Archives for category: Atlanta

Ed Johnson, one of the most astute analysts of education in the nation, has offered a plan to rate the leadership of the Atlanta Public Schools. Please read his linked document. He frequently sends letters to the Atlanta Public School board and they regularly ignore his sound advice. The president and vice-president of the Atlanta board are TFA. The board is determined to disrupt the district and impose charters wherever possible, despite parents’ objections. His following comment describes a rating system for APSL (Atlanta Public School Leadership). Given that we already have ample evidence that corporate Reform is ineffective (see, for example, the $100 million spent and wasted on the Achievement School District in Tennessee), why do leaders of Atlanta persist in their demand for disruption? Because they can.

He commented:

Kindly forgive my intruding with the following long post broken into three parts to offer more perspective, but it’s a desperate situation here in Atlanta. Please help as you see best.

Part 1 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):

APSL stands for Atlanta Public Schools leadership. The abbreviation distinguishes understanding the leadership of APS as being different from APS, the district, itself.

The APSL are the currently serving Atlanta Board of Education members, collectively and severally, and the Harvard-trained Meria Joel Carstarphen, Ed.D., as Superintendent.

Right after civil society of Austin, Texas, effectively dismissed Dr. Carstarphen, effective school year end 2014, for imposing school choice and charter schools upon their Austin Independent School District in opposition to the public’s interests, the Atlanta school board’s Superintendent Search Committee, chaired by Ann Cramer, saw fit, for some unfathomable reason, to select Carstarphen as the search committee’s sole finalist.

Consequently, in April 2014, the Atlanta school board approved hiring Carstarphen to succeed Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis. Carstarphen is now in her fifth year as Atlanta superintendent, and APS is now nearly a decade removed from Dr. Beverly L. Hall’s tenue in that position and the history-making test cheating crisis Hall’s behavioristic practices applied to teachers and their administrators spawned.

Always generally busy with some manner of rushed, attention-grabbing, self-aggrandizing activity about “moving forward” with change, but never effecting improvement, the APSL are now busy with “Creating a System of Excellent Schools” under the auspices of their “Excellent Schools Project.” An aspect of the project is the involvement of a 57-person Advisory Committee comprising top-level APS administrators, some APS principals, and mostly other persons said to be representing “the community.”

The APSL Excellent Schools Project Advisory Committee met most recently … on Monday, 12 November 2018. The facilitated work of the committee in this meeting was that of responding to, and giving feedback on, the 18-page DRAFT Excellent Schools Action Framework (“DRAFT”). A scanned copy of the DRAFT, in PDF format, can be viewed and downloaded from my Adobe Document Cloud space, at this link (light blue highlights on the PDF are mine):

https://adobe.ly/2OBJUdj

First, see in the DRAFT that pages nine (9) through 18 present action items to “Rate on a scale of 1-10 your belief that this action will help increase access to excellent schools across APS.”

When, at the end of their Monday meeting and after having concluded their facilitated work, the Advisory Committee asked for input from members of the public present. I was the only member of the public present.

In rising to the floor to speak, I respectfully and humbly introduced myself as someone who has been called “that Deming guy” and then offered this feedback on rating the DRAFT action items:

On a scale from 1 to 10, I would rate every action item zero (0). Unfortunately, your allowing me to deliver just a two-minute monologue is not enough time to explain, why zero. Thank you.”

(Note that in keeping with the APSL practice of legally ending public meetings immediately prior to allowing public members to speak for two minutes maximum, so the APSL will have no legal obligation to dialogue with the public nor to legally include public input and feedback in meeting minutes and in the public record, the Advisory Committee Meeting asked to hear from the public only after having concluded the meeting’s work.)

Part 2 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):

Now, be alarmed by the DRAFT. Be very alarmed, if not angered.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it embodies what students, researchers, and practitioners of continual quality improvement (not “continuous improvement”), such as that of Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s humanistic philosophy and teachings applicable to education, readily recognize to be what Deming calls “Evil Practices” and “Forces of Destruction” operating.

