Over the past few days, I have posted some astonishing articles from Eclectablog, the Michigan blogger who has been following the story of Governor Rick Snyder’s misnamed “Education Achievement Authority.”
This is a special district set up for low-performing schools from across the state. The governor’s plan is to continue expanding the EAA under the leadership of John Covington, a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy. In his previous job in Kansas City, the district lost accreditation shortly after Covington decamped to Michigan. Not a stellar record as a turnaround star. The Broad Foundation gave EAA $10 million to keep it afloat.
Eclectablog has printed the accounts of teachers who work for the EAA. All describe horrific conditions for teaching and learning. Neither students nor teachers are safe. The technology is ineffectual and experimental. The schools have no curriculum or discipline and poor leadership. They seem to be staffed mainly by inexperienced Teach for America recruits.
On February 13, the board of the EAA will meet to hear Covington explain and deny all that has been reported by Eclectablog.
Here is another disturbing account from a current teacher in one of the EAA schools. He or she is anonymous for obvious reasons.
One small part of that account:
Discipline and Safety at Henry Ford High School: It is a fact that the executive leadership of the EAA has dozens upon dozens of e-mails from Henry Ford staff outlining the serious problems at Ford. These include details of a complete lack of consistent discipline procedures since the beginning of last year, hallways jam-packed with up to a hundred kids in the middle of various afternoon class periods, and little to no consistent consequences for tardies, absences, etc. I can often look out into the hall during 5th, 6th, or 7th hour and see kids running everywhere however they please. There are no consistent procedures for clearing the hallways or disciplining truant / skipping students – sometimes a random hall sweep, sometimes suspensions, sometimes a brief trip to the office… But no student could tell you what the policy for being late or tardy is. It’s all random.
Discipline problems creep into the classrooms. I am cussed out by students literally every day. I don’t go to administrators much about it anymore because they never did anything about it when I did – the students would get a slap on the wrist and come back to class unpunished or, at the most, chewed out.
Last year, the smell of marijuana would regularly come into the classroom. Kids have openly smoke joints in the hallways. Prostitution, too, was a rampant issue in the school.
The EAA knows about all of this. It has repeatedly sent its executive leadership into our school in response to concerned e-mails from staff that date all the way back to September 2012.
The important point of this expose is that the EAA should not become part of the “reformer” narrative of “success” stories, which are all too common, where failed policies get dressed up in fancy clothes and sent out to the nation as models. Don’t believe the hype. The EAA is a model for failure.
This description is very much a part of the Broad Foundation pattern nationwide. It begins in Broad-influenced elementary schools and flows up through the grade levels. All discipline-related incidents are ignored so that they do not occur in documentation. When something does jump off that manages to contradict “The Official Version”, a teacher is targeted and charged with incompetence as an explanation for the incident.
One way or another, it is all made to look AS IF the incidents do not and could not exist. “Not here. Not in our school or system because we are Broad Trained and we know what we are doing.”
This is the BIG LIE and it is the Ignorance+Arrogance Cocktail undiluted.
The Broad-selected leaders are completely ignorant of how to deal with the routine discipline issues that arise in schools and they are also arrogant enough to believe that such ignorance and incompetence can be covered up. Hire a Broad-trained public dis-information ‘officer’ like Terry Abbott and leave the cover-up to him. These chaotic institutions are then left to decay and collapse from the massive dysfunction they engender. Looks an awful like “The Enemy Within” staring Jason Robards and Forest Whitaker…an old movie about a coup in the USA.
kathyirwin1: so the charterite/privatizer model massages, disappears, tortures and makes up stats & numbers in order to make ‘worst’ practices appear ‘best’ practices?
Say it ain’t so!
But, but, but, what did they do in days of yore when they didn’t have the stats & numbers we have today?
“In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.” [Stephen Leacock]
Ah, the good old days, the good old days…
😎
If you really dive into the EAA, it looks like the business plan was predicated on growth.
They relied on private funding to establish the entity but that was just “bridge” funding. The plan after the initial round of billionaire bucks was to have the experiment codified into Michigan law and start adding students, at 7k per year. To add students they had to take over additional schools. At one point they were projecting 46k students, added. To get there they had to take over more public schools.
It looks like the experiment was unsustainable without taking over more schools. The business plan was predicated on growth. I suspect the plan was to take advantage of economies of scale by relying on rapid growth and the computer instruction model they use.
It’s just a remarkably risky strategy for a (supposedly) public entity. Unless they grew, and fast, they don’t have enough money to operate.
This situation they created grew worse when enrollment dropped and they started losing the students they had.
http://www.democracy-tree.com/education-achievement-authority-fiscally-repsonsible/
Thank you Electablog for reporting the truth to the people of Michigan. Don’t you wonder why The Detroit Free Press and News have failed to investigate and tell the people the truth? The people in the neighborhoods know what is going on. Why do the papers feel the need to cover-up the truth? I really don’t understand how people like Snyder and Covington look themselves in the mirror. I think it has been proven that this “reform” is an absolute failure. I feel sorry for the teachers in the EAA. I’m sure they all had dreams of making a difference with young people, etc. I wonder why more TFA don’t come out and tell the truth.
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.
Diane: MEA Conferance in Detroit today. I hear a speaker directed people to you and badass teachers asso. Hope discussion had more meat, details later.
I just left a charter academy after several years for a position in the EAA. I feel as if I left the frying pan for the fire. Our building has no curriculum for any grade level. No books! After spending the last five years working with students below grade level, I am familiar with creating my own developmentally appropriate material. I don’t even have this option at my building because teachers don’t have access to copiers or laminators! And let’s not even discuss the condition of the building!