Mercedes Schneider employs her highly honed investigative skills to examine the background of Tennessee State Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn, who announced her resignation, as well as the “credentials” of her replacement Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds.
Schwinn started in Teach for America, then worked her way up to become chief deputy commissioner of academics for the Texas Education Agency. Such meteoric advances seem to happen only with TFA experience, especially in red states. Schwinn caused a bit of controversy after she handed out a $4.4 million no-bid contract to a newly-formed vendor who also had a TFA background. Strangely the whistle-blower was fired, while Schwinn rose yet again to be state commissioner of education in Tennessee.
In 2021, a Republican legislator introduced legislation calling for her resignation, due to the astronomical turnover rate in her department. But the proposal was withdrawn.
Then Schwinn audaciously awarded a multimillion dollar contract to TNTP (founded by Michelle Rhee) without disclosing that her husband worked for TNTP.
Schwinn’s successor, Reynolds, has no classroom experience. None. She rose through Ed deform organizations, largely connected to George W. Bush and Jeb Bush.
Schneider concludes:
Ed-reform makes for a tight and influential club.
For now, Schwinn is out, but with Reynolds replacing her, market-based ed reform will almost certainly not be taking a back seat in the Volunteer State.
Scandal might. But not corporate-styled ed reform.
If the people of Tennessee want a different approach to education, they will have to elect a new governor.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane: fifth paragraph, head (possessive case) noun “Schwinn s” needs an apostrophe between the ultimate n and the s. (First comment; please delete if so inclined.) Best, Mark.
Thanks, Mark.
Done.
Chalkbeat referenced the connection Reynolds has to Pahara. For those who don’t know about Pahara, it was funded by Gates. Pahara’s founder also co-founded New Schools Venture Fund, Bellwether and TFA. Kim Smith (Stanford University grad) was interviewed at Philanthropy Roundtable relative to her role at NSVF. She said the goal of charter organizations is “brands on a large scale.”
Tennessee really needs another drain of local money to retailers like Walmart (sarcasm). School privatization is worse than what happens to communities after Walmart moves in. School privatization is the legalized taking of community assets and elimination of local democracy.
TN Gov. Bill Lee appears bent on destroying public education. His latest salvo has been a law banning automatic union dues deduction from members’ paychecks. Get this- every gov’t employee in TN can do automatic deduction- police, city gov’t. employees, everyone but teachers. Then the Republicans threw in a scant teacher pay raise (50K starting salary to go into effect 3 years from now). Democrats were afraid to vote against the bill since it contained this “poison pill.” Teachers in Nashville and Memphis won’t see any pay raise from this bill. Lee and Republicans are hoping it hurts unions to the point of non-existence. He hates that we have spoken out against vouchers and charters.
Ohio’s conservative Catholic cabal (Sen. Cirino’s bill targeting faculty at universities)… same agenda as Tennessee’s.
Entitled, old, White, GOP males, besmirching Christ… window dressing added by the front of a few women who are stupid.
Example- state Sen. Linda Rogers of Indiana
The Far-right governors like Bill Lee of TN are copying the Scott Walker playbook by trying to destroy teachers unions. They do that, as you know, by cutting off their dues, their funding. Of course they exclude pokice and fire unions.