The superintendents of the Philadelphia public schools, William Hite, is a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. The BSA is a major proponent of charter schools, and a major critic of public schools, which it considers to be failing, failing, failing.
Superintendent Hite has filled up the top administrative jobs of the public school system with veterans of the charter school movement.
Guess that is what he learned as a Broadie.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The enemies are infiltrating and spreading like a cancer. Cancer needs a host to feed on and in this case the host that allows this cancer to survive is our kids. Take away the kids and we can destroy this cancer from spreading further. Broad, Gates, Walton are hugely invested in Charters. These are truly evil people.
Keep using this phrase “unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy.”
Keep on exposing the infiltration of public education by enemies of it.
I am sure these almost daily exposures of the takeovers seem to be without consequence, but this is necessary work.
Charters are public in name only. They are designed to bypass every accountability measure imposed on public schools. They are represented as virtuous but they exacerbate the racial and social and economic and political segregation of communities and schools under the false banner of honoring the civil rights movement.
The promoters of current reform want to transform democratically governed public education into a private market driven system. Some are seeking profit and some are ideologically driven or both. They are working to do so on every level, including using the classic “boring from within” strategy. They enter with resonant catch phrases and then before anyone fully realizes what has happened, the system has changed utterly. Since they have unmatchable financial resources and access to levers of power, the only strategy is to mount a values-driven movement among average folks. That struggle must be defensive (opt-out of egregious testing), but also offensive (fight for the kinds of school and equitable system most people we need and want). The primary shift is changing the conversation from what is best for me to what is best for us.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
“Jeff Rhodes, assistant superintendent of Learning Network 9, spent two years as director of school quality at Michigan-based National Heritage Academies, a charter-management operator with about 51,000 students ”
Not good:
“National Heritage Academies is a for-profit corporation based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. It operates 75 schools in nine states with approximately 50,000 students. In 2011-2012, it was the third largest for profit charter school company in the United States based on number of schools with second largest number of students.
It operates nationwide although most of its schools and students are in Michigan. In 2012, the Michigan Department of Education identified National Heritage Academies as the operator of more than half of the charter schools in the state labeled as “focus schools” because of poor student performance. ”
No one in their right mind should be expanding the charter school mess in the midwest east to Philadelphia.
Do we do ANY vetting of these management companies when they cross state lines? For goodness sakes. It’s Pennsylvania to Michigan. It’s not like this information is unavailable.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/why-is-this-charter-schoo_b_5397059.html
The whole purpose of certification is to maintain some minimum level of acceptable standards. I don’t understand how improperly trained people should be permitted to appoint more improperly trained staff. Most states require people to meet minimum requirements to be a cosmologist or even to drive a car. Do we allow doctors, dentists, lawyers to practice without a license? How can we allow a leader of a major city school system to bypass minimum standards when there are many more qualified candidates ready, willing and able to accept the challenge? This should be illegal.
Maybe the first rule of Broad Superintendents Academy is that while students are teachers are being measured, we are the ones who do the measuring.
While student and teachers are being measured, we [Broadies] do the measuring.
I think it has more to do with billionaires inserting themselves and writing their own rules. After all, rules are for the little people.
There is no “measuring” of anything by these BSA (Bullshitting Supe As. … . .) faux administrators.
The teaching and learning process cannot be measured-PERIOD!!
And these same superintendents with mail-order certificates think that to graduate high school (or even to get promoted to 4th grade) kids should be performing at Ph.D. level. Go figure.
For sharing: http://www.philly.com/philly/education/20150724_New_school_administrator_has_past_controversies.html My best, Deanna
He sounds like a winner!!!! Maybe Tom Wolf should check to make sure they don’t squander anymore tax dollars.
Eric Becoats was one of the applicants to the superintendent’s job in Prince George’s County Public Schools to take over after Dr Hite left.
I listen to him speak and he spoke nice words with the reformer favor but no specifics.
urging went beyond that because the county executive was given the power to appoint board members and select the superintendent.
In Philadelphia, before children were left behind, there was a very active group of public school supporters that used to promote this idea: “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know
how much you care.” (The Elephant ..?.. Group)
They’re Agnostics, Diane. Just ignore that they never hire anyone who comes out of a public school.
It’s ALL… science! 🙂
Wait until the Obama Administration ends. We’ll be inundated with former Duncanites. They’re already fanning out to the ed reform orgs from whence they came.
Same thing has happened in Denver Public Schools. A major reorganization has made room downtown for ex-TFA and Broad people to move in. Supt. Boasberg is charterizing the entire district by stealth. Parents, citizens and taxpayers are largely unaware. Former Gates people are now running for school board and claim with a straight face they have no conflict of interest. http://co.chalkbeat.org/2015/07/17/denver-board-candidate-lisa-flores-northwest-denver-schools-aflame/#.VbK-yxNVhBc Here is an excerpt, “Chalkbeat: How do you respond to people who say that you would likely side with the current majority on the board in DPS on many issues, creating a uncritical board?
