An earlier post this morning said that two young TFA had run a “successful” charter school in Chicago and were invited to open a charter in Indianapolis. They are both under 30.
A reader who knows the couple in Chicago sent this comment:
“They didn’t “stick with the school they started in Chicago” because they didn’t even start one there. Just an afterschool program for 100 students already enrolled in other charter schools. They applied to CPS in 2016 to start a charter school. But weren’t approved.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Amazing! All of this is just an expendable income LARK. “Once upon a time we spent a holiday with TFA and after that we walked past a public school and then we briefly ran an after school program and then… Viola! We get to run a charter school in IN. Isn’t this just the most fun? Think we will run a food truck after this. I mean we once really did eat a taco.🌮 Isn’t life a giggle?”
“…what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made …”
I think that the supporters of these entrepreneurs need to be exposed to public view. here we go, from the pilotEDSchools website
Logos at the pilotEDSchools website: PBS, Aspen Institute, Echoing Green, New Schools Venture Fund, Forbes. Supporters seems to mean “anyone who offers positive publicity,” but there is some overlap with actual donors.
Current Donors: New Schools Venture Fund, Chicago Bears, Teach for America, Echoing Green, Camelback Ventures, Hillshire Farms, Tome E. Dailey Foundation, Finnegan Family Foundation, Kellogg School of Management,
also these individuals “Paula Sneed + Lawrence Bass; Warren Allen II + Chandra Keller-Allen; Raam Jani + Carolyn Welch; David Spitz; Curt Balara; Brian Berg; Carli Siegel; Anonymous; and many others.”
Advisors
Brian Berg Principal, Berg & Associates, Board Chair, Historic Chautauqua Amphitheater; Curt Balara Vice President of Sales Strategy & Planning, Tyson Foods; Talisha Schaffer Auditor, U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission; Ebony Scot Coalition Director, One Chance Illinois; Paula Sneed CEO, Phelps Prescott Group, Board Member, Charles Schwab Corporation; Lisa Zimmer Primary Division Head, Sacred Heart Schools (the only advisor active in education, and not public education).
The website pitch
“RACE //GENDER//SOCIOLOGY//LIBERAL ARTS//CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
REDEFINING ELEMENTARY EDUCATION BY EMPOWERING THE WAY STUDENTS SEE THEMSELVES AND THE WORLD AROUND THEM” Imagery. (Behind these words a left-handed person holds a brush-like marker that seems to be staining a whiteboard or trying to remove stains from a whiteboard).
The logo is a thick black the outline of a six-sided polygon with a stylized head of a Phoenix facing left.
The founders of pilotEDSchools are masters of spin. The menu at the website invites you to look at “press.” The same story of the “passion” of the three founders of the pilotEDSchools appears in most of the press. At least one report shows that pilotEDSchools cherry pick students, beginning with 6th grade African American students who have a “C” average. The founders claim to have academic scholarship supporting their work.
My judgment: The whole operation is built from templates offered by venture capitalists to entrepreneurs who have meager or no experience in education. The template originated with the Education Industry Association, vintage 1990s. A major message at their conferences: Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
(The Education Industry Association, once the go-to organization for profit-seekers, no longer exists. It was killed by the rapid growth of the Tech Industry and influence of their lobbyists).
Dang! That’s what I should do! Open my own charter school so I can teach again! I figure I’ve got a couple of years left in me…
That is all Tom and Daisy need, because that is all they did in Chicago is work a couple of years.
OMG! Horrors. These “DAZE” entrepreneurs crop up in Edu-Lala-land. Thus the falsity of free enterprise, not so free after all. In fact, costs more and worth a whole lot less.