I received the following comment from Kenya Bradshaw, the executive director of Stand for Children in Tennessee. She was responding to the posts about the transition plan for merging Shelby County and Memphis. The transition plan envisions an expansion of the number and proportion of students in privately managed charter schools, from 4% to 19%, and a transfer of $212 million out of the Memphis public school budget.
Ms. Bradshaw seems to be a sincere and committed person, and I suspect she has no idea of the enmity that Jonah Edelman of Stand for Children generated by his performance a year ago at the Aspen Ideas Festival, when he boasted of stripping away job protections from teachers in Illinois, specifically in Chicago. Or the enmity he created when he launched a campaign in Massachusetts to eliminate teacher job protections. Or the enmity he gained by converting Stand for Children into a multi-million dollar corporate organization that advocates for privatization as well as the reduction of teachers’ job status. There was a time when Stand for Children was a grassroots advocacy group that actually stood for children. Now, it is part of the corporate reform movement that is pushing the untested and often failed ideas of the wealthiest, most powerful people in this nation on children and school teachers.
I’d like to hear Jonah Edelman explain why he thinks it is a good idea to strip teachers of all job protections, leaving them at the mercy of communities that might fire them for teaching evolution or the wrong novel. And why he thinks it is a progressive idea to hand public schools and children over to entrepreneurs.
| Dear Mrs. Ravitch,My name is Kenya Bradshaw, I am the TN Executive Director of Stand For Children. First let me thank you and Jim Horn for your analysis of the Transition Plan that the Transition Planning Commission developed for the Merger of Memphis and Shelby County Schools although I disagree with your attempt to use one data point as an attempt to showcase the flaws in the plan. I believe that you both should highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and let us know. But to call out one item lacks journalistic integrity and does not offer a fair prospective to the people who read your blogs. To do an in depth analysis of the process I would urge you to read the over 10,000 pages of documents every member poured through or read the transcripts of the over 400 hours worth of meetings. I would also ask that you research the history behind how this happened and read Professor Daniel Keil’s report on schools in Memphis and Dr. Marcus Polhman’s recent book on education in our county then come visit Memphis.I was humbled to work with such committed people who came up with recommendations such as instituting a service learning model so that all students complete at least 40 hours of volunteer service prior to graduating, expanding Art, Music, Pre-K and STEM courses, and a parent advisory board to help engage more parents at every school. My summary in no way does justice to the recommendations so I would urge others to use the link about to read them.Charters: Charters are already a part of the landscape in TN. We projected for what the reality of our current educational landscape forecasts and also took into account the Achievement School Districts growth. First let me say that all schools in the ASD are not charters some schools are directly run by the state. Personally as a native Memphian I was unsure of what this meant for schools initially so I reached out to Chris Barbic and I must say that he exceeded my expectations. He CARES about not only what happens with the schools data numbers but what happens to the children in the community and the community as a whole. One of your commenters said that parents and teachers did not have a say in this process. I must completely disagree since I attended the first round of community sessions when the ASD team meet with parents. I also know that they meet with every staff member and solicited feedback about what was working and what needed to improve and offered each the opportunity to return to MCS if they did not want to be a part of the ASD. I ask that others just also give them a chance because I do not see any of the people complaining running to get their children into these schools. This work is personal for me because my zoned schools fall into the ASD and it directly affects my family. My family deserves better schools than the current options that are available to them. As an avid supporter of public education we must work to improve our system as a whole and charters in my opinion serve as a tool to improve schools. Charters are not the enemy of public schools and public schools are not perfect. As a nation we should stop painting the picture that it is one or the other if you support charters you hate traditional public schools. I support strong public schools and strong public charter schools and will work to hold each group equally accountable.Stand for Children: I am not only an employee of Stand for Children I am also a proud member and came to this organization through its grassroots advocacy to advocate for school funding in Chattanooga, TN. I then became a community organizer then worked my way up to being the ED. I am a first generation college graduate who returned to Memphis to work to improve the system that I LOVE and graduated from. If I ever felt that anything I was doing was not in the best interest of children my moral convictions would not allow me to proceed. At my core I believe that you are a brilliant woman and deeply care about what happens to all children but I do believe that you are unfairly targeting our organization and painting everyone who works in “education reform” with the same brush. Judge us fairly.I work with some of the best people in the country and they spend their lives working to support and build parents up to let them lead on redefining what needs to happen for children in our communities. They don’t believe that we can wait to improve outcomes for children and neither do we.If you are interested I would host a meeting for you in Memphis or anywhere TN to hear parents stories about what has been happening in education. I assure you that these will not all be sad pity stories because great things are happening at many schools across TN. But our parents as do we believe if there is any school that is not providing a solid educational foundation to children we should advocate to change that. Come meet our organizers and members hear about our work and then fairly judge us. I would also like to extend an offer for you and Mr. Horn (Please share the invitation with him) to talk to me or any other TPC member Please let me know if either of you are interested. I believe that our Country should be watching what happens in Shelby County. (Lastly please excuse any spelling or grammatical errors I am typing on my phone and the small screen is making it hard to proof) |
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If Ms. Bradshaw DOESN’T realize how Edelman has destroyed the credibility of SFC, she’s living under a rock. She may be sincere, but ignorance in this case is inexcusable. Naturally, not all the folks who work for this group or the similarly deceptively-named CHILDREN FIRST group Michelle Rhee is running are as cynical as the folks at the top. But it’s not as if it’s difficult to find ample evidence of what the likes of Edelman and Rhee are about.
