Tom Ultican has written a series of posts about the Destroy Public Education Movement.
His latest post analyzes the nefarious role of TNTP in that movement.
This movement exists solely to disrupt public education and the teaching profession.
TNTP is one of several organizations that only exist because billionaires have financed them. Wendy Kopp founded TNTP (originally called The New Teachers Project) in 1997. She assigned Michelle Rhee, who had recently finished a two year Teach For America (TFA) tour, to run TNTP. Along with TNTP and TFA there are also the uncertified Broad Superintendents Academy, the fake schoolfor professional educators, Relay Graduate School and others forming a significant part of the infrastructure instilling a privatization mindset into the education community.
TNTP says it mission is to partner with educational entities to:
- “Increase the numbers of outstanding individuals who become public school teachers; and
- “Create environments for all educators that maximize their impact on student achievement”
These are laudable goals but why would any school district or state education department turn to an organization with minimal academic background and experience to train teachers and school leaders? Michelle Rhee earned a B.A. in Government from Cornell and a master’s in public policy from Harvard with no education studies. In the Book Chronicle of Echoes, Mercedes Schneider observes that “Wendy Kopp was a child of privilege”. She left her exclusive Highland Park neighborhood in Dallas to study International Affairs at Princeton. Kopp had no education experience or training and Rhee had five weeks of training to go along with two years experience teaching elementary school in Baltimore…
Before the billionaire driven push to privatize public education a “non-profit” company like TNTP would have gotten no consideration for training teachers because they were unqualified. If policy makers in New York wanted to create and alternative teacher certification path, they would have turned to an established institution like Columbia University’s Teachers College to create and manage the program. If Washington DC schools wanted to develop a teacher professional development program, they would have likely looked to the University of Maryland. These are places with more than a century of experience studying education and training its leaders…
Working for these want-to-be oligarchs is lucrative. The last tax return from TNTP (Sep. 2017) listed the top 12 paid employees and all of them made more than $200,000 per year. “Thirty pieces of silver” is not worth undermining democratic rights and free universal public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TNTP is an apt acronym cuz adding TNT to public ed has a totally predictable outcome.
TNTP is not limited to New York, New York. Listed below are contracts funding TNTP in Oakland Unified School District over the years:
File # Enactment # Type Status File Created Final Action Title
19-0617 19-0964 Agreement or Contract Passed 3/26/2019 6/12/2019 Ratification by the Board of Education of a Professional Services Contract between the District and Elizabeth Arney, Piedmont, CA, consultant, for the latter to join Office of Charter Schools (OCS) staff on annual site visits to 10-15 charters from February to May of 2019, performing the following tasks: 1) prior to site visits, consultant reviews each school’s data, raising questions to ask at the site visit; 2) at site visit, consultant is responsible for rating the school on the TNTP rubric, providing evidence for ratings, and developing a list of strengths and weaknesses for each school; 3) the debrief with the school leader following classroom observations; 4) at debrief, the consultant shares the strengths and weaknesses identified and provides suggested action steps based on instructional expertise, via the Office of Charter Schools, for the period of February 26, 2019 through May 16, 2019, in an amount not to exceed $10,500.00.
16-2571 17-0015 Agreement or Contract Passed 11/28/2016 1/11/2017 Approval by the Board of Education of the Service Agreement and the First Amendment to the Service Agreement between District and the New Teacher Project (TNTP), New York, NY, for the latter to 1) design and implement TGDS and LGDS data reporting systems to showcase observation results by school and network and inform teacher development, 2) implement a teacher career lattice that will support and develop teacher leaders, and 3) provide targeted support to the Executive Director of Educator Effectiveness, for the term from July 1, 2016 to December 30, 2016 at a cost not to exceed $130,000.00.
10-1811 10-1508 Agreement or Contract Passed 8/2/2010 8/11/2010 Approval by the Board of Education of Amendment No. 3 of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), for the latter to recruit, select and train 40-50 new teachers, from the previous stated 75-85 new teachers, to fill critical shortage subject areas, for the period October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010, at a cumulative cost not to exceed $620,883.00.
09-2993 09-2372 Agreement or Contract Passed 11/13/2009 11/18/2009 Approval by the Board of Education of Amendment No. 2 of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), for the latter to recruit, select and train 75-85 new teachers to fill critical shortage subject areas, for the period October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2011, at a cumulative cost not to exceed $626,190.00 (correction of inadvertent misstated cost as $472,434.00, Legislative File Id 09-2328, Enactment No. 09-1582, adopted 8/12/09).
