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Jim Mordecai
Berkeley, CA
Recent Activity
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Jim commented on the petition |I'm signing this petition because it was police behavior that undermines the important wrong they do.
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Jim signed the petition |
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Jim commented on the petition |I'm against the state killing in my name. But, if there is a death to be claimed I want never there is be a reasonable doubt attached to a state killing. The State of Georgia does not speak for me in killing Mr. Troy Davis.
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Jim signed the petition |
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Jim commented on the article |Charter schools have passed their window of opportunity to privatize America's public schools because the financial meltdown in the loan industry has shown the folly of deregulation.
It makes no sense to talk free market regulation for charter schools for five years and then hold the management accountable. Government must hold charter schools accountable for how they treat their students and how they spend the taxpayers' money from day one which is a concept in contradiction to creation of a free market.
Also, an entrepreneur risks his/her own money but charter schools are financed by the government's money. Once the corporation goes belly-up the management of the charter schools can walk away and government and its taxpayers clean up the financial mess while lacking capacity to replace the five years lost at a charter school with money the priority and not the children. The accountability for charter schools in theory is the destruction of the charter schools that does not manage well but charter schools are experimenting with real children and children should not be the collateral damage of failed charter schools. Because charter school operators are playing with government money they are going to be sharp operators figuring how to milk this government cow and children will not be the number one priority. The operators of a charter school will be tempted to pad their salaries and benefits at the expense of the children and staff of a charter school.
Another bad thing about charter schools is that the money they receive in part is diverted into paying state and national organizations to lobby in their interests. Remember this is public funding paying for political lobbying. As charter schools grow so do their state and national lobbies.
It makes no sense to replace democratically elected school board with a school that begins by taking out corporate papers that in effect says public money will now be managed by private industry and you must not regulate me. The language of deregulation is that charter schools will be outcome based. In other words a function box with higher test scores coming out the other end but paid for by taxpayers’ dollars.
One final thing about charter schools is that the high stakes testing is conducted by the charter schools and not a third party. Talk about the wolf guarding the hen house.
Charter schools rose in the age of Enron. Should not the Enron story be a caution tale of what happens when a deregulated free market replaces a public service. And shouldn’t Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan wake up and stop his plan to invest race to the top dollars in a misplaced fantasy about charter schools as a free market solution to improving public education by privatization?
Impact
7 Actions
0 Recruits
Top Causes
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3 Actions
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Organizations
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American Civil Liberties Union1 Action 0 Recruits -
Class Size Matters1 Action 0 Recruits -
California Forward1 Action 0 Recruits -
UNITED FARM WORKERS NATIONAL UNION AFL-CIO1 Action 0 Recruits -
Union of Concerned Scientists1 Action 0 Recruits
