Peg Robertson is rightfully outraged that the Relay Graduate School of Education received state approval to operate in Colorado.
She was even more outraged that no one spoke out in opposition to this travesty.
She writes:
This is the story of a fake graduate program getting approved by the Colorado Commission of Higher Education. CCHE has approved that non-educators trained by non-educators can be “certified” teachers who are in charge of the social, emotional, physical, mental and academic well-being of Colorado’s children. Imagine your child in that classroom. I’d like to see all the principals and leaders in Colorado who attended Relay Principal training PUT THEIR OWN CHILDREN IN THESE CLASSROOMS.
These fake teachers must prove that they can achieve one year’s growth via TEST scores in order to graduate from Relay. You can be assured that they will be stellar at teaching to the test. This is all that they know. And in order to make this happen, militant disciplinary methods must be used because children, and adults, ultimately find this form of dog training to be boring, redundant, and insulting. Therefore, it must be enforced – and as it is enforced this conditioning will become normal – it will be accepted as “as good as it gets.” Democratic thinking will continue to erode.
These fake teachers will be led by a fake dean who appears to be 31 years old and is a former TFA. She has two years teaching experience and appears to have some bizarro M.S.T. in which she got her training by speaking to robotic students via video games. Meanwhile her bachelor’s was in sociology.
Daniel Katz of Seton Hall University wrote a scathing article about Relay last year. Of course, Arne Duncan praised it.
Katz described it thus:
It is a “Graduate School of Education” that has not a single professor or doctoral level instructor or researcher affiliated with it. In essence, it is a partnership of charter school chains Uncommon Schools, KIPP, and Achievement First, and it is housed in the Uncommon Schools affiliated North Star Academy. Relay’s “curriculum” mostly consists of taking the non-certified faculty of the charter schools, giving them computer-delivered modules on classroom management (and distributing copies of Teach Like a Champion), and placing them under the auspices of the “no excuses” brand of charter school operation and teachers who already have experience with it.
This is a direct assault on the very idea of teacher professionalism. This alleged graduate school has no Ph.D.s or EDDs on its “faculty.” It consists of charter teachers teaching prospective charter teachers how to raise test scores. No research. No library. No scholars. Of its several campuses in five states, not one has a dean with a doctorate. They are mostly TFA graduates. They will now train and award master’s degrees in test-score raising.
Relay is spreading like kudzu, offering to “train” teachers and principals. It has been approved in New York by the Board of Regents. It was approved in Massachusetts. And most shocking of all, it has been approved by NCATE, which apparently has no standards for what constitutes a graduate school of education. Having a masters’ degree in raising test scores should be about as valuable as a BA from Corinthian Colleges.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I blame the Democrats for this. The party has been completely co-opted by the big bucks of the billionaires who fund them. Milton Friedman could not have imagined how fast the Democrats would fold in his wildest dreams.
I also believe this began with Wendy Kopp and Teach for America. It seemed like such a great thing in the beginning. Who knew that an entire generation overprivileged, well-educated Americans would suddenly realize a lucrative, high-paying career could be theirs without “selling out” and becoming a Wall Street banker? They may have started in TFA for the right reasons, but it only took a year or two having to actually teach before they ran running to much higher paying jobs in TFA “administration” and then on to even higher paying jobs at think tanks established to promote the reform movement. They are in it for the money and the “prestige” of being able to hobnob with those billionaire financiers who they used to think were just too money-hungry. Teaching has little prestige and pays very little. But a job in the “reform movement”? A whole generation of faux Democrats have found their own high paying careers in which they can only fail up the ladder, as long as they do “whatever it takes” to take money from public schools and direct it into the privatization movement.
And President Obama is the perfect leader for them. His appointment of Arne Duncan has done more to destroy public education than any Republican could have hoped.
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I TOO BLAME the DEMs.
