Benjamin Riley, formerly of the NewSchools Venture Fund (which invests in charter schools and other “reform” ideas) has put together a group called Deans for Impact. This group will advocate for data-based decisions, perhaps including test-based evaluation of teachers (VAM).
Here is the group’s website.
Paul Thomas comments on this group in this post. These deans, he says, are announcing that they want to ruin their own field with data, data, data, without waiting for the feds to make them do it.
He writes:
Accountability seems to be a SF [science fiction] plague, spawned in the bowels of government like the root of the zombie apocalypse.
Pick your analogy, but the newest round isn’t really any different than all the rounds before.
The USDOE announces accountability for teacher education, in part using value-added methods drawn from student scores on high-stakes tests.
NEPC [National Education Policy Center] offers an evidence-based review, refuting accountability based on student test scores as a way to reform teacher education.
But in the wake of misguided bureaucracy and policy, possibly the most disturbing part of this pattern of doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is that educators themselves invariably line up demanding that we be allowed to do that same thing ourselves (including our own continuous complaints about all the bureaucracy with which we gleefully fall in line).
And Thomas adds:
Let’s be clear, instead, that accountability (a lack of or the type of) has never been the problem; thus, accountability is not the solution.
Let’s be clear that while teacher quality and teacher preparation obviously matter, they mostly cannot and do not matter when the teaching and learning conditions in schools prevent effective teaching, when children’s live render them incapable of learning.
Mercedes Schneider also wrote about this new reformer organization. As you might expect, Schneider delves into Riley’s background at NewSchools Venture Fund. She also analyzes the funder of “Deans for Impact.”
She writes:
So now, Riley has started a “venture” using (according to EdWeek) a one-million-dollar grant from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. Ironically, in 2013, the Schustermans also donated over one million dollars to Teach for America (TFA), whose temp teachers are “trained” in five weeks and who are assumed prepared because, after all, they are “talent.”
In 2013, the Schustermans also supported Stand for Children (SFC) for $2.3 million; the Gates-Walton-Broad-funded NewSchools Venture Fund (NSVF) for $500,000; the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) for $25,000; KIPP charter schools, for over $100,000; Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) for $50,000, and Gates-Walton-Broad-funded Education Pioneers (EP) for $500,000. All of these organizations are known for devaluing education via privatization and test-score worship.
And now, thanks to Riley and his Schusterman million, we have deans who are willing to follow a guy who helped draft legislation to create teacher-prep charter schools.
Be careful, O Deans of Impact.
If teacher-prep charter “academies” are somehow worked into your traditional teacher training programs, your programs run the risk of being supplanted by a privatized substitute.
Higher ed charter co-location.
Already, you have agreed to play the test-score-driven, common-metric game easily recognized as a privatization gateway. Too, Riley is advertising that he wants to “remain relatively small,” which makes you sound like an unsuspecting petri dish for a man who wishes his GREAT legislation might find a testing ground.
Perhaps not. Perhaps I am wrong.
But watch out.
Deans for Impact.
Their acronym should be DIM.
Since the New Venture Fund is so heavily populated with Teach for Awhile venture capitalists who had 5 weeks of training before inflicting themselves on their students in depressed urban schools, isn’t it somewhat illogical for them to be touting accountability in our nation’s legitimate teachers colleges? Or is it all just part of the bigger plan to scrap university schools in favor of Benjamin Riley’s more profitable alternative teacher prep mills. I notice that one of the “deans” now works for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As Anthony Newley once said: Stop the world. I want to get off!
Notice the labels these DEFORMERS use to LABEL THEMSELVES…Deans for IMPACT, no less. Guess we should be happy the word positive isn’t their title.
Their acronym would fit, meteors make an impact, so do natural disasters. No one said their impact was a desirable one.
I love that you quoted Anthony Newley – he also sang “Pop goes the weasel” equally applicable to fraud deformers.
“Deans for Impact intends to be a joyous, rigorous place to work. We believe that a great workplace is one where you are amazed by your colleagues every day. We want to inject some of the values of start-up culture into higher education by moving nimbly, iterating quickly to improve, and collaborating constantly. We will live our values and demonstrate them through our actions.”
