Amy Frogge was elected twice to the Nashville Metro school board. She is a lawyer, a public school parent, and executive director of Pastors for Tennessee Children.
As a board member, Amy quickly learned about the big money behind charter schools, especially when she was outspent 5-1 when she ran for office. Tennessee received a grant of $500 million from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top competition and spent $100 on its “Achievement School District.” The ASD gathered the state’s lowest scoring schools into a new district and handed them over to charter operators. The leader of the ASD promised that within five years, the schools at the bottom would be in the top quarter of schools across the state. The ASD was a complete failure. None of the lowest performing schools reached that goal and remained at the bottom.
Amy Frogge posted the following thread on Twitter about the charter scandals in Tennessee.
Tennessee is considering opening 100 new charter schools, removing ALL local control of charter approvals, and giving charter schools free access to public school buildings. Last week, I shared charters’ dismal performance rates. Now let’s consider 10 horror stories:
1. Memphis Academy of Health Sciences closed after 3 leaders were indicted for stealing $400k for personal use- for Vegas trips, a hot tub, NBA tickets, auto repair, etc. 750 students were displaced.
2. The Executive Director of Legacy Leadership Academy was charged w/2 counts of theft and 3 counts of forgery after the comptroller found she inflated amounts on phony invoices to steal $4595 from the school.
3. New Vision Academy in Nashville shut down after state and federal investigation into financial irregularities and failure to comply with federal laws re: EL students and special needs students. Its leaders- a husband/wife team- earned $563k per year to oversee a school serving only 150 students. New Vision also violated the fire code by cramming too many kids into classrooms.
4. Knowledge Academies in Nashville failed to pay teachers, used uncertified teachers, lost hundreds of thousands in an online phishing scheme, changed grades and transcripts, understaffed the school, forced poor kids to buy expensive uniforms, failed to properly serve. special needs and EL students, ran for-profit businesses out of the school, posted terrible academic results, and more. After $ went missing, its CEO/founder disappeared. Nashville shut it down and THE STATE FORCED IT BACK OPEN. It’s now operating w/a $7.9 million deficit.
5. Two KIPP charter schools in Memphis abruptly closed without notice or community discussion, displacing about 650 students.
6. Gateway University Charter School in Memphis shut down after it falsified grades, used uncertified teachers, gave credits for a geometry class that didn’t exist, and pulled children out of class to clean school bathrooms, classrooms, and hallways. (!)
7. Southwest Early Charter School in Memphis closed after using uncertified teachers, failing to serve special needs students, losing its partnership with a community college and having “no institutional control,”according to the district.
8. Rocketship in Nashville forced open a brand new ASD school, even though its school was in the bottom 3% of schools statewide. (The ASD is supposed to bring up low-performing schools, not open new ones.) This new school closed after only one month. Rocketship, based in CA, is amassing millions in TN tax dollars through substantial management fees, facilities fees and “growth” fees. It also accessed a nearly $8 million tax-free bond for facilities through a back room deal.
9. Drexel Preparatory Academy in Nashville closed after using unlicensed teachers, a carbon monoxide leak that impacted students, and ongoing poor performance.
10. Boys Preparatory Academy in Nashville shut down after only 2 years after district officials found flaws in its special education services, manipulation of enrollment data and “other troubling patterns.” – And this is just a sampling. THERE’S MORE.
Charter schools are unregulated, and there is essentially zero oversight into their use of public tax dollars. Meanwhile, only 5 TN charter schools (out of over 100) has a success rate over 20%, according to the state Report Card.
Wake up, Tennessee! It’s a scam.