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I have to agree. I think it is time parents of color mobilize to ensure their children receive the same quality of education that the rich and famous is receiving. Parents I encourage you to take to the street. Make sure you are at every hearing. Let the politicians know you vote and if they do not have the interest of your children in mind, you will not be voting for them. Also, I think unions members need to stop writing to each other and start protesting in the newspaper, social media, and other places where they can mobilize a larger audience. My concern is that the “graduates” of this program (and others like it) will find their way into urban or inner city schools for a couple of years doing more harm than can ever be corrected. This has become a serious problem and it needs to be addressed not on this blog but in the larger community.
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Exactly right! It’s beyond disappointing to see how Democrats have bought into this frightening nonsense.
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It’s also the fault of NCATE member schools, who boast of their NCATE accreditation. The public, students, and prospective employers are led to believe that graduates of NCATE schools are receiving superior education. IMO, it’s the fraud of a seal of approval, where the lowest common denominator is rated just like the highest.
The parallel, which was exposed in the Big Short movie, is Wall Street bond ratings.
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Relay reminds me of Mao’s barefoot doctors during his Cultural Revolution (1965 – 1976). At the time, real medical doctors were the targets of teenage Red Guard gangs (that reminds me of TFA, because TFA recruits also are young and their job is to disrupt and destroy the traditional school system. Teachers also were targets of the Little Red Guard. Imagine what it must have been like to have millions of teenagers turned lose with the power to torture and torment teachers, doctors, etc.
Under Mao’s barefoot doctor program, anyone could become a doctor and even illiteracy wasn’t a problem, because all these want-to-be doctors had to do was watch a film on how to conduct a surgery before cutting into patients to remove or patch up body parts, etc. After a short training session watching several videos off the barefoot doctors went to treat patients around the country. They also watched films on how to improve cleanliness (reminds me of VAM) so China’s average lifespan actually improved under this program because the barefoot doctors also taught the peasants how to live a cleaner lifestyle — washing hands, mopping floors, etc. Measuring the improvement in lifespan was an indication that even though many patients died on the operating table (any old table or even a floor), the average lifespan did improve — a clear sign of success.
But if you needed surgery, the failure rate was extremely high. Imagine having heart surgery from a barefoot doctor that was illiterate, had watched a 20 minute film on how to do heart surgery and before becoming a doctor after watching a few films, he/she had been peasant farmer that raised pigs.
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And of course, I imagine the top officials and their connected buddies during the Cultural Revolution were not having any of those barefoot doctors operating on their own children.
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Probably not, but no one was safe from the Red Guard except Mao. When Mao felt threatened by a high party member that might not approve of what was happening during the Cultural Revolution, he let the teenage Red Guard take care of the perceived problem — no written orders just a dropped hint. That meant if a high ranked party member used a real medical doctor to treat his family, that might mean the party member was corrupt and needed to be purged.
But Mao had his own properly trained medical doctors during the Cultural Revolution and the teenage Red Guard, that worshiped Mao as if he were a living god, didn’t care or didn’t pay attention to what god was doing. Almost everyone else was a fair target. But Mao wasn’t taking any chances. He lived in Beijing’s Forbidden City as if he were an emperor, and had his own trusted division of the People’s Liberation Army guarding it in case the teenage Red Guard decided to burn the Imperial Palace to the ground like they were doing to so many old buildings. In fact, the teenage Red Guard did attempt to burn the Forbidden City but when faced with that armed division of troops, they decided that wasn’t such a good idea.
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Lloyd, I wonder how long the reform movement would last if Bill Gates demanded that all his minion followers be taught (and tested) in public schools run and taught by Relay grads? His own children would be the only ones exempt, of course.
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From what I’ve read, Bill Gates never attended public schools and he certainly isn’t a teacher.
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^^^he let the teenage Red Guard take care of the perceived problem — no written orders just a dropped hint….”
I can’t help noticing how similar this sounds to certain high-performing charter school chains. Somehow the principals and teachers highly rewarded by the CEO get caught doing the things that they were never “ordered” to do. Just a lot of dropped hints (“wouldn’t it be nice if those troublesome low-scoring kids disappeared..” or maybe “you need to have fewer students with low scores to improve average scores in your school and don’t tell me how you do it”) and when the charter school “Red Guard” took care of the perceived problem, they were richly rewarded with promotions and esteem. However, on the rare occasions their actions became public, the leader points to them being an anomaly and they are “shocked, shocked!” to learn that such behavior would be going on by such highly valued employees”.
