John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma City, read Motoko Rich’s report in the New York Times on the travails of Antwan Wilson, the Broad-trained superintendent in Oakland, California, and thought of the negative reputation that these “Broadies” have acquired. What is a Broadie? It is someone, with or without an education background, who attended a series of weekend seminars sponsored by the Eli Broad Superintendents Academy. This “academy” has no accreditation. It focuses on management style, not education. The Broad Foundation picks people to learn its autocratic management style and places them in a district where Broad has influence and might even supplement the leader’s salary. Once placed, you may surround yourself with other Broadies to push decisions on unwilling teachers and principals who know more than you do about the local schools and students. The list of failed Broadies is long, including Mike Miles in Dallas, General Anthony Tata in Wake County, N.C., John Covington in Kansas City and Michigan’s Educational Achievement Authority.
Thompson was reminded of the Broadie who took charge of the Oklahoma City public schools and sowed racial antagonism and division when he read Rich’s article about Wilson and his problems.
He writes:
It would be easier to sympathize with Wilson’s feelings if Broad and the rest of the Billionaires Boys Club’s public relations teams didn’t have such a long and disgusting record of using racial taunts against those (regardless of our race) who disagree with them. More importantly, the Broadie’s pain is dwarfed by that of poor children of color who increasingly find themselves in “apartheid schools” after competition-driven reformers (illogically) try to use resegregation of schools as a method for undoing the damage done by Jim Crow.
As explained in my book, A Teacher’s Tale, I first encountered the Broad mentality in 2007 when Oklahoma City hired a Broad Academy graduate as superintendent. Hoping to get off to a good, collaborative start, I introduced myself to the mentor that the academy assigned to him. She was sitting with several of my old friends and civil rights allies, African-American women with decades of administrative experience that they also would have gladly shared with the rookie superintendent. The Broad Academy mentor wiped the smiles off our faces when her first words to me were, “Why don’t you in Oklahoma City teach our African-American boys to read?”
At first, I thought we could have better luck communicating with the new superintendent. He was a good enough sport to compete in my school’s “Buffalo Chip Throwing Championship.” (Dressed in a fine business suit, the superintendent finished second, behind me, but unlike the champion buffalo feces thrower, he wore a plastic glove.) The superintendent enjoyed talking with my students, but he never seemed comfortable listening to teenagers when they disagreed with his policies. In one such meeting, the superintendent explained that he wanted an aligned and paced curriculum where every class covered the same material at the same time, and where he could supervise classroom instruction by video, throughout the district, from his office. Afterwards, my students were blunt, saying that the superintendent had no idea of what he was rushing into….
Across the nation, Broad and other market-driven reformers are stepping up the use of mass school closures to defeat teachers, unions, and parents who oppose them. Even as the Billionaires Boys Club proclaims that their goal is a 21st century civil rights crusade, they impose a brutal policy where the highest-challenge students are crammed into the schools that were already the most segregated, under-resourced and low-performing. In other words, they sabotage the highest-challenge neighborhood schools in order to discredit educators in them who seek win-win school improvement policies.
The Broad Academy and their allies are thus willing to sacrifice the welfare of the most vulnerable children and to inflame racial tensions in order to defeat educators who disagree with them. Whether they do so in Oakland or Oklahoma City – in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Denver, Washington D.C. or New Orleans – they are playing with fire. Whether we are talking about race, poverty, or special education, we must recognize the complexity of these issues and the need for nuanced conversations. As long as corporate reformers continue to vilify educators, complicated and interconnected problems will get worse. If Broad-trained superintendents had the knowledge about education that is necessary to improve schools, they would also understand why inflaming racial tensions is so dangerous.
The first line of the comment by John Thompson featured in the posting:
[start]
It would be easier to sympathize with Wilson’s feelings if Broad and the rest of the Billionaires Boys Club’s public relations teams didn’t have such a long and disgusting record of using racial taunts against those (regardless of our race) who disagree with them.
[end]
Any wonder why I assert that the default setting for the enforcers of corporate education reform is the sneer, jeer and smear?
😏
Read about the “Broad virus” here (NOTE this is five years old):
———–
“Those of us who have experienced the ‘leadership’ of L.A. billionaire Eli Broad’s corporate-trained superintendents send Chicago our condolences. We have been there, done that, with scars to show for it, and nothing in the way of real academic or positive gains for our schools and kids.
“What’s striking is the similarity of the reigns of terror and error of these Broad ‘graduates.’ Disturbingly so, in fact.
