Corporate reformers managed to gain control of the Atlanta School Board hired America Carstarphen as its superintendent; she previously worked in Austin, where voters ousted the charter-friendly board.
Now Atlanta has ambitious plans to turn itself into a portfolio district and disrupt schools across the city. Reformers say that when they are finished with their mass disruption, every student will attend an excellent school.
Sadly, they can’t point to a district anywhere in the nation where this has happened. In New Orleans, the Star Reform District, 40% of schools are rated D or F by the reform-loving Dtate Education Department, and these schools are almost completely segregated black.
This is the key exchange:
School board chairman Jason Esteves acknowledges the work will lead to “tough decisions,” but says it’s necessary to create excellent schools for every child.
Over the coming months, the district will develop a rating system to grade its schools as well as determine how to respond when schools excel or fail. The board that will consider any changes includes several members who joined after the 2016 turnaround plan was approved.
“The vast majority of the community has seen the progress that we’ve made, has endorsed the work that we’ve done, and … wants to see more of it,” he said. “The electorate has generally been supportive in the face of pretty significant changes.”
But there are critics, and they say the district needs to shift priorities, not redesign its structure.
Shawnna Hayes-Tavares, president of Southwest and Northwest Atlanta Parents and Partners for Schools, fears officials want to bring in more charter schools or charter operators to run neighborhood schools, especially in those parts of the city.
“We’ve had the most change on this side of town. It’s like trauma,” she said. “The parents are just tired. They can’t take it anymore.”
Promises and lies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When people saw they privatized New Orleans critics said they would privatize every city they entered. Ed reformers dismissed this as hysteria and insisted they had no intention of embarking on a national privatization strategy.
But then that’s exactly what they did. They haven’t been honest with the public at any point of this 20 year experiment. They knew they couldn’t sell privatization so they decided they simply wouldn’t admit that’s what they’re doing.
There won’t be a public school left in Atlanta in a decade and we’ll be told it was “markets” when it was actually the entire goal and a manipulated result.
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Chiara:
You have highlighted one of the fundamental features of corporate education reform—
Dishonesty. And it doesn’t matter whether they are fooling others or themselves. Irrelevant.
It’s a question of priorities.
As a very old and very dead and very Greek guy put it:
“Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception.” [Sophocles]
$tudent $ucce$$. Now that’s something you can count on…
😎
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Another quote for my notebook. I love it when you get all quotey on me. We hear from you too infrequently these days.
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The Indianapolis “portfolio” district uses two different grading scales for charters and public schools- this results in public schools getting C’s and D’s and charter schools all getting A’s.
They inflate the grades of the charters and hold the existing public schools to a more difficult grading scale, then they launch marketing/lobbying campaigns that say charters score better than public schools. It’s a way to juice charter market share while reducing public school enrollment.
Will Atlanta engage in the same deliberate effort to deceive parents? Will all portfolio districts [promote charters over existing public schools?
This is ideology, not education. The privatized schools are invested in and encouraged and nurtured while the disfavored public schools are deliberately gutted and weakened.
The students in those public schools that ed reformers disfavor? Just collateral damage of the privatization push. Sacrificed to The Agenda.
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Of course Atlanta will deceive in order to favor segregation schools and privatization. No matter what the deform movement does, it’s not punished. There’s no legal nor ethical boundary that applies when burnishing the image of charters and their students. And, there’s no accountability for charter operators and their political cronies in capitols. On the other hand, burnishing the records of public school students resulted in 7 year prison terms for Atlanta teachers.
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most frightening truth: “No matter what the deform movement does, it’s not punished.” It may pull back, it may change its facade or personnel, but it is never, ever gone.
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The minute the money goes away, the “movement” will go away.
A real movement does not depend on financing by Wall Street and billionaires.
This is a “movement” with no grassroots.
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I certainly hope and pray that “when the $$ go away, the movement will go away also.” Charters can fill a void in some city systems, but not when the motivation is money. I live in a great school system in Colorado where we have 5 charter schools of various sizes and philosophies (Montessori for two of them), and in our district, it works well; however, the teachers are paid sub-standard wages, and although many are very dedicated, they jump at the chance to work for our district where they receive higher wages and benefits. Charters have relieved some of our over-crowding until the district can catch up with new schools (we’ve been very fortunate to pass bond issue after bond issue to improve and add on to our existing school buildings and build new ones.).
The saddest news to me in the “movement” is the unabashed practice of manipulating student scores and school ratings. Then on top of that (New Orleans) segregating the charter schools. John Dewey had it right ! The public school system with education for all is the backbone of our democracy. May we never lose it ! I abhor corporations and billionaires thinking they know more than public school professionals and skewing the schools and scores to “prove” their case.