• DRAFT Evil Practices: “Institute performance-based incentive pay,” “Performance-based contract,” etc.
• DRAFT Forces of Destruction: School “Leadership transition,” “Merge” schools, “Close” school, etc.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because its committee of creators and the APSL clearly aim to slink into parents minds and behavior selfish, consumerist school choice and charter schools expansion ideology that says, “It does not matter what kind of school it is – public, charter, or other – just as long as the school is an excellent school regardless of neighborhood.” In other words, the means don’t matter, just as long as one can get the end one wants regardless of the harm doing so will inflict upon others, even children, but just not “my” child.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it brazenly intends to lead to codifying behaviorism and Taylorism in greatly expansive ways even Beverly Hall did not do. Understanding that Hall’s practice of behaviorism and Taylorism as continuous improvement, with attendant numerical goals and targets for test score gains, is what drove APS to experience the greatest systemic test cheating crisis in U. S. history, then just imagine the damage and destruction the DRAFT portends.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it is so reductive and regressive in the extreme in going so far backward into the 20th century that it is reasonable to say the DRAFT makes behaviorism’s B. F. Skinner (life, 1904-1990; Harvard Professor, 1958-1974) and Taylorism’s Fredrick W. Taylor (1856-1918) rise from the grave to applaud it.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because, intentional or not, its committee of creators and the APSL aim to seal the fate of current and future generations of Atlanta children, especially those labeled “black,” in being generally submissive and compliant cogs in a “college and career ready,” simplified, algorithm-driven, amoral and selfish and greedy world of corporatocracy (yes, it’s a word; see definition below), when the reality is that the world comprises a completely interdependent and interacting network of systems created by both Nature and man that gives rise to ever greater complexity, unceasingly.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it offers nothing, absolutely nothing, for working on learning to improve the internal capabilities of Atlanta public schools as a system that aims to prepare all students for complexities that will unfold, and have already unfolded, into the world, including public schools and other public institutions in service to sustaining and advancing democracy to benefit civil society.

Be alarmed by the DRAFT because it signals its committee of creators and the APSL, ironically, do not have even a Martin Luther King Jr kind of Systems Thinking wisdom and knowledge of what a system is nor of how systems give rise to complexity.

MLK Jr: “As nations and individuals, we are interdependent. … That whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. … This is the way our Universe is structured.”

To see an example of an MLK Jr kind of Systems Thinking in action, freely play around with my qualitative simulation of “Why APS cannot improve and why it can,” at this entirely self-contained link, shortened:

https://tinyurl.com/y8gwwqzn

Part 3 of 3 from my “APSL design to rate schools, public design to rate APSL,” emailed 14 November 2018 (original email at https://tinyurl.com/ybk2e9u5):

Atlanta school board members who have no understanding of systems, nor of Taylorism, nor of behaviorism, nor of Carstarphen’s known bent for behaviorism and Taylorism, in the style she practiced in Austin, and now in Atlanta, are an inherent risk and danger to the moral and ethical development, education, and welfare of especially children labeled “black.” They should not be school board members. They should have the wherewithal to know to step down. They simply are not qualified for leadership in the ever more complexifying 21st century.

For this reason, now see in the DRAFT that pages seven (7) through eight (8) present the following APSL Excellent Schools Framework Rating design:

• Exceeds Expectations (also 5-stars or “A”)
• Meets Expectations (also 4-stars or “B”)
• Approaching Expectations (also 3-stars or “C”)
• Beginning (also 2-stars or “D”)
• Needs Improvement (also 1-star or “F”)

But then, in the sense “what is good for the goose is good for the gander,” the APSL DRAFT design for rating the level of a school’s excellence suggests the public might also have a similar design for rating the maturity of APSL quality.

Accordingly, the following design is offered for rating the maturity of APSL quality:

• Great APSL Quality
• Good APSL Quality
• Middling APSL Quality
• Fair APSL Quality
• Poor APSL Quality

Then taking the design for rating the maturity of APSL quality into considering that the APSL DRAFT Excellent Schools Action Framework, and the APSL Excellent Schools Project, clearly signal that the APSL aim to codify behaviorism and Taylorism as well as school choice and charter schools expansion, the rating “Poor APSL Quality” is justified, and so is hereby attributed to the APSL.

Therefore, let it be known: Poor APSL Quality is the situation hobbling improvement of Atlanta Public Schools as a public educational institution and system of public schools.

Moreover, the Poor APSL Quality rating begs asking: What was it in the general minds, hearts, and souls of Austin civil society that came to reject Carstarphen and stand up for public education that seems lacking in the general minds, hearts, and souls of Atlanta civil society that has embraced Carstarphen and is amenable to destroying public education using the rationale that attaining an “excellent schools” end justifies any “school choice and charter schools expansion” means?

Again, freely play around with my qualitative simulation of “Why APS cannot improve and way it can,” as you wish. It will be interesting to vary P.Superintendency (public superintendency) quality and P.BOE (public board of education) quality. See below for definitions of the interdependent and interacting entities the simulation involves.

