Reporter Garrett Haake of KSHB In Kansas City reported that State Education Commissioner Chris Nicastro and the State Board commissioned a report that calls for a radical restructuring of the Kansas City school district.
“It calls for replacing the top-down district structure with a much smaller, near purely administrative entity called a Community Schools Office (CSO). The CSO would retain some functions of the current district, including facilities maintenance, enrollment and transportation coordination, but its primary purpose would be to set accountability standards for schools, which would themselves be free to run largely independently, so long as they hit those standards.
“The school system would shift its focus from operating schools directly to finding the best possible nonprofit operators, empowering them to run schools and holding them accountable for results,” the executive summary said. “Schools that succeed would grow to serve more students. Those that continually fall short would be replaced with better options.”
It adds:
“Kansas City students could choose any public school to attend, and while some would be charter schools, the report makes clear that most would not be – and pre-buts the notion that it is replacing public schools with charters. The report notes that Kansas City has several “high quality operators” of public schools already that fit the bill, including Lincoln Prep and Academie Lafayette.
“The report also identifies what its authors consider another glaring need, and proposes instituting universal pre-kindergarten for children ages 3 and 4 city-wide. The report says this can be done using funds reallocated in the reorganization of the district, without raising taxes.”
“The Missouri State Board of Education will hear a presentation of the draft report, which it paid education reform consultants CEE-Trust $385,000 after a controversial bidding process to produce, Monday afternoon.”
Over a month ago, some legislators demanded Nicastro’s resignation after hundreds of emails revealed that this plan was in the works since last April, funded by two local foundations.
“The e-mails show Nicastro and officials from the Hall Family Foundation and Kauffman Foundation working with Kauffman partner CEE-Trust as far back as April to develop a plan for the future of KCPS, should the district fail to regain accreditation.
Obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request by the education equality group MORE2 (More Squared), they show a series of meetings, conference calls and even budgetary discussions between Nicastro, foundation backers and CEE-Trust leadership designed to get a process in motion quickly – without going through a typical request for proposal project.
“District officials, including KCPS Superintendent Dr. Stephen Green, said they knew nothing of the discussions. A spokesman for Kansas City Mayor Sly James said he, too, was not informed.
“The Missouri Board of Education rejected the Memorandum of Understanding drawn up by the group over the summer. But with coaching from Nicastro and her aides, CEE-Trust ultimately submitted a bid and won a contract to study options for the long-struggling district for $385,000.
“When the e-mails were first published in the Kansas City Star on Sunday, negative reaction to the back-room dealings came swiftly.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Regarding:
“The school system would shift its focus from operating schools directly to finding the best possible nonprofit operators, empowering them to run schools and holding them accountable for results,” the executive summary said. “Schools that succeed would grow to serve more students. Those that continually fall short would be replaced with better options.”
To which I would respond as that voice that piped up from the back of the room . . .
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. “In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.” – A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
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But ed reform isn’t about privatizing public schools. No, sir. Don’t let your lying eyes deceive you. Just because they drafted a plan to replace public schools with a completely privatized system, it’s not about privatizing schools.
I wonder when they close the last public school. Do you think they’ll retain a “public option” on this private school exchange they’re setting up?
I look forward to Phase Two, when they start chipping away at the subsidies. Ed reformers in Michigan floated a plan to fund public education at 5k per student, which is half what they’re currently spending. That’s next.
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“Kansas City students could choose any public school to attend, and while some would be charter schools, the report makes clear that most would not be – and pre-buts the notion that it is replacing public schools with charters. The report notes that Kansas City has several “high quality operators” of public schools already that fit the bill, including Lincoln Prep and Academie Lafayette. ”
When ed reformers were promoting anti-collective bargaining legislation in Ohio, I spoke to a (public) college professor who was really worried about privatization. He told me “they’ll keep a couple of flagship public schools, but the neighborhood schools will all be replaced with private operators”
Turns out, he was probably right. That’s what happened in Chile, did it not? Ordinary people ended up with low-cost commercial chain schools, so no “choice” at all?
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There must be something really wrong with the educational system if people are dumb enough to buy this grifter spiel.
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Jon– it has been plagued with problems for many years for a myriad of reasons. I don’t advocate privatizing but I do think there is a lore that only a dramatic gesture will hush.
