Commit Executive Director Todd Williams - former Dallas ISD principal and executive director Eddie Conger opens charter school to teach in Chinese

Dallas ISD Trustees received the communication below from Commit Executive Director Todd Willlliams and Education Advisor to  Mayor Mike Rawlings regarding the opening of a new charter school headed by former Dallas ISD employee Eddie Conger.

The purpose is obviously to promote expanding charter schools.

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From: Commit! - Todd Williams [mailto:todd.williams@commit2dallas.org]
Sent: Monday, August 26, 2013 3:59 PM
Subject: New Dallas-area charter school to teach in Chinese

Eddie Conger, former DISD Thomas Jefferson High School principal and Exec. Director over the TJ feeder pattern for first few months of 2012-13 school year, opened a new charter school network with focus on language exposure.  Per attached article, they accepted 2,900 students out of 6,000 applications in first year. Certainly highlights strong parental demand for this feature given enrollment for a brand new concept; this network is the same size as Harmony's footprint in Dallas County after multiple years and 4-5x larger than KIPP (which also expanded in Fall 2014).  As superintendents think about potentially growing schools of choice within districts across the area, this is a concept that certainly seemed to resonate with certain parents and students.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/texas/article/New-Dallas-area-charter-school-to-teach-in-Chinese-4755506.php

New Dallas-area charter school to teach in Chinese

GARLAND, Texas (AP) — Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams was so impressed with plans for students at a new Dallas-area charter school to be taught in English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese that he traveled from his Austin office to offer best wishes.

Williams attended an open house Thursday for International Leadership of Texas school, which opens charter school campuses Monday in Garland and Arlington, The Dallas Morning News (http://dallasne.ws/12uy2OW ) reported.

"I came to praise the good in advance of you doing it," Williams told the audience that filled an auditorium. He saluted school leaders for their plans to make students multilingual and prepare them "for a world that might be a tad bit bigger than Garland, Texas."

International Leadership was one of eight charters approved by the State Board of Education last year. The charter school accepted about 2,900 students in kindergarten through 10th grade; it received about 6,000 applications.

Superintendent Eddie Conger, a retired Marine and former high school principal in the Dallas Independent School District, thanked current and former state board members for or supporting his school's proposal.

"If they had not voted for the merits of it, we would not be here today," Conger said.

Denise Toliver of Rowlett, a parent, said she was impressed by the school's diversity and mission.

"Leadership for a global world is exactly what we're looking for," Toliver said.

Charter schools in Texas are publicly funded but privately managed.

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Information from: The Dallas Morning News, http://www.dallasnews.com

Charter schools help privatize public education

Private charter school choice doesn't help strengthen public education. It helps privatize public education and turn it into a business for entrepreneurs and investors - whether profit or non-profit.

The head of Teach for America is married to one of the top officers of KIPP Charter schools. Would you like to guess the total annual income of this so-called non-profit couple helping poor kids get an education?

Compare their combined incomes to the salary of demoralized public school teachers who serve every day of the front lines of teaching and learning and who are ignored in the discussions about the future of their profession.

Today the big money in education is found in the corporate reform movement funded by large private foundations.  Good education policy should by determined by the public interest - not the private agendas of corporate reform foundations pushing one failed reform after another - all helping to push public education dollars toward private control.

Economist Milton Friedman made it plain before he departed this life. He commented on the opportunity presented by Hurricane Katrina to privatize education in New Orleans:

 "Most New Orleans schools are in ruins," Friedman observed, "as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are now scattered all over the country. This is a tragedy. It is also an opportunity."

"In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans' school system took place with military speed and precision. Within 19 months, with most of the city's poor residents still in exile, New Orleans' public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools." (The Shock Doctrine)

Charter schools were rushed into operation in New Orleans to conduct the largest charter school takeover in the nation while the poor citizens were missing and had no say.  The current Superintendent of Schools in New Orleans is a former Teach for America employee.

"What has emerged since Katrina wiped out New Orleans Schools is the quintessential corporate education model, with corporate charter schools now constituting 3 out of every four schools in the Big Easy.  This system based on the "portfolio model" was developed under the leadership of Paul Vallas, who became the highest paid superintendent in Louisiana history (over $400,000 annually) at at time when large numbers of children in New Orleans did not have textbooks and teachers bought their own chalk.

While Vallas and his toadies claimed the new charter system was open to all comers, what quickly emerged was a school caste system, with the poorest and neediest children shut out of schools where their test scores could damage the charter brands that were set up as the urban model for the nation." Schools Matter

What helps public education is public investment of time and resources to improve traditional public schools. There is no miracle. There is no short-cut. There is no simple solution. There is only hard work, dedication and commitment to providing a quality public education for all children.