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-81776 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

Atlanta: After School Board Takeover, Major Disruption and Mass Privatization Underway

By dianeravitch

December 4, 2018 //

Corporate reformers managed to gain control of the Atlanta School Board hired America Carstarphen as its superintendent; she previously worked in Austin, where voters ousted the charter-friendly board.

Now Atlanta has ambitious plans to turn itself into a portfolio district and disrupt schools across the city. Reformers say that when they are finished with their mass disruption, every student will attend an excellent school.

Sadly, they can’t point to a district anywhere in the nation where this has happened. In New Orleans, the Star Reform District, 40% of schools are rated D or F by the reform-loving Dtate Education Department, and these schools are almost completely segregated black.

This is the key exchange:

School board chairman Jason Esteves acknowledges the work will lead to “tough decisions,” but says it’s necessary to create excellent schools for every child.

Over the coming months, the district will develop a rating system to grade its schools as well as determine how to respond when schools excel or fail. The board that will consider any changes includes several members who joined after the 2016 turnaround plan was approved.

“The vast majority of the community has seen the progress that we’ve made, has endorsed the work that we’ve done, and … wants to see more of it,” he said. “The electorate has generally been supportive in the face of pretty significant changes.”

But there are critics, and they say the district needs to shift priorities, not redesign its structure.

Shawnna Hayes-Tavares, president of Southwest and Northwest Atlanta Parents and Partners for Schools, fears officials want to bring in more charter schools or charter operators to run neighborhood schools, especially in those parts of the city.

“We’ve had the most change on this side of town. It’s like trauma,” she said. “The parents are just tired. They can’t take it anymore.”

Promises and lies.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Parents, Privatization

Atlanta: Take Note, There Is a New Science Educator in Town with Great Ideas!

By dianeravitch

November 17, 2018 //

Jack Hassard, professor of science education in Georgia, has discovered a wonderful new science educator with great ideas for the Atlanta Public Schools, and they don’t cost a dime.

Veteran education guru Ed Johnson has some tips on how to put science at the center of the elementary school curriculum. His plan calls for using nature, exploring, seeing, touching, paying attention, learning the science that is right in front of you.

Hassard quotes Johnson’s advice to the school board:

Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Meria Carstarphen has blogged good news: Let’s Play! Every APS Elementary School Gets a Playground! She recaps that, as a consequence of the school board having decided to provide for schools to be more equitable operationally, nine of ten priority elementary schools now have a playground ready for back-to-school. In addition, she reports that a playground at the tenth priority elementary school, Beecher Hills Elementary, is under construction and that the planning process there includes working with a City of Atlanta arborist. Great!
So, speaking of Beecher Hills Elementary School…

One of several points of entry onto a system of greenway trails is right next to the gated entry to Beecher Hills Elementary. It is at that entry point to the trails that I sometimes start and end a walk-run. Being out there to emerge in the surroundings and to be open to The Universe always proves a way to more fully engage the senses, and to renew. What am I seeing? Hearing? Feeling? Smelling? Tasting? One the most engaging times out on the trails occurred during a torrential downpour, and I got soaking wet. Still, the rain provided a very different learning context and experience I had not before imagined.

The greenway trails effectively extend Beecher Hills Elementary School’s backyard. And because they do, I often think it would be magical to be a kid at Beecher with freedom to play and learn in and from that extended backyard.

The point of entry to the greenway trails at Beecher Hills Elementary lies adjacent to the school’s front driveway. From that entry point the greenway meanders northward and down the westward side of the hill upon which the school sits. Then the greenway curves eastward along a fence behind the school before curving northward and connecting with an east-west trail just beyond having crossed a creek.

Environments outside the classroom for students to explore and learn.

Out Beecher’s back doors and down the hill, the fence encloses an expansive green field just begging to be played on. The field catches my eye, every time. It always invites me to pause and wonder what would kids do if let loose upon it? What sort of games would they innovate and play? What sort of learning would they innovate and personalize and internalize for themselves? What sort of questions would the kids ask prompted by observations they would have made? Would they even ask questions, having been trained to give only answers à la standardized teaching, learning, and testing? Would teachers run themselves ragged trying to control the kids’ play? How would teachers deal with kids’ questions, especially questions lacking answers?

And then I think, hmm, nighttime. Hardly any surrounding light! Look up, “billions and billions!” –thanks, Carol Sagan! And, of course, thanks, too, to that astrophysicist guy Neil Degree Tyson who claims “All I did was drive the getaway car” when Pluto got knocked off. So, yep, a telescope, right in the center of the field out back Beecher Hills Elementary School. Can’t you just imagine?!