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I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!
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I wonder sometimes what the country will look like without the thing the vast majority of us have in common, which is that we attended public schools.
I can’t imagine, but the deliberate destruction of the universal, public system is happening so fast I suspect my 5th grader will know. My hope is his ed voucher covers his child’s purchase on the “education exchange”. I think the chances of his having a “public option” are slim to none, after having watched politicians and industry beat one back on the health insurance exchange.
Why would anyone in their right mind take a universal public system and privatize it? I mean, that is INSANELY reckless. All they have to do is look at the health care system!
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Idiocracy, the Movie
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This only reinforces the call to ACT NOW! Take back the schools. Develop your own quality assessment of students now. Do not wait for permission. Here’s a jumping off point http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
How many have administrators that would support quality assessment? If you do, get your teachers together and start now to re invent your school
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Thanks for the advise! We started a group: CoalitionforQualityPublicEducation.org and we are doing everything we can to get this study quashed. I’ll pass this info on to our group.
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Let me know if I can help
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Prediction —
When the full-scale national investigations start — if they start — we will uncover a steaming pit of sheer corruption that will make everything previous in U.S. history pale in comparison.
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So how can these groups continue to claim they don’t want to privatize schools when ALL they do is privatize schools?
I’m just baffled by it. I read a piece by Eli Broad in the Detroit paper where he vehemently DENIES privatizing schools, but that’s all he does! There aren’t going to be any public schools left in Detroit when Broad and Snyder and the rest are finished there, obviously, and they can’t close public schools fast enough in Chicago and Philadelphia.
I could see making an actual up-front argument to dismantle public ed and replace it with a privatized exchange/voucher system. That I would know how to respond to. But what do you do when you’re watching this happen in city after city and yet the vehement, outraged denials of privatization keep coming?
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Chiara Duggan,
A central part of the “reform” game is to call things what they are not. If your goal is to disrupt schools and demoralize teachers, call it reform. If your goal is privatization, call it reform. If your goal is to crush unions and cut the future pay of teachers and lower qualifications, say you want a “great teacher in every classroom.” You must learn mirror language. Nothing is what they it is.
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This is called lying. When those we elect as leaders, LIE and LINE THEIR POCKETS, this says a lot about us as citizens. Vote with your money…kick them where it hurts…their pocketbooks! And please entertain the notion that there is MORE THAN JUST THE DEMs and REPs.
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Academie de Lafayette is a charter, I feel certain.
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k-8, 644 students…..they say they are a charter school on their website……http://www.greatschools.org/missouri/kansas-city/3329-Academie-Lafayette/
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Joe they are a good school. I have been there and know students who attend. I don’t know those details, but I do know there is a positive and supportive energy and spirit there. The children who go there like it. And they speak French! I have nothing against that school.
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Johanna….the fact that they are a good school is part of the problem….because….this cee trust is pointing to them and and another school as if….we will make all schools like these…..well, is that fair to do, when a school in KC has ended up with a 63% white population, and policies not available regarding the treatment of special needs children? There is a board member who questioned them regarding the other school….O.Victor Lenz…..former board president of Lindbergh in st. louiis county…..a high performing school from a wealthy area…..he knows what they are trying to pull….. the question Mr. Lenz’s asked CEE-Trust during yesterday’s meeting. He wondered if the student success at Lincoln Prep because it had selective admissions standards or due to leadership.
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Joe, watch for he post about this Kansas City report tomorrow. It is a doozy.
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Joe, OK. I see what you are saying.
They are making a role model of something, but possibly attributing its success to aspects that do not account for other supports that enable the success.
Sort of like when Nestlé sold their powdered baby formula in developing nations without clean water to mix with and it killed infants. All factors must be considered before making the “sell.”
Why don’t people realize that deception never makes a long term gain? We are not playing poker here. These are children.
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I am familiar with this school and I will say that they are steadily growing more and more “upscale” meaning their demographics are out of lopsided. Charters like this one can set weird “requirements” such as you must be able to send your kid to France as a required field trip. Some families could never send their kid to France…. just a hypothetical example, but there you have it.
