Gary Rubinstein has been following the sad career of Tennessee’s Achievement School District for a decade. The ASD was created with $100 million in Race to the Top funding, a portion of the $500 million won by the state in Arne Duncan’s competition.
The ASD was launched in 2012, when advocates of privatization earnestly believed that charter schools performed miracles. The mere act of turning a low-scoring public school over to a private operator would free the school from regulation and bad teachers and inevitably produce high test scores. Over the years, this assumption has been proven untrue, and the ASD is a leading example of great promises that produced failure.
Gary has tracked the failure of the ASD to transform low-scoring public schools into high-performing charter schools. The irony, as he notes in this overview, is that many states have copied the Tennessee ASD despite its failure to achieve its goals.
Gary writes:
The mission of the ASD was to take schools in the bottom 5% and within 5 years ‘catapult’ them into the top 25%. They started with six schools and over a period of about five years expanded into around 30 schools. The plan was to turn the schools over to charter operators and then after the schools had been successfully catapulted, they would return to the original school district.
After five years, it was clear that at least five of the original six school were still in the bottom 5%. The other one had maybe risen into the bottom 10%. Barbic resigned, Huffman resigned, the ASD changed their mission to something a lot more vague.
Now, ten years after the takeover of the original 6 schools, we learn from Chalkbeat, TN that some of those original 6 schools are returning to their district. I’ve been tracking those six schools for the past 10 years: Brick Church College Prep, Cornerstone Prep — Lester Campus, Corning Achievement Elementary School, Frayser Achievement Elementary School, Humes Preparatory Academy — Upper School, and Westside Achievement Middle School. Year after year, despite having been turned into charter schools, these schools barely budged in the rankings. One of the six, Humes, was already closed down and now, as reported by Chalkbeat, TN, two of them, Frayser and Corning are being returned to their districts even though they did not improve. Ironically, eight years ago Frayser was hailed as a miracle success story proving the effectiveness of the ASD.
There is no reason to celebrate the failure of a school, especially one enrolling vulnerable children. But there is every reason to point to the P.T. Barnum School of Charter School Propaganda. in did not achieve its goals. It disrupted the lives of children, parents, and teachers.
How shallow are the promoters of these grand plans that tear apart communities, then move on to another gig.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why is there so much falsity in the world?
Well. . . considering that almost, something to the effect of 85% of Americans, are exposed to the myths, nonsense, absurdities that Abrahamic religions indoctrinate into their children from birth on up. . .well. . . falsity is bound to abound!
Duane: given the themes of self-sacrifice and redemption common in Abramiac religions, do you think that such a cultural exposure makes those types of stories more prevalent in American fiction? What other themes arose in the various stories that inform us about our world that rise from our religious history? Are stories with a villain related to this history?
I have been contemplating questions like this of late
No doubt that the Abrahamic religions have those themes. Considering that the origination myth begins with the “fall from grace” with all mankind being punished with supposed “original sin”, it makes sense that they would have stories of redemption/salvation playing prominent roles in said theologies.
That doesn’t mean that those theological stories have any relevance whatsoever in Post-Enlightenment thought. Forcing children to believe the unbelievable leads those children to grow up believing whatever unbelievable story the shysters and hucksters, whether political, economic, psychological or religious conjure up and spew forth.
Fear is the great seller and the Abrahamic religions historically have been the top force in promulgating that fear to gain adherents (otherwise known as $$$ resources.) Hitting peoples fear button is a far more effective tactic in garnering “believers” (and their $$$) than rationo-logical thought arguments.
Don’t forget shame, Duane.
Fear and shame are the two methods most frequently used by the patriarchs of the Abrahamic religions to get people to do what they want them to do.
First they use shame and if that fails, they resort to fear mongering.
Eating is sinful
Original sin was eating
’twas all downhill from there
If eating brings a beating
Then life is hard to bear
Eating is sinful (2)
Eating is sinful
And drinking is worse
And drinking that’s bingeful
Is worse than a curse
Eating is sinful but killing is religious”
Killing’s religious
If done in the name
Of God, who is righteous
And loath to place blame
When charter schools fail, and they do in high numbers, the socialized disaster is turned over to the community to resolve. Since privatizers use public money and students for their grand experiment, they walk away and reinvent themselves in a new “market” leaving waste, disruption and human suffering in their wake. Privatization is reckless policy on a grand scale. Instead of providing more agency for poor families, it often ends up providing less, and the local community is left to pick up the pieces.
and then it is while the local community is weak that even more big money opportunists jump in to muddy the waters
I think most if not all of the charter school/voucher movement keeps rolling along like this because of support from the Koch libertarian network funded mostly by fascists billionaires.
Jana Wilcox-Lavin, formerly from the Tennessee ASD, is now the Opportunity 180 Executive Director in Nevada.
Jana was first brought to Nevada as Superintendent of the ASD (Achievement School District). The Nevada ASD caused many problems and was obviously an attack on community schools serving people of color in Vegas. Jana clearly stated she wanted to take over a new building. Her priority was not children or achievement. It was real estate with great plumbing. Apparently the schools taken over in Tennesee vexed her with plumbing issues. In the end, the Nevada ASD had 4 weird failing charters in it – including Andre Agassi’s Flagship. The ASD was abolished after failing on every level and the sad charters were moved back to the charter authority.
Currently, Jana’s job is to recruit charter businesses to Nevada. Under the Trump, she received $22 million at Opportunity 180. Opportunity 180 which was formerly housed in the United Way, has failed to recruit approved charters. Bottom dwellers who have scammed other states have applied and fortunately been denied. This is the second large grant disappearing – there was a $10 million failure under the first CEO Allison Serafin who left town under a cloud. As the Nevada Charter Authority reviews applications, Jana is often there to support her businesses. Nothing done by Opportunity 180 is worth $32 million.
This last meeting a sad Nevada Charter Report was given on diversity – it was given in fractions of a percent. A handful of IEP, African American, and ELL students were added to a district almost as large as Washoe. It will take the Charter Authority 200 years to reflect community diversity at this rate. That is not reasonable or a remedy. Nevada Charters primarily serve rich white students (80% white in a community that is 20% white). The Nevada Charter Authority promotes and protects segregation. It is a legal requirement that any new charters meet diversity benchmarks. This has actually caused a standstill in new charter approvals. Exceptions are charters that intentionally flaunt the law. Acedmica has done this with its new for-profit Pinecrest in Reno – they flagrantly lied and open with rich white students.
When I saw Nancy Brune from the Guinn Center produce a white paper that extolled the virtues of the Tennessee ASD and the charter take over in New Orleans – my heart was broken by the garbage she submitted aa a white paper. And Brune did it in front of a full room of protesting community. Some sell their soul. Unfortunate.
Thankfully Rebecca Feiden, Jana Wilcox-Lavin, and Nancy Brune were not successful and the Nevada ASD was abolished that session instead of recreated into a worse monster, because parents and CCSD staff do not want children experiemented on.
“The mission of the ASD was to take schools in the bottom 5% and within 5 years ‘catapult’ them into the top 25%”
The people who proposed that must have been taking some good LSD.
And the people who bought into the idea, some even better LSD.
The phony promises of great success–the bottom shall be raised to the top in only five years–is part of the charter school DNA.
Privatization is no cure, but France shows us how to narrow the achievement gap: systematically transmit knowledge in public schools . Why aren’t we paying attention to France, as ED Hirsch suggests? Do we care about proven solutions? Read Why Knowledge Matters. We can make real progress if we’re equipped with the right ideas.