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Breitbart Loves Marshall Tuck as the “Choice” Candidate for California Superintendent of Public Instruction

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2018 //
3

Earlier this summer, the rightwing rag Breitbart posted a very positive article about Marshall Tuck, who is running to become California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Breitbart, long associated with Steve Bannon and white-nationalist policies, identifies Tuck as pro-charter school and anti-union.

The article correctly notes that Tuck received only 5% of the votes at the state Democratic convention.

The overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates to the convention endorsed Tuck’s opponent, Tony Thurmond.

There are many reasons to vote for Tony Thurmond, including his experience as a social worker and his demonstrated concern for students, not corporate interests.

If you want Eli Broad and the other billionaires to control public education and privatize it, then Tuck’s your man.

If you want public schools to remain public and accountable to democratically elected school boards, vote for Tony Thurmond.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Why Philanthropy Is Bad for Democracy: An Interview with Anand Giridharadas

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
28

This article expresses our frustration with arrogant, clueless billionaires like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, Betsy DeVos, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, the Waltons, the Koch brothers, and Mark Zuckerberg. We have long known that they don’t like democracy. It gets in the way of their grand plans to change the world. Why should we—the targets of their plans—have any say? Those of us who are not billionaires think that they should stop rearranging our lives. We don’t want them to disrupt our lives and our institutions. We believe in the idea of one person, one vote. We are losing faith in democracy because these plutocrats have more than one vote. They use their vast resources to buy elections and, what is even cheaper, to buy politicians.

Anand Giridharadas frequented their circles, mainly at the Aspen Institute, which made the mistake of inviting him to join them as a Fellow. He confirms what we suspected. These people are a threat to democracy. They think they are “doing good,” but they are destroying democracy.

It begins:

“In 2015, the journalist Anand Giridharadas was a fellow at the Aspen Institute, a confab of moneyed “thought leaders” where TED-style discourse dominates: ostensibly nonpolitical, often counterintuitive, but never too polemical. In his own speech that year, Giridharadas broke with protocol, accusing his audience of perpetuating the very social problems they thought they were solving through philanthropy. He described what he called the Aspen Consensus: “The winners of our age must be challenged to do more good, but never, ever tell them to do less harm.” The response, he said, was mixed. One private-equity figure called him an “asshole” that evening, but another investor said he’d voiced the struggle of her life. David Brooks, in a New York Times column, called the speech “courageous.” That lecture grew into Winners Take All, Giridharadas’s new jeremiad against philanthropy as we know it. He weaves together scenes at billionaires’ gatherings, profiles of insiders who struggle with ethical conflicts, and a broader history of how America’s wealth inequality and philanthropy grew in tandem.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Democracy, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Walton Foundation

Beware the Elites Who Want to Change the World.

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2018 //
30

This is an unusually good opinion piece that appeared in the New York Times a few days ago.

Think Gates, Zuckerberg, Walton, Hastings, Koch, and many more who use their wealth to impose their ideas on what they consider lesser lives.

The author is Anand Giridharadas.

Please note the mention of charter schools, a bone used by the elites to distract us from wealth inequality and the necessity of providing a better education for all.

It begins:

“Change the world” has long been the cry of the oppressed. But in recent years world-changing has been co-opted by the rich and the powerful.

“Change the world. Improve lives. Invent something new,” McKinsey & Company’s recruiting materials say. “Sit back, relax, and change the world,” tweets the World Economic Forum, host of the Davos conference. “Let’s raise the capital that builds the things that change the world,” a Morgan Stanley ad says. Walmart, recruiting a software engineer, seeks an “eagerness to change the world.” Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook says, “The best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company.”

“At first, you think: Rich people making a difference — so generous! Until you consider that America might not be in the fix it’s in had we not fallen for the kind of change these winners have been selling: fake change.

“Fake change isn’t evil; it’s milquetoast. It is change the powerful can tolerate. It’s the shoes or socks or tote bag you bought which promised to change the world. It’s that one awesome charter school — not equally funded public schools for all. It is Lean In Circles to empower women — not universal preschool. It is impact investing — not the closing of the carried-interest loophole.

“Of course, world-changing initiatives funded by the winners of market capitalism do heal the sick, enrich the poor and save lives. But even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off. Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.

