Nancy E. Bailey, who teaches in Tennessee, posted a blog about the legislature’s habit of using poor Memphis as its experimental district, where disruption is the rule and failure is persistent. Jim Gifford, a high school English teacher in Murfreesboro wrote the post on Nancy’s blog.
Tennessee had the bad fortune to win a bundle of Race to the Top cash, so some district had to be the donkey where everyone pinned the tail. It was Memphis. Every bad reformer idea lands on the students, teachers, and schools of Memphis (Shelby County).
Bill Gates dumped a barrel of money into Memphis to try out his pet ideas about teacher evaluation. Oops!
Then came the so-called Achievement School District. A total disaster!
Now legislators have decided to experiment with vouchers. Where? Memphis, of course.
The people who live in Memphis don’t like the idea of vouchers. But nobody cares what they think.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yep.The first Memphis grant from Gates was an irresistible $84.5 million. At about the same time he went after Hillsborough County Schools in Florida and Schools in Pittsburg. These were not the only districts where Gates thought that everyone was incompetent and needed his “for hire” experts to intervene. Find more by entering this phrase in the Gates Foundation database: Intensive Partnership Sites.
Gates begin his investments in Memphis in 1998. He paid $150,000 for the public library to get computer equipment and software. He paid $150,000 for upgrades in 2000, and $150,000 more in 2006 for the same.
I imagine these contributions softened up the business community and powers that be for his grandiose and failed experiments in Memphis.
The Gates experiment failed in Hillsborough County.
He promised $100 million for the teacher evaluation stuff. The district had to add another $100 million or so, which drained its reserves.
The district pulled out; Gates stopped paying after having spent $80 million. The district’s reserves are depleted.
The county superintendent was MaryEllen Elia. She was very enthusiastic about the Gates deal.
She was fired.
She is now state commissioner in New York.
I am not sure how things worked out in Pittsburgh.
THIS all ties in well with Mercedes Schneider’s recent look at “voucher” credits being bad for the country but likely financial incentives too strong for the rich to ignore. Even if actions required by school reformers are not logical — and even when they will devastatingly harm a local community or an entire nation — it is MONEY which always runs the show. The phrase “Tennessee had the bad fortune to win a bundle of Race to the Top cash” speaks volumes.