Parents and educators in Douglas County, Colorado, opposed to corporate reform were pleased by the resignation of the superintendent, who has accepted a position in the schools of Humble, Texas.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 25, 2016
For more information contact:
Amy DeValk: voices4publiceducation@gmail.com, 303-350-7206
Stefanie Fuhr: voices4publiceducation@gmail.com, 303-483-1196
Superintendent Fagen’s Resignation a Victory for the Community; More Work Remains to Reclaim the Douglas County School District
After years of calling for the removal of Dr. Elizabeth Fagen as the District’s superintendent, students, parents, and teachers of Douglas County are celebrating the departure of the state’s most controversial school district leader. Community members have long attributed the district’s hostile environment to Dr. Fagen and her divisive methods for implementing policies set by the elected school board. Frustrated that their concerns have been largely ignored by the school board, parents responded with a spontaneous social media campaign started in May 2013 using the hash tag #FireFagen. A petition asking for Dr. Fagen’s removal has grown to nearly 1,500 signatures. [click here for the change.org petition]
Dr. Fagen was hired by the Douglas County Board of Education in 2010. The superintendent is hired to ensure the accomplishment of the Board of Education’s goals and vision for the District. These policies have resulted in a marked increase in teacher turnover, multiple lawsuits for an unconstitutional voucher program, and a flawed pay for performance system.
While we are pleased with Dr. Fagen’s departure, Directors Silverthorn and Reynolds are unfit to represent the Douglas County School District, as evidenced by their recent treatment of high school student Grace Davis during a private meeting where they unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade Ms. Davis from holding a student protest criticizing the board’s anti-teacher policies. Ms. Davis’ parents were not notified in advance that their daughter would be interrogated for 90 minutes by the directors. Ms. Reynold’s unethical behavior led to her suspension and subsequent resignation from a volunteer position with the Girl Scouts. Both are currently under a third-party investigation regarding this matter; results of the investigation are scheduled to be released at the June 21 board meeting.
Amy DeValk, co-founder of Voices for Public Education (Voices), questions why the District would hold itself to a lower standard than the Girl Scouts of Colorado. “It is clear the Girl Scouts, a respected national organization, took the complaints against Reynolds seriously when they suspended her from volunteer activities, from which she later resigned. Why hasn’t the District taken any action to protect the students of Douglas County School District? Their threatening behavior towards Ms. Davis is indefensible, and any result of the investigation that does not call for the immediate resignation of Directors Silverthorn and Reynolds will be seen by parents as invalid. We will not allow this to be swept under the rug.”
Stefanie Fuhr, co-founder of Voices wants the people who are truly responsible for conditions in the district to be held accountable. “We recognize that Dr. Fagen was only a symptom of a larger problem. With Dr. Fagen’s removal, our community can now get back to the business of supporting Ms. Davis and every other student in the district. Regardless of the outcome of the investigation, Directors Silverthorn and Reynolds must resign from the board immediately so our community can heal and focus on what matters most for kids.”
Voices initiated an initial email campaign on April 21 demanding the immediate resignation of Directors Silverthorn and Reynolds. That campaign resulted in over 385 requests from the community to the school board for the resignation of Silverthorn and Reynolds. A second campaign will be launched requesting the board hold the two directors to a high ethical standard and demanding their resignations.
About Voices for Public Education
Voices for Public Education is dedicated to educating the community to empower to act and take back our public schools.
We educate by:
• Bringing in national education experts to discuss education reform and offer alternatives
• Building personal relationships to tell our story
• Supporting other community groups fighting education reform
We empower by:
• Working with our school communities to develop actions to take back our schools
• Giving teachers, parents, students and community members a voice in decision-making
We act by:
• Creating actions for both quick “wins” and long term goals
• Providing the resources and information for people to take individual actions
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Visit https://www.facebook.com/VoicesForPublicEducation/?fref=ts for more information.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am not expert, but the board in Douglas County seems to be part of the problem. I reached this conclusion after looking at the thin rationale for teacher salaries (based in part on labor markets is the area) and not apparent reasoning behind deciding which job assignments “deserved” a higher salary based on grade levels and subject matter taught. In any case, congratulations to the activists whose long and sustained work helped this person find another job.
Correct, and as stated in our press release, we are also demanding the resignation of 2 board members for their resignations as well.
The next vote is in 2017, but right now we can demand the resignations of two board members.
But this superintendent did follow board policy.
