Five years ago, Tennessee was flush with cash from its Race to the Top grant, and it created a state takeover plan called the “Achievement School District.” The idea was to identify the schools with the lowest test scores and give them to private companies to manage. The promise was explicit: within five years, the lowest-performing schools would join the ranks of the highest-performing schools thanks to the magic of privatization. In the five years since, two leaders have departed, and the schools that were privatized remain among the lowest performing in the state.
North Carolina had to copy this model–after all, it was recommended by ALEC, the corporate bill mill. They had to copy it even after hearing testimony from a Vanderbilt researcher who found no evidence that the ASD was on track to meet its goal.
Given the failure of the Tennessee ASD, North Carolina continued to pursue the idea but renamed it: the North Carolina Ipportunity School District. Same plan, new name. Six schools across the state are on the state’s list for ending local control.
Educators in Durham are fighting back. Two Durham schools are targeted for takeover, and the Durham community says NO.
The elected school board says it will fight the state takeover.
The legislature hasn’t considered the impact of their budget cuts or their attacks on the teaching profession or the decline of teacher salaries as causes of poor performance. And of course they have not given a thought to poverty and segregation.
For some inexplicable reason, Republicans have become the enemies of local control. They think that only the state can fix schools, despite the abysmal results of the Tennessee ASD.
Recently NC elected a young TFA alum to be its state superintendent. He taught for two years but there’s no reason to believe he knows how to turn around schools, never having done it.
Nothing fails like copying failure.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
I predict that since it a failed concept and that he is great at copying failed concepts, Lt. Dan will try to force some sort of plan like this on the people of Texas.
As a TFA alum, NC’s superintendent surely nows how to turn around and run from schools.
Good one. TDA helps to fund the campaigns these TFA “leaders.”
Thank you for sharing the fight for NC public schools widely. Please follow our grassroots work and sign the petition here http://defenddurhamschools.org/
Tennessee has mysteriously dropped off the list of Great Ed Reform Accomplishments.
If the experiments fail they just bury the results and pretend it never happened.
Now they promote Indiana- I have no idea why.
Reformer experiments never fail, doncha know?
Teachers and others just fail to correctly implement them.
Common Core is the poster boy for that.
The fellow who wrote the math standards (Jason Zimba) even said as much.
“Failure to Implement”
Deform demands
That washing hands
Is absolutely key
Cuz when you fail
The “blame and bail”
Will always set you free
They promote Indiana because that is the home of MindTrust, a money laundering outfit for TFA and because Indianapolis has a mayor in charge of public education who can be bought. Indianapolis is bliss for charter enthusiasts. And, of course there is the VP who hails from the state and who is all-in for DeVos. MindTrust is also a regional hub for charter mischief as far away as Cincinnati.
It’s hard to “analyze” anything because we only get the information that supports the ed reform argument.
One doesn’t hear a word about those states who HAVEN’T adopted charters and vouchers.
A real comparison wouldn’t compare Tennessee, before and after. A real comparison would be between states that adopt the ed reform formula and states that don’t.
DeVos talks about Indiana and Florida because Indiana and Florida adopted the whole agenda.
I don’t know if other states have shown growth WITHOUT adopting the Duncan/DeVos approach- that’s crucial information because there’s an opportunity cost factor- if you’re pushing charters and vouchers that means you aren’t doing something else.
They’re cherry-picking examples- they only compare ed reform states to the whole.
I know no one is interested in the unfashionable “public school sector” but can any “public servant” in North Carolina point to one thing they have done to benefit PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
I get it, I really do- our schools are mundane and boring and the Best and Brightest can’t be asked to serve them in any way, but it’s really pretty ridiculous that we have THOUSANDS of public employees in state and federal government who have made a personal ideological decision NOT to serve 90% of students.
This is ludicrous. We can’t get anyone to support 90% of schools and we’re PAYING them! What might persuade them to start doing the 90% of their job they refuse to do?
I am a public school teacher in NC. I spend hundreds of dollars on my students and classroom-and I regularly work until 11pm every night-grading and planning innovative lesson activities that are based off of the newest and best educational research out there-I’m not a rarity. I’ve taught for 5 years in NC in high poverty schools and every single colleague I have taught with sacrifices their health, their well being, their family obligations to fight for their students and what their students and communities deserve. WELL over 90% are going above and beyond to do their job-a job that pays around the same or LESS than a head custodian at the NC Governor’s mansion, a store manager of Trader Joe’s, and more jobs that don’t require a college degree, or endless hours after the work day is done, which I do so I can be the best I can be for kids. This is absolutely not meant to demean those professions-and these examples are only used to try and deeper your understanding of the dedication and sacrifice NC educators will continuously make for your children. We are not failing your kids-we are doing the best we possibly can to provide exceptional, quality education to your kids even though society treats us like garbage and blames us for every little thing, even though budget cuts have reduced us to paying for our own copy paper to produce learning tools for children, even though our kids go hungry, even though we are stretched so far to the limit that most of us don’t have time for our own families. Please don’t blame us, our students, or their families for the things we have to do in a broken system that is designed of us all to fail.
