John Thompson, historian and teacher in Oklahoma City, has written a three-part series about superintendents “trained” by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, financed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
He writes:
After less than two years on the job, another Broad-trained Oklahoma City School System superintendent resigned. I was struck by the many similarities between Aurora Lora’s (Broad class of 2015-16) term as superintendent and those of other Broad-trained reformers. Although I endorsed her efforts to advance gay rights and changing the names of schools named for Confederate generals, and even though she seemed to understand the need for a more holistic approach to schooling, trying to discuss education policy was extremely frustrating. The sincerity of those who disagreed was repeatedly dismissed, making the exchange of policy ideas difficult if not impossible.
And then came the Oklahoma teacher walkout and the conversations with educators who had similar experiences with Broad graduates. Although we appreciated Tulsa superintendent Deborah Gist’s (class of 2008) support for a teacher pay raise, she presided over a district with ten Broadies in leadership positions. (The hiring of another, from Denver, was announced last week, bringing the total to 11.) Despite the large number of Tulsa’s advantages in comparison to Oklahoma City, it is near the bottom of the nation’s urban schools in increasing student performance. When I hear from Tulsa teachers about the micromanaging imposed by the Broad-dominated administration, it’s hard to believe that their mandates haven’t undermined teaching and learning.
This prompted a survey of secondary sources, and an inventory of how and why other Broad graduates were dismissed or forced to resign. As with Oklahoma educators who finished each other’s sentences when discussing their Broad graduates, reporters across the nation used very similar language in describing the careers of their cities’ Broad superintendents. It was shocking to read how many of them played fast and loose with the facts before and after being hired, ruled their systems in similar ways, and left office in a comparable manner.
It would take a far more detailed study to determine whether Broad superintendents behave the way they do based on the personalities that they brought to the academy, as opposed to determining what it is about the organization that recruits such people and trains them to operate in such similar ways. I assume it is a combination of the two factors – it takes a certain type of mindset to advance in the corporate reform system, and there is something about the Broad world which turns out certain types of leaders.
Or should I say, turns out leadership outputs?
In 2007, the OKCPS hired a graduate of the Broad Superintendents’ Academy, John Q. Porter. The Broad Academy was run like a corporate executive training program, and it emphasized data, choice, and other market-driven policies. Broad superintendent candidates attended long weekend training sessions over a ten-week period. Their curriculum stressed instructional alignment, performance management systems, and leadership. Its management techniques emphasized “prioritizing and pacing work for optimal quality.”
Oklahoma City’s Broad graduate was unquestionably dedicated to the students, and he was a good enough sport to compete in my school’s first “Buffalo Chip Throwing Championship.” (Dressed in a fine business suit, the superintendent finished second, behind me, but unlike the champion buffalo feces thrower, he wore a plastic glove.) The superintendent enjoyed talking with my students, but he never seemed comfortable listening to teenagers when they disagreed with his policies. I never understood how a man, who was so committed to poor children of color, could be so unwilling to listen to the real experts on poor schools – the students whom he sought to help.
In one such meeting, the superintendent acknowledged that his experience had been in a suburban district that had nearly three times as much per student spending, but he said that his former district, Montgomery County, had more low income students than the OKCPS had students. I remained silent as my students tried to explain the difference between one of the nation’s top school systems where only a quarter of students were low income, and our schools where almost everyone was poor and most students were several years behind grade level. I was so proud of my students as they argued that poor kids in neighborhood schools could master the same high-quality material as kids in his old district, but that it would take time. Afterwards, my student leaders were blunt, saying that the superintendent had no idea of what he was rushing into.
At the same time, the principals whom I most admired were clearly intimidated by the new superintendent. Video cameras were installed in schools, not for supervising unsafe areas but as a first step toward monitoring routine activities. No memos, I was warned, should be sent by e-mail anymore. I wondered, perhaps naively, how policy discussions could be conducted without e-mail. Before long, however, it became clear that expressing dissent was no longer seen as appropriate and memos were no longer welcome.
According to assistant principals at my school, every teacher would now have to “be on the same page” in teaching at the same rate from the same textbook. My principal knew that I would not abide by that rule. Since I was an award-winning teacher who was then on his way to being selected the runner-up OKCPS Teacher of the Year, I had political leverage to make a deal. In case we had a visitor from the central office, my students would keep their textbooks open to the official page, regardless of whether they looked at it.