“What their “change” leaves undisturbed is our winners-take-all economy, which siphons the gains from progress upward. The average pretax income of America’s top 1 percent has more than tripled since 1980, and that of the top 0.001 percent has risen more than sevenfold, even as the average income of the bottom half of Americans stagnated around $16,000, adjusted for inflation, according to a paper by the economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.

“American elites are monopolizing progress, and monopolies can be broken. Aggressive policies to protect workers, redistribute income, and make education and health affordable would bring real change. But such measures could also prove expensive for the winners. Which gives them a strong interest in convincing the public that they can help out within the system that so benefits the winners.”

There is more, if it is not behind a paywall.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Fake, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Koch Brothers, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Mike Petrilli: In the Face of So Many Setbacks, Where Does Reform Go From Here?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2018 //
28

Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, one of the leading advocacy groups in the Corporate Reform Movement, offers advice and consolation to fellow Reformers.

“After two decades of mostly-forward movement and many big wins, the last few years have been a tough patch for education reform. The populist right has attacked standards, testing, and accountability, with particular emphasis on the Common Core, as well as testing itself. The election of Donald Trump and appointment of Betsy DeVos, meanwhile, have made school choice and charter schools toxic on much of the progressive left. And the 2017 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate a “lost decade” of academic achievement. All of these trends have left policymakers and philanthropists feeling glum about reform, given the growing narrative that, like so many efforts before it, the modern wave hasn’t worked or delivered the goods, yet has produced much friction, fractiousness, and furor.”

Take heart, he says. The children of America need us to privatize their schools, bust teachers’ unions, and Judge their teachers by student test scores. Remember when they all laughed at NCLB, but now “we” know that it was a great success?

It’s true that NAEP scores have been flat for a decade. It’s true that charters close almost as often as they open. It’s true that the charter industry is riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse.

But stick with proven leaders like the hedge fund managers, Bill Gates, and DeVos.

Sorry to be snarky, Mike, but I couldn’t resist.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Testing, Trump, VAM, Vouchers

LAUSD Chief Picks TFA-Broadie from Nation’s Lowest Performing State as Chief of Staff

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2018 //
21

Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner, new to the education world, has defined himself by his first big hire. He selected Rebecca Kockler, the Louisiana Department of Education’s assistant superintendent for academic content to be his chief of staff. Like her boss, John White, Kockler is both TFA and Broadie. (For the initiated, that means they both got a little bit of teaching experience as recruits for Teach for America and are “graduates” of Eli Broad’s unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, whose “graduates” are taught top-down management, the value of closing schools and replacing them with private management, and other reformer tricks of the trade. John Thompson recently wrote a series of posts here about the dismal record of Broadies.)

Mercedes Schneider, researcher and high school teacher in Louisiana, reviews Kockler’s TFA career in TFA here, which was mysteriously absent from the LAUSD press release. Also unmentioned in the press release was her Broadie history. Mercedes knows more about the Louisiana Department of Education and its new chief of staff than LAUSD. To be fair to the person who wrote the press release, Mercedes notes that Kockler deleted her Linked In bio that describes her TFA history. But Mercedes has it.

Both the LAUSD press release and the Broad Center agree that Louisiana is one of the “fastest improving” states in the nation.

But is that true? Nope. Its NAEP scores declined significantly from 2015 to 2017.

What is especially irksome about the LAUSD press release linked above is that it refers to Louisiana’s academic standards as “a national model.” Who would look to a state that scrapes the very bottom of NAEP rankings as “a national model”? Maybe it is a model of how to fail while boasting of success. Maybe it is a model of Trumpian rhetoric that turns lemons into lemonade.

Consider this report in the New Orleans Advocate on 2017 NAEP.:

“In the latest snapshot of education achievement, scores for Louisiana public school fourth-graders plunged to or near the bottom of the nation in reading and math.

“In addition, eighth-graders finished 50th among the states and the District of Columbia in math and 48th in reading…

In 2015, fourth-graders finished 43rd in the U. S. in reading and 45th in math….

“But both scores dropped five points – to 212 and 229 out of 500 respectively – during tests administered to 2,700 students last year.

“That means fourth-grade math scores finished 51st while fourth-grade reading scores are 49th.

“The group that oversees the exams, the National Center for Education Statistics, said both drops are statistically significant.”