09-2328 09-1582 Agreement or Contract Passed 8/3/2009 8/12/2009 Approval by the Board of Education of Amendment No. 1 of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), for the latter to recruit, select and train 75-85 new teachers to fill critical shortage subject areas, for the period October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2010, at a cost not to exceed $472,434.00.
09-1630 09-1501 Agreement or Contract Passed 6/18/2009 6/24/2009 Approval by the Board of Education of the Amendment No. 1 to the Memorandum of Understanding between District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), providing for an Amended Scope of Work, as described therein, for the program for the 2009-2010 School Year. All other terms and conditions of the contract remain in full force and effect.
08-1865 08-1323 Agreement or Contract Passed 8/27/2008 8/27/2008 Approval by the Board of Education of an Agreement between the District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP) through Oakland Teaching Fellows and Oakland City Teacher Corps to recruit, select, and train 125-150 new teachers for the period of October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009, who will begin teaching in the fall of 2009 in critical shortage subject areas, with both parties to bargain in good faith to reach agreement for continued services for the period of October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2013, at a cost not to exceed $863,215.00, plus training stipend for each participant.
08-1861 08-1377 Agreement or Contract Passed 9/10/2008 9/10/2008 Approval by Board of Education of the Memorandum of Understanding between District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), for the latter to establish an Intern Partnership Agreement for the Oakland Practitioner Teacher Program, a Teacher Education Alternative Certification District Internship Partner Program, for twenty-seven participants at a cost not to exceed $275,000.00, as specified in/from funding sources named herein, for the period October 1, 2008 through September 30, 2009.
08-1283 08-0961 Agreement or Contract Passed 6/11/2008 6/11/2008 Approval by the Board of Education of Amendment No. 3 to Agreement between the District and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), made March 8, 2006, to decrease program targets to 80-100 new teachers, as determined by the District, for the latter to recruit, select, train and support teachers in critical shortage subject areas for the 2008-2009 school year. All other tems and conditions of the Agreement remain in full force and effect.
Our read-by-three Legislation places a person in each elementary to coach K-3 folks. I was told this was a “grant”. When the coach came into my room last year – she showed me a TNTP spiral bound workbook. I asked her if she knew Michelle Rhee with Students First rose to fame by firing teachers on television. That did not go over well with her or with me. Apparently the coach was recruited from a New York Charter and her aspirations were to own a charter. She also idolized Obama Reform.
Is this our new norm? We do not hire teachers – we hire warm bodies without pedagogy and them indoctrinate them with a notebook produced by someone who hates teachers? Something is very wrong with this.
TNTP is a Trojan Horse designed to enable the infiltration of hostile actors in legitimate public schools. Certification was established to ensure that teachers and administrators have met minimum standards. It makes no sense that any public school district would allow untrained people into a district simply because billionaires are bribing them to accept the unqualified fake credentials of TNTP. Sadly, money is often the price of admission. Any district that accepts these fake credentials is inviting a fox into a hen house. TNTP is a product of billionaire meddling in public education. Its operation is headed by amateurs, not educators. The so-called research From TNTP is as fake as their credentials. Instead of university led studies, TNTP produces “non-peer reviewed polemics.” Then, the media that is mostly owned by conservatives repeats the fake “findings” to provide credence to TNTP’s fake research.
The original articles up at OPEd news,
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/TNTP-is-a-Part-of-the-Dest-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Education_Education-Funding_Educational-Crisis-190811-97.html#comment741759
my comment has embedded links at OpEd
Public schools are getting hammered by the loss of public tax dollars that have been diverted from public school finances into charter and choice school accounts. Charters, having forgotten the era when they bragged that they could do more with less, complain that they are underfunded compared to public schools. Peter Greene points out in this post that legislatures have a nasty habit of overlooking the central question about charter schools: their funding. They pretend that they can run two publicly funded school systems without any additional cost.They pretend that the funding for charters is not subtracted from the funding for public schools.
The war on public education is a war on our people… token them ignorant and unskilled serfs. t is Shared knowledge that MAKES DEMOCRACY POSSIBLE.An ignorant citizenry is the goal, not just the profit made by the businesses that take over our schools. https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/hirsch.pdf
My personal “favorite” is the time that TNTP “rated” schools of education based on their syllabi, including schools of education that didn’t exist. That was several years ago, and I can’t find the links any longer, but I know that both Mercedes Schneider and Peter Greene talked about that.
That was not TNTP, that was NCTQ. They are in the same camp, so you need a program to tell them apart.
Oops, my bad. But you’re right–all those acronyms confuse the daylights out of me.
