State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor announced that he would not serve a second term and was seeking other opportunities.
Jon Pelto, who hopes to run an independent campaign for governor, says that Governor Dannell Malloy is cutting his losses because of Pryor’s outspoken advocacy of charter schools. Also, says Pelto, Malloy realizes he has alienated teachers and is trying to win back their votes.
When the charter school Jumoke Academy and its parent organization FUSE were embarrassed recently, with the revelation that its CEO had served time in prison and had falsely claimed a doctorate, Pryor’s championing of charter schools became an embarrassment.
The unasked question is whether Governor Malloy will pick another charter booster if he is re-elected.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s way too late, Malloy – you’ve lost my vote. If you cared about us CT teachers, Pryor would have seen the door hit his backside a long time ago. I’m voting for Pelto.
He won’t have my vote.
Malloy realizes he has alienated teachers? Really? Now all of a sudden he has this realization?
Maybe Malloy needs some shock therapy to open up the pathways of neurotransmitters.
Zap, crisp, charr. . . . .
To see his name on the highway signs on 684 and 84 in Connecticut is enough to make anyone have a car accident. . . . .
“Good friends don’t let you think of Dannell Malloy and Drive” . . . .
This is a “Malloy Ploy”!! He thinks voters will fall for.his “Change of heart.” Malloy will have to pledge himself to a pro-public school agenda and specifically reject his pro-charter actions for people to believe he’ll do anything differently with Stefan’s replacement. Vote for pelto!
Diane, Unfortunately I think it is a given that Malloy will chose an even more enthusiastic champion of charter schools for the next Commissioner of Education
Teachers are being heard and that’s very good.
Sorry this is off topic, but it’s worth sharing. The media is just now reporting about Florida students as young as kindergarten having to take standardized tests in every subject. This is the result of Florida’s 2011 Senate Bill 736. Yes. A bill passed three years ago. The merit pay provision goes into effect this school year, which means districts have to administer tests for all subjects.
http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/9-investigates-state-plan-means-testing-kindergart/ng473/
“For us to assure that schools do their jobs we can only test. If you don’t test, you don’t care,” said Simmons.
Well, if you don’t test, you don’t care. Obviously.
Isn’t everyone, everywhere, completely and exclusively motivated by test scores, beginning in kindergarten?
I don’t think they can stop. They insist they can but all obsessives and addicts say that 🙂
I must not care for my level 3 & 4 Spanish students then although you might ask them if I care. (Please don’t tell the admin that I don’t test them.)
I originally saw this story on the station’s Facebook page. What scares me are the comments. People are appropriately reacting in disgust toward this measure, but they seem to be placing the blame on the school system instead of on the reform movement.
What if that was the plan all along? Place so many regulatory burdens on the public schools that parents who never planned to do private school or home school all of a sudden want out. Then, the state offers vouchers to those parents.
Is it possible that Pryor is jumping ship because he knows Malloy’s in trouble and could lose?
He’s in a stronger position as far as “career opportunities” stepping down rather than waiting around and losing the job anyway.
Is there a state where an ed reform governor is popular? I can’t think of one, but there must be at least one.
Nevada would be the state to fill the bill. Governor Sandoval has done everything his good friend and consultant Michelle whatever her name is advised. He has no opposition to be re-elected and will likely run for the U.S. Senate against Senator Reid. He could well win. The robber barons of old and the casino moguls own Nevada, so this is not surprising. They do not want to spend taxes on anything unless it is a stadium or arena for their casinos.
Well, what bothers me is that Foley believes the “money follows the child” nonsense and he thinks Florida has a good record on reform.
Lisa, Foley is scary too. Vote for Pelto.
Foley is loathsome –a caricature of a morally-moronic plutocrat. Here he browbeats the doomed workers at a profitable mill that private equity has decided to liquidate to maximize shareholder value:
http://www.courant.com/news/politics/elections/hc-ctm-foley-press-conference-awry-20140730,0,7866412.story
I love the writer’s observation that Foley “alighted from the backseat of a blue BMW sedan”! He rides in the backseat, like Prince Charles! Watch the video to savor the full awfulness of this man.
Malloy is loathsome too.
The latest article says Pryor doesn’t leave until January. Malloy think this buys him time and some votes. I think not.
