Competing with the Suburbs
Dear Competitors:
Robert Bettmann and Erich Martel, below, call attention to articles
that they have published on other sites. Please post messages here
yourselves when you have written (or read) something about DC that you
think will benefit themail’s members. Here are two other articles that I
would like to recommend. "Urban School Reform Is Really About Land
Development (Not Kids)," by Leslie Fenwick, dean of the Howard
University School of Education, published by Valerie Strauss in her "The
Answer Sheet" column,
http://tinyurl.com/jwmyrj8;
and "The Triumph of Suburbia," by Joel Kotkin in New Geography,
http://tinyurl.com/boptfz5.
Kotkin’s article makes an important points in support of one of my
recurring arguments in themail. Those of us who love cities and living
in cities cannot afford to look down on and dismiss the attraction of
suburbs. If you don’t like something yourself, that’s fine. But if you
can’t sympathize with the attraction that other people have for it, then
you can’t understand it. Some people like living in a tiny apartment
within easy walking distance of many bars and a subway stop. But for
many people — most people — that is not their highest aspiration. Cities
cannot compete with suburbs if they ignore the charms of suburbia, and
if their urban planners, in their personal scorn for spacious detached
houses with well-trimmed lawns, feel they don’t have to compete.
Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com
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Is anyone out their having any problems with the Department of Motor
Vehicles? As far as taking the Learners permit, they do not give the
answers anymore in the back of the book. Even though I study hard, I
can’t seem to pass this test. The council, if they really want to make
some money, need to start letting us take the test as many times as we
want and charge us for it, instead of just letting us take it six times
out of a year!
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I published a brief op-ed in the Huffington Post related to
legislative earmarking, which seems to be making a comeback in the
council, "Don’t Let Earmarks Return to DC,"
http://tinyurl.com/ovngpqf.
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Argument for More Charter Funds Is Flawed
Erich Martel, ehmartel at starpower dot net
I wrote an article that was published in the May 29 Current
newspapers [ http://tinyurl.com/lwa39lw,
page 9] in response to a commentary by Robert Cane, executive director
of FOCUS (Friends of Choice in Urban Schools) that appeared in The
Current and the Washington Examiner on May 15.
My article argued that charter schools are boosting their perceived
success rates by shedding and transferring their less successful and
most disruptive students. "The council and the public deserve to know
the test scores and graduation status of these students, as well as the
reason for their removal from charter high schools. How can the mayor
and council tolerate charter schools receiving public funds and then
selectively removing large numbers? If the average transfer rates of all
DC public schools (14 percent) and all charter high schools (41 percent)
were switched, the impact of the charter transfer privilege on school
performance rates would be dramatically revealed: The charter graduation
rate would drop from 77 to 52 percent, while the DC Public Schools
average would rise from 56 to 81 percent."
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Volunteer for the DC Statehood Survey Campaign
Bill Mosley,
billmosley@comcast.net
Would you like to be part of the movement to win Statehood for the
District of Columbia? Become a volunteer in the Statehood Survey
Campaign being organized by the Stand Up! for Democracy in DC Coalition,
better known as "FREE DC." You’ll ask visitors to the National Mall this
summer about their views on Statehood and help dispel myths standing in
the way of full citizenship for DC residents. Join dozens of volunteers
working to make DC the 51st state. The campaign starts in June so sign
up now. Volunteer by E-mail at StandUp_FreeDC@yahoo.com or call 232-2500
to sign up. Stand Up! Free DC! Statehood Now!
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I much appreciate the link on the May 5 issue of themail to the April
22 report "Market-oriented education reforms’ rhetoric trumps reality."
Having been inundated with corporate "reform" speak for the past six
years, it was a challenge to read another sixty five or so more pages of
it, but I wanted to know if the authors lived up to the claims in the
report’s title, and I think they do.
For all who are troubled by the scourge of corporate "reformers" that
has descended on America’s public education system since the No Child
Left Behind Act eleven years ago, it is an invaluable thing to have a
document that gathers a rather random "set" of "reforms" and the massive
amount of information about their effects in the real world of three
major cities into one place. By doing that, the authors have helped to
make sense of what’s been going on while at the same time showing how
little, if any, sense the "reforms" actually make.
More importantly, much needed attention is given to the effects of
these "reforms" on our democracy, to the grabbing and controlling nature
of the "reformer’s" campaign to put our elected representatives to work
exclusively for them. What is clear to me from this report, and all my
other experience, is that these "reforms" are weeds that have grown up
out of the root of NCLB and its local companion in DC, the Public
Education Reform Amendment Act of 2007. To get rid of the weeds, we will
have to pull up them up by their roots.
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CLASSIFIEDS — EVENTS
Scott Seligman at Tenley-Friendship Library,
June 5
Mary Alice Levine,
maryalicelevine@starpower.net
Please join the Friends of the Tenley-Friendship Library on Wednesday
night, June 5, at 7:00 p.m., when we welcome author Scott Seligman on
the second floor of the Library. Scott will be talking about his book,
The First Chinese American: The Remarkable Life of Wong Chin Foo.
This biography is an account of the life and times of one of the most
famous Chinese-Americans, and one of the earliest campaigners for racial
equality. Wong Chin Foo (1847-1898) founded America’s first association
of Chinese voters and testified before Congress in favor of repealing
laws that denied Chinese-Americans citizenship. The book will be on sale
after the talk. The Tenley-Friendship Library is on the corner of
Wisconsin Avenue and Albemarle Street, NW. Take the Red Line to
Tenleytown.
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