Here it is in one neat package: the Obama reform program, drafted by the Broad Foundation and published in April 2009.
Please review the names of those who participated in drafting the plan. Many will be familiar to you. Here you will find the agenda for Race to the Top, which was revealed to the public three months later. These are the people and these are the policies that forged a strong link between No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. Here is the framework that saddled the nation with more high-stakes testing, more privatization, more closing schools, more layoffs, attacks on tenure, and other policies that lack any research or evidence.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Truly you know it’s a piece of contagion because John Deasy, the man who purchased his PhD, is one of the writers. This man is now destroying Los Angeles as fast as he possibly can.
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But–WOW!–he’s listed as MR. John Deasy. (Perhaps he “earned” his phony PhD. between the time this was printed & 2013!)
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I thought the same, but then I saw that his replacement in PGCPS (Dr. Hite), was also listed as Mr.
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Thank you!!!
Jen Leuck
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Obviously know many of the names on the list. Sad to see Peter McWalters, who was a decent state superintendent in RI. It is perhaps important for people who did not know to point out how Lynn Olson is listed and to remind people of her role at Education Week – remember, that publication is the primary source of information on education for those who do not have time to do their own digging through the internet.
Two of the men on that list were my bosses- John Deasy before he was at Gates was the predecessor of Bill Hite at Prince George’s County Public Schools. Worth noting that both went through Broad training, although both already had been somewhat traditionally trained for their roles as superintendents.
A quick glance at the report itself raises all kinds of questions. I suppose we could crowdsource taking the document apart. It offers little research for its recommendation, and when one of the pieces you do is someone who is effectively touting his own approach (Robert Mendro has been heavily involved in promoting value-added for years before this report) it could raise some questions (note, I have not read the particular study cited to know if there are issues with it).
This has been a long week in many ways. I probably should thoroughly digest both the Broad document and its underlying justifications before offering comments, but it is infuriating to see the same names over and over when for too many – eg: Michelle Rhee and Kevin Huffman, former husband and wife – the influence they are allowed to wield is far out of proportion to any real accomplishments in education either has ever demonstrated.
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I found the Babu and Mendro study that was cited online here: http://www.dallasisd.org/cms/lib/TX01001475/Centricity/Shared/evalacct/research/articles/Babu-Teacher-Accountability-HLM-Based-Teacher-Effectiveness-Indices-2003.pdf It was a presentation at a 2003 AERA conference and supposedly published in an AERA journal in 2004, but I was unable to locate it, so please let us know if you find that and any peer reviews.
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This is shocking, well not really. I have always loved the photo of Eli and Arne in their tuxes laughing it up and perhaps plotting how to destroy public education at a by invitation only Inauguration Ball thrown by Broad.
Here is how the NYT reported the event in January 2009:
“Anyone who is anyone in Washington was at Tuesday night’s pre-ball dinner, thrown by the California billionaire Eli Broad at the Park Hyatt Hotel to honor members of the new Obama administration.
The guest list looked like a who’s who list of Washington old and new: Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama’s choice for secretary of state and her husband, former President Bill Clinton; Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and new White House chief economics adviser; Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Arne Duncan, Mr. Obama’s pick for Education Secretary, Leon Panetta, the nominee for director of the C.I.A.; Vernon Jordan, the power lawyer, as well as media celebrities like Larry King and Charlie Rose.”
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“Begin to aggressively close the lowest-performing schools and replace
them with new, high-performing schools.” So, can you order one from Amazon? What magical realm are these fabulous new schools coming from?
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Yes, it has the same student body and parents. What is going to change?? The only way to do a vast turnaround is to start recruiting higher performing students. This whole thing is DUMB.
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“High performing schools” is code for nonunion privately run charter schools. What changes is the requirement to follow state law and the rights of teachers. Oh, and high performing students will be selected to keep test score results high.
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I always suspected that Race to the Top was hastily scribbled on a yellow pad in a plane by some ill-informed ideologues, especially since the part about school turnaround was not even in a proper outline format when RTTT was first put online. It’s not surprising to see who’s on this list, and it’s scandalous that there isn’t a single academic or PhD with research expertise.
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It’s also interesting that the section labeled “turnaround” that includes 4 strategies (turnaround, restart, school closure, transformation) in the end has just led to school closure and charter growth. How slick to call it “turnaround” and make up a “turnaround” strategy about replacing the principal and over half the staff, when what you really mean is replace the public school with a charter school.
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I couldn’t agree with you more, Alexandria.
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Yes, let profiteers make money off of poor children. Sickening.
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The report states that over 30 professionals with DECADES of collective k-12 experience participated in the drafting. That means they would had to have on average less than 4 years experience otherwise it would have been centuries of collective experience.
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More interesting to me it the Obama quote at the end. He has no faith in public education.
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He’s a liar to boot.
This document is a great find, Diane. I hope it gets spread all over the country.
This IS Obama’s education policy, and it’s wrecking the country.
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Obama’s educational policy is not only wrecking public education in this country (as intended), it is theoretically and pedagogically wrong. Thank you, Dr. Ravitch for this great find.
