Archives for category: Administrators, superintendents
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Ed Johnson on the Non-Renewal of the Atlanta Superintendent’s Contract

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2019 //
4

The Atlanta Board of Education announced earlier today that it was not extending the contract of its superintendent.

Ed Johnson has been an outspoken critic in Atlanta of the drive for privatization and the behaviorist methods that have been in favor in Atlanta since the arrival of the late Superintendent Be early Hall, who literally drove teachers, principals, and students to produce higher test scores with promises of rewards and threats of punishment. Hall’s tenure ended badly.

Ed Johnson warned about the fruitless pursuit of miracles and quick fixes.

This was his response to today’s news. 

It is the sound of wisdom.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Breaking News! Atlanta Will Not Renew Superintendent’s Contract

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2019 //
7

In a surprise announcement, the Atlanta School Board decided not to renew the contract of it controversial Superintendent Méria Carstarphen.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/divided-atlanta-school-board-meets-today-discuss-superintendent-future/udqiT86GLYtGnEpXUCQPJL/

She supports the transformation of the city’s schools into a portfolio district with many charters. It appeared that she had a supportive board because of leadership drawn from TFA.

She served previously in Austin but lost the board majority when voters turned against charter expansion. She has served in Atlanta since 2014.

The Atlanta school board will not renew the contract of Superintendent Meria Carstarphen.

School board Chairman Jason Esteves said the board notified Carstarphen in July that there was not support for a renewal, but waited until now to announce it publicly so as not to disrupt the start of school.

The board did not release the vote count.

We will learn more later about this unexpected decision.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Tulsa: How Data and Gates Consultant Persuaded Public to Close Public Schools and Cut Their Budget

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2019 //
11

This is a curious article about the makeover of Tulsa Public Schools, where the superintendent is Broadie and former Rhode Island Superintendent Deborah Gist.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/opinion/columnists/ginnie-graham-tulsa-public-schools-has-gone-through-major-reforms/article_4bc36885-c247-5858-99f1-7387c48b4fab.html

Under the previous superintendent, a plan called “Project Schoolhouse” resulted in school closings and consolidations. The leaders persuaded the public to accept these “reforms.” In the background was a management consultant brought in by the Gates Foundation; he had no education experience but understood how to use data analytics to persuade the public to go along with his ideas.

When the fate of Rogers High School was on the table, the superintendent was stunned that people cared whether the school remained open.

About nine years ago, a public meeting in the Rogers High School library was so packed that former Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Keith Ballard had to shoulder his way to the front.

Alumni drove from out of state to attend. Neighborhood residents, students, parents and community leaders joined.

The outpouring didn’t line up with other measures that showed a waning interest in the school. It made a difference in the reforms being planned.

“You couldn’t fit one more person in there. I was stunned to see so many people,” Ballard said. “A person stopped me and said, ‘We want our high school to be great again.’ We did, too. This was an opportunity to hear what people had to say and for us to talk about changes in the high schools.”

That was just one evening in a year of developing the last TPS district-wide reform, known as Project Schoolhouse.

A similar process is beginning. TPS will be cutting $20 million from its budget in the next school year. School leaders say this is a chance for the public to shape how TPS serves students moving forward.

This is a massive undertaking in a short amount of time. The board is expected to approved a modified budget by Dec. 16.

So the next job is to persuade the public that a budget cut of $20 million will make the public schools great again.

Oklahoma is notorious for tax cuts for corporations and the fossil fuel industry and underfunded public schools.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Data, Democracy, Disruption, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Oklahoma

Tom Ultican: Beware the Broadies!

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
26

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, has written a well-documented critique of the Broad Academy.

He describes its origins and purposes. Its primary purpose is to privatize public education. The Broad Academy, he writes, is the powerful force driving the Destroy Public Education movement. Including the current cohort, 568 people have learned the disruptive and destructive philosophy of billionaire Eli Broad.

