Katie Osgood, Chicago teacher if children with high needs, left this comment:
“Here is the link to the Atlanta BoE members:
“http://www.atlanta.k12.ga.us/Page/40514 The four TFAers are Courtney English (I-AL7), Jason Esteves (AL-9), Matt Westmoreland (D-3) and Eshe’ Collins (D-6). I encourage everyone to click into their bios to see the organizations they’ve been in involved with, their youth, and the corporate choice of language. For example, Jason Esteves’ bio says, “Jason is a practicing attorney at the Atlanta law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge, LLP, where he brings businesses, nonprofits and individuals together to solve problems and get results. Jason has also served on the boards of KIPP South Fulton Academy…” He did his TFA stint and then straight to law school. Or Courtney English which reads, “Courtney D. English, was elected to the Atlanta Board of Education in 2009 at 24 years old; and was at that time, the youngest person to bke elected citywide in any capacity in the city of Atlanta’s history.” He did TFA for two years and went straight into the politics of school. Then there is Eshe’ Collins who chose to include “As a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher at A.D. Williams Elementary School, 92 percent of her students met or exceeded expectations on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test for both grade levels.” Citing test scores in a bio shows a deep edreform bias, something we know TFA focuses on heavily. And Matt Westmoreland, well he is a white boy from Princeton, need I say more?
“This atrocity is exactly what TFA’s end game is. An all charter district would be a wind fall for TFA and its corporate partners. Their youth and isolation within the edreform machine has clearly had a strong and damaging influence on their beliefs. Expect TFA to keep pushing people like this onto school boards and political office through their political branch, LEE. This is why TFA cannot be allowed to exist.”
I don’t think TFA is going to go out of business. But it is important to know their goals and strategies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“For example, Jason Esteves’ bio says, “Jason is a practicing attorney at the Atlanta law firm of McKenna Long & Aldridge, LLP, where he brings businesses, nonprofits and individuals together to solve problems and get results. Jason has also served on the boards of KIPP South Fulton Academy…”
From the law firm website:
“McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP’s (MLA) cross-practice National Charter Schools team is a thought-leader in this growing field, representing public charter school clients at the federal, national, state and local level. Our team is comprised of attorneys and policy advisors with the experience and resources to assist clients with their facilities, employment, financing, operational, tax-exemption, litigation and appellate, fundraising, legislation and government affairs objectives.”
“Government affairs” means lobbying.
http://www.mckennalong.com/industries-Charter-Schools.html
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David Jernigan, Deputy Superintendent of APS, was Executive Director of the KIPP Metro Atlanta network of charter schools – seven KIPP charters in the APS system. When Dr. Carstarphen was appointed as APS Super, David Jernigan came in board at the same time – 2014-2015 school year. Next, charter conversion appears a done-deal. No doubt in my mind, KIPP will spread its wings. Check out Jernigan’s LinkedIn.
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And of course, he started in Teach For America.
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“I don’t think TFA is going to go out of business.”
As much as they are trying to eliminate democratically (notice the small d) run school districts we must try to eliminate them and force them to go out of business by showing their nefarious practices. Truth eventually can and should/will win but it needs the help of all truth seekers.
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Frequently, I am struck by the title of ‘thought leader’ as I read the vita of PoliSci major turned TFA, turned EDUCATION EGGSPURT, turned lecturer at universities on EVERYTHING EDUCATION RELATED, AND ALL THIS BEFORE THEY TURN 30!?
What is a ‘thought leader’ and when did that lame title come about? Usually, it follows a past TFA connection.
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Reposting…
Original e-mail date: November 9, 2014
Subject line: Turning APS into a Charter System to still operate status quo
It has been difficult wanting to offer what follows, but sometimes it is better to go at difficulty head on.
My voting and encouraging others to vote to put Cynthia Briscoe Brown [1] on the Atlanta school board has turned out to be a great mistake. So I offer my apology to all I had encouraged to vote for her.
I had hoped, actually believed, Cynthia would bring a greater measure of intellectual, moral, and ethical maturity to the board than would especially the four Teach for America youngsters on the board. Never was there the thought that Cynthia would go along with the stupidity of turning APS into a Charter System or go along with any effort to undermine APS as a public institution, as a public good.