In an interview, posted at Reason Foundation, Fagan was given an opportunity to echo Reason’s libertarian “choice” agenda. Fagan said she’s part of EDLeader21. While the Ed…21 site does not have an easily found list of funders, one of their programs rec’d funding from guess who? Nah, too easy, Gates. The CEO, of EdLeader21, claims this fame, “Executive Director of the premier CEO advocacy group in the US computer industry”. Say what? Ed…21’s 2013 event was sponsored by Pearson, Hewlett Foundation,… The EDLeader21 site has a US map that identifies, by SCHOOL DISTRICT, the organization’s members.
Back to the Reason Foundation- Sourcewatch reports that Reason’s V.P. of Public Policy is an advisor to ALEC. Reason receives funding from the Koch’s. David Koch is on the Board. Reason’s founder, was formerly a Board member of State Policy Network (SPN), which is linked to the Koch’s. Reason, also, receives funding from Schaife, Lynn and Harry Bradley, John M. Olin,… in other words, the same flock that is found, as the source of funding, for the usual extreme right-wing agendas. Drumroll- Reason gave an award to Eva Moskowitz
Public school administrators betray the public when they are aligned with privatization. It, on the face of it, should be grounds for dismissal. No other organization would tolerate management undermining the entity’s existence, from within.
It’s like some Star Trek episode, the billionaires grand experiment of ultra-competition on some unwitting community.
I’ve always felt that this whole experiment in competitive test-score rewarding was much like pitting the regular Olympics against the special Olympics — and then denigrating and punishing not only our less-able contestants, but also anyone who held the audacity to work with them.
This is how the Lemon Dance of failed, incompetent reformers goes down, it’s basically the “You can’t fire me, I quit!” model. Same thing that was seen when Rahm brought Brizard to Chicago after he was evicted from his prior job in Rochester, and it was an eviction since their ELECTED school board was so disgusted with his performance that they were looking into how to void the remaining years of his contract in order to not pay him for his failures. I’m betting that this has become part of the reformy operations manual, if things start getting to rough in the district, find a new job and resign before they fire you so the reputation of all things and personages reformy isn’t tarnished. Much easier to spin past failures as work experience that way. I hope the parents of DougCo do what Rochester parents did for Chicago parents, send emails and make social media posts to warn them about the loser they just got saddled with. At least that way there’s no learning curve and parents can start defending their kids and schools from day one.
Nicely put, and thank you.
Congratulations, and fervent thanks, to the good people at Voices for Public Education.
I read ed reformers all the time. Colorado (along with DC and New Orleans) are the jewels in the crown of ed reform. Tennessee WAS a jewel- I don’t know what happened. They don’t promote it anymore.
The cherry-picking in the echo chamber starts from only pointing to successes and never failures. It’s the first omission that leads to the all the subsequent bad assumptions.
Here’s how it works- they completely ignore ed reform states or cities that don’t show test score gains. Only successes are discussed. I happen to live in Ohio and we’ve had the entire ed reform menu for 15 years yet Ohio is never, ever mentioned as an ed reform state for obvious reasons. Ditto for Michigan and Pennsylvania. They omit our states because there’s inconvenient realities.
Misleading by omission is tough to counter. Detroit is the most extreme example of how omission can be as misleading as a deliberate lie. Detroit has “choice” out the wazoo and has had “choice” for years. I think Detroit is 40% privatized. They completely ignore this – all the ed reform prescriptions for Detroit are for more charters. To read them you would think Detroit has no charter schools. Detroit was JUST REFORMED in 2012 by none other than Eli Broad and it’s as if it never happened.
Chiara,
The city with choice for the longest time is Milwaukee. No bragging there.
On Monday, Ohio’s auditor, describing the “Ohio Dept. of Education, as possibly the worst-run agency in state government”, called for the Education Department to be split. The only interpretation, I can derive, is that the pro-charter cheerleading, based on campaign donations, and former Congressional leaders acting as paid lobbyists, have corrupted the accountability process, beyond repair. Tuesday’s Dayton Daily News article concluded with the obligatory Fordham quote. After taxpayers, students and communities have been egregiously ripped off, Fordham floats the idea that funding be tied to completion rates, instead of enrollment.
Here’s some other “reform” cities that are completely ignored in the echo chamber because they’re not ed reform successes:
Chicago and Philadelphia- Chicago was just (brutally) “reformed” a couple of years ago and I have lost count of how many times Philadelphia was “reformed” – both cities have tons of “choice” and both cities have been run by celebrity ed reformers.
The school systems are collapsing, so no one in ed reform claims them as “reform” cities although they’re as “reformy” as DC.
That’s cherry-picking. Ignore Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and claim only DC and New Orleans and presto! Market-based ed reform is a huge success.
Chiara,
DC and New Orleans are not successes. The reformers don’t have an example of success anywhere.