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Atlanta should look at New Orleans in order to understand what a portfolio district looks like. There will not be excellent schools for all. There will be enhanced segregation with cheap charters for black students and selective charters for mostly white students. There will be widespread profiteering and squandered resources, and corporate leaders will extract as much value as they can from their public asset, put that value in their own pockets, and like carpetbaggers take Atlanta’s money out of town! They will rip neighborhoods apart with little regard for the residents. The people of Atlanta should organize, and in the spirit of the late Dr. M.L. King, protest and fight the corporate takeover of their public schools.
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TFA leads the Atlanta school board, so the board is ready to rip up neighborhood schools and scam the students and families.
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Scam the families and blame, blame, blame older teachers: the TFA kids are known to be some of the most vocally willing to make the argument that schools fail because of “out-of-touch” older teachers….and then from those who stick around more than a couple years and thus find THEMSELVES under fire by even newer TFAers, we begin to read articles that oh, well, maybe it’s not the experienced teachers after all…
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Bill Gates should own up to targeting poor populations in cities for his education privatization vision “…brands on a large scale”. His Frontier program that disproportionately targets historically Black colleges and universities appears to match the marketing plan. It trades “collaboration on content and delivery” for money. The Zuckerberg /Gates’ schools-in-a-box business aligns in targeting the vulnerable.
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Bill Gates would never own up to that because it would essentially amount to owning up to being a racist.
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Your point?
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Just the obvious.
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and over time seems intent only upon strategically separating out those who cannot stably afford Gates/Zuckerberg tech product
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So true, Linda.
Gates and Zuckerberg have their heads up each others’ behind.
So why do people continue to use FB? Why do people continue to use word, when there’s OPEN OFFICE?
Open Office can be opened using Word and Pages. Open Office is FREE and so much better than Word and Pages.
I hope more people download and use Open Office.
Can you imagine what it would be like for Gates if everyone used Open Office. Can you imagine what it would be like for Zuckerberg if people closed their FB accounts?
Both Gates and Zuckerberg are immoral and greedy.
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Yvonne,
Don’t leave out John Arnold.
Z-berg and Sandberg have been exposed as Republican predators.
Can’t wait til shame’s spotlight solidly hits Mr. and Mrs. John Arnold, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates and, the Waltons (the association with the Center for American Progress will be poisonous for the organization).
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John Arnold has been very active in trying to stamp out public sector pensions.
Mr. Ex-Enron is a billionaire. He doesn’t believe people should have pensions.
I have to tread carefully.
The first time I mentioned his name, I got a call from his PR person, who threatened to sue me.
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The Truth About John Arnold is a project sponsored by the National Public Pension Coalition and Californians for Retirement Security. It is a roadmap that shows just how far one billionaire has gone to decimate retirement security for millions of public servants all over the country
http://truthaboutjohnarnold.com
My guess is if what they were saying were not true, Arnold would have sued them long ago and forced them to take down their site.
So what they say is very likely true.
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And Arnold is proud of wrecking current and future lifestyles of the working class. Make them losers and make them pay for losing.
He’s like the mean Lord in the castle surrounded by his serfs that work back breaking work sixteen hours a day from before sunup to after sundown seven days a week and have an average miserable lifespan of 34 years. And as they breathe their final breath, they sigh in relief that the torture is over.
Arnold is the kind of monster that would tell his chauffeur to run down his serfs if they don’t get out of his car’s way. That’s why he’d have a front grill with metal spikes added to his cars. The car would have to have double wipers on the front windshield and a larger tank of windshield cleaner to clean the blood off of the glass.
Trump and his family, and Betsy DeVos are the same.
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Lloyd, yes. You got Arnold right.
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An upper bar for political statements as libel, hasn’t been identified yet?
NPPC, if it suspects false and malicious statements about its organization/individuals have been made, would be in a far better position to prove the required financial damage than someone like Bill Gates-just my opinion.
Libel suits are often accompanied by counter suits.
The law that needs to be drafted and passed applies to the tax status of villainthropic foundations which harm people financially like those aimed at public retiree defined benefit plans. And, a follow-up law that enacts consequences for the individuals who fund the offending activities is overdue. A countervailing force to the Koch’s ALEC would create those laws.
BTW, if media’s quote from John Arnold, that claimed he donates to the ACLU is true, it’s good news because the ACLU is in courts on the charter school funding issue.
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“The electorate has generally been supportive in the face of pretty significant changes.”
This is a blatant lie by Esteves (not surprised he would lie). The residents of Atlanta like the rest of the state voted overwhelmingly against the massive charter takeover the governor and charter lobbyists tried to engineer in 2016. Naturally, when defeated on the statewide amendment TFA and the rest of the charter cabal went and bought the school board seats to do actly the opposite of what the electorate explicitly declared. Worse still Esteves and the rest are all Democrats. These people are absolutely shameless. I’d rather deal with the openly hostile “government schools” crowd than these charlatans.