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I went ahead and posted this on their facebook site…….I doubt I get a good response…….it believe it is significant that so little is offered in information about their special needs students….”.I do not trust cee trust. I am very critical of Rex Sinquefield and the so called reform movement in public education. I do not want to say wrong things about your school, which is listed among great schools. Cee trust went before the state board, and I believe they were disingenuous when they said this: Kansas City students could choose any public school to attend, and while some would be charter schools, the report makes clear that most would not be – and pre-buts the notion that it is replacing public schools with charters. The report notes that Kansas City has several “high quality operators” of public schools already that fit the bill, including Lincoln Prep and Academie Lafayette. Did it not seem like they were emphasizing that most of their schools would not be what AL is….a charter school? the internet said k-8 with 644 students…..it is a charter school, 63 percent white. When I tried to find out what percentage of the students were special needs……no information was offered. These cee-trust people are mis-named….do not trust them to use your school in a way that is misleading to the state board…you are already drawing national attention on Diane Ravitch’s Blog.
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Reaching this point, I wish they would have it be like Hong Kong or the Panama Canal and in a certain number of years or in a phased or tiered way, give it back to the city over time.
Otherwise I think the solution is short sighted.
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Interesting to read about this the same day as hearing about this http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/01/07/260461489/decades-later-desegregation-still-on-the-docket-in-little-rock
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Whatever the state board decides affects more Missouri districts than only Kansas City. Missouri has a law that forces an unaccredited district to pay the tuition to send any student to neighboring districts. Currently Normandy and Riverview Gardens districts are paying other districts for enrolling Normandy and Riverview Gardens students. Normandy will be bankrupt soon. These are suburban St. Louis districts.
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“The report also identifies what its authors consider another glaring need, and proposes instituting universal pre-kindergarten for children ages 3 and 4 city-wide. The report says this can be done using funds reallocated in the reorganization of the district, without raising taxes.”
I knew this bait and switch was coming, too. “Reallocated” funds for preK, “without raising taxes”.
In other words, they’re going to pull still more money from public schools and “give” us preK.
It’s just dishonest. I should have known the big marketing push on pre-K was somehow going to screw public school students. This will be the bribe they’ll dangle in front of “liberals”, so they’ll “relinquish” their schools.
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This story sounds like the desire by some alumni of Washington DC. once illustrious high school, Dunbar to take over running the school.
Their plan is to make the school selective admission, basically keeping out the riff raft.
http://wapo.st/19l7LID
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Knowing that district very well, I cannot make a sweeping thought against charters there. There are good things happening in charters there that need to happen (I don’t know about all of them). I do know that the culture in many of the public schools there represents the poor and minorities. Teaching in that culture can be frustrating because of what you are up against. I don’t blame the leadership of influence in the city for wanting to try something in order for a more positive spirit to flow. I don’t think privatizing is the answer, but I do see why there is the notion to want some kind of change. How can a city thrive if affluent and well-educated folks avoid the public schools at all costs (which they do). When I moved there as a young adult I was advised to stay far away from KCMO schools. Can you imagine welcoming a young teacher to your city and then advising her to go to the suburbs to work? I took it as a challenge.
Metal detectors. Security guards. Professional development with cops on gangs.
You can kind of understand the notion to try something to “disrupt” this norm.
I am square in the middle on this one. I am hoping something for innovative arises. Something that lets the city keep its schools, but that brings a new and positive dimension to the culture of poverty.
If anyone there asked me what I think I would give them some ideas.
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But they won’t be helping those whose disfunction cripples the public schools, in which a second grader will call their teacher the b word or sixth graders decide today is hold hands day, tomorrow is kissing day and the next is groping day.
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How does one help that? I think that question is a huge factor in all of the public schools debate. I took plenty of disrespect in KCMO as a young white teacher. I always felt supported by the administration and actually, because we did have metal detectors and security guards, safer than I would be any sheer else. MOST students were kind on an individual basis, but breaking through the tough shell and defensive nature of the students as a whole was a daily effort.
And I agree privatizing won’t help that. But I don’t know what will help it as a culture—case by case and student by student, wise and supportive teachers can reach the students. But a culture where people have seemingly given up on themselves, really, is a hard thing with which to grapple.
I think the motivations for “reform” are actually very different around the country. Had I not taught in Missouri and Kansas, I would have no clue how to really speculate on the situations in comparison with NC, where I teach now. An underlying greed might slither in an among each state, but the points that have made the public schools vulnerable from state to state are really not all identical. Unfortunately, the fact that we have a Department of Education and large federal measures has allowed for a plague affecting a myriad of situations.