Hold up Colorado as a success and ignore Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania and you too can have a lucrative career in ed reform.
Except those pesky counter-examples exist and ignoring them doesn’t make big swathes of ed reform failures go away.
“dianeravitch
May 26, 2016 at 9:01 am
Chiara,
DC and New Orleans are not successes. The reformers don’t have an example of success anywhere.”
Okay, but say I give them DC and New Orleans.
If you’re an ed reformer and you hold up DC and New Orleans as a success, don’t you also have to consider Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit as failures?
If you’re an ed reformer and you hold up Colorado as a success, don’t you also have to admit you reformed Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania?
They can’t just take the upside of market based reform for a VERY good reason- they scale it up.
Chicago is an ed reform city and ARNE DUNCAN and then Rahm Emanuel reformed it. It doesn’t get more “reformy” than those two. Chicago is in crisis. It’s a disaster.
Cherry picking one success out of 5 examples and ignoring the 4 failures is 20%. A 20% success rate means nothing and it CERTAINLY doesn’t mean “:scale it up”. It may as well be “chance”.
Chiara,
Where we differ is that I say their success rate for market-based reform (the Republican agenda for more than 50 years) is zero.
EdLeader21 identifies itself as the first “Professional Learning Community”. On Oct. 2, 2015, Ed Week cited a Boston Research Group finding, based on teacher surveys, that showed plc’s were the “least beneficial of the professional development opportunities”. Fagan, interviewed at the Koch-funded Reason Foundation said she was a member of EdLeader21.
Appointees to the EdLeader21 PLC 2016 Advisory Committee include the following.
Molly Bestge, West Fargo Public Schools, Karen Cheser, Deputy Superintendent, Boone County Schools (Ky.), Mike Duncan, Superintendent Pike County Schools (Ga.), Theresa Dunkin, Superintendent, Aptakisic-Tripp School District (IL.), Scott Garden, Superintendent, Saline Area Schools, (MI.), Jon Gundry, Superintendent, Santa Clara County Office of Education (CA.), John Jungman, Superintendent, Springfield Public Schools (MO.), Deb Kerr, Superintendent, School District of Brown Deer (WI), James Merrill, Superintendent, Wake County Public School System (NC), Anita Micich, Superintendent, Mason City Community schools (IA), Syna Morgan, Chief Academic Officer, Jefferson Co. Public Schools (CO), Juliette Myers, Dir. of Middle/Secondary Education-Frederick County Public Schools (VA).
Adding to the list above,
John Puglisi, Superintendent, Rio School District (CA), Eric Schneider, Assistant Superintendent, Minnetonka Public Schools (MN), Aaron Spence, Superintendent, Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VA), Elena Toscano, Assistant Superintendent, Napa Valley Unified School district (CA).
Too Diane, I can play this game too, if I want.
Give me the 5 best public school states in the country. I know Massachusetts is one. If I’m a public school advocate Massachusetts is my Colorado.
I just “proved” public schools “work” and should be “scaled up” and I could take a whole set of policy prescriptions out of that, including “labor unions for teachers” and “adequate funding”. As long as I ignore Alabama I’m golden. Alabama actually “shows” labor unions make better schools as long as I ignore Ohio!
Chiara,
I am not sure why you point to Colorado as a great “reform” success. Or to Alabama. Look at NAEP data: http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#?grade=4
And read Jeannie Kaplan on the hoax of school success in Denver.
Hear, hear.
The cherry picking extends all the way to the top. The President of the United States cites “Cleveland” as THE ed reform success. Okay, I’ll spot him Cleveland. Let’s also mention Cincinnati which went in a different direction from the Obama Administration dogma and has had some successes!
This is how omission works.
Chiara,
Do not concede Cleveland. Cleveland is not a reform success. It is an example of an abandoned city, whose leaders think the fix for the public schools and high poverty is school choice.
I contacted EdLeader21 and requested a list of organizational funders. The website states membership, at more than 170 school districts. State maps, event participants and appointees to EdLeader21 Committees, available from internet searches, identify public school districts and officials.
The reply I received, EdLeader21, is “a private company”.
Diane,
Thank you for “watching the Fagen Saga” As Thompson School Reform Watch says. I’m in the ‘lucky’ district that GOT her! I’ve been trying to find the connection, the backing, the how and why she is here, how she got here. If you go back to her beginnings, the pages are non-existent. You can’t find much before TUSC. She has a total of 20 years in education…but, she speaks at every event called “21st something or other,” or “reform this or that.” I want to know what is on her “agenda” for or wonderful district. Is she going to leave us in her wake? I want to know where she came from. I have done some homework. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/20/1540439/-Just-Say-NO-to-Fagen