Our reader Laura Chapman wrote about a newly elected member of the school board in Cincinnati. He is a local executive for TFA. The board on which he will serve pays TFA $100,000 to supply inexperienced teachers. He should resign his TFA position or resign from the board. At the very least, he should recuse himself from any discussions of contracts for his employer.

Chapman wrote:

Some details on Cincinnati Ohio elections.

Ben Lindy won a seat on the Cincinnati School Board. Lindy is CEO of Teach for America (TFA) in Southwestern Ohio. He will NOT step down as regional CEO of Teach for America (TFA) in Southwestern Ohio. He has at least one conflict of interest of course, because Cincinnati Public Schools has been co-opted into sending about $100,000 to Lindy’s operation to hire TFA’s.

Lindy got 20% of the vote. Local editorials supported Lindy and attacked the teacher union for not endorsing Lindy. Lindy also raised MORE money than all the other candidates, a whopping $165,398, all for a seat whose pay is capped at $5,000 annually.

TFA executives and staff in 21 states and 26 cities outside of Ohio contributed to his campaign. About $13,000, came from Leadership for Educational Equity or LEE. LEE trains and supports TFA alums (like Lindy) who run for local, state, and national public office. In these positions, they launch unjustified criticisms of public schools, teacher unions, and elected school boards. They aggrandize test scores and they market computers as if these devices offered more “personalized” learning than human teachers.

Lindy was also supported by funders of Accelerate Great Schools. Accelerate Great Schools is the local version of the “Education Cities” effort to put more districts into a portfolio model, managed like stocks in a portfolio. You add, keep, or close schools based on their outcomes, meaning the test scores of students (and other measures in Ohio’s Report Cards where schools are graded, A-F). The Accelerate Great Schools coalition includes: • Cincinnati Business Committee, • Cincinnati Regional Business Committee, • Farmer Family Foundation (wealth from Cintas services), • Haile U.S. Bank Foundation, • KnowledgeWorks Foundation (promoter of computers to replace teachers), and • Archdiocese of Cincinnati. https://www.accelerategreatschools.org/who-we-are/^

Accelerate Great Schools hopes to call the shots if they can get enough people on the school board who approve of TFA temps, the charter school test-em-til-they-drop philosophy, and a portfolio model of privately-managed schools. Lindy and local reporters did not report this factoid: Ben Lindy’s wife, Paige Elisha Lindy, is the Chief of Staff and Operations at Accelerate Great Schools. It is not surprising that Arthur Rock, founder of Intel, worth $340 million, contributed to $4000 to Lindy’s campaign or that KnowledgeWorks, promoter of computer- centric education is in the orbit of the Accelerator. https://www.followthemoney.org/entity-details?eid=37970366

This will not stop the the Cincinnati Education Justice Coalition, advocates for traditional public schools, from calling out the many efforts to undermine public education and deprofessionalize the work of teachers.