This is a story so nutty that it would be hilarious if there were no children involved. Instead, it is an outrage.
When the fringe rightwingers of the Tea Party won control of the North Carolina legislature in 2010, they promptly passed laws authorizing charters and vouchers and transferring the funding from the state’s successful N.C. Teaching Fellows Program (which prepared career teachers) to the temps in Teach for America.
Then they looked wistfully to Tennessee and realized that what they were missing was a mechanism for state takeover of low-scoring public schools. Tennessee had its very own “Achievement School District,” funded by $100 million of federal Race to the Top money, and North Carolina wanted to do the same thing. The Tennessee ASD took control of the state’s lowest-performing schools and pledged to catapult them into the top 20% of schools in the state.
By 2016, it was clear that the ASD was a total failure but that did not deter North Carolina lawmakers. Give them credit for a combination of gullibility and ignorance.
To help the state takeover pass, a very wealthy conservative entrepreneur from Oregon named John Bryan funded a campaign for the state takeover legislation. Bryan handed out about $600,000 to Legislative candidates from 2011 to 2016.
The bill passed, and now North Carolina had its very own Innovative School District. The law said the state would take over up to five low-performing schools in its first year, which would be turned into charter schools.
But now the story gets even better! Oregon entrepreneur John Bryan had his very own charter chain, called TeamCFA, which already operated 13 charters in North Carolina.
Why not give the contract for the ISD to TeamCFA?
The only problem was that no public school wanted to be part of the ISD. Each time a school was designated by the state, the parents fought back, contacted their legislator, and avoided the state takeover.
Ultimately, only one school joined the ISD: Southside Ashpole Elementary School in Robeson County. The school was turned into a charter school operated by a new company called Achievement for All Children.
Achievement For All Children is heavily connected to Oregon resident John Bryan, a generous contributor to political campaigns and school-choice causes in North Carolina. He has taken credit for passage of the law creating the Innovative School District.
The board of directors for Achievement for All Children includes former Rep. Rob Bryan, a Republican from Mecklenburg County who introduced the bill creating the new district. John Bryan contributed about $17,000 to Rob Bryan’s campaigns for the state legislature from 2013 to 2016.
Tony Helton is chief executive officer of both Achievement For All Children and TeamCFA, a charter school network founded by John Bryan.
But most of the questions this week focused on the qualifications of AAC, which was formed in February 2017.
An independent third-party evaluation by education consulting firm SchoolWorks said it’s unclear whether AAC “is legally eligible to operate and manage” Southside Ashpole because state law says the company chosen must have a record of results in improving performance for low-performing students or schools.
The company plans to partner with TeamCFA, which has 13 charter schools in North Carolina. But SchoolWorks says TeamCFA’s schools have “a mixed record of student achievement.”
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article208006534.html#storylink=cpy
The new Innovative School District had a new principal and its own Superintendent, quite a lot of leadership for one little school.
The State Board of education just got an evaluation of its takeover school.
Test scores, already low, dropped a bit. The new charter got a grade of F.
The school saw high administrative turnover:
Behind the scenes, the report says rifts developed between the principal and some faculty, which were due in part to the significant leadership changes in the district. In the past two years, the program has seen three superintendents, two principals and two different peoplerunning Achievement For All Children.
And despite the experiment’s negative evaluation, the state is supposed to throw more public schools into the “Innovative School District.”
Under state law, four more schools have to be added to the district for the 2020-21 school year. A list of 12 schools being considered for takeover (none in the Triangle) was released in September.
State board members and State Superintendent Mark Johnson met Wednesday with state lawmakers to ask them to approve a delay in selecting any new schools this year.
Expect public schools chosen to enter the failed ISD to fight back.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The guy who bought the politicians to get the school district then moves his own company in to take over the schools.
And this is all perfectly legal in the “governance” plan ed reformers cooked up.
This is the quality of the “governance” they seek for every public school in the country – one with absolutely no ethics guardrails or rules of any kind. Just a publicly-funded free for all.
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Charter operators cannot have conflicts of interest, because they are inherently morally superior to people who operate public schools. Better PEOPLE.
That has to be the grounding of ed reform “governance”. There’s no other reason they would refuse to regulate- they simply believe that people who operate public schools are inferior to people who operate their schools. Our schools need regulation- theirs do not.
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How many sad stories of community plunder do we have to read? “Reform” is mired in dirty dealing, conflicts of interests, endless profiteering, and rigged political schemes that give the targeted community no agency in deciding where its public money goes. So-called reform is anti-democratic.
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“I challenge people who are genuinely interested in improving public schools for all children to refrain from always saying what they’re against and to instead stand up and say what they’re for. I am for more high-quality public schools nationwide. Together, we can all work for more great schools, not just in New Orleans, but across the country.”
Ed reformers constantly say this but I would challenge anyone to look at the ed reform initiatives in your state from a public school perspective and see what they have contributed to existing public schools. They never advocate for public schools. Public schools are sometimes tacked on as leverage in one of their campaigns to get more funding for charters/vouchers but that’s the sum total return for public school students.
Can anyone point to what they have contributed to students in PUBLIC schools?
Testing. That’s it. They test our kids. And for that we’re all supposed to hire and elect them. Why would we do that? If I want testing I can just hire one of 500 contractors.
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I am for empowering teachers to make their own decisions about curricula and pedagogy.
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And to hell with the contractors. Teachers can write their own tests.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Like Forrest said: Stupid is as stupid does!
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The more true stories I read about the crimes being done in the United States to public school teachers, public schools, and teachers’ unions, the more I understand, “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war”.
This expression comes from the play Julius Caesar, written by Shakespeare in the 1601.
“Cry havoc means for a military commander to give the order to cause chaos by allowing the soldiers to pillage and otherwise destroy an area. Let slip means to unleash. … The dogs of war can have a literal meaning, which would be dogs trained to fight in war.”
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“Each time a school was designated by the state, the parents fought back, contacted their legislator, and avoided the state takeover.”
Memphis parents should have done the same against ASD takeovers. But I think they were told, “it’s the law, you cannot do anything against it”.
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Some people are submissive, some fight back.
It was the law in NC too.
Parents fought back and won.
Except for one school, that has now experienced a parade of supervisors.
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