” Many of the above earned No Confidence votes from their district’s teachers, and from parents too.
“All meted out a top-down dictatorial approach. Most alienated parents.
“Many closed schools.
“A number had questionable audits on their watch.
“More than one had false or questionable data to support their reforms.
“All commanded large salaries with perqs, while at the same time slashing services for kids and closing schools in the name of financial scarcity.
“A number of them avoided informing the elected school board of their plans or actively withheld information from them, effectively bypassing democracy.
“Scandal, controversy, animosity followed them all, inevitably out the door.
“To help our fellow school districts throughout the nation, here is a guide to diagnose whether your school district has come under the influence of the Broad Foundation (and what you can do about it).”
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
“How to Tell If Your School District is Infected by the Broad Virus:
– – – – – –
“Schools in your district are suddenly closed.
“Even top-performing schools, alternative and schools for the gifted, are inexplicably and suddenly targeted for closure or mergers.
“Repetition of the phrases ‘the achievement gap’ and ‘closing the achievement gap’ in district documents and public statements.
“Repeated use of the terms ‘excellence’ and ‘best practices’ and ‘data-driven decisions.’ (Coupled with a noted absence of any of the above.)
“The production of “data” that is false or cherry-picked, and then used to justify reforms.
“Power is centralized.
“Decision-making is top down.
“Local autonomy of schools is taken away.
“Principals are treated like pawns by the superintendent, relocated, rewarded and punished at will.
“Culture of fear of reprisal develops in which teachers, principals, staff, even parents feel afraid to speak up against the policies of the district or the superintendent.
“Ballooning of the central office at the same time superintendent makes painful cuts to schools and classrooms.
“Sudden increase in number of paid outside consultants.
“Increase in the number of public schools turned into privately-run charters.
“Weak math text adopted (most likely Everyday Math). Possibly weak language arts too, or Writer’s Workshop. District pushes to standard the curriculum.
“Superintendent attempts to sidestep labor laws and union contracts.
“Teachers are no longer referred to as people, educators, colleagues, staff, or even ‘human resources,’ but as ‘human capital.’
“A (self-anointed, politically connected) group called NCTQ comes to town a few months before your teachers’ contract is up for negotiation and writes a Mad Libs evaluation of your districts’ teachers (for about $14,000) that reaches the predetermined conclusion that teachers are lazy and need merit pay. [ ‘The (NAME OF CITY) School District has too many (NEGATIVE ADJ) teachers. Therefore they need a new (POSITIVE ADJ.) data-based evaluation system tied to test scores… ‘ ]
“The district leadership declares that the single most significant problem in the district is suddenly: teachers!
“Teachers are no longer expected to be creative, passionate, inspired, but merely ‘effective.’
“Superintendent lays off teachers for questionable reasons.
“Excessive amounts of testing introduced and imposed on your kids.
“Teach for America, Inc., novices are suddenly brought into the district, despite no shortage of fully qualified teachers.
“The district hires a number of ‘Broad Residents’ at about $90,000 apiece, also trained by the Broad Foundation, who are placed in strategically important positions like overseeing the test that is used to evaluate teachers or school report cards. They in turn provide — or fabricate — data that support the superintendent’s ed reform agenda (factual accuracy not required).
“Strange data appears that seems to contradict what you know (gut level) to be true about your own district.
“There is a strange sense of sabotage going on.
“You start to feel you are trapped in the nightmarish Book Five of the Harry Potter series and the evilly vindictive Dolores Umbridge is running your school district. (Seek centaurs and Forbidden Forest immediately!)
“Superintendent behaves as if s/he is beyond reproach.
“Superintendent reads Blackberry (Goodloe-Johnson, also see comments ) or sends texts (Brizard, see comments) while parents and teachers are giving public testimony at school board meetings, blatantly ignoring public input.
“A rash of Astroturf groups appear claiming to represent ‘the community’ or ‘parents’ and all advocate for the exact same corporate ed reforms that your superintendent supports — merit pay, standardized testing, charter schools, alternative credentialing for teachers. Of course, none of these are genuine grassroots community organizations.
“Or, existing groups suddenly become fervidly in favor of teacher-bashing, merit pay or charter schools. Don’t be surprised to find that these groups may have received grant money from the corporate ed reform foundations like Gates or Broad.
