In the education world, currently controlled by a coalition of billionaires and the rightwing think tanks and legislators they finance, public schools have some valuable friends. Among them are the National Superintendents Roundtable and the Schlechty Center. If your school board is looking for a new superintendent who believes in public schools, these are the go-to sources. They are the anti-Broadies. Since James Harvey, the Director of the National Superintents Roundtable is retiring, the two organizations are merging. Jim Harvey is a member of the board of the Network for Public Education.
Here is their press release:
The National Superintendents Roundtable will merge with the Schlechty Center this fall
Seattle, WA – The National Superintendents Roundtable and the Schlechty Center have entered into a partnership to merge on September 30, 2021, bringing two veteran, non-profit organizations together under one roof to better serve school superintendents. The Schlechty Center will provide a legacy home to the National Superintendents Roundtable after its founder, Dr. James Harvey, retires at the end of the year.
Both organizations have spent decades delivering professional development and strengthening relationships among superintendents. The Roundtable, the successor to a Danforth Foundation network established in 1992, has operated since 2006; the Schlechty Center was founded in 1988 and its Superintendents Leadership Network was established in 1997. Both organizations believe fiercely in the value of public education.
The National Superintendents Roundtable and the Schlechty Center’s Superintendents Leadership Network will maintain their own names, membership, and programming, with opportunities for superintendents to join in some activities together.
“The Roundtable is delighted to become part of the Schlechty Center. There is great synergy between the two organizations. Dr. Phillip Schlechty was one of the giants of American public education over the past 50 years. The Roundtable is honored to be associated with his name,” said Harvey, the group’s executive director.
“The Schlechty Center is honored to become the legacy organization chosen to carry forward the excellent tradition and impact of the National Superintendents Roundtable. One of our cornerstone beliefs at the Center is the critical role of superintendents as moral and intellectual leaders. We are truly excited to broaden our interaction, design, and facilitation of deep learning with superintendents from across the nation. The impact of bringing together our cumulative 150 voices around the key issues that all leaders face in public education today will be high leverage for the field,” said Dr. Steve McCammon, president and CEO of the Schlechty Center.
Harvey will retire in December and assist the Schlechty Center part-time to facilitate a smooth transition in 2022. McCammon will become the Roundtable’s new executive director on January 1, 2022, in addition to the continuation of his role as president and CEO of the Schlechty Center.
About the organizations:
Based in Seattle, Wash., the National Superintendents Roundtable (superintendentsforum.org) is a community of 90 school superintendents committed to just and humane schools. Besides bi-annual conferences focused on policy and social factors in education, members take study missions to learn how other nations organize their school systems. The Roundtable also conducts research—adding to the conversation about U.S. school performance overall.
Based in Louisville, Ky., the Schlechty Center (schlechtycenter.org) is a private, non-profit organization that partners with education leaders to nurture a culture of engagement in their organizations, with the ultimate goal of increasing profound learning for students. Schlechty Center staff consult with school district leaders on strategic planning, school improvement planning, systems design, and the design of professional learning and classroom experiences for students. The Center’s Superintendents Leadership Network is a fieldtrip/experience-based network that draws on Schlechty frameworks and learning organization theory to build organizational capacity to focus on engagement at all levels.
Contact
National Superintendents Roundtable: Rhenda Meiser
(206) 465-9532, rhenda@rhendameiser.com
Schlechty Center:
Nicole Bigg
(502) 931-3046, nbigg@schlechtycenter.org
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good. I’m glad they’re merging. I would like to see the AFT and the NEA merge. For those who don’t know those two groups well (I worked for NEA & affiliates, and SEIU in alliance with AFT) they are not fighting “tooth and nail,” as they used to, but AFT still represents the cities, including NYC, and thus gets way more coverage than the larger NEA, mostly in smaller cities, suburbs, & rural. Also, AFT is part of AFL, while NEA is independent. They do have a truce right now, I believe, and cooperate on some things, but sometimes I feel neither group “gets” or internalizes that powerful forces are destroying public education, with testing, privatization, testing, castigation, testing, and testing and mal-comparisons.
Maybe this merger will stimulate some talk in teacher union circles about more cooperation and a more effective counteroffensive against the forces that would destroy them.
The pervasiveness of the rank and file teachers’ lack of knowledge about the threat and their lack of commitment to fighting it indicates a colossal failure.
Part of this is due to the unions’ namby pamby approach to garbage like the Common [sic] Core [sic] and standardized testing. Their resounding silence on these matters–their failure to take to the streets in active opposition–marginalizes them.
Hey, get excited about the union! We stand for nothing!