The superintendent confirmed to my students and me that he ultimately wanted a system where he could supervise classroom instruction by video throughout the district from his office. In the meantime, compliance was monitored by teams of central office staff. My visit was conducted by the former principal of the district’s nationally-ranked magnet school. This highly-paid professional continuously typed the details of our class’ instruction into his laptop. He obviously enjoyed the lesson, smiling at all of the best parts. When I tried to speak with the administrator, however, it was like we had never known each other. We later met in the hall, and started a real conversation. He complimented my lesson and relationships with students, but another central office administrator approached, and our discussion stopped mid-syllable.
A second post will describe published accounts of Broad superintendents’ behavior that show a very common and destructive pattern of abrasiveness, micromanaging, and playing fast and loose with many facts. Just as important, Broad seems to be doing its best to stop education conversations, mid-syllable, in schools across the nation.
From Thompson’s article:
I feel for Aurora Lora as she resigns as superintendent of the OKCPS. She cares deeply about our children. I hope we will all take a moment, empathize, and vow to de-escalate our education civil war. We must all do a better job of dealing with people as individuals, not just as members of the opposition. Lora was a resident of the Broad Academy. . . ”
From newsok.com in 2014:
“Aurora Lora, the acting superintendent of Oklahoma City Public Schools, has worked for nearly two years without certification required by the state, district officials acknowledged Tuesday. “Per Oklahoma state statute, any school district staff member who carries the title of superintendent or associate superintendent must obtain an Oklahoma Superintendent certification,” district spokeswoman Tierney Tinnin said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. “Aurora Lora has served as Associate Superintendent since 2014 and recently completed the exam required to obtain her superintendent certification; not ensuring she completed the required certification when she was hired was a complete oversight on the district’s part.” “The issue,” Tinnin continued, “was overlooked by the The Oklahoma State Department of Education during our accreditation process over the last two years; we have been in contact with OKSDE representatives to resolve the issue.”
Considering the two together why the hell would Thompson “feel for Aurora Lora”-another typical unqualified Broadie. She should have been kicked out a long time ago. “OH, BUT SHE CARES ABOUT CHILDREN.” Big effin deal! Who doesn’t? Who is this “we” in “we must all do a better job. . . ” Horse manure playing nice with bullies and incompetents is what got us into this mess to begin with.
To hell with the Broadies!
Good point. The Broadies are moles designed to infiltrate public systems and undermine them. The fact that states let them in is inviting the fox into the hen house. States should enforce their own certification laws that ensure there is a minimum standard of preparation for the job.
Duane, I opposed Ms. Lora’s policies for a year and a half, but now she’s gone. Because of her support for progressive social issues, a lot of OKC liberals, gay and civil rights leaders, Bernie supporters etc. remain supportive of her. If she was still in office, I’d continue to oppose her policies, while hopefully not dividing progressives at a time when unity is needed. But since she’s gone, there’s no need to anger people who are allies in other ways, as opposed to persuading them to support holistic and meaningful instruction in ways that are the opposite of Broadism.
John,
Thanks for the explanation.
For me it shows that the edudeformers and privateers come in all political persuasions. Yes, there are many who claim to be supposedly liberal (neo-liberals-Clintonite Dims) who support destroying public education all supposedly in the misnomer of this century “The civil rights issue of our time”. Man did the liberal upper-class (and even some in middle and lower SES) get sucked into that trap, and trap it was/is.
You are a lot more forgiving than me, John. But what I’ve seen in the “education wars” is that being nice only gets your fingers cut off first, then your toes, then a hand, etc. . . . I’m tired of being “nice” when I see total inanities, stupidities, falsehoods, errors, lies, frauds and very real harms perpetrated on the most innocent of society, the children.
And no I don’t give a damn about anyone’s “intentions” anymore as everyone, yes everyone, throughout history, even the worse of the worse, have always had “good intentions” in their heart and believed they had the answers to others’ situations. I’m interested in the results not the intentions, and the supposed liberals whom you reference have been very much a part of the privatization problem resulting in further segregation, ranking, sorting and separating students, in other words discriminating against some while rewarding others. That is not what public education should be about.
And I’ve seen many a true conservative, not those teaparty trumpian regressives, but true conservatives who understand the function of the local community school and who work to do their best for those schools be a lot more amenable to supporting the students and teachers.
It’s not liberal vs conservative anymore, never really has been except for those who seek to exploit divisions in society for their own personal benefit, whether that benefit is money, fame, power, acclaim, being with the “in” crowd. Screw them!
