New Orleans Membuat SBI Juga

Sekolah2 di New Orleans menjadi bagian dari sebuah eskperimen, tanpa minta izin kepada orang tua atau kepada siswa.

Sebagian dari sekolah negeri ditentukan sebagai “charter schools”. Sekolah charter ini (ibarat “Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional” yang ingin dibuat oleh Diknas kita) akan mendapatkan tambahan anggaran yang besar dari negara (jutaan dolar), tambahan fasilitas, guru yang berkualifikasi, dan hak untuk menolak anak masuk dengan berbagai alasan. Ada siswa yang ditolak karena kelas sudah penuh, karena ranking siswa kurang tinggi, dan lain-lain. Siswa yang punya ganguan belajar (seperti ADHD) atau gangguan emosional akan ditolak juga. Berarti sekolah2 charter ini sudah menjadi sekolah elit dan semuanya dibayar dengan uang pajak rakyat, dengan banyak tambahan dari organisasi swasta.

Sekolah yang tersisa disebut "Recovery School District" (RSD). Sekolah RSD ini layak sekolah negeri yang biasa, tapi lebih parah lagi karena berada di wilayah New Orleans yang masih dalam keadaan hancur setelah kena Badai Katrina dan banjir besar. Sekolah RSD dengan sengaja tidak akan mendapatkan dana jutaan dolar yang diberikan pada sekolah charter (inilah eksperimennya). Sekolah RSD punya banyak guru yang tidak berkualifikasi, dan jumlah guru sangat kurang. Siswa di sekolah RSD mengeluh bahwa sekolah mereka ibarat penjara, karena ada lebih banyak satpam daripada guru. Siswa sering menghabiskan harinya dengan duduk di aula menunggu para guru yang datang telat.

Mayoritas dari anak di sekolah RSD berkulit hitam (dengan arti mereka kaum yang lebih miskin ketimbang anak berkulit putih yang masuk sekolah charter).

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Does this sound familiar????

Apa ada bedanya dengan Sekolah Bertaraf Internasional (SBI)?

Ini sebuah eksperimen terhadap pendidikan anak yang rasis, mewujudkan perasaan elit dan mengabaikan hak bagi setiap anak bangsa untuk mendapatkan kualitas pendidikan yang sama dari pemerintah.

Untuk mendukung proses perubahan dari sekolah negeri yang daftar kembali sebagai sekolah charter, seluruh dari 4000 guru di New Orleans (yang sudah punya serikat guru) dipecat oleh pemerintah.

Kedzaliman pemerintah terhadap anak kecil tidak ada batas, dan ternyata ada negara lain yang sama jeleknya dengan Diknas kita.

Menyedihkan sekali.

Sebagian dari teks aslinya:

There is a massive experiment being performed on thousands of primarily African American children in New Orleans. No one asked the permission of the children. No one asked permission of their parents. This experiment involves a fight for the education of children.

This is the experiment.

The First Half

Half of the nearly 30,000 children expected to enroll in the fall of 2007 in New Orleans public schools have been enrolled in special public schools, most called charter schools. These schools have been given tens of millions of dollars by the federal government in extra money, over and above their regular state and local money, to set up and operate. These special public schools are not open to every child and do not allow every student who wants to attend to enroll. Some charter schools have special selective academic criteria which allow them to exclude children in need of special academic help. Other charter schools have special admission policies and student and parental requirements which effectively screen out many children. The children in this half of the experiment are taught by accredited teachers in manageable size classes. There are no overcrowded classes because these charter schools have enrollment caps allowing them to turn away students. These schools also educate far fewer students with academic or emotional disabilities. Children in charter schools are in better facilities than the other half of the children. These schools are getting special grants from Laura Bush to rebuild their libraries and grants from other foundations to help them educate. These schools do educate some white children along with African-American children. These are public schools, but they are not available to all public school students.

The Other Half

The other half of public school students, over ten thousand children, have been assigned to a one-year-old experiment in public education run by the State of Louisiana called the "Recovery School District" (RSD) program. The education these children receive will be compared to the education received by the first half in the charter schools. These children are effectively what is called the "control group" of an experiment Ð those against whom the others will be evaluated.

The RSD schools have not been given millions of extra federal dollars to operate. The new RSD has inexperienced leadership. Many critical vacancies exist in their already-insufficient district-wide staff. Many of the teachers are uncertified. In fact, the RSD schools do not yet have enough teachers, even counting the uncertified, to start school in the fall of 2007. Some of the RSD school buildings scheduled to be used for the fall of 2007 have not yet been built.

In the first year of this experiment, the RSD had one security guard for every 37 students. Students at John McDonough High said their RSD school, which employed more guards than teachers, had a "prison atmosphere." In some schools, children spent long stretches of their school days in the gymnasium waiting for teachers to show up to teach them.

There is little academic or emotional counseling in the RSD schools. Children with special needs suffer from lack of qualified staff. College-prep math and science classes and language immersion are rarely offered. Classrooms keep filling up as new children return to New Orleans and are assigned to RSD schools.

Many of the RSD schools do not have working kitchens or water fountains. Bathroom facilities are scandalous. Teachers at one school report there are two bathrooms for the entire school - one for all the male students, faculty and staff and another for all the females in the building.

Hardly any white children attend this half of the school experiment.

These are the public schools available to the rest of the public school students.

Read both articles here:

Part One:

New Orleans's Children Fighting for the Right to Learn
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Report

Thursday 09 August 2007

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080907A.shtml

Part Two

Part II: New Orleans's Children Fighting for the Right to Learn
By Bill Quigley
t r u t h o u t | Report

Friday 10 August 2007

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081007C.shtml