With the DOE laying off 800 school aides from DC 37, there is still a need for the enormous amount of work they do still needs to be filled. And how are some schools filling the gap? Many are throwing the work onto teachers if they can get away with it - meaning, no strong chapter leader.
The other option is to use - er - misuse - students, often by pulling them from academic areas. Though I'm sure many of these students might relish the idea of doing grown-up work while getting out of class, in fact they are being used as slave labor.
ADDED COMMENT by Susan:
Sick, sick, sick is how I felt reading about the kids being pulled out of class to do clerical work formerly done by the school aids. Even sicker when I remembered where I first heard about this. Yes, it is the brainchild of Chris Whittle, who wrote about putting kids to work in their schools in his 2005 book Crash Course: Imagining a Better Future for Public Education . I can't believe the DOE is actually allowing it to be implemented.
Here is a description of his plans from Jim Horn's review of the book (full review at http://www.edrev.info/reviews/rev442.htm)--
" In this bravado new world of educational corporate welfare that Whittle projects out to the year 2030, the public school will remain public, in that public dollars pay the bills for personnel, transportation, food service, maintenance, and, of course, the contracting fee to Edison, Inc. or its MacSchool counterparts—yet private, in that education corporations organize, manage, hire principals who hire teachers, consult, assess, make merit pay recommendations based on those assessments, and, of course, get paid with public dollars that, in turn, make a 10% profit for the shareholders for the company. If this doesn’t sound good enough to get you to spend the $25 for this kind of visionary thinking, then add to this emerging educational utopia the need to increase class size, severely reduce the number of teachers, turn students into part-time clerical workers; and I am sure that you will agree that Whittle’s book will be required reading, at least by every reform industry lobbyist on K Street who is sure to get goose bumps at Whittles’ recurring focus on the 400 billion dollars that Americans spend on K-12 education every year."
Parents should strenuously object to their children being used in this way -- starting with the principal's office, then their CEC and city council members, and especially Christine Quinn. I'm sure Mr. Whittle is not planning to put children to work in his "world class" Avenues private school. Or maybe he his, the better to maximize shareholder returns on this "for-profit" school.
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THE CORPORATE GRAVY TRAIN ROLLS ON
Danger: Corporate Sponsored Charters Coming
In this scam a corporation sets up a charter for its employees and gets 8 grand per child from public funding and supplements the rest.
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4 comments:
They will give the kids credit for htis and call it life experience. That way, they can get rid of a few more teachers as well.
Pissed Off- I like the way you think...
Yes, sometime before Whittle's book came out, when Edison Schools was still riding high, Whittle announced the child labor strategy as one of those "innovations" for which charter schools are so celebrated.
Of course the money saved with this innovative practice was designated to flow into the pockets of private investors. As I recall, Whittle was looking to kids to perform custodial functions too -- they can scrub toilets as well as an adult, right? Just another example of American ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking!
Seriously, of course, it's not unusual for schools to have students assist in the office within reason -- it's a matter of degree. When it's openly being done to allow the investors more profit (as in Edison's case) or just to keep taxes low for billionaires, it's time to occupy Wall Street.
I saw some kids in our school who can't afford their school fee is forced to work in the school as a carpenter and a maintenance crew which is against in the national child labor act.
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