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Dem politicians/privatizers have CAP which provides cover, high visibility advocacy and links to big campaign money. Corporations and Bill Gates fund the Center for American Progress, which was created by John Podesta, a friend of Jeb Bush and Chester Finn. (Podesta was Hillary’s campaign manager.) The media quotes CAP, then wrongly labels it, the liberal voice.
CAP now has a favorite privatizing Democratic politician, Sen. Corey Booker. He is the tech tyrants’ dream come true. Finding a Black person who will sell the hedge funders’ education scheme rivals finding gold, when you’re an education profit taker.
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Kindly forgive my intruding with the following long post broken into three parts to offer more perspective, but it’s a desperate situation here in Atlanta. Please help as you see best.
Part 1 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):
APSL stands for Atlanta Public Schools leadership. The abbreviation distinguishes understanding the leadership of APS as being different from APS, the district, itself.
The APSL are the currently serving Atlanta Board of Education members, collectively and severally, and the Harvard-trained Meria Joel Carstarphen, Ed.D., as Superintendent.
Right after civil society of Austin, Texas, effectively dismissed Dr. Carstarphen, effective school year end 2014, for imposing school choice and charter schools upon their Austin Independent School District in opposition to the public’s interests, the Atlanta school board’s Superintendent Search Committee, chaired by Ann Cramer, saw fit, for some unfathomable reason, to select Carstarphen as the search committee’s sole finalist.
Consequently, in April 2014, the Atlanta school board approved hiring Carstarphen to succeed Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis. Carstarphen is now in her fifth year as Atlanta superintendent, and APS is now nearly a decade removed from Dr. Beverly L. Hall’s tenue in that position and the history-making test cheating crisis Hall’s behavioristic practices applied to teachers and their administrators spawned.
Always generally busy with some manner of rushed, attention-grabbing, self-aggrandizing activity about “moving forward” with change, but never effecting improvement, the APSL are now busy with “Creating a System of Excellent Schools” under the auspices of their “Excellent Schools Project.” An aspect of the project is the involvement of a 57-person Advisory Committee comprising top-level APS administrators, some APS principals, and mostly other persons said to be representing “the community.”
The APSL Excellent Schools Project Advisory Committee met most recently … on Monday, 12 November 2018. The facilitated work of the committee in this meeting was that of responding to, and giving feedback on, the 18-page DRAFT Excellent Schools Action Framework (“DRAFT”). A scanned copy of the DRAFT, in PDF format, can be viewed and downloaded from my Adobe Document Cloud space, at this link (light blue highlights on the PDF are mine):
https://adobe.ly/2OBJUdj
First, see in the DRAFT that pages nine (9) through 18 present action items to “Rate on a scale of 1-10 your belief that this action will help increase access to excellent schools across APS.”
When, at the end of their Monday meeting and after having concluded their facilitated work, the Advisory Committee asked for input from members of the public present. I was the only member of the public present.
In rising to the floor to speak, I respectfully and humbly introduced myself as someone who has been called “that Deming guy” and then offered this feedback on rating the DRAFT action items:
On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate every action item zero (0). Unfortunately, your allowing me to deliver just a two-minute monologue is not enough time to explain, why zero. Thank you.”
(Note that in keeping with the APSL practice of legally ending public meetings immediately prior to allowing public members to speak for two minutes maximum, so the APSL will have no legal obligation to dialogue with the public nor to legally include public input and feedback in meeting minutes and in the public record, the Advisory Committee Meeting asked to hear from the public only after having concluded the meeting’s work.)
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Part 2 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):
Now, be alarmed by the DRAFT. Be very alarmed, if not angered.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it embodies what students, researchers, and practitioners of continual quality improvement (not “continuous improvement”), such as that of Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s humanistic philosophy and teachings applicable to education, readily recognize to be what Deming calls “Evil Practices” and “Forces of Destruction” operating.
• DRAFT Evil Practices: “Institute performance-based incentive pay,” “Performance-based contract,” etc.
