Mercedes Schneider posted a review of the meteoric rise of a young alumna of TFA.
West Virginia Public Radio asked this young woman for her opinion of the new charter law in that state. She sharply criticized West Virginia for letting districts act as authorizers, which goes against charter school gospel that the best laws have multiple authorizers that compete to open multiple charter schools.
I read the interview, saw her picture, and I swear I thought she was 14 years old. Maybe 21, since she was a college graduate.
She is now “director for state advocacy and policy with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.”
What was her relevant experience?
She worked for Michelle Rhee in D.C. as a “program manager,” whatever that is.
She was education policy director for Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, then executive director of the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools. (Bentley, a very far-right Republican, resigned in 2017 because of a sex scandal.)
How many “public” charter schools are there in Alabama? Two.
Reformworld offers great career opportunities for ambitious young people. You can achieve very little, then be asked to opine on public radio about important state legislation that was designed to harm public schools.
Schneider writes:
Alabama’s charter school law allows for multiple authorizers, as NSFA notes on its “start a school –> process” page:
Groups applying to open a charter school in a district that has registered as an authorizer must first apply to the district. Should the district deny the application, applicants can appeal to the Alabama Public Charter School Commission (APCSC). The decision of the APCSC is final. Groups applying to open in a district that has not registered as an authorizer must apply directly to the APCSC.
So then, why only two charter schools in four years? Isn’t market-based reform about quantifiable results?
Why would WV pro-school-choice legislators seek advice from someone whose AL charter school policy advocacy resulted in a scant two schools in four years?
Why, indeed.
Schultz has an impressive title: director for state advocacy and policy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
No reason to check for the substance behind it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would like to invite all the readers of this blog to contribute to the International Alliance for Grassroots Quantum Akashic Chromodynamics, a new organization I’ve founded because I once worked for an organization that published an article that mentioned Albert Einstein. I don’t have a degree in physics and don’t even have much of a clue what Quantum Chromodynamics is, but I did kinda read a book by Richard Feynman once, and I can tell you, Quantum Chromodynamics is VERY IMPORTANT and just great. The continued proper functioning of the very universe may well depend upon it!!! So, act today. Write your name on a couple hundred dollar bills and send them to me because the universe is your home, too, isn’t it?
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I will donate only if you learn the drums like Feyman. That should stands a s qualification.
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I once had a girlfriend say to me, Roy, “Bob Shepherd, if you just played the saxophone, I would marry you.”
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It was not Hillary Clinton, I presume.
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Another example of the TFA “plague bacillus” entering the body.
Very often, politicians, school district leaders, or principals are inviting into and letting loose the TFA “bacillus” into the *“body” of your school or of your school system, and one that could eventually weaken and kill that body.
That “bacillus” analogy includes all the TFA Corps Members’ post-TFA career (SEE TFA’s “Leaders for Educational Equity”, which places former TFA’s in political office, or positions of authority within school districts.), as those two years of mediocre-at-best teaching gives them credibility, as they claim to have worked as a public school teacher.”
Oh, and don’t forget the billionaire-privatizer-funded, TFA-staffed “Fifth Column” groups such as “Educators for Excellence”, and “Teach Plus,” which bill themselves as “alternatives to traditional teachers unions.” Yeah, right!
By the way, the “plague bacillus” quote comes from Churchill.
Please indulge as I give a little history lesson.
Years after the World War I and after the Soviet takeover of Russia, Churchill wrote about what went on behind the scenes. He described how, at the height of World War I, the German High Command came up with a brilliant idea to get Russia out of German’s two-front war.
They knew of a revolutionary exile named Lenin, then found him and his forlorn followers languishing in Switzerland and struck a deal. They would smuggle this bald bastard and his men behind enemy lines into Russia, riding in a sealed train through Germany, and then through neutral Scandinavia, in exchange for something from Lenin, once he and his minions overthrew the Tsar. (It actually turned out to be the overthrow of Kerensky’s Provisional Government, which took over after the Tsar abdicated.)
As his end of the bargain, Lenin, once in power, would then sue for peace, and Germany could then put the entirety of its war machine on the Western Front against France, England, and (later) the United States.
WINSTON CHURCHILL: “They turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed train, like a plague bacillus, into Russia.”
It worked like a charm. Had the United States not entered the war shortly after this, the Germans would likely have won.
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Beautiful, Jack. Thank you.
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It is difficult for a tennessean to forget the time of Huffman here, when we were led by one of that nature.
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Was anyone else allowed to weigh in on charter schools in West Virginia, or was debate limited to input from a national charter school lobbying organization?
I can tell already that this is going to be very “locally driven” and “grass roots”
They couldn’t find an actual local supporter of these proposed schools? They had to drop the national lobbyist in?
She should come to Ohio next. This state will give her anything she demands. Our lawmakers take a list of ed reform demands and just copy and paste them into “state law” that is really drafted in some DC think tank. On one memorable occasion in Ohio they neglected to rename the law the lobbyists wrote. They were too lazy to even put their own caption on it. It had to be pulled because they actually submitted it with “put your state name HERE” still at the top.
Is there any possible way we could hire people who actually support public schools to write laws that affect public school students, or is that an outrageous request?
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It sure is odd that such an “agnostic” (and publicly-funded) organization like TFA ends up with 100% charter advocates and 0% public school advocates.
What are the odds of that? Gates should fund a study. Something mighty strange is happening with this distribution.
Is there some reason public school families have to train these people, when they then finish their 2 year stint in our schools and go to work immediately dismantling our schools? Is that a good investment for us? How about our students? How is this working out for them?
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I would say 99%.
Gary Rubenstein always notices how TFA never celebrates, or even mentions two of its most illustrious almuni: former LAUSD President Steve Zimmer, and two-term UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl, because they deviated from the privatizing agenda. The latter led one of the most successful strikes in education history against the forces that fund TFA.
President of the 2nd largest School District’s School Board in the country
AND
President of the 2nd largest teacher union in the country
It’s as if they never existed, and the TFA powers-that-be arehey’re ashamed and embarrassed by what Zimmer and Caputo-Pearl did in their post-TFA careers.
Meanwhile, TFA promotional materials can’t shut the-freak up about privatization puppets such as Nick Melvoin.
Regarding Zimmer and Caputo-Pearl, TFA is likely groveling to the billionaire funders, “Hey, we’re so, so sorry about those two. They somehow got loose of their mental leashes, and went rogue on us. Those two were mistakes on our part. Sorry. Regarding what happened with them, we’re going to try and make sure that never happens again.”
Fun Fact: both Michelle Rhee and Steve Zimmer were in the same TFA Class: (the 1994 Corps, if memory serves)
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The charter school industry (CSI) does not want anyone to fact-check the validity of their alleged false and misleading claims.
Like Donald Trump, the CSI prefers biased, ignorant people that accept whatever they are told without question, and that seems to be about 42.5 percent of the adult population of this country if the average of all the polls is any indication.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
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