Now there is a radical and innovative idea: Let the children play! Let them learn the lessons right in front of them! Let them understand that science is part of life and they are living in its midst.

Categories Atlanta, Education Reform, Play, Science

Mercedes Schneider: Atlanta Mayor Creates de Facto Mayoral Control

By dianeravitch

July 12, 2018 //

Mercedes Schneider assesses the strange political maneuvering in Atlanta.

Atlanta has an elected school board and a superintendent. TFA elected at least two of the board members. The superintendent Meria Carstarphen is a data-driven reformer, eager to expand the charter presence in Atlanta.

But, but, but…the mayor has stepped in to name a “chief education officer.” Her choice is a TFA with corporate entrepreneur experience.

I know it’s confusing. I don’t understand it either.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

Ed Johnson on Atlanta’s New “Chief Education Officer”

By dianeravitch

July 12, 2018 //

Ed Johnson is an Atlanta community activist who is deeply concerned about the corporate reform takeover of the school board.

He wrote this open letter to the school board:

10 July 2018

Atlanta Mayor’s first-ever Chief Education Officer, an alum of TFA and BCG

Yesterday The Atlanta Voice reported that Atlanta’s new Mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, has hired Aliya Bhatia to be the city’s first-ever Chief Education Officer.

Unsurprisingly, Bhatia comes into the job by way of Teach for America (TFA), Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Harvard University. BCG is known to charge exuberant fees for cookie-cutter-like recommendations to downsize and privatize public services and for being a danger to public education.

According to The Atlanta Voice (my emphasis):

“As Chief Education Officer, Bhatia will work with community stakeholders to improve collaboration and identify and advocate for policies and resources that will improve access to high-quality education for all Atlantans.”

“Bhatia will also be tasked with creating a citywide Children’s Savings Account program for every child entering kindergarten and with working across city government to ensure that public schools are a priority for infrastructure investment and public safety.

“‘Quality education can transform lives. Aliya Bhatia’s experience, passion, and commitment to creating high-quality, accessible educational opportunities will allow her to effectively partner with APS [Atlanta Public Schools] and other education and industry leaders from throughout the community as we work to improve access to education and training for all of our children and residents,’ Bottoms said.

“A native of metro Atlanta, Bhatia started her career as a teacher with Teach for America and later joined the Boston Consulting Group as an associate and consultant. She recently completed her master’s degree in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University[.]

“The search for this position was led by two members of Mayor Bottom’s transition team: Bill Rogers, Chairman & CEO of SunTrust Banks and Virginia Hepner, former CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center.”

So now we have Mayor Bottoms leading Atlantans to believe it is necessary to “improve access to high-quality education.” Such messaging typically exemplifies the language school choice and school reform proponents so often use to bamboozle and sucker especially Black parents and others into selfishly demanding charter schools on the pretense charter schools are public schools.

Charter schools are not public schools; they are private entities that suckle public school funds for profit and thereby necessarily help destroy public schools and public education. Top priority for charter schools requires making money off children; no profit, no school. Thus saying “high-quality education” is very different from saying “high-quality public education.” Besides, what does “high-quality” mean, anyway? Or even low-quality?

Mayor Bottoms’ messaging implicitly argues that charter schools naturally provide “high-quality education” because, after all, they are like private schools and private schools always provide “high-quality education,” unlike public schools. Therefore, it is never necessary to improve charter schools; it is only necessary to “improve access” to them, which generally means having more of them. In contrast, access to public schools is a given, and public schools have always stood to be improved, continually. Disturbingly, however, charter schools are about replacement of public schools, not about improvement of public schools.

Atlanta City Council President and Members advised what was coming

On 20 April 2018, in a separate email to Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore, Post 1 At Large Council Member Michael Julian Bond, Post 3 At Large Council Member Andre Dickens, and District 4 Council Member Cleta Winslow, my district representative, I wrote:

Today I became aware of the [Mayor’s] “confidential” search for a City of Atlanta Chief Education Officer per the attachment, enclosed by linked reference.

The search bespeaks entangling City of Atlanta in Atlanta Public Schools Leadership’s continuing actions to expand school choice as a consumer good, to include inciting profit-making opportunities for private investors, rather than work on improving public education as a common good. Consequences for Black children, as a category attending Atlanta Public Schools, is education made worse for them and their learning resilience virtually destroyed. These consequences have become quite apparent during just the past three years.

Therefore, I wish to meet with you in your role [on Atlanta City Council]. I wish to share and discuss perspectives and understandings about the matter that otherwise may go unconsidered.