“The superintendent receives the highest salary ever paid to a superintendent in your town’s history (plus benefits and car allowance) – possibly more than your mayor or governor — and the community is told ‘that is the national, competitive rate for a city of this size.’
“Your school board starts to show signs of Stockholm Syndrome. They vote in lockstep with the superintendent. Apparently lobotomized by periodic ‘school board retreat/Broad training’ sessions headed by someone from Broad, your school board stops listening to parents and starts to treat them as the enemy. (If you still have a school board, that is — Broad ideally prefers no pesky democratically elected representatives to get in the way of their supts and agendas.)
“Superintendent bypasses school board entirely and keeps them out of the loop on significant or all issues.
“School board candidates receive unprecedented amounts of campaign money from business interests.
“Annual superintendent evaluation is overseen by a fellow named Tom Payzant.
“Stand for Children appears in town and claims to be grassroots. (It is actually based in Portland, Ore., and is funded by the Gates Foundation.) It may invite superintendent to be keynote speaker at a political fundraising event. It will likely lobby your state government for corporate ed reform laws.
“Grants appear from the Broad and Gates foundations in support of the superintendent, and her/his “Strategic Plan.”
“The Gates Foundation gives your district grants for technical things related to STEM and/or teacher ‘effectiveness’ or studies on charter schools.
“Local newspaper fails to report on much of this.
“Local newspaper never mentions the words ‘Broad Foundation.’
“Broad and Gates Foundations give money to local public radio stations which in turn become strangely silent about the presence and influence of the Broad and Gates Foundation in your school district.
– – – – – – – – – –
*** THE CURE *** for the Broad Virus:
“Parents.
“Blogs.
“Sharing information.
“Vote your school board out of office.
“Vote your mayor out of office if s/he is complicit.
“Boycott or opt out of tests.
“Go national.
“Follow the money.
“Question the data – especially if it’s produced by someone affiliated with the Broad or Gates Foundations or their favored consultants (McKinsey, Strategies 360, NCTQ, or their own strategically placed Broad Residents).
“Alert the media again and again (they will ignore you at first).
“Protest, stage rallies, circulate petitions.
“Connect and daylight the dots.”
— Sue Peters
“For more information on the Broad Foundation, see: A Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation’s training programs and education policies by Parents Across America…. which you can get here:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/a-guide-to-the-broad-foundations-training-programs-and-policies/
Jack, thank you so much for your comment. Wow; it says it all.
Please don’t forget Broad’s biggest failure of all. It’s disgraced John Deasy, former superintendent of LAUSD. And, the FBI and SEC are yet to publish their findings on the iPad bid rigging scandal.
You beat me to it, educator.
The utter failure and cruelty of Broadies is also apparent in Huntsville AL. A consent decree managed by a Broadie is quickly destroying the district. Discipline and learning has been replaced by fear. The response to fights in schools is to expel students who dare post on social media (fighters, however, are not threatened with expulsion). Teachers are leaving in droves. Students are languishing in classrooms with computers that track every answer, every time. The board bobbles their heads and questions nothing. Parents who raise concerns are threatened with decreased property values. There is much that is good in our schools, but that will quickly evaporate if the Broadie isn’t gone. Soon.
Teachers are not only leaving in droves, they are BEING DRIVEN OUT in droves. That’s a number one indicator of Broadie/corporate top-down management.
About a year ago, in Burbank, California, Eli Broad at first tried to sneak a Broadie, Matt Hill, into the Superintendent’s position before anyone got wise, but the parents DID get wind, and then all hell broke loose.
The parents asked Hill about Broad, and, thinking those parents were not aware, Hill lied and claimed that he “was unfamiliar with Broad and his positions.”
WRONG ANSWER.
The parents responded, “We know all about you”… that Hill was trained at the Broad Institute, and for years worked at the Broad Institute.
When asked about his total lack of any teaching experience, Hill replied that this was a plus, that it will make him work harder than a person with teaching experience would.
Huh?
When asked about closing schools, Hill lied and said, “I don’t have a playbook.”
WRONG ANSWER.
The parents produced Broad’s playbook about how to close schools in the face of opposition from parents:
Click to access school-closure-guide1.pdf
That should have been the end of it. However, Michelle Rhee’s STUDENTS FIRST dumped millions in to the Burbank school board campaigns, and thought they’d shove Matt Hill’s appointment through without anyone noticing.
Well again, notice they did, as seen in the video “Bloodbath”, that covers the school board meeting where the debate and vote on Hill taking over Burbank schools:
The parents and teachers point out all these objections to Hill. (As they did a few days earlier at a community forum in Burbank’s John Burroughs High school.)