Did Pryor get a job with Miracle Grow and St. Hope schools? Will he be changing his last name?
Jon Pelto’s interpretation of Pryor’s “departure” is right on target. Malloy has alienated the teachers of Connecticut who helped elect him in 2010, and since then his educational policies have been a disaster. The teachers in the state will not forget how condescending and arrogant he has been when dealing with them and the entire issue of education reform in the state. Pryor, as the commisioner of education, was the figurehead for corporate reform in the state and is now deemed expendable out of political expedience.
Pryor was unqualified to serve as the commissioner of education by anyone’s definition of qualified, and the entire charter snafu should have had Pryor dismissed for a conflict of interest charge long ago.
This from the State Department of Education in Connecticut website:
Click to access commissioner_pryor.pdf
In the mid-1990’s, Pryor served as Policy Advisor to the Mayor of New Haven, Connecticut. Pryor is a co-founder and was the first Board President of Amistad Academy, a public charter school in New Haven. Amistad is the flagship of the Achievement First network of schools. Pryor served on the board of Achievement First, which has opened more than 20 schools and academies in four cities in Connecticut and New York.
And so the dance of the edubully lemons goes on…
Stefan Pryor is simply part of the “new civil rights movement of our time” that provides jobs for those that feel entitled to garner $tudent $ucce$$ at everybody else’s expense.
Their motto? Best expressed by Paul Vallas:
“I go in, fix the system, I move on to something else.”
Link: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Paul-Vallas–213999671.html
English-to-English translation: “I sneak in, rig the system, move on to other prey.”
Perhaps he will be seeking a new position with Michelle Rhee-Johnson?
😎
Isn’t Rhee stepping down?
I didn’t think “what’s her name” (thanks old teacher) could get any lower.
Rhee moved on to Scott’s Board of Directors, an oft-fined company, headquartered in Ohio.
Pensions invest in companies. We can all review Scott’s Miracle Gro (Roundup), at websites like Sourcewatch, and provide opinions to our pension boards.
Chicago paper has a list of the names of contractors in the Concept charter scandal:
“Gurbuz referred questions to attorney Patrick Cotter, who said Friday the company is “in the process of complying” with a grand-jury subpoena it got as part of the FBI probe. Cotter declined to say what Core was asked to turn over.”
Neither the state charter board in Illinois or the Chicago school board require competitive bidding for contractors hired or goods purchased for charter schools:
“The federal E-rate program requires competitive bidding in hiring contractors in an effort to ensure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. There’s no such requirement, though, imposed on charter schools by either CPS or the state charter commission, even though the privately run schools depend almost entirely on tax dollars and CPS requires competitive bidding for its own schools.
Nor do they require charter operators to report to officials who their vendors are or how much they are paid.
None of the deals that Concept’s Chicago schools made with Core or ASE was awarded via competitive bidding.”
No competitive bidding and no one has to report anything, to anyone.
What could possibly go wrong! 🙂
http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/nearly-1-million-charters-went-firms-named-fbi-probe/mon-08182014-1201am
Malloy believes in “money follows the child” as well. Even worse, he told me as candidate Malloy that he did not, then just a year after being in office, did a 180 and pushed not only money follows the child but also every other destructive education policy one can name. There is no difference between Foley and Malloy on education. And if Malloy is reelected, he will think he has some sort of mandate to continue ruining our public schools. As Diane says, vote for Pelto.
Foley has already said what he believes in for education–let rich districts, like his home district of Greenwich, off the hook for any and all reforms, common core, teacher evals, etc. When it comes to urban “failing” district, the sky’s the limit! Vouchers (which so far have not been mooted by Malloy, although the Special Master Steven Adamowski instituted a local version of vouchers for select families–Adamowski supported Foley last time, by the way! So someone like him will likely be Foley’s ed commissioner); money follows the child; school choice; privatization; union busting; charters. It’s true that the Malloy administration desperately wanted to take over Bridgeport schools, along with other urban districts (Hartford and New Haven already have mayoral control or partially appointed boards, and they are truly a mess because of that)–so it is hard to argue that Foley would be worse. I guess the whole two-tiered, separate-and-unequal system Foley wants to legislate would be more confrontational. Buying off the teachers in safe districts might not be hard. I mean, the inequities have been around for a long time in CT, and they haven’t seemed to bother a lot of the “high-performing” districts.