• DRAFT Forces of Destruction: School “Leadership transition,” “Merge” schools, “Close” school, etc.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because its committee of creators and the APSL clearly aim to slink into parents minds and behavior selfish, consumerist school choice and charter schools expansion ideology that says, “It does not matter what kind of school it is – public, charter, or other – just as long as the school is an excellent school regardless of neighborhood.” In other words, the means don’t matter, just as long as one can get the end one wants regardless of the harm doing so will inflict upon others, even children, but just not “my” child.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it brazenly intends to lead to codifying behaviorism and Taylorism in greatly expansive ways even Beverly Hall did not do. Understanding that Hall’s practice of behaviorism and Taylorism as continuous improvement, with attendant numerical goals and targets for test score gains, is what drove APS to experience the greatest systemic test cheating crisis in U. S. history, then just imagine the damage and destruction the DRAFT portends.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it is so reductive and regressive in the extreme in going so far backward into the 20th century that it is reasonable to say the DRAFT makes behaviorism’s B. F. Skinner (life, 1904-1990; Harvard Professor, 1958-1974) and Taylorism’s Fredrick W. Taylor (1856-1918) rise from the grave to applaud it.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because, intentional or not, its committee of creators and the APSL aim to seal the fate of current and future generations of Atlanta children, especially those labeled “black,” in being generally submissive and compliant cogs in a “college and career ready,” simplified, algorithm-driven, amoral and selfish and greedy world of corporatocracy (yes, it’s a word; see definition below), when the reality is that the world comprises a completely interdependent and interacting network of systems created by both Nature and man that gives rise to ever greater complexity, unceasingly.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it offers nothing, absolutely nothing, for working on learning to improve the internal capabilities of Atlanta public schools as a system that aims to prepare all students for complexities that will unfold, and have already unfolded, into the world, including public schools and other public institutions in service to sustaining and advancing democracy to benefit civil society.
Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it signals its committee of creators and the APSL, ironically, do not have even a Martin Luther King Jr kind of Systems Thinking wisdom and knowledge of what a system is nor of how systems give rise to complexity.
MLK Jr: “As nations and individuals, we are interdependent. … That whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. … This is the way our Universe is structured.”
To see an example of an MLK Jr kind of Systems Thinking in action, freely play around with my qualitative simulation of “Why APS cannot improve and why it can,” at this entirely self-contained link, shortened:
https://tinyurl.com/y8gwwqzn
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Part 3 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):
Atlanta school board members who have no understanding of systems, nor of Taylorism, nor of behaviorism, nor of Carstarphen’s known bent for behaviorism and Taylorism, in the style she practiced in Austin, and now in Atlanta, are an inherent risk and danger to the moral and ethical development, education, and welfare of especially children labeled “black.” They should not be school board members. They should have the wherewithal to know to step down. They simply are not qualified for leadership in the ever more complexifying 21st century.
For this reason, now see in the DRAFT that pages seven (7) through eight (8) present the following APSL Excellent Schools Framework Rating design:
• Exceeds Expectations (also 5-stars or “A”)
• Meets Expectations (also 4-stars or “B”)
• Approaching Expectations (also 3-stars or “C”)
• Beginning (also 2-stars or “D”)
• Needs Improvement (also 1-star or “F”)
But then, in the sense “what is good for the goose is good for the gander,” the APSL DRAFT design for rating the level of a school’s excellence suggests the public might also have a similar design for rating the maturity of APSL quality.
Accordingly, the following design is offered for rating the maturity of APSL quality:
• Great APSL Quality
• Good APSL Quality
• Middling APSL Quality
• Fair APSL Quality
• Poor APSL Quality
Then taking the design for rating the maturity of APSL quality into considering that the APSL DRAFT Excellent Schools Action Framework, and the APSL Excellent Schools Project, clearly signal that the APSL aim to codify behaviorism and Taylorism as well as school choice and charter schools expansion, the rating “Poor APSL Quality” is justified, and so is hereby attributed to the APSL.
Therefore, let it be known: Poor APSL Quality is the situation hobbling improvement of Atlanta Public Schools as a public educational institution and system of public schools.
Moreover, the Poor APSL Quality rating begs asking: What was it in the general minds, hearts, and souls of Austin civil society that came to reject Carstarphen and stand up for public education that seems lacking in the general minds, hearts, and souls of Atlanta civil society that has embraced Carstarphen and is amenable to destroying public education using the rationale that attaining an “excellent schools” end justifies any “school choice and charter schools expansion” means?
Again, freely play around with my qualitative simulation of “Why APS cannot improve and way it can,” as you wish. It will be interesting to vary P.Superintendency (public superintendency) quality and P.BOE (public board of education) quality. See below for definitions of the interdependent and interacting entities the simulation involves.
Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-81776 | edwjohnson@aol.com
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The corporate pirates of everything in the public sector are an assembly line of broken promises and endless lies.
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inflicted by soulless despots
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Roadmap clear for savvy readers: “Helping APS with the planning work is Denver-based Foxhall Consulting Services [sheep’s clothing], whose fees are being paid by RedefinED Atlanta [wolf], a local, charter-friendly [air quotes] non-profit [close air uotes].
Translation:
(1)SGO for PreK-2 [can’t have those 3-7y.o.’s left out of the yr-round assessment/ data collection process!]
(2)And the survey SAYS …. “Characteristics of a negative school culture include suspicion, centralized decision-making, and poor communication.” [Hmm, sounds like… a portfolio district!]
(3)…And another layer for everybody: SEL stds/ prog assessments!
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