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State Superintendent for Public Instruction Tony Bennett will recommend state takeover of four Indianapolis Public Schools. Under Bennett's plan, each would be run by an outside organization beginning with the 2012-13 school year. They are: Emma Donnan Middle School, Manual High School and T.C. Howe High School, all of which would be managed by Charter Schools USA. The Florida-based company operates 29 charter schools in Florida, Georgia and Louisiana.

Now, in the midst of the latest controversy, it has become clear that ALEC has also played a major role in writing the so-called "parent trigger" laws designed to allow charter management organizations to engage in hostile takeovers of public schools. Interestingly, the web page on the ALEC site which contained the model "parent trigger" law has been taken down, out of the fear, one would presume, that increased public attention on ALEC and its role in promoting reactionary, anti-public education legislation could become a tad bit embarrassing. But the good folks at ALEC Exposed, a virtual clearinghouse on all matters ALEC sponsored by the Center for Media and Democracy, have a library of all the draft ALEC education legislation, and there one finds the missing ALEC model "parent trigger" legislation.

What is the responsibility of the state to the education of its children. What should it do in response to continued failure? The debate about privatization-about charters and vouchers and increased aid to private schools-really is a consequence of the failure of what was one thought to be the ultimate school reform: The state takeover of failing schools. One panelist, Michelle Fine of Montclair, an author and professor at City University of New York, called privatization "just an exit ramp for some people.'' Because charters and other forms of privatization don't take in all children, she said, they "cannot be considered a systematic, equitable strategy'' for reform. Just a way to help some children.

Louisiana's "School Performance Score" (SPS) is the state's primary accountability measure, and it determines whether schools are subject to high-stakes decisions, most notably state takeover. For elementary and middle schools, 90 percent of the SPS is based on testing outcomes. For secondary schools, it is 70 percent (and 30 percent graduation rates).* The SPS is largely calculated using absolute performance measures - specifically, the proportion of students falling into the state's cutpoint-based categories (e.g., advanced, mastery, basic, etc.). This means that it is mostly measuring student performance, rather than school performance. That is, insofar as the SPS only tells you how high students score on the test, rather than how much they have improved, schools serving more advantaged populations will tend to do better (since their students tend to perform well when they entered the school) while those in impoverished neighborhoods will tend to do worse (even those whose students have made the largest testing gains). One rough way to assess this bias is to check the association between SPS and student characteristics, such as poverty.

Columnist Alan Chartock ("Cuomo the students' lobbyist? Not really," Jan. 15) rightly points out Gov. Cuomo's surplus confidence in claiming to be the lobbyist for the state's students.  He correctly observes the "terrible situation" that Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the Board of Regents will be in if Cuomo sets up another education commission, stripping them of much or perhaps all of their authority. He affirms that the Regents offer protection from a political takeover of public schools, saying, "the whole idea was to get the traditional grubby politicians out of the game." However, he fails to point out that both Tisch and the Regents have not done a good job representing the best in public education lately.

John Mooney at NJ Spotlight provided a reasonable overview of the NJDOE waiver proposal to "reward" successful schools and sanction and/or takeover "failing" ones. The NJDOE waiver proposal includes explanation of a new classification system for identifying which schools should be subject to state intervention, ultimately to be managed by regional offices throughout the state. This new targeted intervention system classifies districts in need of intervention as "priority" districts, with specific emphasis on "focus" districts.

Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors: Fighting for the Soul of America's Toughest High School By Alexander Russo Jossey-Bass, 2011, $24.95; 232 pages. Reviewed by Nathan Glazer Neither "stray dogs" nor "saints" play any role in Alexander Russo's account of how Green Dot, a nonprofit organization that creates new charter high schools, managed to take over Locke High School in the Watts area of Los Angeles, and what it achieved in its first year managing it.

If you listened just to news about public education or read some of the briefs coming out from the U.S. Department of Education, you could be forgiven for thinking that that the country is overrun by "dropout factories" and "failing schools," and that we are inundated by schools that need a dramatic "turnaround" or even a "takeover." You would be justified in thinking that the state of our nation's schools was in total decline and that there was little reason for cheer. Actually, the truth is very different.

Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors, a new book about a Los Angeles school turnaround by education journalist Alexander Russo, is refreshingly void of any mythical figures. The book tracks the events leading up to, and a couple of years following, the takeover of troubled Locke High School by start-up charter management organization Green Dot Schools. Because of the history of violence and failure in and around Locke (located in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles), a majority of Locke teachers and administrators petitioned in 2007 to be released from the Los Angeles Unified School District and placed under Green Dot's management.

Governor Jindal is moving to assert complete control of both the legislature and BESE. A recent article in the Advocate describes Jindal's plans to hand pick all key legislative leadership positions. In addition, in an Aug 31 article, The Advocate carries a story about a new PAC formed by Lane Grigsby, Rolf McCollister and Jindal's former Chief Counsel who will commit up to one million dollars on the BESE takeover effort. With no viable opponent to his own reelection bid the Governor aims to help elect more close allies to both the legislature and BESE. Jindal wants no less than total control of state government and the public education system.

The justification for mayoral takeover of school districts is that it pinpoints accountability. I've always believed, however, that the rationale sounds better on paper than it plays out in reality. The situation in the New York City school system is a case in point.

At least Jeb Bush isn't trying to hide where and who he's getting his money from. On the website of Foundation for Excellence in Education are the proud shields of the corporate and billionaire financiers who stake Bush's school privatization takeovers. Two entities - Pearson and Charter Schools USA - have directly benefited in Florida from Bush's education legislative pushes.

The national media consensus is that New Orleans has discovered the miracle cure for urban education.  Their conclusion is largely drawn from data provided by the Louisiana Department of Education, which obviously has a vested interest in emphasizing the good and ignoring the bad in the post-Katrina education changes.  New Orleans is important in the national education debate, but not for the reasons we commonly hear; it is important because it is the beachhead for a national movement to remove schools from local democratic control and accountability.  The privatization trade-off is that the public sacrifices control of schools for a privatized system that delivers better education for the same tax dollar.  While the citizens of New Orleans certainly lost control of their schools, it cannot be said that they have received a better education, if that also means an equitable education, nor can it be said that it came at the same cost.

"To reiterate, the point here is not really about whether Camden schools should be taken over, nor is this discussion intended to suggest that the choice to do so was not deliberated extensively, using a variety of different types of information. Rather, this is about the more basic fact that NJ officials have justified their decision to the public based in large part on the argument that Camden schools are severely ineffective, but their evidence doesn't really come close to supporting that conclusion."

I had counted on the real Right Wing to stop national curriculum, national testing, and other such nonsense, but even they seem to have come to terms with the power of the State when it comes to such minor details, which meanwhile help distract us from seeing the charter/voucher movement for what it is.

"Teachers are fighting the privatization wave by connecting with families right where they live."