Proactively Serving Our Disenfranchised Youth 65served as chairman of the Board of Trustees for The Ohio State University from 2001-02. His
biographical sketch, as posted to the OSU website, denotes the following: “In 1992 then Ohio
Governor George Voinovich was looking for someone to head a blue-ribbon commission on
education. He tapped David Brennan. The Governor's commission forwarded a plan that led
to significant new opportunities in educational choice across Ohio. In 1997, Brennan received
The Governor's Award for his unique contributions in the field of education” (see
http://trustees.osu.edu/membership/former.php)..) Somehow, I doubt that Mr. Brennan’s
Commission spoke much about egalitarianism.
Finally, no discussion of mine on charter schools could be complete without a brief
overview of Ohio’s charter law enactment and the nepotism that has been derived by and as a
result of said law. The Toledo Blade described it well. To paraphrase from an exposé
published on July 10, 2006 is an effective manner to tell the story. I can only hope that my
paraphrasing indeed does justice to the banality of the overall situation. Nonetheless, here it
is -- Sally Perz, a former Republican lawmaker, helped create Ohio’s charter school laws and
then helped form the school council her daughter now runs... Allison Perz... is currently
paid $85,000 annually to run a conglomerate of charter schools, receives a $4,800 car
allowance in addition to her salary, and was given a $26,000 bonus in October, 2004...
Sally Perz now works for her daughter as a regional representative... monitoring some of
the charter schools (see http://susanohanian.org/show_outrages.html?id=6306)..) Can anyone
not wonder how we have fallen so far, as a profession, to allow this type of shameful, if not
deceitful, action to come about? Greed must be the driving element here; as Siddhartha
Guatama Buddha is known to have once said: “There is no fire like passion, there is no shark
like hatred, there is no snare like folly, and there is no torrent like greed” (Easwaran, 2007).
As I draw this section of the talk to a close, I must offer to all of you my fervent belief that
much of what I have outlined here, with regard to public disregard for what is known and
factual in the world of public education, is driven by greed. So, then, aside from greed, why
do we as a nation often behave in ways contrary to prevailing research findings in education?
To answer that we must look carefully at the self-interests of those who oppose these
findings. As I have done just that for the last two decades, I have come to the conclusion that
those with the most to gain will do everything to continue to make that gain a reality,
regardless of who fall behind or are lost (see http://www.clevescene.com/2007-08-
29/news/education-at-its-worst). Poor children fail—rich children win. Children of color are
more unsuccessful on standardized accountability measures than are Caucasian children.
War is waged on public schools—those with investments win that war because the metrics
are set to allow that win to occur. And, those who sit quietly and watch the predetermined
outcomes will have no one, absolutely no one, to blame but themselves.
AS LEADERS OF LEADERS, WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
The final section of this presentation is, in some ways, the most simplistic to explain and
illustrate but, in other ways, it is the most difficult, because it requires implementation and
action. To change the course with respect to the obvious acts of educational malfeasance that
I have described throughout, professors of education administration must become active and