Peter Greene is now writing on a regular basis for Forbes magazine, an absolutely splendid setting for his brilliant work.
In his latest article, he tells the sad story of Kansas City, Missouri.
In 1964, it had 77,000 students.
When the order came to desegregate the district, white families fled the city’s system, and in an unusual and controversial move, the system tried to meet its desegregation goals by luring those white students back with an array of shiny special programs rather than investing in a more solid base. Just before the turn of the century, Missouri okayed charter schools, but only for urban areas (meaning Kansas City and St. Louis). Since then, a portion of the district has been annexed and the district suffered under a Broad-trained superintendent (and his abrupt departure). Today there are 14,216 students in the public school system, and 12,468 in the various charters operating in the city.
Now, Kansas City is struggling to figure out how to co-exist with the charters. Dr. Mark Befell, the superintendent, is trying to figure out how to create a new ecosystem.
The proliferation of charters in Kansas City has also created a system that is difficult for families to navigate. Charter schools present a wide variety of grade ranges including K-6, K-4, 6-12 and, most improbably, 5-11. Parents have to figure out how to navigate their child through all thirteen grades while factoring in programs, location, and whether or not the charter will admit students in the school’s higher grades (a charter that doesn’t “backfill” may cover grades K-6, but will not accept students in the higher grades even if the school has empty seats). A student can ending up switching school systems multiple times in her educational career.
Unregulated charters have made a mess out of the Kansas City ecosystem, but Bedell is looking to clean it up. The school district has a unique opportunity. Charters in Missouri can be sponsored by a university, a school district, or the state’s charter school commission, and one of Kansas City’s major sponsors is getting out of the business, leaving eight charters in search of a sponsor. The state commission wants them, but so does the public system.
As in other districts, the question is whether and how the public schools can survive the charter invasion.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Bedell has said that he believes that charters are not going away. Kansas City has some terrible problems, but it will be interesting to see if they can forge a model for how public and charter schools can work together under public school leadership for the good of all students in the larger educational ecosystem.”
Bedell, taught for 3 1/2 years (I believe through TFA) before becoming an adminimal. He took part in the Show Me Institute’s “Failure to Fixes” conference in May ’17 wherein folks like Hess, Greene, McShane and other edudeformers deplored the state of edudeform, mainly blaming teachers for not “implementing with fidelity” the deforms they had/have been hawking. When I asked Bedell at the NPE conference about that day, he couldn’t seem to remember it at all. Wolf in sheep’s clothing? I’ll let you decide.
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For those not familiar with the Show Me Institute. It is regressive right wing libertarian millionaire Rex Sinquefield’s personal “think tank”. The Show Me Institute brought in Eva Moskowitz to St. Louis about a year ago to extol the virtues of charter schools.
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Dammit Duane, I was getting ready for a man crush. Now, you send me down the path of disillusionment and self-loathing.
Dr. Bedell comes across as a very positive force for Public Education, but his partnering with charter schools did give me pause. It reminded me of the systems of schools idea being promoted for billionaires in Oakland.
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I first heard that claim from Joel Klein, who became chancellor after being pushed out as CEO of Bertelsmann. Zero education experience. That was 2002.
Months after starting, he said he would transform NYC from a “school system” to a “system of schools.” Last week, I heard that the Broadie superintendent of Atlanta presented the same language as innovative.
I’d pay $50 to anyone who can find and send me a copy of the Reformers’ Guide to Language and Jargon Intended to Give Words the Opposite Meaning.
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I will make it a reward of $100 for a copy of the Reformer hymnal.
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Silly me. Anyone who had a copy of the Reformer Guide to Deceptive Jargon wouldn’t Part with it for only $100.
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Just reporting what I personally know. Nothing more. I must say I was quite stunned when he said he didn’t remember that conference.
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It’s good that Peter Greene is writing at Forbes to counter the right wing propaganda on education from the Center for American Progress, which is egregiously identified as “liberal”.
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It depends on to what extent you equate “Democrat” with “liberal”. The Board of CAP is solidly Democrat
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Identified as “liberal” by so many who choose never to look past the title. The public is slowly learning more about being wary of NEOliberal goals, can we add NEOprogressive to that list?
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I listened to Dr Bedell at the NPE Conference and was very impressed, how many superintendents are leading the fight? Blog writing and bemoaning the education charter driven world is fine, feet on the ground is quite different. Bedell and his team were realists, charters are not disappearing, the strategy he expressed and the other presenters laid out a strategy that was thoughtful and realistic …. we need more Dr Bedells ….