The above is DIM’s statement of their “culture”, found if you click on the “Careers” tab on the website. (No, I was just curious). My close reading reveals several dangerous signals. The scary use of the word “rigorous” in the first sentence. The second sentence which speaks of being “amazed” by your colleagues every day ( likely to be true if you are an education dean working for DIM). The third sentence’s reference to “injecting” “start-up” culture ( a bacillus?) into higher education. The strange goal of “iterating quickly to improve”, as though repeating something over and over again at a high rate of speed can help inform and educate. The expressed desire of “collaborating constantly”, something DIM and the other deformers have taken away from teachers. And finally, the last sentence. At last, some truth.
By the way, if you a Teach for Awhile grad, DIM is looking for a few good “policy coordinators” and “systems analysts”.
Great job on discerning and highlighting the spin. This is the same rhetoric being pushed by the PR advisors to non-profits seeking funds under the social impact bond program also known as pay for success.
The rhetorical moves are intended to set up a sharp contrast between the labyrinth of bureaucratic structures foisted on public education by federal overreach, repeating the implicit claim that nothing about public education is sufficiently “rigorous,” and valorizing the nimble, “amazing,” and collaborative options that will IMPACT ( transform ) teacher education.
Of particular interest is the willingness of these deans to take money that may in the end damage the reputation of their institutions. Of course all of these deans seem to be headed in the same direction as the Obama/Duncan/Gates initiatives with much talk about data-driven decisions, and a studied disregard for the new news that 50% of the students in out public schools are living in poverty– the single most important factor in school performance. That 50% number comes from report this week in EdWeek.
Dr. Mercedes Schneider is one of the best investigative researchers uncovering the corruption of the corporate privatization movement that is destroying public education. Her blog is 2 years old today! Let’s give her a wonderful birthday present from all of us who read her blog religiously (deutsch29)
Mercedes is a public school teacher who speaks out for public schools but so far she has not been paid for her numerous speaking engagements (other than expenses). A Chronicle of Echoes is on its way to being a landmark book, but Mercedes does not see a dime until a year has passed.
A Chronicle of Echoes has been a fabulous who’s who in the corporate-education movement but it did receive one suggestion. We want an index! She has way too much information for us mere mortals to sift through. So her new book on the Common Core State Standards is aching to have an index. Unfortunately, indexes cost money . . .
And so does permission to use other people’s work. Mercedes has not shied away from using Bill Gate’s own words to illustrate his true intentions, but to quote him from the Washington Post interview costs money too . . .
So here is what I am hoping you can help fund:
One more year of Mercedes blog- $99
Permission to use Washington Post interview- $784
Index for new book- approximately $800
I know many of you were generous before and helped me to fund Mercedes a subscription to a database (we raised the $350 needed in just a few hours). She really appreciated it! Mercedes was too humble to ask for help then and I know she is uncomfortable asking now. But she will not be able to pay these expenses while she is waiting for future speaking fees, book royalties and potential funding.
So I would like to support her again. I am going to send her the costs of her blog, but who wants to help me with all the rest? If you can spare a few dollars it would mean a lot to Mercedes and to those of us who depend on her work. Let’s give her blog the best birthday present ever!
(In the one week since I restarted this campaign we raised almost all the funds. Would you help me reach our goal today? or help spread the word? We have raised $1845/$1950 so far. Thanks to all of you who have already contributed.)
here is the link! http://www.gofundme.com/g0ehic
We made our goal. Thanks everyone!
Remove all possibility for profit from education and watch who sticks around “for the children.” — Matthew Nicholson
I have never seen words ring quite so true. Indeed. They really don’t give a crap about the kids, or education for that matter, they are all in it for the cabbage.
From NYS assembly woman Deborah Glick:
*Fighting Success Academy Charter School in District One*
I am proud to announce that on January 8th I joined community members and education advocates to present testimony at PS.20 after the Success Academy Charter school hearingwas cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice. My testimony was in opposition to Success Academy Charter school’s application to move into school district one. The hearing was cancelled because Success agreed to remove their application at this time but made no promise about the future.
As I have expressed in previous testimony and numerous letters to the SUNY Board of Trustees, while charter schools may be deemed public under the law, they operate in a manner that is substantially different from traditional public schools, and all too frequently undermine neighborhood schools. Giving Success Academy the green light to open a school in any district they choose in direct opposition to local needs sets a poor precedent. It also fails to recognize that each school district has different needs and the cursory decision to shift Success Academy to School District 1 shows a blatant disregard for the community. We will continue our fight to keep Success Academy out of our district.
*Robert Ruderman*