Flores: What I would say is that the current representative, Arturo Jimenez, did not have a reputation for working well with the other six board members and as a consequence was very isolated in how he chose to represent this community. I think you can get much further on advocating for the community when you have the support and willing collaboration of the other six board members.”
Shorter Flores: everyone should just agree with us, that’s the democratic way.
we have a TFA alum in the NC legislature who is trying to pass a bill that we have a recovery district like Memphis and New Orleans
Here in Boston, too.
Supernintendo Tommy Chang, late of LAUSD and the iPad melodrama; his previous school experience was to run a Green Dot charter school with 580 students. He’s Broadie, class of 2015.
He has named Barbara Deane-Williams, also a Broadie 2015, as his Senior Deputy Superintendent of Operations.
His Chief of Staff comes to us from Families for Excellent Schools.
Doannie Tran, the newly-appointed Assistant Superintendent of Professional Learning in BPS comes from TFA and TeachPlus.
At least one new principal was a TFA’er whose classroom experience is quite limited.
And TNTP is hiring – (isn’t that the school system’s job?) :
“Leadership Coach – Boston Public Schools
Boston, MA
Seeking passionate school leaders!
TNTP seeks a full-time Leadership Coach to support school improvement efforts in Boston, MA. This position is available immediately and is based in Boston.” Wondering if they’re bringing their walkie-talkies and bugs for teachers’ ears.
http://chc.tbe.taleo.net/chc02/ats/careers/requisition.jsp?org=THENEWTEACHERPROJECT&rid=1919&cws=1&source=LinkedIn
More of the same at the state level – Heather Peske, current Associate Commissioner for Educator Quality in DESE comes through TeachPlus, Education Trust, and Teach for America.
And – oh glee!
“E4E Focus Groups: Educators for Excellence (E4E) is a teacher-founded non-profit that works with teams of teachers to help them make change at the school, district, state, or union level. They are considering coming to Boston and are interested in learning from current BPS teachers: what are the current issues facing Boston teachers? what channels do teachers have to take leadership on issues that matter to them? This is also a chance to learn firsthand about E4E’s model and how it might work here in Boston. Fill out this brief survey to tell me which dates work for you for a 2-hr meeting (dinner/lunch included): http://goo.gl/forms/EHHMRQgHIH”
More of the same at the state level – Heather Peske, current Associate Commissioner for Educator Quality in DESE comes through TeachPlus, Education Trust, and Teach for America.
Stealth takeovers of the public system.
Suggest that Dr. Chang might experience a bit of a culture shock moving from
LA to Boston. His hundred day plan is surely politically correct, but it makes
no mention of the lagging performance of boys.
Interestingly, he’s left his family in L.A.
Christine, the Broadie way. They don’t put down roots.
The massive privatization war is is a special kind of coup d’etat, not like the violent ones we’re familiar with in history, though this overthrow of the public sector is doing great damage to kids, teachers, families, and communities. This is what I call a “stealth coup.” The capture of the public sector has been underway for decades legalistically with the successive formation of foundational maps on what needs to be done, formation of a whole set of privatel-financed org’s to develop a critical mass of agents and operatives who can fill managerial/policy offices(from school boards to principal offices to district sups. to state heads to SCOTUS justices grads of Washington Legal Foundation), with the bought collusion of crony politicians under the guidance of NGO’s like ALEC which are heavily-financed and managed by billionaire entrepreneurs with a great deal to gain by commercializing the public sector and killing unions.
This stealth coup can be conveniently dated to begin 44 years ago this August with publication of the famous Powell Memorandum(Aug.’71)by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, a Va. heavyweight lawyer who had headed the Va. State School Dept. That memo is available online, pls read it to see Powell posing the mass movements of the 60s/70s as the great threat and outlining a series of measures needed to take the conservative offensive against these movements and gains by popular forces, measures all legal/organizational/institutional, many undertaken in the coming decades, leading to the billionaire boys club, TFA, NCLB, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, etc., no matter if a Democrat or a Republican Congress or White House was in charge, a bipartisan project.
The ferocious privatization of public education since Milwaukee went voucher in ’94 brought the huge public school sector in line with the general corporate conquest of all things social and public in the US under the umbrella of what we call neoliberalism.
Pls forgive these dense paragraphs, but what is happening now is a stealth coup that nullifies constitutional and democratic rights through legalistic/electoral maneuvers that steadily abrogate legal process. Only thing that can stop this assault on democracy and equality is a massive increase in parental refusal, more Opt-Out from coast to coast, so we’d do well to urge Opt-Out every chance we get and help it along. Thanks very much for your patience.
Thanks, Ira.
And it seems to be happening with teacher union acquiescence.
It is hard to explain it to people outside education -they do not seem to understand the dangers of the privatization movement in relation to the bigger picture of democracy. Your post explains it succintly.