Thanks for setting me straight.
Wow Wendy Kopp put someone with 5 total weeks of teacher training and 2 years of teaching experience to be in charge of The New Teachers Project?
Kopp really is the lowest of the low. I’m glad most smart college students now reject TFA because they now understand that Kopp and the organization that she used to promote her own profile is about helping her and her pals as far more important than what is best for the most vulnerable children.
Rhee had two years of teaching experience. Kopp has none.
It is standard operating procedure for the Destroy Public Education camp. Relay Graduate schools was started by the charter industry with no PhD’s in education. The unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy is the Billionaire Eli Broad’s personal school administrators training group that literally wrote the book on how to close public schools. It is a key part of the training. And of course it is a very bad joke that collage graduates with five weeks of training in education practices are certified to run a classroom. This stuff fly’s because their is a well financed conspiracy to end public education.
It’s amazing how much influence ed reformers have IN public schools.
None of them support public schools, yet we get every one of their various projects and fads jammed INTO our schools.
There is no comparable influence in charter and private schools. There are no organizations that don’t support those schools but are invited into them. Imagine a public school supporter presenting a charter owner with a workbook and “here’s how you will train new teachers”- that would never, ever happen.
I think it goes to how they don’t really value our schools. Anyone can come in and do anything and we’re somehow obligated to use our schools and students as guinea pigs for this “movement”. The assumption is that our existing schools have zero value- they do NOTHING well- therefore ANY garbage they bring in is a plus.
We should have the confidence to be more discerning. Maybe they add NO value. Maybe they should have to earn adoption of their projects in our schools.
Sigh. I don’t think it’s about devaluing our schools, Chiara. That’s just sales propaganda. I think it’s just about the $. $ flows like water: if you dam it up one place, a channel opens somewhere else; it all flows downhill, & needs an outlet. Many states have been cutting ed funds for a dozen+ yrs (since the economy slowed down)), & presto, that’s when these DFER-et-al-funded biz ops popped up w/ their sales pitches to govt actors, saying [fill in the blanks]– doesn’t matter what they say, they’re offering to fill the void of available public dollars w/their excess of private dollars. They stole it from the public, & now they need to invest it somewhere. Why do govt actors go for it? Because they want to maintain their jobs & dept budgets.
Don’t underestimate how far Rhee and Kopp got on Harvard and Princeton, respectively.
It is almost comical how much ed reform values degrees from prestigious colleges. I read them a lot and the bios always start with the recitation of the Ivy league degree.
Put “Stanford” together with “private sector” and they’ll hand you a 20,000 public school students and a 100 million dollar budget.
Their disdain for public schools and public school students extends to those who attended less selective colleges. They’re snobs. They sprinkle in “diversity” and “equity” but it’s really rigidly conventional as far as ranking. These are people who care a LOT about college entrance exam scores. The only thing they’re “radical” about is eradicating public schools and labor unions. Other than that they have zero interest in shaking up any existing power structure. Works JUST FINE for them.
Larry Summers (former/current friend of the architect of Russian privatization and Epstein) admitted his stupidity, unabashedly. He was into charter schools. He was harvard President. Then, he said 4 years ago, “What is inconceivable can turn into what is inevitable rapidly”. Duh. Everyone except the neo-liberals predicted the horror that charter schools and loss of unions would become.
Headline from the news, “Silicon Valley’s Latest Misery of Disruption”. How ironic that the tech tyrants fund school disruption and then quash it with no excuses, when it is the students being disruptive in classrooms.
Guess where the dim-witted Summers is a distinguished fellow- at the Gates-funded CAP.
TNTP’s V.P. is in the cluster f of fellows of the Gates-funded Parhara Institute. Her fellow cronies include reps from Charles Koch, 50 Can, Walton Family Foundation and think tank Stanford’s CREDO.
In MI, TNTP’s failed alternative teacher route, MI Teacher Corp, is being relaunched inside Detroit Public Schools under a new brand—On the Rise Academy. Former TNTP employees were hired by Detroit Public Schools to staff executive positions in the human resource department. Two HR directors of HR are former TNTP employees and TFA alumni. The Superintendent of HR is a former TFA teacher and TNTP employee. He only holds a bachelor’s degree in English. Why was he hired as the superintendent of HR for Detroit Public Schools when he is clearly unqualified?
He and several former TNTP/TFA employees, now top executives in DPS’s HR department, are developing this alternative teacher pipeline and dismantling the district and teacher’s union from the inside out. Why was this takeover of the HR department of a public school district by unqualified, former TNTP employees allowed to happen?