Jon Lender of the Hartford Courant describes in detail how the embattled candidate for New London superintendent, Terrence Carter, was the very model of a modern school reformer. He graduated from New Leaders for New Schools, founded by Obama and Clinton advisor Jonathan Schnur.
Terrence Carter had deep roots in the world of “reform.”
“To fully understand the Carter episode, it helps to look at him in the context of a national battle over non-traditional school-reform efforts. The high praise that he received from influential voices in recent years sounds almost ironic now – as New London’s school board has its law firm conducting an investigation that could send him packing.
“Terrence Carter represents a new breed of principals who entered the profession from business through an excellent principal training program called New Leaders for New Schools. The program, which operates in Chicago and five other cities and is about to add two more, imposes higher expectations on principals,” the Chicago Tribune said in an editorial Feb. 4, 2007.
“Carter then was principal of Clara Barton Elementary School, in a poor Chicago neighborhood, after receiving training at New Leaders, a national non-profit school-reform group co-founded by Jonathan Schnur, a former Clinton White House staffer and Obama campaign adviser.”
With his credentials, Carter advanced rapidly in Arne Duncan’s Chicago:
“The Obama administration has been receptive to school-reform efforts by groups like New Leaders. Obama appointed his fellow Illinois native, Arne Duncan, as secretary of education after Duncan ran the Chicago schools, cooperating with school reformers and engineering oft-controversial school “turnaround” projects where “new breed” principals were inserted.
“Chicago was an early battleground in what’s become a national controversy between traditional educators and teacher unions, on one side, and, reform activists such as New Leaders and charter school operators on the other. That fight is playing out in Connecticut, where Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy has appointed a charter school co-founder, Stefan Pryor, as a state education commissioner who supports turnaround efforts in low-performing schools.
“Skeptics about such efforts in Connecticut see more in the Carter controversy than just one candidate whose credentials and character have been questioned.
“This is how the pro-privatization, big-philanthropy-funded networks and organizations tend to work. They pass their own people along and up, greasing rails and plumping resumes as they go. And the main criteria for ‘success’ often seems not to be real leadership characteristics, so much as willingness to be a good soldier when it comes to pushing forward a particular reform agenda,” said Lauren Anderson, an assistant professor of education at Connecticut College in New London.”
Carter’s standing in the school-reform movement was such that in 2009 he accompanied Schnur to a presentation at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. The topic was New Leaders’ partnership with Chicago in the “turnaround” of several low-performing inner-city schools.
“New leaders like Terry” have made “dramatic gains” in student performance, Schnur said in a presentation that helped win an “Innovations in American Government” award from the Kennedy School’s Ash Center for the New Leaders-Chicago schools initiative.
“Terry for example — he didn’t spend 15 years as an assistant principal, but he was a chief learning officer at a Fortune 500 company working with and managing adults, and a former teacher, and brought that blend of skills to bear,” Schnur said in remarks still watchable on YouTube at http://youtu.be/sHjWtePruMU.”
Carter had the strong support of Connecticut State Commissioner Stefan Pryor.
“Anderson spoke against Carter’s hiring at a July 24 meeting in New London when the school board put off a scheduled vote to approve a contract for Carter — and instead instructed its legal counsel, Shipman & Goodwin in Hartford, to look into newspaper disclosures including the fact that Carter had used the titles Dr. and Ph.D. for years without holding a degree from an accredited university.
“Other newspaper revelations: he filed for bankruptcy twice; his application essay included long passages identical with other educators’ writings on the Internet; a national research organization released a copy of a bio that it says Carter submitted in 2011 with the claim that he had a Ph.D. from Stanford University, which Stanford says he does not; and he got a Ph.D. in 1996 from “Lexington University” — which doesn’t have a campus and had a website offering degrees for several hundred dollars with the motto “Order Now, Graduate Today!”
“Carter met in closed session with the school board on July 24, and said afterward that he did nothing wrong, never misrepresented his credentials to anyone now or in the past, and still wanted the job.”
“Carter had been selected by the school board in June, with Pryor’s endorsement, to begin running the troubled New London school system starting Aug. 1. At the time, he was the toast of New London and, in comments quoted by the Day newspaper, he invoked the name of Duncan, Obama’s national education secretary.
“The story noted that the Chicago-based Academy for Urban School Leadership — the education-reform group he’d been working for since leaving his principal’s job in 2010 — had been praised by Duncan and Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama chief of staff who now is mayor of Chicago. Carter said in the story that back in Chicago a decade ago, Duncan, then running the Chicago schools, had handpicked him from the New Leaders training program for school administrators.
“He saw my presentation and said, ‘I need this guy in Chicago,'” Carter said in the Day article.
“Duncan’s deputy press secretary declined a Courant request Thursday an interview with the national school chief or a statement about Carter.”