Their track record is deplorable:

Broad trained Superintendents have a history of bloated staffs leading to financial problems like John Deasy in Los Angeles (Ipad fiasco) or Antwan Wilson in Oakland. They also are notorious for top down management that alienates teachers and parents. Jean-Claude Brizard was given a 98% no confidence vote in Rochester, New York before Rahm Emanuel brought him to Chicago where the teachers union ran him out of town. Maria Goodloe-Johnson became Seattle’s superintendent in 2007. She was soon seen as a disruptive demon by teachers and parents. There was great glee when a financial mismanagement brought her down.

He warns:

No school district trying to improve and provide high quality education should even consider hiring a candidate with Broad training on their resume. Neither the Residency nor the academy are legitimate institutions working to improve public education. Their primary agenda has always been the privatization and ending democratic control of schools by local communities. That is why the founding billionaire, Eli Broad, is one of America’s most prolific financers of Charter Schools and organizations like Teach For America. He believes in markets and thinks schools should be privately run like businesses.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Ohio: CEO of Lorain Schools Receives Ineffective Evaluation

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2019 //
5

Earlier this year, Peter Greene wrote two major posts about the state takeover of Lorain, Ohio, under HB 70

Greene started his teaching career in Lorain.

The takeover meant that local democratic control was abolished and all authority was vested in one person, the CEO, David Hardy Jr.

Greene wrote:

The law is nuts; it establishes the CEO as an unchecked tsar of the district with all the powers of both the superintendent and the school board. The only job requirement under the law is “high-level management experience in the public or private sector.” So he could be an education amateur. But that’s not all.

The ADC must also expand “high-quality” school choice options in the district. They may appoint a “high-quality school accelerator” as an independent entity to oversee the non-district schools, including getting underperforming schools up to speed, recruiting “high-quality” sponsors, attracting new “high-quality” schools to the district and increasing the overall capacity of these schools to deliver “high-quality” education. Please note the the “high-quality” quotes are not mine, but come from the state’s write-up of the law. That write-up also notes that “high-quality” is not defined by the act.

And if a building in the district keeps producing low scores within two years, the CEO can convert it to a charter.

Hardy is an alum of Teach for America. He has golden Reformer credentials. He is a member of Jeb Bush’s Future Chiefs for Change and the Pahara Institute. He was a principal of a no-excuses Achievement First charter school. He has worked in other takeover districts.

Greene followed up with another post about Lorain. Hardy swiftly surrounded himself with other TFA alums, then told all teachers at the Lorain High School that they had to reapply for their jobs. This was the Big Purge.

Hardy’s argument is that LHS has to break “patterns of low academic achievement stretching back many years,” but he’s not going to evaluate teachers based on their academic strength, their teaching skills, their content knowledge– they are going to be judged on whether they have the right commitment and belief, whether they are, in fact, team players. Is this about the “no confidence” vote that 98% of the staff made public last week? The board vice-president and the teacher union president both think so.

With his top-down, non-collaborative management style, Hardy did not endear himself to teachers.

This past week, the Academic Distress Commission of Lorain, Ohio, formally evaluated the district’s CEO David Hardy Jr. and rated him ineffective.

Hardy earned a 1.6 for the 2018-19 school year and a 2.6 for the 2017-18 school year. The evaluation levels were based on teacher evaluation standards defined by the state: 1 is ineffective; 2 is developing; 3 is skilled and 4 is accomplished. Ineffective is the lowest score possible.

It is unclear what this means for Hardy’s employment with the district. His current contract runs through Aug. 8, 2020

The local union president Jap Pickering said that if he were a teacher with such a poor score, he would be fired.

School Board President Mark Ballard said:

Other than spending a bunch of money, calling people chiefs, there’s been nothing accomplished under him since he’s been here, in my opinion,” he said. “Other than destruction, deterioration and unrest in our district.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents

New York City: Carranza Gives Big Salary Hikes to Top Aides

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2019 //
10

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza has given fat salary hikes to members of his inner circle. Some are earning more than Superintendents in other districts. Some have never been teachers.

Some have odd job titles.

What does the “Deputy Chancellor for School Climate and Wellness” do?
What does the “Deputy Chancellor for Community Empowerment and Partnerships” do?
What does the “Deputy Chancellor for School Planning and Design” do?