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It’s been a total disaster. It is ruining education in this country. The report looks like it was written by clueless profiteers (apparently it was.)
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Would love to see the total years teaching experience, or lack thereof, of this gang of 40. Not an impartial educational researcher or expert in sight. Apparently the “it’s already happening” anecdotes running down the left column passes for data with this group. Prettily packaged BS is still BS.
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“If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your b.s.”
Unfortunately for them, we KNOW not one of these drafters is brilliant, we are NOT baffled and we will NOT allow their plans to overcome the future of America’s children. “It is not over until WE say it’s over.” Parents and older students (CPS H.S. students will be boycotting this Wednesday, the second day of PSAE, and marching on the Chicago Board of Education), OPT OUT NOW!
Everyone, push back! Yes, WE can, and yes, we WILL!
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Two things stand out for me, right now:
Provide teachers with the tools they need to translate the current standards into engaging instruction. A common complaint in virtually every school district in the country is that the standards have not made their way into classrooms. The remedy: quality formative assessments, curriculum frameworks, model lesson plans, annotated student work, and other tangible tools — all aligned to the standards — that will help more teachers have success “teaching to the standards.”
and
Teachers will be able to focus their teaching on what matters most instead of having to cover everything.
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And therefore, as I read the above, we are not intelligent enough to design lessons and figure this out for ourselves. The underlying theme is a disrespect for the profession and therefore, teachers, soon to be trainers, need to be controlled, supervised closely, measured, and reduced. Funnel the labor costs elsewhere and the party can begin.
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Another underlying theme is that the deformers will provide these products for just a “little fee”.
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Thanks!
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I find it interesting that NOWHERE are parents held accountable. NOWHERE are lower socioeconomic COMMUNITIES and their needs addressed. Poor performing STUDENTS are part of several systems–only one of which is the public school system. If the other areas of life aren’t addressed, there will be NO CHANGE. Poor performing students from lower socio-economic communities START SCHOOL already years behind their middle class peers. Where is the plan to intervene with parents and communities in the preschool ages? Why wait until 9th grade to provide a major intervention? If this is how the policymakers think, it’s no wonder our kids and schools are in the state they’re in. C R A Z I N E S S!!!
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I thought the same thing. It basically makes education not the responsibility of the family or child. Pathetic. RTTT used teachers as scapegoats so the corporatization of schools could spread. Charters are junk. Believe me, I know.
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Just look at who paid for this mess and who allowed it. Well, that is Gates and the “Broadfather” paid for it and Obama made it happen. Three peas in a pod having a good time destroying public education. Two are the masters and one is the puppet. Guess who? Then there is Deasy right after he quits his job when the stories on the phony PHD come out and now we know he also has more false statements on his resume like Loyola. Accountability, where is it in reality? Read the latest DOE OIG audit on the total lack of accountability of charter schools in Florida, Arizona and California. Doe-OIG/A02L0002. Thanks for putting this out there. I just read the whole thing. If you want to help knock out Deasy, Gates and Broad in one clean stroke help us elect Monica Ratliff to Board Seat 6 in LAUSD. The billionaires around the U.S. are supporting the other side. She also needs support nationally even if just endorsements. Money also helps. http://www.monicaratliff2013.com and http://www.monicaratliff2013@gmail.com. there is a reason that many present and past board members were at her last fundraiser. One former staff member even flew in from Hawaii for this event. We all have a chance to throw the corporatists out of LAUSD.
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Here is the link to the DOE audit:
Click to access a02l0002.pdf
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Great find, Diane! TFA/TNTP novices and charters are well represented in that group. Sorry I can’t say the same for veteran career educators from traditional public schools.
Listing “Helping Struggling Students” as the very last “priority” is rather telling to me and reminiscent of NCLB. The actual intervention is just based on that “three great teachers in a row” myth, too. Looks like the corporate “reformers” got a lot of their talking points from that report.
I found this to be amusing: at the very bottom of the last page of the report, it indicates that it is a publication of the “Coalition for Student Achievement” and that the document could be download at their website. However, the link provided goes to a bogus one page website, with no documents. Only two links work on that site and they lead to companies that provide financing and pay day loans, which can be found in the rather oddly worded paragraph that begins with this:
“Reforming the educational system in the United States needs a lot of financing and to attract it, the government needs to take all the possible measures to make some rich companies to fund the educations.”
Just goes to show how monied interests, i.e., “rich companies,” not compassionate, ideological, liberal-minded intellectuals, are really at the heart of this matter: http://www.coalitionforstudentachievement.org
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Wow! And then openly link this? When will the nails in their coffin begin to have an impact?
UNfrigginbelievable!
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Well, zombieducRATs never die, they just die trying to make a killing at the public’s expense.
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The Coalition for Student Achievement changed its name to the Coalition for College & Career Ready America (CCCRA) with a web site at http://www.collegeandcareerreadyamerica.org. I didn’t find when the name was changed, but my guess is that someone goofed and did not register the coalitionforstudentachievenent.org domain name before the Broad Foundation report was published, only to discover that the pay day lender had the domain name already. Or maybe the Broad Foundation people thought they had a deal to purchase the domain and that fell through.
