Parents formed the Sacramento Coalition to
Save Public Education. Some SHS teachers did not want to work without
a union contract for a corporation.
Legitimizing the drive to privatize SHS was The Sacramento Bee, the
city,s one daily paper for over a decade. The McClatchy Co. publishes
The Bee. The Sacramento-based publisher is also the pending buyer of
Knight Ridder Inc., the 12 union papers of which are on the selling
block.
KJ's corporation, in the context of "seed money" taken by the SCUSD
from the Gates Foundation, took over a public high school and weakened
labor unions. In the language of the market, non-union labor is more
"flexible," making it is easier for bosses to fire workers. This
flexibility also weakens the political power of teachers' unions.
Oprah's recent two-part "special report" on the crisis in U.S. public
schools included this gem: "I've often said that I believe that
education is freedom." Presumably, this includes freedom for
billionaires to shape school reform as they see fit. But freeing
public education by turning it over to corporations is no freedom at
all.
Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a
co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper. He
can be reached at ssandron@hotmail.com
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