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Both Relay and the Broad Academy represent attempts by “reform” to blow up traditional teacher and administrator preparation programs. It is up to the states to reject these credentials. Unfortunately, too many state policymakers accept these alternative programs as legitimate. Many states are placing these people in positions of leadership and authority. Unless states come up with tougher standards with specific criteria for those in education, these less than worthy credentials will be perceived as valid. These faux programs cheapen the degrees of all those that obtained credentials through colleges of education.
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States are accepting them because the billionaires who own the politicians and want their own specially trained “administrators” in power are calling the shots.
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That is why it is hard to fight those with money; they have the power to buy the policymakers. I have never seen more irresponsible decisions being made in education than what has happened under the Obama administration. He basically gave Gates the “keys to the kingdom.”
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What’s not to like from the standpoint of a politician who has a thousand different constituencies hounding them for more money?
Relay, Broad Academy, TFA, and many of the reformsters sell a snake oil that claims:
1. Teaching can be masters by anyone in 5 weeks or less.
2. Teaching is nothing more than controlling unruly children.
3. Teaching is about preparing for 1 standardized test.
4. Teaching is a temporary job, with low pay and no benefits.
5. Teaching is a petri dish for edupreneurs to make real money.
College costs have soared and leave graduates with crushing debt. How appealing to eliminate Schools of Education and Graduate Schools of Education, saving millions in professor salaries, benefits, buildings, and their upkeep!
Teacher pensions and due process were always the icing on the very thin cake of compensation for a largely-female profession and they make up a huge percentage of the costs of educating children. How appealing to eliminate the profession entirely and replace it with temp workers who can be paid minimum wage and who receive no benefits!
Teachers Unions are the last, largest, and strongest vestige of the labor movement. They have stood in the way of exploitative employers and bettered the plight of workers for decades, making an American middle class possible. How appealing to eliminate these pesky unions and cut off their waning political influence, lobbying, and campaign endorsements and spending altogether!
The rise of Trump/Drumph has revealed the last gasp of the racist American white population that opposed integration and busing in the 60’s and who have bought into the rightwing lies that poor black and brown children and their families are stealing money that rightfully belongs to them and living high on the hog while doing it. How appealing to take away their voices and rights to a free and adequate public education and turn them over to Lemov-inspired charter schools where they will be conditioned to be obedient, subservient, afraid to think or question authority, and, on top of that, you political supporters can milk the cash cow of education spending unimpeded by ethics, morals, or public scrutiny!
Please stop claiming that reformist-supporting politicians are ignorant or misinformed. They are not. They are completely aware of what is going on and they are neck-deep in their support of the atrocities against public education.
They are NOT of the noble-persuasion who wish the best for all American children and equality for American families. They are part of the oligarchy, bought and paid for, and their motives are anything but pure and trustworthy.
Teachers should be able to see, by now, the evil of our opponents. See the attack on Diane by the people from PARCC and many, many other examples.
We must overcome our naiveté and our basic trust and belief in the goodwill and honesty of most people because that does not describe out opponents and our ignorance and failure to address them for what they are is a tactical advantage they exploit repeatedly and successfully over and again.
Fight back but fight smart!
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Chris: I agree with you 100%. It would be better if the unions actually supported their membership, with more than just token comments.
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Chris in Florida,
Mercedes Schneider exposed Media Matter’s omission of Gates, Waltons, Broad and DFER, when MM, wrote a spin of ed reform to absolve Democrats.
So, you are clearly correct. Democratic senators and representatives knew. A few months ago, our Democratic county chair described the situation as a “rift” in the party.
Three of the most disappointing Democratic senators are Warren, Franken and Brown, of Ohio.
