Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch asks whether North Carolina will be next to copy Tennessee’s floundering “Achievement School District.”
The idea is that the state will take over low-scoring schools, put them into a special district, and hand them over to private charter operators. All teachers will have to reapply for their jobs.
The ASD has encountered community opposition in Tennessee. Teachers leave, parents leave, enrollment declines, and there is no turnaround.
“Tennessee established an Achievement School District (ASD) five years ago in an effort to turn around failing schools, targeting schools primarily located in Memphis and Nashville.
How it works: the state identifies its bottom five percent of schools based on their students’ performance on standardized tests and marks them ‘priority schools,’ placing them within the state-controlled Achievement School District with the goal of lifting them up into the state’s top 25 percent within five years.
In most cases, however, the state doesn’t run the priority schools—instead, Tennessee contracts out their management to private charter school operators.
“It’s been so disruptive to the community,” parent advocate Lyn Hoyt, who is founder and president of TREE, Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence, a group dedicated to fighting for strong and equitable public schools, told N.C. Policy Watch.
“Schools in the ASD have a very hard time getting community buy-in,” said Hoyt. “A charter management company comes in and takes over a school, forces the teachers and staff to reapply for their jobs, and there is just no choice in the matter. The school has to take on a whole new persona under new management.”
Hoyt says that because the charter takeovers tend to be very sudden, parents become angry that their beloved neighborhood schools, which often serve as cornerstones of Memphis communities, become quickly transformed into unknown entities. Teachers hoping to hold on to their tenure rights tend to leave for more stable work environments if they can find them, and parents who have the means tend to pull their kids from the ASD charter schools in search of alternative options, leaving even larger concentrations of low-income, at-risk youth in the ASD schools.
Since the creation of the achievement school district, four charter operators have pulled out of Memphis—at least two because they saw troubling enrollment decreases, said Hoyt.”
The ASD has achieved nothing of consequence. By any objective measure, it has been a failure. Why should North Carolina copy Tennessee’s failed ASD?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“The ASD has achieved nothing of consequence. By any objective measure, it has been a failure. Why should North Carolina copy Tennessee’s failed ASD?”
Because NC follows every failed policy from other states. This is our legacy. Our legislators (remember, we are one of the most gerrymandered states) take what doesn’t work elsewhere, impose mandates on already beleaguered teachers and then point fingers of blame, while reducing funding.
And yes, I’m a cynical truth-teller.
there are a few good ones in there. We just need more like them!
Of course we all know it’s about money, not improving education, but even on that score, I’m confused. Have charters really been making money from these types of districts? I know the charter in Michigan gave up specifically because they couldn’t make a profit. Have other charters in “Achievement” districts made a profit? Or even enough money to sustain a non-profit?
I think it’s also just about power and posturing and being in charge. If you operate under the assumption that the “old-style” way of providing a community and civic service in a democratic fashion in the way of public school (as much as can be handled that way) with teachers trained in our universities. . .if you operate under the assumption that such a system is just another example of bloated government (because you haven’t really read much literature or history, maybe, and you can’t tell the difference between what is bloated government and what isn’t, you just react, assume and make one-liners and like to be cool) then you think knocking something down like public schools that serve poverty areas but aren’t solving the poverty issue is a victory! (in Jesus, perhaps). (Lord help us).
I cannot believe this is happening in my state.
Might be time to run for office.
It all depends on how many in the state legislature are the property of Pearson and the other Rheeformers.
or just TFA alum who operate under a lot of presumptions and assumptions and arrogance.
I recommend that the state should never takeover poor performing schools. They have a function in society. They make the other schools look good by comparison. Instead the state should throw more money (some one above said that it is all about money) at the low performing schools and tell the schools/teachers nothing more is expected of them because they are sacred and just enjoy the bounty. That will possibly make some great teachers to move to the low performing schools and possibly in a million years or so improve those schools.
Fortunately for you this isn’t my blog. If it were, you’d be banned. Even by your lowly standards, this is one of the smarmiest, most insulting, disgusting things you have ever posted. Hope you’re proud of yourself.