Interesting contention that you should read 10,000 pages of documents before expressing an opinion.
Some other interesting “data points”:
Over 400 hours of meeting time would be over 50 eight hour days of meetings, ten weeks worth or two and a half months worth.
The average reader reads a page of non-technical writing in about two minutes, technical writing in 5-6 minutes. Considering that the “over 10,000 pages of reading” was probably almost all technical, let’s use an average of 4 minutes per page. And that roughly equates to an additional 667 hours of reading (10,000 X 4 = 40,000/60 minutes) which then comes out to a little over 83 days of reading time = about 17 weeks = an additional 4 and a quarter months worth of time on top of the two and half months above.
So the process took over 6 and a half months of working eight hour days to complete. Now granted perhaps not everyone showed up at all the meetings and not everyone read everything, or that perhaps some reading was done at the meetings, that is/was one hell of a commitment on Ms. Bradshaw’s part. I wonder if she got paid for that time or took off work to do this.
She certainly showed “due diligence”, but drank a lot of kool-aide in the process.
I can’t believe she wrote that entire entry on her phone….impressive or maybe it was sent from Jonah?
Ms. Bradshaw:
Are you aware of Edelman’s machinations in other states and his true intentions once he invades a state? Have you read the news articles/videos linked here and on previous blogs? Did Jonah need to approve your response? Do some research on your organizations mission in other states. Possibly the full implementation of the SFC mission isn’t quite complete yet in Memphis, TN. Stay informed and alert!
Here Ms Bradshaw is hosting screenings of ‘Waiting for Superman”: http://yourdailyupdateblog.com/archives/6703
Here Ms. Bradshaw is telling others to “stop propagating untruths” : http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13729625
She may be sincere, but she is not consistent.
Beware if Jonah Edelman/Stand for Children is coming to your state. A wolf in sheep’s clothing for sure. Educate yourself….read the links above and here:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/disaster-capitalism-k-12-education-and-corp
And
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/140448-as-schools-struggle-to-get-better-is-selling-out-/?page=2#TOPCONTENT
Ms. Bradshaw wrote, “Charters are already a part of the landscape in TN. We projected for what the reality of our current educational landscape forecasts and also took into account the Achievement School Districts growth.”
That’s absolutely true. As I mentioned on the Memphis post yesterday, the ASD was the brainchild of the state, not the local board or the Transition Planning Commission. It was part of the First to the Top Act to garner money from RTTT.
I believe I was the commenter she referred to elsewhere in her response. To clarify, I was not suggesting the ASD did not meet parents. What I was saying, however, was that the decision to form the ASD in the first place was not one in which parents had any say.
I appreciate the time Ms. Bradshaw and the other members of the TPC put into developing the plan. I did not get the impression from Jim Horn’s piece that he was citing the TPC as the creators of the ASD but simply analyzing how the TPC’s plan lays bare the heavy financial impact charter expansion will have on the city’s public schools and their employees.
Nonetheless, I disagree with Ms. Bradshaw that to “call out one item lacks journalistic integrity.” To criticize a particular recommendation within the plan isn’t tantamount to lambasting the whole shebang. For instance, I like many of the recommendations she listed in her response, but I oppose the recommendation for teacher compensation (do away with increased pay for years of experience or advanced degrees; award pay increases/incentives and advancement opportunities for high-performing teachers (think test scores) and those who work in hard-to-staff schools).
From today’s Commercial Appeal: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/jul/03/herenton-makes-a-pitch-for-charter-schools/?CID=happeningnow
Naturally, the Gates Foundation is involved.
A little tidbit: “Tennessee has become the nation’s top state for charter school growth, Memphis leading the way with 31 charter schools set to open this fall.”
This is from 2010: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/pages/new-charter-school-partnerships-101207.aspx
Do any readers teach in the initial set of cities to sign on to the compact? If so, what have been the results?