I can be available to meet at a time and a place convenient for you. Kindly let me know, won’t you?

Only Councilman Andre Dickens bothered to respond, explaining he had not “seen the application. The new mayor has stated during her campaign that she plans to hire an education liaison role that reports to her under her office. She has the discretion to hire staff that she sees fit as long as it fits in the budget.”

Given his explanation, Councilman Dickens then intimated disinterest in meeting.

Nonetheless, on 22 April 2018, I followed up to Councilman Dickens, with copy to various others that included all council members:

Yes, I know it is Atlanta Mayor’s personal decision to add to the staff of the Office of the Mayor various positions by whatever title, including the position titled “Chief Education Officer.” And that is the concern. The Mayor’s “Position Description for the Position of Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta” reads as if the Atlanta superintendent [Meria Carstarphen, Ed.D.], or a devotee of hers, such as the one elected last year to Atlanta City Council from having served one term on the Atlanta school board [that being TFA alum Matt Westmoreland], may have written it or controlled the hand that wrote it.

Atlanta Mayor’s position description for Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta, is, without question, pregnant with school choice and school reform language the superintendent and her devotee are known to speak and work to make happen. Consequently, the position description strongly intimates the Mayor seeks a person of low moral and ethical integrity who, if hired, will further normalize and expand the superintendent’s school choice ideology and machinations that target especially Black parents to become willing, selfish participants in destroying public education in Atlanta for all children and in destroying Atlanta Public Schools as a public good.

Surely you will agree “education liaison” connotes a very different expectation than does “Chief Education Officer.” The former connotes assisting communications and cooperation and such; arguably, involvement. The latter connotes command and control, as by “governance and outcome targets,” as you say; arguably, entanglement.

Besides, the title “Chief Education Officer” is generally understood to mean, in corporate-speak, the top administrator of a local education agency; for example, Chief Education Officer of Chicago Public Schools. However, City of Atlanta is not a local education agency.

Moreover, alarmingly, Atlanta Mayor’s position description for Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta, allows a “camel’s nose in the tent” to institute quasi-mayoral control of Atlanta Public Schools in a way that can effectively skirt City Council’s lawmaking authority and responsibility. City of Atlanta quasi-mayoral control of APS will have a structure like that of, for example, DC Public Schools, but without the necessity of being codified, thus allowing for democratic ideals and proceedings to be undermined to benefit private interests at the expense of public interests. Not surprisingly, the politics of mayoral control of DCPS are known to precipitate fraud and ethical and moral lapses as normal behavior, as the recently fired DCPS Chancellor, Antwan Wilson, demonstrates.

Expect City of Atlanta quasi-mayoral control of Atlanta Public Schools to be, at least, a first step for the superintendent to begin doing away with the publicly elected Atlanta Board of Education. After all, the superintendent once brassily intimated to Atlanta school board members during a public board meeting that the school board is in her way.

Finally, it is interesting to note Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, will eventually find itself on the trailing edge of the nation’s emerging rejection of bipartisan Bush-Obama-DeVos school choice and school reform ideology. Witness, for example, recent teacher strikes and walk-outs in several cities and states. This should not come as a surprise. People beaten down will take only so much. Atlanta, especially, should know this, and should have learned the lessons by now.

Why must being on the trailing edge be the case for Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca? Why did Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, even allow the “camel’s nose in the tent” that is Atlanta Public Schools in the first place by hiring a pro-school choice superintendent [Meria Carstarphen]? Why now allow that camel’s nose into the tent that is the Office of the Mayor? What has Atlanta, the so-called Black Mecca, yet to learn about lack of authentic education that sustains intergenerational cycles of servitude, hence poverty?

Should you change your mind and wish to meet to discuss more about the Mayor’s “Position Description for the Position of Chief Education Officer, City of Atlanta,” I can be available; it’s up to you. In the meantime, I, as a reasonable person, believe the public has a need to know about this, hence my Bcc (which is a way to avoid displaying a very long list of cluttering email addresses and is not meant to imply secrecy; people Bcc’ed may reply or not as they wish).

Perhaps one now knows why one would have been wise to put aside ones Black racialist ideology during last year’s mayoral runoff election in order to cast a rational, well-informed vote for Mary Norwood.

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA| edwjohnson@aol.com

Bcc: List 2

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Ed Johnson: An Open Letter To Obama about Race to the Top

By dianeravitch

June 6, 2018 //

Edward Johnson is an education activist in Atlanta and one of the sharpest critics of a school board and superintendent determined to privatize the public schools of that city.