Ask our senators to vote no on SB2168. Please contact: Sen. Akbari @SenAkbari; Sen. Mike Bell; Sen. Rusty Crowe @RustyCroweTN; Sen. Farrell Haile; Sen. Joey Hensley @joey_senator; Sen. Brian Kelsey @BrianKelsey; Sen. Jon Lundberg; Sen. Bill Powers; Sen. Dawn White @VoteDawn @MarkWhiteTN
BONUS: A friend reminded me of perhaps the most egregious charter scandal in Nashville- Nashville Global Academy. It was poorly planned from the start and delivered students home after midnight on the first day of school. Then it forgot a student on a bus, leaving the child on the bus parked offsite all day. An investigation of the school revealed poor communication, a non-workable transportation plan, inadequate board oversight, poor administration of exceptional education, failure to meet accepted standards of fiscal management & accounting practices, failure to administer required state assessments, failure to pay teachers, etc. The school misappropriated funds to the tune of $149k and failed to pay food services ($35k), gas charges ($14k), bus leases (over $23k) and employee benefits ($200k). It also failed to reconcile Charter Startup Program Grant funds totaling $81k. It collapsed nearly $500k in debt, leaving the district, teachers and vendors holding the bag. Guess who paid? Us- the taxpayers (not once, but twice).
My comment: Despite this long record of failure and fraud, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee and the Legislature want more charter schools! Gov. Lee has invited conservative Hillsdale College of Michigan to open 50-100 Christian-themed charters. Who knew that Republicans despise local control? Why would they want to outsource Tennessee public education to a Michigan college?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We need a word far worse than “scam”. Sounds like Putin piloted his Super Yacht to Tennessee, began shelling the Public School System with depraved charters and then finished off The Volunteer State with a huge dose of Hillsdale Toxin.
This is an unrelated topic, but it does mention Bill Gates funding, so I thought I would post this email to see if anyone knows the backstory. Another failed Gates Foundation venture?
BetterLesson Community
is sunsetting on March 4, 2022
To the BetterLesson educator community,
Twelve years ago, BetterLesson set out to create a free, open-source, community-driven platform for teachers to share their best lesson plans and classroom resources with the world. At the time, our tagline, “Share What Works,” was the embodiment of BetterLesson’s mission to support every teacher in developing the next generation of resourceful, compassionate, and resilient learners. We are so proud of the community that generously rallied around BetterLesson and contributed thousands of resources to our platform. The sharing and discovery that resulted from your lessons is inspiring, and it has had a profound impact on teachers and students alike.
Over the past seven years, we have partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NEA, the Kauffman Foundation, Newsela, Open Up Resources, The Learning Accelerator and Adobe to create thousands of lessons and instructional strategies via our Master Teacher Projects, and offered them at no cost to educators, sharing what works on a new platform, for a new generation of teachers and students. We have also developed a comprehensive suite of professional learning services to complement our free lessons and resources because we still believe that the best way to help students is to empower teachers.
In order to better align with our company vision, we are shutting down BetterLesson Community beginning March 4th, 2022.
Thank you for the time, attention, and hard work you’ve contributed to this community. It has been a privilege to serve teachers and students across the world together.
such horrendous words “another failed Gates venture” — there should be a new term and definition put into modern day language for what those failed ventures by ANY big money “philanthro-capitaist” does to its victims
Nevada did eliminate our ASD. Unfortunately we still have Jana Wilcox-Lavin and Rebecca Feiden from the failing Tennessee ASD.
The girls caused so much turmoil that the Nevada ASD was impossible.
Elaine Wynn,the Casino tycoon, sat as President on the Nevada State Education Board becoming an education advocate after her gift to the Macau Government/University was flagged by the SEC. Everyone gave Elaine whatever she wanted. The billionaire with her Los Angeles Eli Broad friends controlled school board elections. A lot of outside money came into Nevada so that Elaine Wynn could have her way and run schools like a Casino. It was announced that Agassi would build 100 charters in Nevada. Sound familiar?
Two girls were imported from the failing Tennessee ASD to run Elaine Wynn’s ASD. When it became clear that money could not make Elaine’s ASD fly – the girls were moved to other key Charter Authority positions. Rebecca Feiden runs the Charter Authority. Jana Wilcox-Lavin runs Opportunity 180.
The ASD failed because Feiden and Wilcox-Lavin offended everyone.
Jana in particular was vocal about wanting to take over public schools with a decent physical building because apparently in Tennessee – there were plumbing issues in take-over buildings. Note: She did not mention children or curriculum, only real estate.
Elaine Wynn’s board published failing schools lists which cherry picked public schools for take-over. This led many people to really look at the data and it was apparent racism. The failing public schools were in rural white Nevada. The onviously failing schools were not included in the ASD takeover. Picking from the middle, diverse inner city Vegas schools with newer buildings were selected.