The unions’ not having taken a really strong stance on ending Common [sic] Core [sic] and the multi-billion-dollar standardized testing scam makes the other good work they do almost moot. It’s as though oncologists (cancer doctors) had decided that the only treatment they would provide were dispensing aspirin.
Or as though the federal government’s only response to global warming were to turn off the lights in one of the closets in the Executive Office Building.
I’m sick of watching their inaction. If they are not fighting this garbage, then they are a big part of the problem.
yes: so very much needed — a notably intentional and very, very public COUNTEROFFENSIVE against the forces trying to destroy our public school system
All Americans who believe in the founding principle of secularism should cheer for the success of the new merger.
It’s unwise for superintendents to Ignore the fact that at least two executive directors of state Catholic Conferences publicly took credit for school choice legislation in their states (some state Catholic Conferences co-host school choice rallies in state capitols with Charles Koch’s AFP). It is unwise for superintendents to ignore the advice that Bellwether gave about outreach to churches for attainment of “ed reform” goals which is the plot of the self-appointed, billionaire- funded, who give indication that they are opposed to democratically elected school boards.
The single best description of the threat posed to American democracy from a Christian nationalist agenda that I’ve read is posted at La Civil Cattolica about the political intersection of “evangelical fundamentalism and Catholic Integralism” (updated 2/21). The author, Antonio Spadaro, SJ, editor of Church Life, describes an “ecumenism of hate…intolerance is a celestial mark of purism…Some who profess themselves to be Catholic express themselves in ways that until recently were unknown in their tradition and using tones must closer to evangelicals…They are defined as values voters.”
In an article at another publication, ” How ‘In God We Trust’ bills are helping advance a Christian Nationalist Agenda”, we learn that the bills are a response against “modernist ideas… modernism that includes civil rights, the feminist movement and socialism…opponents are stigmatized as against faith…”
It will take a massive concerted effort to fight off power brokers in an alliance that brings together politicized evangelicals and conservative Catholics who are in league with men like Charles Koch.
Ryan Girdusky’s interview (2014) with Pat Buchanan posted at the Buchanan site reinforces the fear we should have about the loss of our freedom to the dictates of religion.
School superintendents should be aware that Catholic organizations are the 3rd largest U.S. employer, largely because of tax dollars they receive. They should also inform their constituents about the implications of the verdicts in the Biel v. St. James Catholic school and Espinosa v. Montana court cases, rendered by the conservative Catholic majority on SCOTUS.
I hope they have money to advertise their services. We know the privatizers are vultures backed by deep pockets that seek out vulnerable districts to attack, weaken and privatize. When they pounce on districts, they put their corporate stooges in leadership instead of a trained and qualified school district administrator.
BTW, I watched a new documentary on the price we the people pay for privatization. It’s about 46 minutes long, but well worth the time. Diane is featured at about 16 minutes. I wish more names of the speakers were shown in the film. I knew some, but not all of them. The Price of Privatization, has been released, covering all aspects of the privatization of public services and assets. A must-see for anyone concerned about privatization in the Biden-Republican infrastructure initiative. It features Donald Cohen, executive director of In the Public Interest, David Dayen, Diane Ravitch, John Nichols, Lisa Graves, Thom Hartmann, Shar Habibi, Lisa Bloom, and Peter Montgomery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmDia50NmWA
Godspeed to this new organization.
Second that!
Los Angeles right now has a new, interim superintendent who got along great with disgraceful and disgraced Broadie, John Deasy. Megan Reilly is a standardized testing maniac. It is imperative that LAUSD Board members do not allow themselves to be taken in by the same billionaire funded groups as they did when convicted felon Ref-used to step down Rodriguez voted, with no transparency and no community input, for our last superintendent, a friend and business partner of Eli Broad. Broad is dead. It’s time for a new day. Time to stop restricting teachers and students with cuts. Tome to stop outsourcing and let teachers teach. Board members, take note of this important post! Get us a superintendent who will help LAUSD instead of hobbling it for the benefit of business special interests.
From the Guardian, 7-19-2021, “It’s chilling what is happening: a rightwing backlash to Biden takes root in Republican states. …The NYT unearthed a memo from Jim Banks, a Congress member from Indiana and chairman of the Republican Study Committee in which he regurgitated frenzied exaggerations about CRT.”
Jim Banks is an evangelical. The following is posted at his site. “Catholic education is steeped in centuries of tradition and academic excellence all while instilling in their students the value of service and Christian morals. Indiana’s third congressional district is blessed to be home to two Catholic high schools and 20 elementary and junior high schools”.
Public schools must learn to counter the messaging of the well-funded ed reform echo chamber that demands tax dollars for the benefit of Catholic schools and, to counter the school choice promotions of the state Catholic Conferences. It is not anti-faith to fight for America’s founding principle of secularism. Taxpayers opposed to the type of authoritarianism that leads to a cover-up of priest pedophilia and to the abuses inflicted on First Nation children in Canada by Catholic Church-run boarding schools, are called upon at this time to stand up.