Notice how the Burbank School Board DOES NOT ADDRESS ANY OF THE POINTS MADE BY THE SPEAKERS:
— the Broad Academy training
— Hill’s working for the Broad Foundation
— the Broad “How to Close Schools” playbook (Excerpted BELOW)
— Hill caught lying about these things
— his lack of teaching experience
— Hill being part of major screw-ups while working at LAUSD — the main person behind the MISIS debacle:
Instead, the Board viciously attacks the parents for … well.. for just being so mean to Hill by daring to ask him about these issues (one of the Broadie Board members is a morbidly obese compulsive eater, who can’t stop showing potato chips in his face during the meeting. What’s up with THAT?)
One Board member — one of the guys who NEVER ADDRESSED A THING THE PARENTS SAID — dramatically resigns and lashes out at the parents and teachers who just spoke, then storms out of the room.
Very theatrical… but it doesn’t address any of the criticisms.
One female Board member says that the decision has kept her up at nights, but nevertheless believes that Hill will not close schools and replace them with charters —- IN SPITE OF THE MOUNTAIN OF EVIDENCE ABOUT THE BROAD FOUNDATION, THE ENTITY CONTROLLING HILL — that the parents had just presented to her. Watching her, I just want to jump into the video screen and scream in her face, “DIDN’T YOU JUST HEAR WHAT EVERYONE JUST SAID?”
It’s quite a show.
Here’s some excerpts from Eli Broad’s “How to Close Schools” playbook:
Click to access school-closure-guide1.pdf
—————————-
BROAD SCHOOL CLOSING PLAYBOOK: (parentheticals are mind, JACK)
(PAGE 2)
“This guide describes first what it takes to go through the school closure process; second, the do’s and don’t’s of school closures—some major risks and mitigation strategies other districts have identified; and finally, the detailed steps a district must take to decide upon and conduct school closures.
(PAGE 7)
” (When closing schools) Political realities are underestimated. Not enough time is spent with school board members to ensure that they understand why recommendations are being made and the trade-offs at stake. As a result, the board vote (i.e. TO KEEP SCHOOLS OPEN) can be unduly influenced by adult rather than student interests.” (That’s code describing when Board members who are “unduly influenced” to follow the will of the parents and citizens, and not that of their corporate puppet-masters such as Eli Broad. Note the false dichotomy — closing schools is about “students’ interests or “for the kids”… keeping them open is not about the kdis, and instead caving to “adult interests”.)
(PAGE 40)
“A difficult and often divisive task (i.e. due to massive democratic community opposition), closing schools is something that every school district eventually faces … For those who may be less accustomed to closing schools, we hope to have provided you with a comprehensive framework and some of the tools necessary to make this task a manageable one.
“Equally important, we hope you will use this guide to identify challenges in the school closure process early on—and to mobilize resources to address them.
“Only by facing school closures with an empowered leader, ongoing engagement with the
community, perseverance through to implementation, a reasonable timeline, and a sharp,
unwavering eye on better educational opportunities for students will districts achieve the most favorable results from school closures.
“By learning from the successes and failures of efforts highlighted in this guide, district operators will be better positioned to run smoother, less rancorous, and ultimately more successful closure efforts. Ultimately, this will aid in the effort to redirect district dollars to where they can have the greatest impact on our children’s future.”
—————————-
“redirect resources” is code for using the cash that used to fund traditional public schools, and instead using it to open more privately managed charter schools that are not accountable to the public, not transparent to the public, and who do not educate all the public.
The whole thing is pretty outrageous. A billionaire who doesn’t have any children or grandchildren who attend a district’s schools, who doesn’t even live in a district, is appointing his puppets to carry out his plans to wipe out public schools… even if he has to force it down the throats of an unwilling public.
I forgot to mention that, at the time, the events in Burbank were covered by Peter “CURMUDGUCATION” Greene. With his usual flair for words, Greene said that hiring a Broadie as Superintendent was “like handing management of your steak house over to a life long vegetarian.
“It’s like putting a Democrat in charge of the Republican primary. It’s like hiring a fox to watch your henhouse.
“It might very well work out, but not if there’s no real plan, and you certainly can’t expect people to just shrug and say, ‘Sounds legit. ‘ ”
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/04/dear-burbank-school-board.html
——————
PETER GREENE:
“Dear Burbank School Board:”
” … ”
“However, at the risk of being one more person who seems to be piling on you, I have to tell you– that ugly mess was entirely your fault.