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Perhaps I’m far more jaded than you EintheA, but I find someone who can’t remember cavorting with the edudeformers during a full day conference a bit disconcerting. A supe adminimal whose teaching experience is 3.5 years, I believe in a TFA position, then gets an MA in EdAdm, and starts being an adminimal. Seems we’ve seen that type before and the outcomes for the students affected by the policies enacted to be less than desirable. “Birds of a feather. . . .” or “If it walks like a duck. . . . ”
Now I left the conference after Sat due to not feeling well, so I didn’t get to see his presentation on Sunday. I wanted to, and I think I probably would have had a few searing questions for him. Maybe he has had a “come to Jesus” moment-I doubt it by the way he responded to my queries on Sat. morning. But it seems that he has embraced the charters, as if they are a “natural” part of the education landscape now. As I said above “Wolf in sheep’s clothing?”
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His bio information on the KC Public Schools site* says nothing of his experience teaching, nothing. Sorry, but I can’t support a supe who isn’t proud enough of his teaching experience (actually a lack of sufficient teaching experience) to even mention it in what I would consider a very important bio.
*see: https://www.kcpublicschools.org/Page/5676
We don’t need more of his type, there are more than enough of that type out there now.
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The phase “educational ecosystem” implies that the charter schools and authentic public schools can and should co-exist and function as a unified whole. That is unlikely to happen if Bedell is in charge. In fact, the charters are likely to eat the remaining public schools for lunch while posturing about putting in place “innovations” to improve them.
Kansas City, MO schools were featured in a Bellwether Education Partners exercise titled The U.S. Education Innovation Index: Prototype and Report September, 2016 http://bellwethereducation.org/publication/us-education-innovation-index-prototype-and-report
The “Education Innovation Index” is a scoring system for ideas that favor market-based and privatized education, with entrepreneurs having a free reign for experiments. In this aberrant view of what works for innovation, public school failures are a blessing. They are viewed as a requisite for any “educational ecosystem” favoring innovation. I kid you not.
In addition to viewing poor test scores as opportunities for market-based “innovations,” the US Education Innovation Index identifies specific charter-friendly policies, and local economic and philanthropic assets that favor dismantling public schools. There are four case studies. One of these is Kansas City, MO where the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is cited as one of several nonprofit organizations seeking control of public schools
The Innovation Index was designed to produce data and a rating scheme to accelerate the process of privatizing public schools. The report offers comparisons among several cities leading the way (e.g., New Orleans, Indianapolis, San Francisco, and Kansas City, MO). The comparisons are based on 42 “indicators” of an “ecosystem” favoring innovation in education. The Index has an elaborate scheme for measuring and weighting these indicators.
Pages 81-83 of this report offers a summary of the indicators for Kansas City, MO with scores dating to 2015. Appendix B (Table IB) has a complete list of the major “pillars,” “indicators” and rationales for these.
Here are a few highlights:
1. Innovation Culture (city has incubators for entrepreneurs and startups).
2. Student Achievement (innovation outlook is favorable if five-year trends in test scores are NEGATIVE).
3. Collaboration & Coordination Mechanisms (Gates-funded district-charter compact, Strive partnerships, common enrollment, intermediaries for funded projects).
4. Talent Supply & Quality (TFA and similar teacher pipelines, teacher residency as training, college-educated workforce).
5. Innovation-Supporting Institutions (Venture philanthropists, incubators for education innovation, member League of Innovative Schools, Education Cities, USDE “Innovation Cluster,” excellent internet access).
6. Innovation-Friendly Policy (Online course choice, charter laws, vouchers and variants).
7. Innovation Investment (Federal innovation grants, venture and philanthropic capital investments in innovation).
8. Deviation (budget allocations that differ from norms in comparable districts as sign of readiness for innovation).
9. Dynamism (churn in schools, startups, and closures by type).
The Bellwether U.S. Education Innovation Index: Prototype and Report incorporates information from the longstanding Kauffman Index, a project of ranking metro areas by their entrepreneurial activity. https://www.kauffman.org/kauffman-index/rankings?report=growth&indicator=growth-rate&type=metro version
I think the takeaway is this. If you prefer not to talk about dismantling public education, shift the discussion to “innovation” as if everything innovative is super great and inevitably so.
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“That is unlikely to happen if Bedell is in charge.”
I’m not so sure about, Laura. It appears to me that he is aiding and abetting the takeover of KC public schools by the edudeformers.
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“Innovation” is also a buzzword in the pharma industry. It generally means “Hold on to your wallet” and “If it was really a big deal, we’d call it blockbuster.”
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