Whatever they do, they are paid more than $200,000 a year to do it.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, New York City

Jan Resseger: Do Not Trust Superintendents from Jeb Bush’s “Chiefs for Change”

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2019 //
14

 

Jan Resseger writes here about the difference between Superintendents who understand the importance of collaborating with and respecting the community they serve, and the Superintendents connected to Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, who believe in state takeovers and imposing their views on their communities. She might have added the Brodie’s to the latter category, those who are “graduates” of the Broad Superintendents Academy. The BS Academy teaches Eli Broad’s corporate-style of Top-Down management.

She writes:

There is an ongoing battle of values and language that shapes the way we think about and talk about education.  The current threats across several states of state takeover of school districts are perhaps the best example of this conflict.  According to the Chiefs for Change model, the school district in Providence has recently been taken over by the state of Rhode Island.  Texas now threatens to take over the public schools in Houston. In Ohio, four years of state takeover has created chaos in Lorain and dissatisfaction in Youngstown.  East Cleveland is now in the process of being taken over, and the Legislature has instituted a one-year moratorium while lawmakers figure out whether to proceed with threatened takeovers of the public school districts in Columbus, Dayton, Toledo, Canton, Ashtabula, Lima, Mansfield, Painesville, Euclid, and North College Hill.

Among the most painful situations this summer is the threatened closure of the high school or the state takeover of the school district in Benton Harbor, Michigan, a segregated African American community and one of the poorest in the state.  Michigan has actively expanded school choice with charter schools and an inter-district open enrollment program in which students carry away their school funding. The statewide expansion of charters and inter-district school choice has undermined the most vulnerable school districts and triggered a number of state takeover actions.  Michigan State University’s David Arnsen explains: “In Michigan, all the money moves with the students. So it doesn’t take account of the impact on the districts and students who are not active choosers… When the child leaves, all the state and local funding moves with that student. The revenue moves immediately and that drops faster than the costs… In every case they (districts losing students to Schools of Choice) are districts that are predominantly African American and poor children and they suffered terrific losses of enrollment and revenue….”

Benton Harbor—heavily in debt and struggling academically—has been threatened with state intervention like Inkster, Buena Vista, Highland Park, and Muskegon Heights—whole school districts which were closed, charterized, or put under emergency manager control by former governor Rick Snyder.  Now the new Governor Gretchen Whitmer has threatened to close the high school in Benton Harbor or eventually close the district.

If your superintendent supports state takeovers, mass firings, replacing public schools with charter schools, or other corporate management strategies, he is not on the side of your community.

 

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Education Reform

Leonie Haimson: The Other Side of New York State Commissioner Elia’s Resignation

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
5

Leonie Haimson expresses her view of the tenure of New York Commissioner MaryEllen Elia. 

Her conclusion: The state needs a fresh start with a commissioner who is willing to listen to parents and who is not in love with testing and Big Tech.

I attended the meeting with Elia that she describes, held a few weeks after she arrived in New York. When members of NYSAPE expressed their opposition to the state’s Common Core tests, Elia responded that the day would come when there was no more annual testing because the tests would be online and students would be continuously assessed, every hour,  every day, whenever they logged on.

That was not a comforting thought!

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, New York, Technology, Testing

NYSAPE Calls for a Commissioner Who Puts the Needs of Students First

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
9

NYSAPE-New York State Allies for Public Education-is the leading voice for parents and educators who want a forward-looking education agenda, not one that slavishly promotes No Child Left Behind-style policies of test-and-punish. It has led the state’s successful opt-out movement. NYSAPE consists of 70 groups of parents and educators from every part of the state.