“I’m in Pennsylvania. I have no idea what the historic relationship between board and teachers in Burbank has been, but I presume, given Burbank’s reported excellence, that it has been pretty good. That makes it all the sadder that you messed it up.
” … ”
“Matt Hill comes with huge, huge issues attached. You say that you were satisfied that he had addressed those properly. How many of those answers did you share? How many did he provide to your teachers?
“Matt Hill comes with no classroom background at all. That is not a hopeless obstacle, but it is an obstacle. How will he evaluate the performance of a job that he knows nothing about? How will he decide what resources teachers do or do not need if he does not understand what they need the resources for? These are not un-answerable questions, but if you are the only people who have heard the answers, do not be surprised that other folks are doubtful.
“Matt Hill comes attached to John Deasy, whose tenure at LAUSD was a disaster, rife with massive screw-ups that were in turn connected to what could at best be called shady behavior. And Hill was attached directly to two of the largest disasters. It’s fine to say, ‘Well, he assured us that he learned some important lessons,’ but that’s not really an answer.
“Matt Hill comes attached to the Broad empire, which is a giant red flag for anybody working in education. It’s like handing management of your steak house over to a life long vegetarian. It’s like putting a Democrat in charge of the Republican primary. It’s like hiring a fox to watch your henhouse. It might very well work out, but not if there’s no real plan, and you certainly can’t expect people to just shrug and say, ‘Sounds legit.’
“Matt Hill comes believing that schools can be run by a business guy (which is expected from a good Broadie), but not only has he not ever run a classroom, but he has also never successfully run a business. The biggest business decisions he has ever been associated with would be the oft-mentioned disasters at LAUSD.
“Hill has never run a classroom, a school district, or a business. His most recent relevant experience was a highly public failure. His whole adult life has been spent working for and with people who are devoted to shutting down public schools and replacing them with charters.
“There may very well be reasons to believe that none of this matters going forward and that he will be a great superintendent– but if you guys didn’t know there would be enormous pushback then you must be partially brain dead.
“As a business guy, he should have been able to tell you — if his installation in the job was going to run smoothly at all, the massive baggage that comes with him would have to be addressed, publicly, openly, honestly, and with an understanding that people’s first reaction was going to be negative.
“I don’t know how you imagined it would work. People would just take your words for it? You would just run this through quickly before any kind of bad stink could be raised? The other seventeen (candidates considered) were so bad and you had lived with this for so long that you just couldn’t see anything else to do?
“Like I said. I’m in Pennsylvania and for all I know you didn’t botch the selection process at all. All the evidence I can see says, frankly, you did– but all the evidence I can see isn’t very much. But whether or not you botched the selection process, you completely botched the hiring process.”
In Oakland a lot of us are working hard to get his of our Broad superintendent and the school board that hired him. It’s why I’m running for school board and we have a slate of candidates working to unseat the incumbent corporate backed “reformers”.
Charter schools are not public schools
Mike Hutchinson. I wish you well.
You are surely aware that Oakland is part of the CORE District operation designed entirely without the authority of the California School Board and funded by private dollars. Oakland is one of ten districts that applied for and received a USDE Race To the Top waiver for accountability by promising to create a new “School Quality Improvement Index.”
The public rationale for this initiative was a failure of the California State Board of Education, especially Michael Kirst, in not moving fast enough in applying for an RTT waiver. In the end, Kirst did not approve the CORE District application. He signed a transmittal letter asking USDE to respond to specific questions. I don’t know if those were answered, but USDE approved the waiver.
But that is not the whole story, especially if you can follow the money and influence pedaling and cut through all of the usual reformer verbiage about equity, elevating this and that, “deeper learning” and so on.
The public face of “legitimacy” for this this initiative is the privately funded “California Office for Reform in Education (CORE)” launched by Sacramento-based Capital Impact, LLC. Capital Impact operates as a non-profit, but functions as consultancy, manager for a number of projects in California. One of these is the CORE Districts initiative.
You can see more at http://www.capitolimpact.org/projects/
The “School Quality Improvement Index” is certain to increase the number of schools found to be of “poor quality” and not meeting year-to-year targets for “continuous improvement.” More than AYP, this index will put many schools on the road to “data-driven improvement churn” and accountability measures well beyond those required by the state of California. The index is sure to lead to more school takeovers and charterizing. It is also a direct threat to all collective bargaining units.