The Carter story is not about one man, but about the bipartisan movement to disregard credentials, to close schools, to hire ill-prepared TFA, and to favor privately managed schools over community public schools. To favor democratically elected school boards over management by hedge fund millionaires.
I just read that Michelle Rhee has just been appointed to head the New Hope schools in Sacramento that are overseen (owned?) by her husband. I just hope the taxpayers have the sense to keep their eye on the money.
It’s so obvious to me that this whole “school reform” movement is riddled with fraud, deceit and greed, with poor kids as the targets. (Poor schools, rich targets)
What I don’t understand is why the public is tolerating these scams. For example, don’t the people of Sacramento know about the New Hope scams? Why would they allow Kevin Johnson to put his wife in charge of these schools? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Can any of you explain it? Thanks.
Look at Kevin Johnson & Michelle Rhee. Look at the presentations they put on. Look at who their business and political friends are who speak out in support of them and “reform” in the press/media.
Now compare that with whoever is promoting or defending public schools. What do they look like? What is their presentation about? Who are their business and political friends who speak out in the press/media?
Linda,
Must be charters. Is she slowing down her political activities?
It seems that way. I’m going to write to my representative in Sacramento to find out why this sort of hustle is allowed. It’s totally baffling to me!
Rhee has no solutions. She is part of the get in, get out, disrupt, talk bull💩, see this post and look at the chart. She is a failure
So where are all those increases that Michelle Rhee promised — in writing?
The latest DC-CAS scores have been partly released, and at first glance, they appear to show the utter bankruptcy of all of the efforts if Rhee, Henderson and their hangers-on and billionaire sponsors.
Yes, they got rid of just about all the veteran teachers — fired without cause ( like some of my former colleagues) resigned under duress (ditto), or just plain retired (like me). And at some schools, more than 100% of the staff is turned over EVERY SINGLE YEAR as bright-eyed TFA and TNTP recruits are ground to shreds with insane demands and no support, so they quit mid-year.
By their admitted incompetence at running a school system, Rhee, Henderson et al managed to turn over 40% of the students in DC over to charter school operators, quite a few if whom have turned out to be embezzlers and con artists — or major league swindlers like one of the former principal at Noyes ES/EC just down the road from my house in Brookland .
Richard Foye, the interim superintendent stepping in, is a career educator and lifelong member of the New London community. I worked under him a number of years ago, and he should be an improvement over this reformist lemon dance.
This last sentence threw me, Diane: “To favor democratically elected school boards over management by hedge fund millionaires.” Did you mean to say this or the opposite?
(I think we only wish this were true in today’s world.)
Maybe it’s tongue in cheek.
This was exactly my thought as well.
I don’t know how this guy got into the NYTimes past the lockstep reform crowd there, but maybe we’re getting a little diversity of thought, finally 🙂
“Cram schools like the one I taught in — known as hagwons in Korean — are a mainstay of the South Korean education system and a symbol of parental yearning to see their children succeed at all costs. Hagwons are soulless facilities, with room after room divided by thin walls, lit by long fluorescent bulbs, and stuffed with students memorizing English vocabulary, Korean grammar rules and math formulas. Students typically stay after regular school hours until 10 p.m. or later.
Herded to various educational outlets and programs by parents, the average South Korean student works up to 13 hours a day, while the average high school student sleeps only 5.5 hours a night to ensure there is sufficient time for studying. Hagwons consume more than half of spending on private education.
This “investment” in education is what has been used to explain South Koreans’ spectacular scores on the Program for International Student Assessment, increasingly the standard by which students from all over the world are compared to one another.
But a system driven by overzealous parents and a leviathan private industry is unsustainable over the long run, especially given the physical and psychological costs that students are forced to bear.”
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Excellent article & comment thread. Thanks for the tip.
Michelle will always stand by her perp: http://rokdrop.com/2009/11/23/michelle-rhee-linked-to-kevin-johnson-sex-scandal-cover-up/
The real question is: Did any of his turnarounds turn around? The fact that his bio (and I will admit that I did not read it) probably does not mention that fact, of course, is the answer.
From what I read no and his “leadership” was questionable. See comments here.
Abusive of staff and students: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/2014/07/24/66071/take-5-former-cps-officials-credentials-in-question-progressive-politics#comment-43918
Linda, thank you for the link.
The reformers can’t buy better PR than this: “Terrence Carter represents a new breed of principals who entered the profession from business through an excellent principal training program called New Leaders for New Schools. The program, which operates in Chicago and five other cities and is about to add two more, imposes higher expectations on principals,” the Chicago Tribune said in an editorial Feb. 4, 2007.
All of these FAKE POSERS are being anointed/appointed. They have little to no teaching experience, and go up through the ranks by “attending” these created/made up “schools” or “programs” like the “New Leaders” or Broad Academy, and they get their jobs and do as much damage as possible, becoming media and reformer darlings.