APS as a Charter System will do nothing but keep the district stuck in a Beverly Hall kind of status quo, but with a difference. Beverly Hall obviously held scant empathy for the adults in APS. Now, even at this early stage, we see a new superintendent who is pushing that lack of empathy down upon the children, and implicitly blaming the children for the superintendency’s failure to learn to improve the district. That is why when the Superintendent’s Winter Card Contest [2] was announced, by which “[o]ne winning design will be selected by the superintendent,” I reached out to Superintendent Carstarphen to ask, “Do you really want to do this to the children? Why not a Winter Card Collaborative?” Reaching out to ask these questions and to invite the superintendent to think about a better way, a way to honor and to preserve the human dignity of all the children, proved pointless.
Now comes this business-style status quo kind of “APS Attendance Dashboard” [3] that greatly disturbs heart and soul.
Nothing about the dashboard contributes to helping anybody do anything better. The dashboard, no matter how well done using slick technology, evidences the kind of numeral illiteracy that is good only for reacting to the past – much like driving down the road by the view in the rearview mirror. As such, the dashboard makes its mindlessly easy to hold people accountable for making attendance targets, for “making the numbers,” just as Beverly Hall held people accountable for making especially test score targets and reduced the children to passive participants in generating the numbers.
But that is not the worst of it. To see the worth of it, click “Interventions” at the bottom of the APS Attendance Dashboard to read horrifyingly stupid ways for addressing student attendance. For example, “Create competitions among homerooms for the best attendance and provide a prize for the winner” and “Have students sign an attendance contract” and “School offers short term incentives for students to attend school and increase attendance.” While Beverly Hall obviously was pretty void of empathy for adults in APS, we are now witnessing lack of empathy for even the children in APS. Remember, to understand a system, pay more attention to what it does than to what it says.
Now it has become inarguably clear that all the rigmarole APS put into deciding to turn APS into a Charter System amounts to nothing more than Cynthia Briscoe Brown and fellow board members (save perhaps Steven Lee) and the superintendent showing they bring nothing beyond the capacity to maintain the status quo, the real status quo, under a different name. The rigmarole has been a colossal waste of time and money that could have gone into engaging all stakeholders in learning how to improve the current state of APS. But that would have required leadership.
Better had APS leadership capable enough to work on improving APS under the derisively named “Status Quo” option.
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA
edwjohnson@aol.com
Bcc: List 2
[1] http://www.atlanta.k12.ga.us/Page/40514
[2] http://www.atlantapublicschools.us/Page/43925 (no longer available)
[3] https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/AttendanceandSuspensions1415/AttendanceDash?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no
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” “Create competitions among homerooms for the best attendance and provide a prize for the winner” and “Have students sign an attendance contract” and “School offers short term incentives for students to attend school and increase attendance.””
That’s the kind of shit (through instituting B-PISS, oops, I meant to say SWPBS) going down in my rural poverty district that has helped me to decide to retire. It’s all about numbers and the HS students know it is and mock it.
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TFA is a problem. The 2014 Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics, intern placements, reflect another problem. Kennedy, who called businessmen, SOB’s (sons of business), would turn over in his grave if he saw the placements. Full political spectrum representation would likely be the disingenuous defense. But, DFER has an intern, DFPE doesn’t. The cushy high-rent leased accommodations of DFER are preferable to DFPE’s cyberspace. The Department of Ed. has two placements but, groups like the Network for Public Education have none.
Harvard is doing neither its students nor, its reputation any good. All things Harvard will be a target in populist backlash.
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For people who supposedly value rigor and innovation, it’s amazing how lockstep and uniform it’s become.
I can predict the WORDS, the specific language, before they open their mouths. I read a Jeb Bush statement yesterday and it’s a collection of ed reform buzzwords connected by “and” and “the”. It’s a kind of code directed to fellow movement members.
Can one get hired in DC or a state ed agency of you veer from this gospel? I doubt it. They all say the same things. They have these tiny dust-ups over details- “should we backfill the charter schools we all favor?” “how much of the testing we all support can we get people to accept?” but the main tenets of The Movement are never questioned. It’s really freaking disturbing to watch. Complete and utter capture.
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“Freaking disturbing to watch.” Agree. I assume that is why 99% of people at this blog, are working to stop it.
A small win- the “leadership of the University of Dayton, determined that these sorts of grants (Koch) would not be sought in the future”.
I hope it also means, “not accepted”.
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Where are DFPE by the way? I hope it isn’t yet another DC organization dedicated to fleecing the Democratic base.
What exactly do they do to support public schools ? They don’t seem to have any influence at all with the Obama Administration or Democrats in Congress or at the state level.
They’re as ignored and powerless as the public schools they’re supposedly defending. Do they exist to simply retain public school voters for the benefit of Democratic politicians?
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Answer to 3rd question, yes.
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The 7,000 “likes” at the DFPE site, is analogous to the tree that falls in the forest, and no one hears it.
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