At last count, superintendents in the following districts have signed a memorandum of understanding with USDE for the initiative: Long Beach, Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Sanger, Oakland, Garden Grove, Clovis, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno. Together, these districts serve more than one million students.
Precisely because this is a one-of-a-kind bypass of the State Board of Education, it is setting a precedent for removal of state and local control over accountability measures altogether, in favor of a scheme of federal-private “collaboration.” Although the RTT waiver will soon expire, it seems likely that the new administration will accept the system for ESSA accountability, and perhaps recommend it to other states. One reason: Almost all of CORE District metrics are transformed into a 10-point scale that can be aligned with international data-gathering by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Another reason: The system includes measures of school climate and social-emotional learning.
Participating CORE Districts (originally six, last count ten) are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies, and participate in cross-district sharing of all of this data including information from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.
The final rating for each school is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating is allocated to school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.
An autonomous and newly created “School Quality Oversight Panel” oversees the initiative with no oversight by: (a) the state Board of Education and Department of Education, or (b) locally-elected school district boards of education. The Oversight Panel is comprised of representatives from The Association of California School Administrators, California School Boards Association, Ed Trust West, Policy Analysis for California Education, and California State PTA.“
Surveys of students, teachers, and parents/caregivers will be part of the social-emotional/school climate calculations. These surveys have unproven validity, reliability, and a dubious threshold for an “acceptable” response rate set by the “partner researchers” at Stanford University.
As far as I know, this is the largest single take-over by private entities of school accountability, with a rubber stamp provided by USDE. Investigative resources greater than mine are needed to follow the money. At least three of the superintendents are Broadies. Many of the “partners” are funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
There is more.
A “Data Collaborative” is tied to the new School Quality Improvement Index by a separate “Data use agreement.” In that agreement a CORE District permits the “secure” sharing of student level data with other CORE Districts… and “our research, analytical and reporting partners.” Some of these partners are for-profit vendors. The students and school data is gathered annually in a prescribed set of parameters and formats. The “Data Collaborative” agreement requires each district to identify and allocate staff for this venture, a point person with a research/data background, a data analyst, a contact with authority to manage the LEAs approved permission rules for data use.
But the real story on data-use is not publicized.
This “School Quality Improvement System” and “Index” produces ratings of schools feed directly to greatschools.org, funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations (logos displayed) and 19 others (standard type) including the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, and New Schools Venture Fund.
You can see how the school data is used.
1. Start here: http://coredistricts.org/indexreports/ .
2. Click on the right-hand column and choose a school report. Try to make sense of the rating.
3. Then look at your browser to see where that information is really located. It is great schools.org, not the school district and not the State of California.
4. Poke around the greatschools website to see how a non-profit can operate as a for-profit and serve the real estate, charter, testing and text industries; capture media outlets as “partners,” co-opt entire school districts into partnerships, also the US Department of Housing and Urban Development plus Fannie Mae.
I have not concluded my research, but the CORE Districts are clearly one part of a nasty bait-and-switch business— all represented as if relevant to “school quality” funded by private foundations representing themselves as philanthropies and enjoying tax benefits for serious breeches of public participation in determining policies and practices for public education. The real estate partnerships and tiers of licensing rights function at greatschools.org are blunt and blatant instruments for red-lining, increasing segregated schools and communities while pretending to do otherwise.
There needs to be some serious whistle-blowing before this scheme takes root within California and beyond it.
I hope Mike Hutchinson is hearing you, Laura. This expose is seriously scary.
“If Broad-trained superintendents had the knowledge about education that is necessary to improve schools, they would also understand why inflaming racial tensions is so dangerous.”
IF these toads knew how to improve schools, they’d be improved by now, right? How many of these toads have been appointed to infiltrate cities and destroy them from the inside out? How many? I’m not long into the anti-reform game to know the names of many, but I know the names of the few, and they have done some grave damage to schools, kids, families, neighborhoods and the careers of teachers, principals, etc., everywhere they go, in their wakes. And what becomes of them when the are run out of town? They go to work for a Broad-related foundation, or a Jeb Bush related foundation, or create their own for-profit/non-profit, etc. Its a ridiculous merry-go-round of criminal activity, and how many go to jail? Broad is tied up with TFA. How much good has TFA done? Not much for education, but it has enriched the key players.
How the heck do we rid ourselves of these parasites?