After large groups of angry parents showed up against these two Tennesse girls at community meetings, the press started running negative stories. Parents did not want further experiments on their children. Communities had endured decades of various policies, programs, and scammers taking over the schools. Folx had enough. The outsiders were less effective and rude.
Now Rebecca Feiden passes out money to her friends at Charter Authority meetings. She pretends to be following diversity laws (ELL, IEP, and free/reduced lunch). Recently, Rebecca Feiden gave Las Vegas Mayor Goodman permission to become a superintendent.
I have been involved in Nevada politics all my life. I have never seen such arrogant and unethical behavior in open recorded meetings. The people participating literally give millions to each other – as they sit in the Charter Authority but move to the table to ask for cash. Bankruptcies and fraud and lawsuits are regular business there. They are unified in their thirst for grants and cash.
Our state constitution states one county, one district. Yet the charter authority claims the charter businesses do not have a district? Or some other nonsense like that. The State Public Charter School Authority is almost as large as Washoe County School District and mostly siphons from CCSD. The charters create a Washoe sized for-profit empire in Clark County.
Expansion is still key with for-profit management organizations like Academica and other EMOs & CMOs. Illegally – Feiden opened the door for Mayors in Clark County to run their own districts with city money. Mayor Goodman’s charter will be run by Michelle Rhee’s EMO – TNTP (The New Teacher Project). Drowning the new charter in City of Las Vegas money: city provided building, security, and management creates severe inequity immediately. Kids that get to go to Mayor Goodman’s charter will have and all the rest will not. When the Mayor is termed out shortly, the Las Vegas City Council will run this new district she is creating? Sadly we saw Agassi’s flagship go through this process to end up an on-going chaotic mess currently run by Democracy Prep.
Remember when Mayor Carolyn Goodman went on a national tour and embarrassed us all by denying Covid was a problem on as many networks as would film her. She endangered us all to have her way.
Jana Wilcox-Lavin runs Opportunity 180. She gave a large grant to Mayor Goodman’s illegal charter. I keep watching to see where the rest of the Nevada’s Opportunity 180 $22 million grant goes. Hard to see that tax payer money.
The only time you can see that tax payer money is when it passed out at Charter Authority Meetings or hidden in the pages of charter applications. Sometimes a charter brags about the windfall in the media.
Listening to the bragging about their multiple millions in grant money in the Charter Authority is interesting.
Especially as they also discuss using tax payer money to lobby for more money during the legislative session. Yep. Money on top of the per pupil that all public schools receive. Extra. More. Giving more to some at the expense of others. Giving more to rich white students in particular. Somehow charters and their lobbyists forget that grant money when pleading poverty in legislative sessions.
Hint: use the grants for tranpsortation insteqd of giving it to Academica or another vendor.
I write this to show the Tennessee ASD has tentacles. Very destructive, dishonest, abusive, unethical extensions. Those believing this is only a Tennessee issue – most likely do not see Tennessee trained charter folx in their Opportunity 180 buildings or elsewhere linking up with edu-philanthropy to privatize public schools in states like mine.
Sorry. As a Tennessee teacher I can only sympathize, being powerless to change things
Really, Hillsdale College!
Hillsdale doesn’t deserve the right to even call itself a college. Taking a leaf from Sun Tzu’s Art of War to know your enemies better than you know yourself, I subscribed to Hillsdale College’s free newsletter years ago. It keeps arriving in the mail regularly to be scanned and then trashed. At first, I read them from front to back, but it was so toxic and putrid, I had to stop reading all of that lying vampire vomit and scan only two paragraphs, the lead and the conclusion.
Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Putin, MAGA traitor Trump, and North Korea’s dictator would all be proud of Hillsdale’s Re-education camp that pretends to be a college that programs young people learn to NOT for themselves, to not have critical thinking skills, to not have problem solving skills, to not think logically, to not know how to fact check.
Hillsdale’s goal is to create ditto heads that think as they are taught to think.
Good Lord, the tons of CRAP I’ve read in Hillsdale’s misinformation, lying, twisted, propaganda news letter would curl the hair on a bald man’s head.