At the suggestion of a reader, I posted a list of the board of directors of a Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, dating from 2009. It included several school superintendents.
Readers have commented on the track record of the superintendents on that board.
Let’s see:
Joel Klein: Resigned in 2010, after NY State Education Department revealed statewide score inflation and New York City’s celebrated test scores collapsed
Michelle Rhee: Resigned in 2010 after D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty defeated, largely because of her divisive reputation
Arlene Ackerman: Resigned in 2011 in Philadelphia after tempestuous reign
Maria Goodloe-Johnson: Fired in 2010 in Seattle
Arne Duncan: His plan called Renaissance 2010 failed to lift Chicago public schools, now U.S. Secretary of Education
Margaret Spellings: Not a superintendent, but architect of disastrous NCLB
And to think that this is the organization that is training superintendents to “reform” urban education!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I can tell you first hand that Broad Academy Deborah Gist is ripping Rhode Island apart.
The best and the brightest ruining public education in America. I’m sure they all sit around complimenting each other on the hard work they do for our country.
Any stats on how much time each has spent teaching in a real classroom with children?
We all know by now it was about three years for Rhee including her funny story about taping students’ mouths shut.
Linda, thanks for reminding us about the mouth-taping episode. There is a broad acceptance of child abuse/harassment of inner-city, poor youth amongst ed deformers like Rhee, which I find deeply troubling, if not outright criminal.
It seems like Rhee likes this false picture of herself as some sort of teacher of cult-like powers. Yet her supreme confidence (“The Bee Eater”) provides the justification for her atrocious behaviors: mass firings, taping kids mouths shut, pocketing dollars in the name of destroying public education.
It isn’t some non-existant cult-like powers that will save poor kids. We need to let go of these cinematic fantasies that we will be that one teacher that will deliver our children from violence and poverty. Food, smaller class sizes, and decent funding might help. But personally, I’m sick of these fairy tales about super-teachers who eat bees, shame principals on camera, and subsequently get caught in erasure scandals.
JC Brizzard is also a Broad graduate I believe….go figure!
Separate note – any way to subscribe in digest form? Love the blog but generates a lot of email.
Read what you want. Ignore what you don’t.
No digest. I put a lot of time and energy into writing posts. More time than it takes to read them.
Don’t change a thing.
FIRE DUNCAN1 Hire Ravitch!
A digest in this context isn’t an abridged form of your blog that you have to create. It would just include all blogs from a time period (say a day) in a single email instead of individual ones. I don’t know if wordpress has a convenient way to make this happen. I personally use email inbox filters to group all education related emails together so that I don’t miss any and so they’re all in the same place.
Oh it looks like there is: http://wordpress.com/#!/read/subsettings/ – it’s something MsJaseeka has to change on her end.
Ah, thanks for finding that. I do the writing part, other people have to figure out how to make the technology works at warp speed.
That’s understandable. I also didn’t want you to think that she was asking for you to do more work, or that she wasn’t interested in the complete posts.
Thanks rpillala – exactly what I was wondering. Find all the blogs useful/interesting but overwhelming to get ten emails in one morning! My fear is other educators might end up unsubscribing instead of finding a more manageable way to access this info.
Diane – appreciate the work you do. Interested in more people accessing that work. Mine was a suggestion to ensure people keep reading not a critique or request that you do more.
This is leadership?
In the early 2000’s Eli Broad hired both Chief of Staff (to Secretary of Education Rod Paige) John Danielson and Arlene Ackerman to help write the curriculum for students/clients of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems.
What Eli Broad may or may not have known is that John Danielson is a long-time member in good standing with the Church of Scientology. In all three of the “Tom Cruise viral videos” released in Jan. 2008, there are segments of either Tom Cruise walking the “Corridors of Power” with Rod Paige or John Danielson talking about using his role in the federal department of education to further the goals of Scientology.
How this was played out in California is the following:
Arlene Ackerman, when Superintendent of the SFUSD, encouraged and supported the use of the bogus Scientology Narconon Drug Education in the SFUSD classrooms. An investigation by the SF Chronicle and then an evaluation of Narconon by the California Department of Education (CDE) (http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/at/narcononevaluation.asp) led to 12 articles in the SF Chronicle about the infiltration of the Narconon Drug Education program throughout California public and charter schools (go to SF Chronicle archives section, June 9, 2004+) and a CDE 17-page finding that Narconon Drug Education was scientific bunk and did not engage with the best practices for drug education, in the dry research and academic terminology, Feb. 2005.
Former Secretary of Education Rod Paige and John Danielson formed the “Chartwell Education Group,” an influence peddling entity that is still functioning.
There are many examples of the privatization of public education still in operation from the Bush era.
What is especially pertinent to this discussion is that Paige/Danielson also supported many of the management techniques of Eli Broad and of corporate Scientology …… and those techniques are not far distant from one another in terms of top-down management, etc.
The heavy Scientology endorsement by Arlene Ackerman in the SFUSD (including her retaliatory practices against those who questioned why a “religion” was being foisted on public and charter school students, without the knowledge or consent of their parents) was one of the many reasons that she was bounced from there.
Diane,
Just curious..how many subscribers do you have?
Don’t forget NJ’s Chris Cerf
Duval County (Jacksonville,FL) is interviewing for a new superintendent. Several of the board members have Broad training and now I see applicants with Broad connections. It will be a tough August fighting against them.