And I guess groups like ALEC that come up with one size fits all legislation are also not helping.
I have friends who owned the mall in our town in the 80s. They said the unsupervised kid drop-offs were a problem and they worked hard to find solutions. Their solutions attracted the attention of malls states away (far away) who would seek their advice on handling the unsupervised kid issue. Point being–we seem to be handling schools like shopping malls. I understand trends and best practice type thinking, but as my principal said at a meeting yesterday, standard operating procedure is now being written as we go, as we lose more and more personnel to budget cuts and have increased mandates on student testing.
They key to stepping back and visualizing it all is to look at things like water flow. Creeks. Streams. Dams. What are the goals of public education same as the goals for water. When my cousin graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in 1999, the commencement speaker tied everything to our water. Seriously. Analogies help. Clean water. Flowing water. Safe water. Water where we want it. Access to water. Education is like water.
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Sorry to interrupt but this is a must read
http://stopcommoncorenc.org/2014/01/13/must-read-letter-school-board-member/
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If this was a true attempt to assist a failing district why wasn’t it done on the up and up? So many dirty deals being done these days that are ruining public education!
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Did I miss something, or are they suggesting that no one needs transportation if the district has no role in providing it and if families are choosing schools across town? Um… Yeah
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The Missouri State Board lapsed the Normandy School District in May to “preserve schools in the district.” Normandy,a city in St. Louis County, Missouri.
The following is the news release of today (June 16, 2014) announcing the steps it will take “to break the cycle of low achievement and fundamentally change the way Normandy schools will function by approving the transition of Normandy School District to governance under a new appointed board.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DESE Communications
6:25 PM, June 16, 2014
To: ‘dese-bulletin@lists.mo.gov’
communications@dese.mo.gov
The Department has issued the following news release:
Normandy Schools Collaborative to Operate with New Leadership
The State Board of Education took steps to break the cycle of low achievement and fundamentally change the way Normandy schools will function by approving the transition of Normandy School District to governance under a new appointed board.
Beginning July 1, the district will be reorganized as a new district known as the Normandy Schools Collaborative . The State Board has appointed three members of a Joint Executive Governing Board:
* Dr. Charles Pearson, CEO, Innovative Education Solutions, LLC; Training Facilitator, National Institute for School Leadership
* Richard Ryffel, Private Banker, J.P Morgan; Board Chair, Beyond Housing
* Reginald Dickson, Chairman of Buford, Dickson, Harper & Sparrow; Board Member, St. Louis Community College
The State Board approved the Department’s recommendation to grant a waiver to Normandy establishing its status as a new state oversight district . The new district will not have an accreditation classification for three years. The State Board will review the waiver status annually. Subject to review and renewal, the waiver may remain in place. At that time, the State Board will make a comprehensive review of the district governance structure. The Department will also engage in continuous review of student progress, and the newly appointed board will make quarterly progress reports to the state Board of Education.
“Students and parents need clarity as to the future of their district,” said Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro. “We hope this fresh start will allow all involved to begin building a culture focused on improving teaching and learning.”
The Board also approved Department recommendations in the following areas:
* District staffing – all teacher and administrator contracts will lapse effective June 30, and all employees hoping to return must re-interview for their positions. The Board approved a list of recommended rehires who have already been interviewed.
* Student Transfers – no new student transfers will occur under this status at this time. Current student transfers will be allowed to continue with a new tuition rate determined by the Department’s calculation formula. One exception is the 131 students that were not enrolled in Normandy schools in 2012-13.
* Budget – the Department has proposed a balanced budget to keep the district solvent. Salaries for any employees who are rehired will remain at 2013-14 levels.
* Calendar – the school calendar for 2014-15 will encompass 201 days for teachers, including 183 student days and nearly four weeks of professional development.
Parents, students and staff may find more information about the future of the Normandy Schools Collaborative at http://www.dese.mo.gov/Normandy.
Normandy School District was classified as unaccredited on Jan. 1, 2013. The State Board lapsed the district in May to preserve schools in the district.
Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Communications | 573.751.3469 | dese.mo.gov
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