Tennessee was one of the first states to win a grant from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. It won $500 million. It placed its biggest bet on an idea called the Achievement School District. The big plan was to have the state take over the state’s lowest performing schools and do a turnaround. The ASD was launched in 2012 with much fanfare. Its leader promised that the lowest performing schools would be turned around within five years. Reformers loved the idea so much that it was copied in Nevada, North Carolina, and a few other states. Most of the schools were converted to charter schools.
As Gary Rubinstein explains here, the ASD was a complete flop.
“Two years after they launched, an optimistic Chris Barbic, the first superintendent of the ASD, had a ‘mission accomplished’ moment when he declared that three of the original six schools were on track to meet the goal on or before the five year deadline. But the projected gains did not pan out and now, six years later, five out of six of the original schools are still in the bottom 5% with one of them not faring much better. Chris Barbic resigned in 2015 and his successor Malika Anderson resigned in 2017.
“The ASD was, at one time, an experiment that Reformers were very excited about. In 2015, just before Barbic resigned, Mike Petrilli hosted a panel discussion at the Fordham Institute celebrating the lofty goals of the ASD, the RSD, and Michigan’s turnaround district.
“Year after year, all the research on the Tennessee ASD has been negative (except for research that they, themselves, produced). In 2015, a Vanderbilt study found the district to be ineffective. In 2016, a George Washington study agreed. And now, as if we need any more proof, a new 2018 Vanderbilt study found that schools in the ASD have done no better than schools in the bottom 5% that had not been taken over by the ASD.”
A complete flop.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Tennessee was a “portfolio district”- the same plan ed reformers are lockstep promoting all over the country.
The failures are just disappeared, never to be heard from again. When they promote the “portfolio” approach they exclude all the failures.
This is “science”. Experiments that fail are simply omitted.
Cleveland has disappeared too. Another “portfolio district” with some inconvenient results. Dropped right off the map, after being promoted as a huge success for 5 years.
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Well and succinctly put.
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Yep.
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Yep. TN was desperate for money and RTTT had money. They sold out unions, tenure, even the pension system was privatized, and they upped the percent of VAM in evaluations. It has gotten them little bit headaches. Admittedly the prior NAEP showed good things (not the most recent one at all) but many people now think that had to do with a change in how students were/were not held back from grade promotion under failures that has long since rippled thru the system never to be felt again.
TN has no idea what it is doing to create greater success going forward. Not for priority/ASD schools and not for anything else. The only answer anyone ever wants to give for anything is “charters”. We are at capacity on what charters can do. But public officials are likely to add more more more and bankrupt the local county commissions. I don’t see an easy end to that cycle.
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Here’s an example of the rigorous debate in ed reform on the “portfolio district”- a plan they are heavily marketing and lobbying for all over the country:
Author David Osborne is sure that his vision for improving schools is the right one: “If you discovered a cure for cancer, but it was politically difficult with your union, would you avoid it?”
As you can see, they have made up their mind and they intend to bully dissenters into silence by accusing them of blocking “a cure for cancer”
It’s those unions again! They’re the culprits! It is unimaginable that anyone could dissent unless they had bad and selfish motives.
There’s no room for “debate” in this movement. They cut it off at the knees before it even starts. Portfolio district it is! If you disagree that means you refuse to “cure cancer”.
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Through a variety of tactics the spokespeople/promoters/beneficiaries of corporate education education attempt to not just curtail discussion of their schemes and scams but to simply shut people up and not even let the discussion begin.
Over and over and over again they demonstrate a fear of the ethical, open and honest give-and-take on their fantastical claims and accomplishments. For example, their own self-proclaimed five-year ASD deadline is up. Time to take stock?
Why should they when $tudent $ucce$$ and their tender egos would be put at risk?
Regardless of political/philosophical bent, the rheephormsters use the same playbook. It should be named “The Art of the Steal”—and yes, I am making an allusion to another publication…
Thank you for your comments.
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Reform or Reversion of Education for Urban Schools?? Was there a clause in this construct for a Rebate or Recall? Perhaps a “Longitudinal Study” of the impact on the lives of these “Hood Rats” lab animals??
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I think it’s important to read this article below about Yes Prep in Houston, founded by Chris Barbic, who then went on to bigger,better things at TVM. The gist of the article, also by Gary Rubinstein, states that Yes Prep sheds its African American students from its high schools. Chris Barbic, admitted in an interview that it was easier to deal with what he called “immigrant poverty” (i.e. Hispanics) than “generational poverty” (i.e. African Americans). He never claimed any difference in their intelligence or ability to learn. He said he underestimated the effects of generational poverty.
This response is typical of these ed reformers with big egos who claim they just want to save the world, for the right price. Any teacher could have told them about the effects of generational poverty on learning, but I don’t think they care to listen. They just move on to the next big project and apply the same failing ideas as the last one. The latest, shiny thing, TVM in this case, then fails spectacularly, leaving Mr. Barbic to relocate once again, this time with his new BFFs, Laura and John Arnold…
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Correct. But many people are still buying the idea of charters because there is vast distrust of government. It’s a very red state.
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I think Barbic also admitted it was easier to start a charter school from scratch (ie, choose your students) than to take over a school that was struggling. The latter was a flop
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Juvenile tinkering plus wrongheaded thinking. 🤔
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One of the celebrity ed reformers announced that “8 to 10” cities should upend their public schools and adopt the “portfolio approach”
This is what passes for “humility” in ed reform- a plan to privatize school systems in “8 to 10” cities with no democratic process of any kind, as an experiment.
I love the generic nature too- “8 to 10”- just plop this lobbyist and think tank generated “governance model” anywhere- they don’t know and they don’t care.
Who told these people they could conduct ideological experiments on 50 million public school children? Who told them they could invent their own version of “governance” to fit a corporate, private sector model? Is this the kind of arrogance they’re teaching in America’s elite private schools?
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How does the greed flushed coporate privatizers of everything public spell success?
Failure — as long as they walk away with lots of the public’s money and keep getting away with it.
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