Under other circumstances, it’d be fun to contemplate a TV sitcom episode about this: big foundation meets up with enterprising foreign, small business that has a valuable domain name, etc, etc. It’s clear from the writing on the site that the pay day lender has non-native English speakers writing its copy. Recently, I read some sample papers on a site that sells theses and term papers to students; the writing was much the same style as the writing on coalitionforstudentachievenent.org. Makes sense; loan students money to buy the papers they don’t have time to write because they are working so much to pay for college. All at one web site.
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This document is to Obama’s education policy as PNAC was to Bush’s foreign policy.
Both are master blueprints for policy.
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In the 2009/2010 Annual Report of the Broad Foundation, it said this:
“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned. With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”
Click to access 101-2009.10%20annual%20report.pdf
(Page 5)
According to page 25 of this Annual Report, Arne Duncan (until he became the Secretary of Education), along with Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Margaret Spellings and other corporate reformers were on the Board of the Broad Foundation at that time.
For more documentation see:
“Who is Eli Broad and why is he trying to destroy public education?”
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
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May I correct their statement: “. . . seeds we and other GREEDY DEformers have planted”. The seeds they planted were from Kudzu (no offense to Kudzu plants) which strangles everything in its path to reach “glorious heights”.
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Meredith Willson: “Right here in River City. With a capital T. “
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Which River City?
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The list of participants reads like a Who’s Who of the educational privatization movement. Among them are Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot Charter Schools; now Los Angeles Unified Superintendent John Deasy; Joel Klein, the miracle worker in New York City education; and Michelle Rhee, the “radical” reformer of Washington DC’s public school system who is now contending with her own version of the Atlanta cheating scandal.
There isn’t one active classroom teacher voice speaking in this plan.
No doubt some of these folks have prior classroom experience, but who knows. Michelle Rhee, for example, taught third grade for three years in Baltimore. And we all know how that went.
Is it any surprise then that little is offered in the way of hard evidence to back up the this think tank’s perceived shortcomings of our educational system or the plan’s proposed remedies for them? For example, the Babu and Mendro chart which claims to show the influence of “effective and “ineffective” teachers on students passing 7th grade math exams could only be accepted by non-critical thinkers. What is their definition of teacher “effectiveness”? How did they measure it? When? Where? How big was their sample population?
The fact that President Obama and his administration signed off on this agenda does not mean that educational reform is bipartisan so much as it indicates that running our schools is big business. There are no middle class contributors to this document. It may look like a plan to improve our schools, but it’s really a marketing strategy.
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I love the idea of crowd-sourcing a line-by-line critique. Let’s do make use of the blessings of technology to shred this plan and support the children in Chicago and elsewhere, who really belong to us all.
For forty years at least, so-called “conservatives” have tried to increase class size because they care far more about their pocketbooks, and maintaining an “underclass” of cheap labor, than they care about the nation’s children. [Quotes around “conservatives” there because if they were really into efficient economics, conservation of resources, they’d see that excellent education for all is the very best investment, long-term.
I well remember that they tried to kill Headstart in the 1970s. citing “studies” that showed it made no difference. They failed. One part of Obama’s plan, for free high-quality preschool for all, is excellent.
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If anyone here voted for Obama in November, then you have no right to complain about his education policies. We all knew what his positions on education were, but people were too worried about the ” lesser of two evils” part of the election. Let’s instead focus on getting someone elected in 2016 who will be an advocate for positive and progressive education reform because we know nothing will change while Arne and co. are still in charge of the DOE…
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I didn’t vote for him the second time. We need to talk to parents, students, taxpayers and other teachers and keep spreading the word.
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I agree with you Linda. I’m studying to be a Special Education teacher in NY, but I’m losing hope that much can be done while Cuomo and most of the legislatures are still in charge.
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Please watch, especially if you have children in grades k-12 and forward to other parents, very important to spread this to all:
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2013/04/video-occupy-doe-talking-about-class.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FEJcmuc+%28NYC+Public+School+Parents%29
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Look who’s allied with Broad: Randi Weingarten! Anyone ever wonder why the teachers’ unions can’t seem to find their voice to speak out against Obamism? Anyone tired of paying dues to fund their own destruction? http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021860154
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All should read the article referenced and the various sources listed in it.
Good find JM.
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“Neither students nor their parents have an accurate picture of students’ academic strengths and weaknesses. Teachers do not know exactly where to target additional instructional assistance.”
Statements of extreme hubris, not unlike this one, weaken the validity of this document. As long as this type of nonsense is allowed to find acceptance among policy-makers, the “reform” movement will plunder on. It is clear that this team of ” experts” does not let any pesky peer-reviewed research or experiential knowledge get in the way of their invention of the “facts.”
If we are not successful in taking control of the message, and subsequently preventing the complete hostile take-over of our public schools, the history books will reflect their version of reality.
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I’m coming late to the party so apologies for the question …..THIS article that you have linked to your article is Obama’s Race to the Top proposal?
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