I call it as I see it and right now there’s not much to like with all of the deforms and privatizations whether from the supposed left, actually the right side of the political spectrum when it comes to public education these days, or the supposed right, actually regressive reactionaries. And I won’t get into the fact that today’s supposed liberals, especially of the Clintonite Dimocrap ilk, are not Progressives in any way shape or fashion.
But, hey, at least they all have “good intentions”!
“According to assistant principals at my school, every teacher would now have to “be on the same page” in teaching at the same rate from the same textbook.”
Camazotz. Woe to the poor kid who’s bouncing the ball out of rhythm. Madeleine L’Engle’s book A WRINKLE IN TIME (the book, not the movie) should be required reading for all Americans these days.
I wish more would be revealed on Lillian Lowry (a Broadie). When she came to MD 2 other Supers and an assistant Super followed but I could never connect the dots back to Broad Academy. Lillian up and resigned. None of the other 3 are here either. Renee Foose was paid off to “resign” quietly and an audit was very revealing, Dallas Dance is sitting in prison in Va, and Sean Joseph is wreaking havoc with the budget in TN.
“Despite the large number of Tulsa’s advantages in comparison to Oklahoma City, it is near the bottom of the nation’s urban schools in increasing student performance.”
There’s that ever ubiquitous “increasing student performance”. If your against “increasing student performance” well, you must be a heathen mush for brains that should be banished from anything to do with public education.
So much crap, too little time to counteract it all.
But, HEY, let’s play nice in the sandbox!!!
you’re not your against. . .
And from that NYT’s article:
“based on some 300 million elementary-school test scores across more than 11,000 school districts, tweaks conventional wisdom in many ways. Some urban and Southern districts are doing better than data typically suggests. Some wealthy ones don’t look that effective. Many poor school systems do.”
WOW, HOLY COW, SIMPLY FRIGGIN AMAZING!!! 300 MILLION TEST SCORES. HOLY FRIJOLES!
Why it must be the most definitive education study every!!
But there is an old saying “Crap in, crap out”.
Considering the fact that each and every one of those 300 million test scores are only a reflection of what X number of students did on a given day on a given test, NOTHING MORE, and as Noel Wilson has proven, due to the myriad fundamental conceptual errors and psychometric fudgings those individual scores are COMPLETELY INVALID or as he puts it “VAIN AND ILLUSORY”, why would anyone give any credence to such BS?
And on top of all of that it is UNETHICAL to then use those scores for anything else but as a description of a student’s interaction with the test, GEE WHIZ, WALLY, isn’t it all a big bunch of mental masturbation??
“When will we learn, when will we ever learn”?
Never I fear.
OK story familiar to Montclair, NJ, where a Broadie was secretly hired by a stealth conservative Board even though the Broadie lacked proper credentials and faked relocating to the town. The Broadie’s 2.5 yrs here were nonstop edicts, crony hiring, testing invasion, contempt for teachers, tin ear to useful suggestions, conspiratorial investigation of dissenters, cascading demands for metrics, standardizing curricula, out of control consultant fees, etc. This supt. followed the Broadie playbook for step-by-step protocol on how to run a district(into the ground).
This story is a perfect example of why I don’t give a rat’s patoot for anyone’s good intentions or what anyone says or how much they “care about children” or whatnot. Absolutely the only thing that matters is what a person does.
It strikes me that Broad superintendent trainees are not the only ones accepting the business model of school. We were heard that noise back in the 1990s. Old timers were wagging their heads at such tripe, saying things like “they are going to take the fun out of teaching” and “you can’t run a school like a business”. Those of us who had just begun to fight pushed ahead, wondering what was next.
Suddenly, it was all about the test. Suddenly, curriculum design was a state thing, not a school thing. Who was ready to take algebra was decided by a governor, not a local teacher. We started hearing that we should all be on the same page and that was not a metaphor.
None of the leaders that brought this approach to school came from Broad, but they sure sounded like it. He is obviously not the only source for ideas that have failed, just one of them.
You’re right, Roy, about the timing of the “need a strong, businessman, type leader” in the 90s. It would make for an interesting study to go back through all of the “administration” literature/magazines/readings of that time. I’d bet a dime to a dollar that it was around 95 that that mantra started to dominate administrative literature, along with that “businessman” attitude came the “data driven decision making” horse manure.
And those viral ideas came to dominate by the early part of this century. And Broad glommed onto that viral wave and has been riding it ever since.
The old time teachers were right then, just as the older teachers are right about the nonsense approaches now.