He recently wrote an open letter to former President Obama, asking him to apologize for the failed Race to the Top competition, which built on the failed strategy of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind.

Via Email (info@ofa.us)

Open Letter to Barack Obama seeking apology for RttT Competition

22 May 2018 (revised 23 May 2018)

The Honorable Barack Obama

c/o Organizing for Action

1130 West Monroe Street, Suite 100

Chicago, Illinois 60607

Dear Mr. Obama:

“We are being ruined by competition; what we need is cooperation.”

—W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993)

Thank you for your interest in my voting. Voting, of course, is a cornerstone of democratic practice. However, education—public education—underlies democratic practice that aims to serve and sustain the common good and to continually advance on closing gaps with democratic ideals, as in “We the People ….” Unfortunately, your Race to the Top Competition strongly suggests a very different paradigm, a competitive, anti-democracy sustaining paradigm.

Frankly, Barack—may I address you as Barack since you addressed me as Ed? Frankly, it’s hard to figure why especially prominent Civil Rights leaders would forgo inviting you to a private conversation out behind the woodshed at the very moment you spoke the words “Race to the Top Competition.” Did they not understand competition made the Civil Rights Movement necessary more so than did so-called racism? That so-called racism is, in reality, but an insidiously malicious and hostile form of competition?

The point being, the aim of every form of competition has always been, and always will be, to produce as few winners as possible and as many losers as possible. Fine for sport competitions, but why would one facilitate attacking and harming the nation’s democracy-sustaining public educational systems by any manner of competition? Was cooperation between and among the states not an option?

All too often, the thinking is that winning means excellence, and losing means failure or “not good enough.” And that “competition builds character.”

But here’s the rub, Barack. In social systems, such as our public educational systems, people made losers by competition for no good reason invariably figure out how to win, if only in their own eyes. The massively systemic cheating on standardized tests that Atlanta experienced exemplifies the matter: A great many teachers and schoolhouse leaders the superintendent incited to compete for their job and bonuses for high standardized test scores figured they could win by changing students’ wrong answers to right answers.

We also have plenty other examples, including, notoriously: Dimitrios Pagourtzis, at Santa Fe High School, Texas; Nikolas Cruz, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Florida; Adam Lanza, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut; and, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, at Columbine High School, Colorado.

And consider, too, some people made losers by competition for no good reason very likely figured they could win by becoming police officers, or wannabe police officers—in the case of George Zimmerman, for example. Then to that extent, these winners turned policing into hostile competitions with the public that could not avoid producing notorious shootings of especially young “Black” males and other citizens for no good reason.

It really is quite easy to understand, in a word, why the U.S. pretty much leads the world in incarcerating its citizens and children. And that word is competition, meaning deeply inculcated drives to win at the expense of others, by whatever means necessary, so as to rationalize one is superior or excellent and others are not.

Edwards Deming also teaches the wisdom that “when a system is broken into competitive segments, the system is destroyed.”

Specifically, Dr. Deming teaches the wisdom that:

“We have grown up in a climate of competition between people, teams, departments, divisions, pupils, schools, universities. We have been taught by economists that competition will solve our problems. Actually, competition, we see now, is destructive. It would be better if everyone would work together as a system, with the aim for everybody to win. What we need is cooperation[.]”

Barack, can you see the very name “Race to the Top Competition” necessarily meant breaking our otherwise 50 United States into 50 competitive segments? Can you see the Race to the Top Competition aim to expand the number of charter schools hence spread malicious school choice meant breaking local public educational systems into competitive segments? And, therefore, can you see “Chief Facilitator of Destroy Public Education” just might be a fitting aspect of your legacy as a former President of the United States? And that that would be an astonishing juxtaposition of paradigms?

Barack, if you can see these things, and because, as you say, “[t]here are no do-overs,” can you then at least apologize for having created the Race to the Top Competition and then for having foisted it upon the nation?

Kindly know until such apology comes, it will be hard to hear and appreciate any interest you express about my voting, or any matters. Sustaining and improving public education as a common good in service to democracy is just that important. And please, let’s have none of the nonsensical contention that charter schools are public schools.

Sincerely, I am

Ed Johnson

Advocate for Quality in Public Education

Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Bcc: List 1

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Competition, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, Race to the Top

Tom Ultican: Will Atlanta Be The Next New Orleans?

By dianeravitch

April 19, 2018 //

Tom Ultican is on a mission to document the tentacles of the Destroy Public Education movement.