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Here’s the “fake dean” of whom she speaks:
http://www.relay.edu/campuses/denver
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Kerrie Dallman, President of the Colorado Education Association, responded to Ms. Robertson’s blog post: “Peggy- your characterization that the Union remained silent is inaccurate. Both the CEA and local associations testified against the Relay Graduate School approval.”
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How did the Union mobilize the rank and file?
What did they do to coordinate strategy with Colleges and Universities with education faculties?
What was their media presence?
How did they mobilize parents and other stakeholders to pressure the board making the decision and the politicians supporting them?
I’d like to see how they represented the best insterests of the rank and file to protect their profession.
Just ‘testifying against” is not nearly enough and seems to me to be token protest at best and typical of the weak tea ‘leadership’ that our costly Union leadership puts up against the reformists who are stealing our jobs, destroying our profession, and eliminating public education.
They are far too cozy with the reformists and I’m tired of their plaintive cries of having to work with those in power and with the laws that exist. NO! That’s not where Unions came from and NOT how they changed the very fabric of this nation.
Thank goodness there are a few good Union leaders left, like Barbara Madeloni in Massachusetts!
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Chris, bullet points, how the unions fail repeatedly. When, 13 years into rephorm, teachers, education college faculty and AFT/NEA retirees are surprised to learn about the attack on public education, there is no excuse.
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Connect the dots. The teacher pipeline is drying up quickly. With the mass exodus of teachers, the soon-to-be-retired teachers and the usual turnover of probationary teachers, there is a huge need to staff classrooms on the horizon. This “licensure” will allow for “qualified” teachers to pursue the upcoming openings that will surely arise.
It’s a convenient way around certification requirements. Everyone knows it’s a BS program. But that doesn’t matter. By allowing these “schools” to open and accrediting them, they can get around highly qualified requirements cheap and easy.
Haven’t we learned that policymakers aren’t in it to do what’s best for kids? It’s all about cost and ideology. Nothing to do with education. All about test scores because, you know, they’re so useful. We know it’s a stupid game but political leaders don’t care.
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The TALK among the DEFORMERS is to TAKE DOWN TOTALLY Public Education so the DEFORMERS can rebuild education their way. This thinking is twisted and abusive.
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The Relay Graduate School of Education is a stand-alone charter school that began as a project called Teacher U, affiliated with Hunter College. The New York State Board of Regents chartered Relay in 2011, meaning it can operate with no affiliation to institutions of higher education. In addition to granting graduate degrees, Relay can recommend candidates for state licensure and employ faculty without regard to their performance as scholars, especially doctoral degrees. Most faculty are K-12 teachers, including TFA, who focus on strategies for maintaining strict classroom discipline and raising test scores. About 40% of courses are online.
The Relay curriculum is organized around about 60 “skills” offered in stackable modules sharply focused on the content in five books, used in a number of courses: Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov; Teaching as Leadership by Steven Farr, Driven by Data by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo; and The Skillful Teacher by John Saphier.
Candidates demonstrate their competence is applying all 60 skills during the program. There are relatively few lectures. Class discussions are organized around instructional tapes that illustrate proper and improper practices.
Tuition for the 2015-16 school year was $17,500. All graduate students were eligible to receive scholarships that could reduce tuition to $7,500. For students in good standing, with a scholarship, the cost was only $2,500 for a second year leading to a master’s degree (M.A.T).
Training at Relay is keyed to alternative routes to certification, certificates for Special Education, and the MAT. Programs are offered in Chicago, Delaware, Denver, Houston, Memphis, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City, and Newark, NJ; Philadelphia/Camden, and Connecticut.
The “clients’ for Relay-trained teachers are called “partners.” They include the District of Columbia; Selby Co., TN; the Achievement District, TN; Denver, CO; Camden City School District: New York Department of Education; Spring Branch ISD, TX; and Delaware Department of Education.
Other major clients/partners are Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, and charter chains—Yes Prep (Houston), Nobel Charter schools (Chicago), New Schools for New Orleans; New Orleans College Prep; Mastery Charter Schools (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden), Collegiate Academies (New Orleans, Dallas) ; Citizen Schools (based in Boston, and Blue Engine Teaching Assistants (New York City).