You left out ‘racist’. So according to Raj, we should fire more of those lazy, money grubbing, inner city teachers and hire saviors (e.g., privileged, TFA, & white) who deserve their salaries.
I have a suggestion for you, Raj: get your teaching certificate and go and teach at these poor performing schools for several years. See if teachers and students don’t work hard. Then come and report here. Until you do that, I have no respect for your position. Rant over.
The state isn’t “taking over” anything. They’re hiring a bunch of contractors and walking away.
They’ll check in to look at “outputs” and “relinquish” more and more funding to the contractors, but let’s be clear on what this is- it has nothing to do with politicians accepting accountability for the conditions of public schools.
It works out very nicely for them.
I’m not clear why we need what’s becoming an irrelevant layer of “government” between the contractor and their customers. I could hire any reasonably competent accounting firm to do the same thing these politicians are doing, and it would probably be less corrupt and more transparent.
The public can just deal with the contractor directly. We’ll do it by ballot referendum. They can all go to the private sector and REALLY run something or other “like a business”.
It’s called abrogation of responsibility to the state’s children. Let the hired hands deal with it, while, of course, there is no accountability so nobody will notice the bags on cash in the truck of the CEO’s car.
Sorry: trunk
99% of us don’t need or want these money grubbing contractors but Wall St investment banks do. DC insiders are turning the US into a low wage, service economy so they need another source of public money with which to gamble.
Case in point- the bipartisan support for universal pre-k will be financed by bonds backed by nothing but paper & a promise. Instead of expanding directly funded Head Start for all, Goldman Sachs & banksters are using creative financing to open Pre-k programs:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/08/07/37preschool_ep.h32.html?tkn=PZNF%2Fyi60RsoRgtRpL%2B2b5ASuLpkqFuFzg6n&print=1
I detect another Wall St bubble & crash.
After the politicians hire the contractors and disclaim any responsibility for public schools, can we outsource the politicians?
We might get a better deal from the contractors without the whole money-sucking campaign apparatus in the middle. Let’s really run it like a business. They’re not adding a whole lot of value to what is a straight transaction.
I wish we could show a vote of no confidence like the Brits. Maybe it would keep the politicians on their toes.
I am from TN and very politically active. Based on the snake oil sales pitch for the ASD we can honestly say the ASD is a complete failure and its leader and 2011 Broad Superintendent Academy graduate Chris Barbic just announced he is resigning. I guess he can’t take the heat. But if you look below the lies about ASD you will find to the snake oil salesmen the ASD is a complete success. This is why it is spreading. The REAL goal is to privatize public education. Replace ALL schools with Charters and eliminate elected school boards. In the end promises of improved results, reduced achievement gap levels and parental control you will find out (just like parents in New Orleans now know) that you will not only have no choice but no voice either. Appointed people in roles of authority answer to those that appoint them not pesky tax payers. Sen. Thelma Harper sponsored a bill in the 2015 legislative session ( she knows the score) to end the ASD and she was ignored. Tennesseans MUST get with her and support her in ending the ASD in TN. And every citizen in every state must make stopping this agenda in their state TOP PRIORITY!!! Bill Gates, Walton, Broad and others are heavily invested in Charters and it is not because they love your children. They love MONEY.
“But if you look below the lies about ASD you will find to the snake oil salesmen the ASD is a complete success. This is why it is spreading.”
I no longer believe “success” has anything to do with what does or does not “spread” in ed reform. It doesn’t make a bit of difference if ASD’s “work”. They want ASD’s and so we’ll get ASD’s until they want something else.
The same idea for an ” Achievement School District” of failed schools is being proposed in Pennsylvania. And this is before the PA General Assembly has proposed any legislation to correct the wrong doings of past charter scandals and criminality…Just proposing more of the same…. Huge doses of “no accountability’ for everyone, legislators, hedge fund investors, charter managers…. except public schools…
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
It’s happening in Delaware, they call them “Priority schools”. And of course, these schools are in low income neighborhoods, populated by children of color. Great teachers have to reapply for their jobs, and great teachers have left to teach somewhere else before the axe falls. It’s disgraceful and sad.