Why not tell the truth? Beutner hired the academic director of one of the lowest performing states in the nation, where NAEP scores fell in the latest assessment. He was impressed by her credentials in TFA, and she came highly recommended by his friend Eli Broad.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Corporate Reformers, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fake, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Teach for America

Tom Ultican on Philadelphia, Another School Choice Failure

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2018 //
7

Tom Ultican, recently retired teacher of physics, has embarked on a mission to cover the Destroy Public Education movement. His posts have taken him to several cities, where the school choice movement has destroyed public education without putting anything better in its place. In fact, the “new” schools are usually worse than the public schools.

In his latest foray, he studies the destruction wrought by the Destroy Public Education movement on the public schools of Philadelphia.

The trouble started when Republican Governor Tom Ridge hired the Edison Project to conduct a study of the Philadelphia public schools and come up with solutions (such as, taking charge of the entire district themselves, nothing like conflict of interest to stir the commercial juices.)

Ultican relies heavily on Samuel Abrams’ excellent book Education and the Commercial Mindset, which began life as a study of Chris Whittle’s Edison Project.

Things went downhill from there. The whole point of “reform” was not to make the schools better, but to save money.

“Edison’s report was not impartial. Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News called it a charade. (Abrams 116) The report was overly critical of the school district and recommended that the Edison Project be put in charge of running it. Edison also called for reforming “failing” schools by turning them into charter schools.

“Helen Gym (now on the Philadelphia city council) speaking for Asian Americans United, asked, “If this [privatization] is so innovative why aren’t they doing it in Lower Merion.” (Abrams 114) This turns out to have been a perceptive question. Lower Merion is 85% white and rich. Still today, there appear to be no charter schools in Lower Merion Township. Charter schools mostly exist in poor communities without the political capital to protect their schools.”

Broadies, Broadies everywhere! Closing public schools. Starving them. Opening charters. Destroying the district. The great Charade of “Reform.”

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Philadelphia, Privatization

John Thompson: How Broadie Superintendents Nearly Destroyed Oakland Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2018 //
9

John Thompson, teacher and historian, has been investigating the track record of Superintendents “trained” by the unaccredited Broad Foundation.

He writes:

Across the nation, educators have seen the harm done to public education by Broad Academy superintendents. But what do we see when we take a step back and think through their patterns of behavior? And what do we see when looking at Oakland, for instance, where four Broad graduates have run the district? When Broad focuses so intently on one school system, what does the record of its leaders say about education “reform?”

Perhaps the most powerful indictment of an Oakland-connected Broadie, Antwan Wilson, was written by conservative reformer Max Eden, who is one of the many new critics of the data-driven micromanaging which Broad exemplifies. This is crucial because more and more reformers are acknowledging that their accountability-driven theories have failed; apparently, these corporate reformers are now gambling everything on choice, and placing their bets on charters that don’t face the oversight that once was contemplated by many neoliberal reformers.

And that is the first obvious pattern which emerged from Oakland. Before the first Broad manager (Randy Ward) was appointed, Oakland had 15 charters. Six years later, after Oakland experienced three Broad superintendents, it had 34. By the time Antwan Wilson left, the district had 44. As was explained in 2016 by the New York Times Motoko Rich, Wilson faced “a rebellion by teachers and some parents against his plan to allow families to use a single form to apply to any of the city’s 86 district-run schools or 44 charter campuses, all of which are competing for a shrinking number of students.” The likely scenario was that the common application form would result in a New Orleans-style charter portfolio model.

Second, the Oakland Broad experience provides another example about the way that their corporate reformers are untroubled by behaviors that most people see as scandalous. Its four Broad leaders all came with a history of dubious behaviors, or when they left they were caught up in questionable activities.

Vincent Matthews (Broad Class of 2006) had been the principal of a Edison Charter Academy in Noe Valley which had been in danger of losing its charter because it had been criticized for pushing out black students with low test scores. Kimberly Statham (2003) had resigned as chief academic officer of the Howard County Schools following allegations of a grade changing scandal involving her daughter.

http://www.sfexaminer.com/incoming-sf-schools-superintendent-takes-measured-stance-charters/

http://www.baltimoresun.com/bs-mtblog-2007-10-where_are_they_now_kimberly_a-story.html

Randy Ward (2003) left Oakland for San Diego where he resigned, after being placed on administrative leave. The San Diego County Office of Education had been thrown into turmoil as a forensic audit examined “concerns related to certain expenditures and compensation” for top education officials.