Keep exposing the truth. We ask how is this happening that the majority, by and large, don’t know or don’t question how this is going on under our noses – the truth is, unless you are a teacher, have relatives who are teachers, or have kids in school, you don’t really notice.
I’m sick to death of these fakers ruining kids lives and profiting off the ruin.
Arne Duncan–you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do!
Carter in Chicago is a non-item in major media. Collecting a salary at a PhD level on the pay scale without a Phd? How much money for how long? Was is a different, special contract where an advanced degree didn’t matter? When did the Dr claim doctorhood? Major media crowned his great advances in Chicago schools – schools that actually did not make major advances. (Imagine Jeb Bush’s Florida Miracle that never was a miracle being a Carter Chicago Miracle that never was.)
Arne loved Carter. Rahm loved Arne and Carter.
Now we know why it is so important for Karen Lewis to run against Rahm and the Corporate Profiteers backing these puppet minions. Karen will win once the stench of this corruption wafts across the city. After all, our children are at stake, and all school children are our school children.
It is hard to overlook the fact that once again, the Gates foundation is behind something to do with Education Reform. He funded over $20 Million dollars to the “New Leaders” who have been rolled out in this program. Just sickening:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/search#q/k=%22new%20leaders%22&contenttype=Grant
Thanks for the link. I skimmed Mercedes Schneider’s book, A chronicle of Echoes, to find an elaboration on the info. about New Leaders for New Schools. I hope the expose will be in her next book.
Great concluding paragraph! This article illustrates what can happen when competition occurs in an unregulated or lightly regulated atmosphere… people cut corners to get ahead. We’ve seen it in professional sports, in banking, and in politics. Unregulated competition will always result in cheating. MR. Carter took full advantage of the deregulated competition for jobs… Business-minded people bemoan the “bureaucratic procedures” and “onerous regulations” that exist in “government run” schools… I’ve got to believe that had MR. Carter’s credentials been checked through bureaucratic and regulatory channels he would still be in the private sector…
Can I tel you a secret? It all started with a CT mom/educator googling in her pjs.
No lie. Shhhhh!
Was that you, Linda? Woo hoo! (No need to be mum if you have retired, unless you still have to work due to finances, like me.)
BTW, I searched the database where dissertations are typically published, but I didn’t find anything by Carter. It’s probably just too soon though. The folks at Lesley really need to be urged to investigate whether he plagiarized his dissertation by uploading it to http://www.turnitin.com
I promise I won’t tell anyone… way to go!
Yay for moms!
CT, I relay and double check but the real hero appears here often and her family has survived the “special master” who isn’t special at all.
No doubt about it, Linda, you are a hero, too!
I discovered that there are plenty of administrative jobs Carter could probably get in Chicago, including open positions at his former employer AUSL –unless even they have recognized that this man has no scruples– as well as at KIPP. I’d love to see reports of his taking away the desks of their TFA teachers! I bet he’s just hanging tight in CT so he can negotiate compensation for promissory estoppel.
Thanks for all you do!
Firewalls were built around this man using powerful people, money and institutions. He believed he was Superman, encouraged, rewarded and protected by a grand delusion. There is nothing real about this kind of behavior and nothing moral.
Martin Buber once wrote, “Where they are is unveiled as nothing. Those who walk about in this hour of the world in which vileness is exalted among the sons of men, have been revealed in their nothingness. Their nothingness has become their reality. The only being they have is their nothingness.”
In other words, legend in their own minds.
I think many of these “reformers” make the assumption that principles of business directly apply to education. They are interested in selling a product while most teachers I know seeing teaching as a process, and they see their students as evolving life long learners having the tools they need to continue to grow. For many the motivation to privatize is greed. They have no training or miracles; their main goal is to make a profit. That is why so many fail. The “reformers” have done an excellent job of propaganda scapegoating teachers and unions. They have billionaires on their team. We have been less successful in getting out our message, and we lack their resources. All public education has suffered because of the failure of urban public education. I go crazy when I hear “the system is broken” because it’s a lie for the majority of public schools, but we’re all thrown in the same pot by the media. We need to work on a new message for the public. Public education equals the kind of democracy envisioned by our founding fathers, and we need to sell it at every opportunity.
Has anyone analyzed the testing data from these “turnaround schools” under Carter’s administration? I will begin with the the 2007 Chicago Tribune editorial referenced above. Surely the Tribune found Carter’s schools to show significant gains in student achievement before praising New Leaders for New Schools.
If you click AYP reports (Annual Yearly Progress), you will see that the Barton school reached AYP on one or two occasions only (not that I believe in these numbers at all!). Despite plans, turnarounds, watch lists, and Terrence Carter the New Leader, it looks like the results were underwhelming.
http://cps.edu/SchoolData/Pages/SchoolData.aspx