NYSAPE was delighted to learn that Commissioner MaryEllen Elia was resigning.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 16, 2019
More information contact:
Lisa Rudley (917) 414-9190; nys.allies@gmail.com
Jeanette Deutermann (516) 902-9228; nys.allies@gmail.com
NYS Allies for Public Education – NYSAPE

As New York Closes the Door on Commissioner Elia’s Corporate Reform Agenda, NYSAPE Urges the Board of Regents to Include All Stakeholders When Choosing Our Next Commissioner

MaryEllen Elia was the wrong choice for NY in 2015 when she was appointed as Commissioner by the Board of Regents and former Regent Chancellor Merryl Tisch. The Commissioner continued to demonstrate throughout her tenure an unwillingness to move beyond her corporate reform agenda, resulting in NYSAPE’s repeated call for her resignation. The children of NY deserve a state education leader who will put their well-being at the forefront of all education policies.

“In 2015, NYSAPE sounded the alarms when Commissioner Elia was recruited by national and local education leaders to run NY’s education department as she did in Florida, with privatizing, common core, and high stakes testing, as her main priorities.  As the new leadership and education philosophy of the Board of Regents shifted towards child-centered learning, Commissioner Elia was focused on creating a culture of fear, misinformation, and intimidation throughout NYS school districts,” said Jeanette Deutermann, co-founder of NYSAPE and founder of Long Island Opt Out.

“Under Commissioner Elia’s direction, our children and schools continued to endure abusive, excessive testing, developmentally inappropriate state standards and data privacy breaches.  At every turn, Elia circumvented the Board of Regents and failed to steer public education policies in the right direction,” said Lisa Rudley, Westchester public school parent, Executive Director and co-founder of NYSAPE.

“The student privacy regulations just released by the State Education Department were the last straw,” said Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.  “After waiting five years for NY Education § 2-d  to be enforced, state officials just proposed regulations that would allow contractors to sell and use personal student data for marketing purposes, in direct violation of the language of the law. And she has failed to deliver any of the annual reports required since 2014 that would detail the progress in following up on data breaches and parental privacy complaints.”

“We urge the Board of Regents to work with parents, advocates and other stakeholder groups in appointing the next Commissioner. Our children deserve a Commissioner who will move past the current test-and-punish regime, and towards a whole-child education and project-based learning,” said Chris Cerrone, a Western NY school board member, teacher and a co-founder of NYSAPE.

“The New York State Education Department under Commissioner Elia was never straight with parents regarding the state’s high-stakes testing program. Rather than present neutral information, the department engaged in deceptive practices, including creating PR “toolkits” designed to persuade families of the legitimacy of the tests, even though a growing number of respected educators and researchers have questioned their effectiveness. I hope her successor will be more focused on equity and partnering with schools rather than punishing them,” Kemala Karmen, co-founder of NYC Opt Out.

Elia repeatedly feigned inclusivity, exaggerating stakeholder input, such as the role of teachers in creating standardized exams, the ESSA implementation workshops where a popular Opportunity Dashboard was stealthily removed, and the “public” comments on teacher evaluations which were never made public. Elia also never responded to requests asking for the research showing the scientific validity of standardized testing, nor would she make public the invisible scoring formulas which make the results unverifiable,” said public school parent and NYC educator Jake Jacobs.

New York must get it right this time. The children of New York and our public schools can’t afford to wait any longer for the education leadership they deserve.

​
NYSAPE is a grassroots coalition with over 70 parent and educator groups across the state.

###

 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, New York

New York: Time for the Regents to Chart a New Course

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2019 //
4

Note to the Regents: Parents and teachers have had it. They are sick of the same old, same old, test-and-punish, top-down mandates. Isn’t it time to pick a leader who is not in love with high-stakes testing and lockstep policies?

John Ogozalek, teacher and thinker, speaks for many others when he wrote this morning:

Maybe at this point someone in charge should apologize to the children, parents, teachers and taxpayers of New York State for 8 years of chaos and waste and harm.

But I’m not holding my breath waiting for that.

I’m going to go water the garden.

Enjoy this beautiful, summer day all!

I agree that the state owes everyone an apology. But I don’t agree that we should sit back and wait to see what happens. Speak up, contact your Regent if you live in New York, demand a new approach that respects the intelligence of parents, teachers, students, and taxpayers. All over the country, parents and educators are starting to demand fresh thinking, free of the shackles created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. New York should lead, not follow, in breaking free of the status quo.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, New York
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