Only public schools should receive tax funding.
There are Catholic schools e.g. Covington Catholic that altered the U.S. pledge of allegiance recited by their students to include Catholic doctrine.
Tax dollars should not be spent to indoctrinate students to vote for politicians who write laws like the law taking effect in Texas in September. “…tries to turn ordinary citizens into anti-abortion bounty hunters. It offers a $10,000 reward to anyone who successfully sues a fellow Texan for helping a woman seek an abortion beyond six weeks of pregnancy.” The quote is from the Guardian article, July 19, about right wing states.
Amen to those comments. As a staffer in an NEA affiliate, I got in a lot of trouble for trying to swing our organization behind a statewide (Ohio) initiative to ban tax abatements. Those abatements were costing us (the public schools that didn’t have wealthy tax bases) almost the exact amount of funding they sought to giveaway to corporations. In my view AFT is hurt by it’s tendency to have “presidents for life,” and NEA by having the opposite of strong national presidents. One rarely hears from the NEA leadership. NEA also struggles because it has a base mostly in rural and suburban, and small town, areas. AFT has struggled to get into those areas. That is partly why I wish they would unite. Meanwhile, the resistance of some teachers and their locals has been inspiring.
I just think public schools need to take a hard look at what they have been told to do by the ed reform groups over the last twenty years and ask a simple question: “did listening to these folks benefit the students in my public school or even public schools generally?”
That’s permitted. They’re allowed to evaluate the ed reform echo chamber’s work. The ed reform echo chamber doesn’t evaluate their own work, so it’s really essential public schools do it.
If you’re a public school and you’re still taking direction from any of the ed reform groups- Walton, Gates, Broad, any of the university departments that are wholly composed of echo chamber members, the consultants, just ask whether it’s been valuable and useful and whether it benefited PUBLIC school students.
The mission of public schools is not to privatize or advance markets ideology or treat their students like guinea pigs for whatever scheme the echo chamber dreams up- the mission of public schools is to serve students who attend public schools. Any group or person who doesn’t get them there should be rejected.
I think this approach would inevitably lead to fewer ed reformers dominating and directing public school policy. Demand they show how their work has benefited public school students. I don’t think they can show it has.
Billions and billions poured into ed reform over twenty years. Has it paid off for public school students? Might it be time to look outside the echo chamber for advice?
Since so much of the policy ed reformers promote is inconsistent with HAVING public school systems are public schools obligated to accept it?
If I told the lockstep cheerleaders of charter schools in the ed reform ranks that my suggested policy for charter schools involved eradicating charter schools would they take my advice? Of course not. So why should public schools take their advice?
Ed reformers oppose the fundamental existence of our schools. Not believers in “public education”. Get rid of it and replace it with a market system. They’re the LAST people we should be listening to. They have a wholly different mission than we have.
If our goal is strong public schools and their goal is NO public schools we’re not working for the same goal. We’ll never get where we want to go following this echo chamber. They’re working for a completely different outcome than we are.
Cut em loose. They can’t get you where you want to go.
This is the ed reform “roadmap” for schools after covid.
https://www.covidcollaborative.us/issues/education
100% ed reform echo chamber members. As usual, there’s little or no public school input at all, in a document that purports to direct every public school in the country they excluded public schools and public school advocates.
Why should any public school accept this? It’s the same tired tropes the echo chamber has been churning out for 30 years. It’s the Bush/Obama/Trump ed policy with no dissenters and no public school voices permitted inside the gates.
Given ed reform’s failure to benefit public school students, isn’t it time to consider looking for other advisors? If your mission is public school students? I mean, if your mission is “privatize public schools” or “bust unions” you can follow these folks but that isn’t OUR mission, is it?
We don’t share the same goals. We need our own leaders.
“We must act with intention to ensure our most vulnerable students are positioned for success, given the challenges they face. This national crisis demands that we innovate toward a better future. With the futures of millions of students on the line, we don’t have a moment to lose.” – Former U.S. Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan, John King, Rod Paige, Richard Riley, and Margaret Spellings”
Say the lockstep members of the ed reform echo chamber who have been directing public school policy for 30 years. They’re missing only DeVos although I don’t know why – they all promote her ideological “markets” approach to public education.
Are your students better off? If the answer is “no” then ed reform has had its evaluation. They didn’t deliver for public school students. Time for public schools to move on.
Public schools won’t be punished if they veer from this echo chamber. They really and truly can go their own way. It just takes the courage to say “thanks but no thanks- your track record isn’t great for public school students”.