Foley also has some pretty frightening ideas on “efficiencies” in State employee health benefits (hey, one hospital in the state can do MRIs–you don’t get a choice under the Foley plan! another hospital can do other kinds of tests… ). Foley claims he won’t re-open contracts, which are supposedly in force until 2022–but Malloy opened them even though they had been negotiated under Rowland to last until 2017 or 2020… Foley says no layoffs–but maybe he’ll institute freezes so that retiring state workers won’t be replaced. His “business” ideas are corporate and inhumane. Foley also says he probably won’t repeal the gun laws Malloy put in place–but how can we know? He says he wouldn’t have increased gun control–(saying he supports stronger mental health services–he doesn’t say which part of the state mental health care will be offered…–but I would really like to know what Foley would view as appropriate gun legislation. Not control, but….???
I am pretty confident that the Connecticut Education Association told Malloy that they would not endorse him unless he sent Pryor packing. They have 43,000 members and have yet to endorse a candidate. Now the CEA will use this as justification in there endorsement of Malloy. They will “sell” their decision to endorse Malloy based on Pryor’s removal. This will simply prove that the CEA is tone deaf to their own members. I don’t see this ploy working with the vast majority of their members. I am guessing there will be a formal endorsement within the couple of weeks.
Do any CT CEA members or residents see it differently?
They’ll sell their souls for a seat at the table.
I see it the same way. Too late. No way I will vote for Malloy. The CEA should not endorse a candidate for governor.
Those who think that Pryor’s departure suggests a change in Governor Malloy’s plans for education should consider this article from this morning’s Danbury (CT) News-Times,
http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Connecticut-education-chief-looking-for-another-5696656.php#photo-6741864
in which Rep. Andrew M. Fleischmann, D-West Hartford, co-chairman of the legislative education committee, said “Pryor’s job was to take the governor’s vision and implement it.”
Jennifer Alexander, chief executive officer of the Connecticut Coalition of Achievement Now, called Pryor “a tireless advocate for Connecticut students but said “improving education for our kids is about more than one person.”
(Readers might read Jonathan Pelto’s perceptive and scathing evaluation of ConnCAN from January 3, 2014. The clever title alone is revealing! )
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/01/03/can-conncan-con-conn-2/
Pelto’s remarked “Pryor and his team were “anti-teacher, pro-standardized testing, privatization zealots” who have “done immeasurable harm to Connecticut’s public education system.”
“When it comes to actually supporting Connecticut’s public schools, Malloy’s true intentions remain unknown, but Pryor’s departure is a small step in the right direction.”
Diane’s post from July 4, 2014 is worth rereading too in regards to Malloy’s reputation with Connecticut’s teachers.
https://dianeravitch.net/2014/07/04/governor-malloy-of-connecticut-no-friend-to-teachers/
It may have already been mentioned at this blog. Debi Terhar, the President of the Ohio State Board of Education announced she will not seek reelection, when her term ends in Dec. 2014.
That’s good news. But, how will Ohio taxpayers get the wasted tax dollars back, that occurred during her term?
How will the 600 students displaced last week, as the result of the closure of a Cincinnati
charter, be compensated for their disruption?
How will the public schools that enroll the displaced students, in days before school starts, be rewarded for their efforts to correct the errors of the State Board of Education?
If there are findings against the Ohio schools, currently under investigation by the FBI, how will the financial consequences be funded?
How much did the litigation fees, associated with charters, cost Ohio taxpayers? And, how much did 50% of the state auditor’s work, associated with charters, cost?
Where is the accountability for failed leadership? Shouldn’t we demand that part of the salary of members of the state board of education, be returned to the taxpayers?
http://blog.ctnews.com/education/2014/08/19/pryor-tells-superintendents-reforms-will-continue/
Pryor may be leaving, but he’s assuring everyone that nothing is changing:
HARTFORD – Addressing a room full of school superintendents and educational leaders on the day after he announced he would soon leave his job as state education commissioner, Stefan Pryor insisted the state’s public education system is moving in the right direction and will continue to do so.