Board Of Trustees for Relay: Larry Robbins Chair / Founder and CEO, Glenview Capital Management; David Levin Co-Founder ,KIPP NYC; Julie Mikuta Senior Director Of Education, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation; David Saltzman, Vice Chair and Treasurer / Executive Director, Robin Hood FoundationNYC; Dacia Toll Founder, Co-CEO and President, Achievement First; and Norman Atkins, Ex Officio / Co-Founder and President, Relay Graduate School Of Education
Who is funding Relay? The usual suspects and some lesser known. Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Robin Hood Foundation (see also board members), Bill and Melina Gates Foundation, Walton Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, New Schools Venture Fund, Overdeck Family Foundation, Robbins Family Foundation, Raise your Hand Texas.
The Provost, and only person known to have an advanced degree, is Brent Maddin (Ph.D in education policy, leadership and instructional practice, Harvard). Maddin is also the Director of the Gates-funded TeacherSquared initiative funded in late 2015 ($6,872,650, three years) to scale up Relay’s program and merge it with TeacherSquared—a multifaceted social media and marketing space for products, and services targeted to “teacherpreneurs,” education bloggers, and advertisers (e.g. Microsoft, Verizon, Marzano) with Twitter, Facebook, and You Tube serving as platforms for Relay to convene participants in its network of training programs and acquaint them with the Teacher Squared.
A teacher2teacher™ website offers chat rooms with curated content such as #moedchat and promoted topics such as #BeAnEngineer promoted by ExxonMoibile (with twitter links to potential employers, including NASA), also STEM programs in schools. More than anything else TeacherSquared is promoting technology products and services with “soft sell” strategies that praise the ingenuity and dedication of teachers. http://www.relay.edu/blog-entry/relay-forms-new-teacher-prep-center.
Brent Maddin is also a member of the Digital Promise Micro-credential Advisory Board, a program of competency-based certifications in aspects of education—an alternative to the National Board Certification Process. Digital Promise is a nonprofit authorized by Congress in 2008, but not formally launched until 2011 by Arne Duncan. Startup support came from the US Department of Education, Carnegie Corporation of New York, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Other funders are the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, The Grable Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, The Overdeck Family Foundation, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Verizon. Add the following “corporate partners who have wares to offer for K-12 education, teacher education, and built in data gathering systems. Amazon, Apple, Classworks, Code to the Future, Curriculum Associates, Discover Education, Education Elements, EMC2, GPA, Hewlett Packard, Mathspace, Noodle Markets (products for K-12), Promethean, School Improvement Network, and Waterford (digital learning).
Relay is the means for ensuring that the profession of teaching is destroyed along with all historical memory about, all insights from learning theory and research, all critical appraisals of policies and practices that are not approved by thumbs up-thumbs down ratings. Relay is a means to market this inferior, on-the-fly, multi-branded version of teaching on low-income and minority children because that is what the very rich want for the very poor. Canned, packaged, fakery as far removed from professional criteria as possible. The hatred of knowledge about education and critical perspectives on this work is palpable. Calling this unregulated marketing scheme a “graduate school of education” first-order fraud.
The intended proliferation of this “model” has another rarely noted aim: Elevating social media impressions and Relay-branded “convenings” as venues for novice teachers to receive marketing messages. The very rich, corporate partners are also intend on diminishing national associations of professionals in education such the American Educational Research Association, the national associations of associations of educators in the various subjects (e.g., mathematics, social studies), specialists in stages of education (e.g., early childhood), and particular problems (e.g., learning English), roles in education (e.g., state superintendents of education). The intent is to “vanish” the whole infrastructure of public education, make everything market-based.
In the meantime, Relay is the model brought into existence by rich people and corporations who are engaged in what marketeers call “bottom feeding,” targeting poor and vulnerable people. Super-rich people and corporations have created Relay, the source of boot-camp trainers, unworthy of the name “teacher.” They are certified to deploy Dave Lemov’s no-nonsense discipline to raise test scores. That is “good enough” for employment in the charter and on-line programs that cater to students who are living in poverty. The outrage that should be abroad in the land has been suppressed by the power of money and entirely too much passive acceptance of this sham enterprise from educators themselves.