They are not copying failure. They are following an organized plan to subvert the Republic and the U.S. Constitution by taking any power the people have away from them and selling that power to a wealthy, powerful member of ALEC.
A livable wage gives people power too so they want to take that away too and offer as many people as possible jobs that pay poverty wages with no benefits and no future and no stability.
To the far Alt-Right, anyone that does not think or vote like them is an evil liberal and must be crushed. And evil liberal parents must have their children taken away from them and those children must be raised and educated in far-right, religious boot camp schools. Children that can’t be broken will be targeted for prison cells and labeled in ways that will make it impossible for them to find jobs that pay a livable wage.
In Tennessee we had our own Kevin Huffman, with whom many of you may be familiar. He was a lightening rod for criticism and was replaced by another person without public school contact, Candace McQueen. She was an early supporter of Common Core. We still live under the yoke of TVass, the original VAM scam.
News from Kansas:
In a Kansas Supreme Court ruling today, the KSSC made their verdict very clear:
“The state has NOT met its burden to satisfactorily demonstrate to this court that the K-12 public education financing system the legislature enacted is reasonably calculated to have all Kansas Public education students meet or exceed the standards set out.”
http://www.kansas.com/news/local/education/article176605486.html
Thank you so much, Diane, for spreading the word about what is happening in Durham and North Carolina, and for helping us all to better understand the larger context within which these events are occurring…
Tomorrow evening (Tue 10/3), the PTA of Lakewood Elementary, one of the targeted Durham schools, will host a community planning meeting and press conference.
Local news article about the press conference and meeting here: http://www.wral.com/-defend-durham-schools-meeting-planned-tuesday-to-discuss-potential-charter-takeover/16987044/
If you (or your readers) have not yet had a chance to sign our petition, here it is: http://defenddurhamschools.org/Petition
Thank you again for all you do to defend public schools and communities. We will be sure to keep you updated.
Here’s coverage of our press conference and meeting last night:
Article: http://www.wral.com/school-board-parents-fight-to-defend-durham-schools-amid-proposed-charter-takeover/16992224/
Short video: http://www.heraldsun.com/news/article176879856.html
As of today, Lakewood Elementary is OFF the short list. Glenn Elementary is still on… so we keep on.
Will keep you posted.
Good luck!
Comment to Diane Ravitch re: ISD
Thank you again, Diane! We appreciate your coverage and attention to this situation.
Here’s an article from NC Policy Watch covering our meeting at Lakewood and recent developments:
http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2017/10/04/durham-fires-back-state-school-takeover-plan/
We have another community meeting scheduled for Tuesday October 10th at Glenn Elementary (the last Durham school on the short list of schools for the “Innovative School District”).
I was reading an older Politco article (http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/betsy-devos-education-trump-religion-232150) about Betsy DeVos in which I learned that she and her family see public schools as competition with (i.e. a threat to?) churches, arguing that public schools have unjustly displaced churches as the center of communities…
Her husband was quoted in the article saying: “The church — which ought to be in our view far more central to the life of the community — has been displaced by the public school as the center for activity, the center for what goes on in the community.”
I can’t even express in words how proud I feel to be a part of the community that crowded together in that Lakewood Elementary library to share and plan together. Parents, children, educators, concerned community members and elected officials all working together with a common purpose to protect our children and schools. Guess you could say that shows how central our schools are to our community… and it’s hard to see how anyone could interpret that as a direct threat to faith organizations. Hope they don’t try to test our resolve and try to make an example out of Durham…
We’ll continue to keep you posted and continue to appreciate your advocacy for us.
Also, this is happening in NC right now: cancelling upcoming elections…
Editorial: Legislative leaders seek to turn N.C. into Banana Republic
http://www.wral.com/editorial-legislative-leaders-seek-to-turn-n-c-into-banana-republic/16997409/
Well would ya look at that… a money trail leading right to a rich dude who wants to profit off of our children! Hmm, I wonder which charter company will be asked to run the “Innovative School District” school takeovers?
ARTICLE
“A rich donor’s money backed NC’s charter takeover law, and his school network expands”:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article177836091.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article177836091.html
VICTORY in Durham!!!
http://abc11.com/glenn-elementary-no-longer-on-list-of-schools-to-be-taken-over/2528853/
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article178705551.html
We are now going to turn our attentions to getting rid of the NC Innovative School District altogether so that no public school will be threatened with nonconsensual takeover. We plan to show support for the schools that do get “selected” so the fight is not over, but this battle, for now, is won!!