In this post, he traces the career of Atlanta’s current superintendent, Maria Carstarphen, whose singular goal is to turn the school district into an all-charter district. She embraces not only charter schools, but TFA, Relay Graduate School of Education, school closures, and of course, is funded by the notorious Walton Family Foundation in her efforts to stamp out public schools.

Operating in a conservative state with a governor committed to privatization of public schools, she is in a friendly environment.

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

Mercedes Schneider: Relay + TFA, Partners in Deprofessionalizing Education

By dianeravitch

March 8, 2018 //

Mercedes Schneider did some research and discovered that a very large proportion of the “deans” at the Relay “Graduate Schools of Education” got their start in Teach for America.

Relay Graduate School of Education’s Overwhelmingly TFA-Derived “Deans”

This makes sense. TFA bypasses traditional professional education and places ill-prepared “teachers” in urban and rural classrooms with only five weeks of training. Who would go to a doctor who never went to medical school but had five weeks of training? Who would go to a “lawyer” who skipped law school and read law books for five weeks?

Relay is the right place for “deans” with no real education background. These faux “graduate schools” have none of the authentic markers of a genuine graduate school of education. Few, if any, of their faculty have doctorates. They have no programs in the foundations of education, in cognitive development, in learning the skills need to be a teacher of children with disabilities or a teacher of English language learners. Libraries? I don’t think so.

Relay grew out of a program created at Hunter College called TeacherU, whose purpose was to prepare young people to teach in charter schools. It was sponsored by three no-excuses charter chains: KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools. What matters most to the no-excuses charters are strict discipline and test scores. Who needs research? Who needs scholarship? Who needs experts in school finance or history or psychology? Not Relay.

Like the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, Relay is a means of bypassing professional education while mimicking it.

The Atlanta Board of Education just awarded a $600,000 sole source contract to Relay to prepare leaders.

Schneider reviews the background of the 15 Relay “deans” and concludes:

There you have it: 15 “deans”; no Ph.D.s (but one almost); no bachelors degrees in education; no refereed publications, and not a one “dean” qualified for a tenure-track position in a legitimate college of education. But who needs legitimacy when you can franchise yourself into a deanship?

What a farce.

P.S. Mercedes Schneider has an earned Ph.D. in research methodology and statistics. She chose to teach high school students in Louisiana. She knows what a legitimate graduate school of education is.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Atlanta, Principals, Teach for America, Teacher Education

Atlanta Gives Sole Source $600,000 Contract to Relay “Graduate School of Education”

By dianeravitch

March 6, 2018 //

I wonder who is pulling the strings in Atlanta, where the school board voted last night to give a sole source contraction Relay “graduate school of education” to train leaders. This was my advice. The Atalanta NAACP urged a delay in the decision. No dice.

Atlantan Ed Johnson writes:

Update

Last evening, 5 March 2018, the Atlanta Board of Education approved the superintendent’s recommendation to inject the pretentious Relay Graduate School of Education further into Atlanta Public Schools by terms of a probably fraudulent, but definitely questionable sole source contract. The school board took this action in spite of NAACP-Atlanta’s caution (see below) and in spite of educational historian Diane Ravitch having offered knowledge of Relay as “an organization founded in 2011 by three “no-excuses” charter chains–KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools–based on a charter teacher training program called TeacherU at Hunter College in New York City.” All school board members, save Byron Amos, voted in the affirmative.

Additionally, the school board approved the superintendent’s recommendation to reconstitute Perkerson Elementary School, in spite of the board members having been presented clear, research-based evidence that such behavioristic violence is counterproductive. In this matter, every school board member voted in the affirmative, arguably, a testament to the competitive, conflict-driven nature of their belief systems, especially the superintendent’s. Interestingly, District 4 board member Nancy Meister made the motion to reconstitute Perkerson. Yet, District 4, on Atlanta’s most affluent “White” north side, is the district most geographically distant from the Perkerson Elementary School community, in District 6, on Atlanta’s least affluent “Black” south side.

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Relay is a faux Graduate School with no doctorates on faculty, no research program, no library, nothing but no-excuses behaviorism and test prep. Charter teachers training charter teachers. Charter leaders training charter leaders. Doug Lemov as the canon. And to think that teachers in Atlanta were found guilty of cheating. This is official cheating of students, teachers, and school leaders for which there is no punishment. But there should be.

Categories Atlanta

NAACP to Atlanta Board of Education: Do Not Give a Sole Source Contract to Relay “Graduate School of Education”

By dianeravitch

March 5, 2018 //

The Atlanta Board of Education will vote tonight on whether to give a $600,000 sole source contract to the Relay “Graduate School of Education” to train school leaders.