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Thanks Laura,
In a prior post, you described the upcoming merger of NCATE. You also described the Dept. of Ed.’s mandated “outcomes only” approach to accreditation. For those who didn’t read the prior post, I hope you’ll add comment here. When readers forward the Peg Robertson post, it would be beneficial to have the full picture.
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LHC,
Thx for informative post.
Relay so-called GSE seems akin to having physicians do post-doctoral studies with blood-letters rather than AMA-sanctioned schools of medicine.
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Scami Anderson, in Newark, NJ, sanctioned Relay for the teachers in her district. Connect the dots. And our politicians are complicit with the duping of their taxpayers. TFA, where you can get your college debts paid off, rent assistances, completion bonuses from your college, weekend quickie lube masters degrees, highly qualified teacher status conferred on you without being highly qualified, open doors, praise, emergency licensing/certification, etc. Its great to be in the “in” crowd.
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What is NCATE? Is this in North carolina?
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It certifies the quality of teacher education colleges and programs nationally
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What is NCATE?
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NCATE is the National Association for the Certification of Teacher Education
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Trust me. You gotta read Carl Barney’s vision for graduate schools in Colorado and HERE!.
This moves along with what Diane posted here.
He’s guided by the ‘heroic’ entrepreneurial creed of Ayn Rand, a champion of unalloyed selfishness and remorseless capitalism. “She taught me how to live,” Mr. Barney said.
“… the path to a degree is clearly mapped in the schools he proposes, like the one in Colorado — no electives, no course catalog to decipher — and that class work was structured around short, four-week modules.”
BUT Graduating students find that other colleges would not accept the credits.
“Unhappy students can be found at any school, but a darker picture is portrayed in lawsuits directed at Mr. Barney’s other colleges. The Colorado attorney general’s office, for example, has accused CollegeAmerica in Denver of deceptive advertising and lying about job placements and graduation rates.
“The clash is not just over policy options, but ideas. Ayn Rand, who died in 1982, has long been a flash point for conflicting concepts of America and its promise. ” ” He credits Rand’s brand of antigovernment libertarianism, hard-nosed rationality and unapologetic self-interest with helping him realize his own American dream — an achievement he sells to the students at his schools. But his inspiring story is not without contradictions.
“Mr. Barney, who opposes government-backed loans and grants on principle, has made his fortune in a business that is almost wholly dependent on them.
“His students borrow heavily to pay for their studies in hope of replicating Mr. Barney’s up-by-the-bootstraps success, but often find themselves dropping out and burdened with loans. And while he invokes a rigorous Rand-inspired ethical code of fair dealing, he is in an industry with a history pockmarked by fraud and abuse.”
“Federal efforts to prevent abuses through increased monitoring and regulation, Mr. Barney argues, are only burdening schools with onerous requirements that further increase student costs. Mr. Barney’s business and beliefs place him at the center of a pressing national debate. More than ever, a college degree has become a ticket to the middle class. But there is a divide over how to best help students with the fewest skills and resources.
“More than ever, a college degree has become a ticket to the middle class. But there is a divide over how to best help students with the fewest skills and resources.Versions of this debate are playing out on the presidential campaign trail — in clashes over income inequality, government regulation and college affordability.”
This cannot be allowed to happen, but it IS being sold by the same politicians and government ‘leaders’ who privatized our health system..and we see how well that worked.
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Here is th link to the Article in the NY Times which gives you the blarney Barney view of how to give our people a ‘college degree’ with no value!
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“There are two books that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life, The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood. The other, of course, is about orcs. ”
John Rogers, describing men like Barney
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LOL! Loved Lord of the Rings, so did my sons, and their sons.
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Reformers say they’ve got to “blow up the ed schools”. (Gates-funded organization employee, writing at Philanthropy Roundtable). And, the response- NCATE approves Relay.
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Isn’t this happening in Newark also?
Sent from my iPhone
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