Retired arts educator Laura Chapman posted the following comment:

 

 

According to The Telegraph (newspaper), Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, is looking at bringing in an expert from overseas to be the next chief inspector of English schools to replace Sir Michael Wilshaw. The Telegraph says that the favorite candidates from the US are:
1. Dave Levin, co-founder of the KIPP network of more than 180 “high-performing” charter schools, and (hold your hat)
2. Doug Lemov, head of a chain of charter schools in New York, and (hold your hat)
3. Eva Moskowitz, chief executive of Success Academy Charter Schools in New York, and (hold your hat)
4. Joel Klein, who as chancellor of the New York schools district took on the teaching unions.
“Mrs. Morgan believes the new chief inspector needs a track record of pushing through education reforms against resistance from unions, whether experience was garnered in this country or abroad.”

Downing Street reportedly supports the international search for a “radically different leader” of Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills).
http://reports.ofsted.gov.uk/inspection-reports/find-inspection-report/provider/ ..

Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers said; “If the government is scouring the world for a new head of Ofsted, they should look to Finland.”… “It is universally agreed to have an excellent education system characterized by co-operation, collaboration and trust – a far cry from the Charter School ethos of the US.”

Lucy Powell, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “We should be looking to the best examples internationally…to improve school standards.“

“The key ingredient to raising standards is enough high quality teachers in our classrooms…. Ministers are failing to recruit and retain enough teachers, threatening our future economic success and the prospects of young people in the global education race.”
Source http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/12156541/Ministers-looking-abroad-for-new-chief-inspector-of-schools.html

That all narrative sounds familiar, but the plot thickens.

 

Major sub-contractors for Ofsted inspections of educational programs, including the Tribal Group, lost contracts in May 2014. Tribal Group’s stock dropped. But by 2015, Tribal Group had been reinstated with a contract as Inspector for southern England and London. Why should this factoid be of interest?

1. Tribal Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange. It is a leading provider of technology products and training services to education, and it operates internationally, including the US.

 

2. The Gates Foundation is funding an “Inspectorate” system for teacher preparation based on the Tribal Group’s method but with criteria supplied by the National Center for Teacher Quality. This 33 month 2015 grant to “Teacher Prep Inspection — US, Inc. is for $3,248,182.

3. Among the “experts” enlisted to shape and approve the criteria for the National Center for Teacher Quality’s ratings (published in US News and World Report) and now to be part of the Gates-funded Inspectorate are:

Sir Michael Barber, Chief Education Advisor, for Pearson International—publisher of texts, tests K-12, and teacher education, including on-line learning.

Doug Lemov, Managing Director of “The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching Practices” project for Uncommon (charter) Schools, trustee of the New York Charter Schools Association and of KIPP Tech Valley Charter School. Author of Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. Lemov is known for propagating the extremely authoritarian teaching techniques used in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools.

Merideth Liben, Director of Literacy and English Language Arts for Student Achievement Partners. Liben worked on the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and developed tools for analyzing text “complexity,” mathematical formulas and rules for selecting texts that comply with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Recall that that the Gates Foundation financed those standards. Only eight states are using the Common Core as written, nineteen have “re-branded” them.” More on the technical panel at NCTQ at http://www.nctq.org/teacherPrep/review2014/ourApproach/whoWeAre/technicalPanel.jsp#318

4. If you work in teacher education, you should know that Inspections have already been piloted in the US. In 2013, Dr. Edward Crowe, co-founder of Teacher Preparation Analytics, managed the first pilots of the inspection process, modeled on the Tribal Group’s British inspection system. Crowe continues this work, leading the Gates-funded work Teacher Prep Inspection-US (TPI-US).

Here is an overview of the US Inspectorate process, also showing the clear connection to criteria from NCTQ, notorious for their prescriptions that pretend to be based on research, http://www.iacte.net/files/Inspectorate%20Model%20Overview%201.31.14.docx

5. In the US Inspectorate— US (TPI-US)— higher education faculty in teacher education are excluded from the process except for being subjected to extensive surveillance and being “cooperative” in providing information as requested. Inspectors fault programs that fail to track the test scores produced by their graduates and have the equivalent of customer satisfaction reports from their graduates and employers of their graduates (among much else).

 

You can get an idea of the process used in the 2013 inspections here. https://secure.aacte.org/apps/rl/res_get.php?fid=835&ref=rl