Edward Johnson, a champion of public schools and an advocate of systemic change based on the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming, has spoken out against this decision, and with good reason. Deming helped to transform Japanese industry based on principles of teamwork and collaboration and the recognition that accountability starts at the top, not the bottom. (To learn more about Deming, read Andrea Gabor’s excellent The Man Who Invented Quality, especially chapter 9, where she explains Deming’s opposition to merit pay. Her new book, After the Education Wars, directly applies Deming thought to education.)

Relay is not really a “graduate school of education.” It is an organization founded in 2011 by three “no-excuses” charter chains–KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools–based on a charter teacher training program called TeacherU at Hunter College in New York City. Graduate schools of education have faculty members with doctorates in their fields; they have research programs; they have departments and courses devoted to pedagogy, psychology, philosophy, sociology, economics, history, and other aspects of education. Relay has none of these features. Its “schools” are managed by charter teachers, some of whom have a masters’ degree; they specialize in teaching how to raise test scores and impose strict discipline according to the canonical texts of Doug Lemov; if you search for a Relay campus, you are unlikely to find one. Relay is one of the ways in which corporate reformers are determined to destroy professional education, for teachers and administrators alike.

I wrote a letter to the Atlanta Board of Education, following Ed Johnson’s complaint, explaining that Relay was not the right choice.

The chair of the education committee of the Atlanta NAACP wrote too, urging that the agenda item for a sole source contract be deferred until other institutions were invited to submit proposals.

From: Lula Gilliam [mailto:education@naacpatlanta.org]
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2018 12:12 PM
To: mjcarstarphen@atlanta.k12.ga.us; jesteves@atlantapublicschools.us; epcollins@atlantapublicschools.us; lgrant@atlantapublicschools.us; bamos@atlanta.k12.ga.us; michelle.olympiadis@atlanta.k12.ga.us; nmeister@atlanta.k12.ga.us; Erika.Mitchell@atlanta.k12.ga.us; kandis.woodjackson@atlanta.k12.ga.us; cbriscoe_brown@atlanta.k12.ga.us; pierre.gaither@atlanta.k12.ga.us
Cc: jkahrs@gsu.edu; dcowan1@gsu.edu; bawilli@gsu.edu; president@naacpatlanta.org; AfQPE@aol.com; edwjohnson@aol.com; Marypalmer515@gmail.com
Subject: Relay Graduate School of Education Sole Source Contract

To: Atlanta Board of Education (ABOE) members

Good afternoon,

Community education activist, Ed Johnson, included the Atlanta NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) on an email thread that has raised several concerns. We have been informed that ABOE has an action on tonight’s (March 5, 2018) agenda that includes Item 7.05.

The Board will be voting to enter into a sole source contract with Relay Graduate School of Education (RGSE). The purpose is “for tuition for school leaders and central office supervisors to participate in the [Relay] National Principal and Supervisor Academy.” The contract amount is $600,000.00.

We are certain you are aware the terminology sole source denotes that no other entity can provide these services. Are you all familiar with the Principals Center at Georgia State University (GSU), which provides the very services that are mentioned in this sole source? Did you contact the Center about the contract and offer them an equal opportunity to provide these services? If not, please explain. Just in case you don’t have this, I am including the contact information for the Center’s executive staff: Dr. James R. Kahrs (jkahrs@gsu.edu) and Dr. Dionne Cowan (dcowan1@gsu.edu) as well as copying them on this email. Also copied are GSU president, Dr. Mark Becker, and Dr. Brian Williams, Director of the Alonzo Crim Center for Urban Educational Excellence (Atlanta NAACP Education Committee – Co-Chair).

Founded in 1913, GSU graduates more African American students than any other college/university in the country. With this impressive distinction and a true testament of leadership training at its finest, seemingly, Georgia State’s longevity and outcomes negate that no other entity can provide the services described by ABOE. On the other hand, Relay Graduate School of Education was founded in 2011. What is their track record for success that has ABOE considering a sole source contract in the amount of $600,000.00?

The Atlanta NAACP would caution ABOE to tread carefully in the use of “sole source” and the doling out of public dollars. We highly recommend tabling this agenda item in order to offer this contract to the best possible provider. Our children and families deserve nothing less.

In the best interests of students and parents,

Lula M. Gilliam

Atlanta NAACP

Chair – Education Committee

Co-Chair -Labor & Industry Committee

970 Martin Luther King, Jr., Drive

Suite 302

Atlanta, GA 30314

(404)524-0580 (office)

(770)256-0275 (cell)