I’d add an observation about one controversy involving Michelle Fort-Merrill, “a close confidant to former superintendent Ward,” who earned a salary of $161,000. A whistle-blower won a civil lawsuit after accusing Fort-Merrill and others of “playing favorites with public education money by awarding lucrative legal contracts to friends.” He successfully claimed that his due process rights were violated.

When Fort-Merrill was terminated, she sued saying her due process rights were violated. Isn’t it hypocritical for corporate reformers to use charter expansions and data-driven evaluations for an all-out assault on educators’ due process rights while using those rights to protect their huge salaries?
http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/education/sdut-tensions-rise-at-county-office-of-education-2016jul14-story.html

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-county-schools-audit-20170714-story.html

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2017/mar/02/ticker-lawsuit-top-lawsuit-office-education/#

Only after Antwan Wilson left Oakland and became Washington D.C.’s chancellor, did his full record become apparent. As Valerie Strauss noteds “It was no secret that when Wilson departed the Oakland Unified School District 2½ years after arriving, he left a budget deficit of about $30 million behind.” But subsequent analyses showed:

While Wilson was superintendent in Oakland, the district overspent its budget in some areas, but spent substantially below budgeted amounts in other categories, according to data from the Board of Education. During the 2016-2017 school year, $10.4 million was budgeted for “classified supervisors and administrators” while $22.2 million was spent, according to the Board of Education. In the same year, $21.4 million was budgeted for professional and consulting services, but $28.2 million was spent.

Wilson spent huge amounts of money, creating new, unbudgeted positions and he paid more than what was customary. Strauss noted, “In 2013, before Wilson arrived in Oakland, only four administrators earned more than $200,000; two years later, at least 26 did.”

But Wilson spent less on books and supplies for classrooms than was budgeted. In 2015-2016, Strauss recalls, “$18.6 million was budgeted, but only $12.3 million was spent, according to board data. In 2016-2017, $20.1 million was budgeted for books and other school supplies, but only $6.8 million was spent.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/11/21/new-d-c-schools-chancellor-under-scrutiny-for-overspending-in-california-district-he-led/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.26d4816495f4

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/co/2018/04/27/antwan-wilson-no-longer-working-as-a-consultant-for-denver-public-schools/

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2018/01/30/books_cooked_at_dc_schools_will_star_chancellor_answer_110250.html

Wilson was forced to resign in D.C. after violating rules when transferring his daughter to one of the city’s most desirable high schools. This followed a Washington Post report that “an internal investigation has uncovered signs of widespread enrollment fraud” at a desirable school.

And these violations were revealed about the time that it was learned that Wilson had been warned of the Ballou High School graduation scandal. Moreover, these revelations followed Washington Post discovery that “the dramatic decrease in school suspension rates was also fake.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/dc-mayor-muriel-bowser-called-her-ousted-school-chancellors-action-indefensible-the-chancellor-says-bowser-knew-about-it-for-months/2018/03/05/d909cbc3-6e34-49f8-995f-22e1dd2ea5aa_story.html?utm_term=.1f04bdaca4ee

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/some-dc-high-schools-reported-only-a-small-fraction-of-suspensions/2017/07/17/045c387e-5762-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html?utm_term=.33d5f5ed4ce0

In other words, Wilson, the fourth Broad superintendent of Oakland, found himself in a very similar situation in D.C., being the third in the line of corporate reformers that began with Michelle Rhee. My sense is that the mess he helped create in Oakland illustrates a pattern which is similar to the one that was started by Michelle Rhee. Even if Broad superintendents were not so cavalier about violating the norms of honest behsvior, their data-driven mentality would still create inevitable scandals. Plus, the more that Broad and other corporate reformers double-down on a single district, the more damage will become too serious to be covered up any longer.

For instance, D.C.’s data-driven, competition-driven reforms created “a Culture of Passing and Graduating Students.” A review of FY16-17 DCPS graduates found that 34.% of students graduated with the assistance of policy violations.

Click to access Report%20on%20DCPS%20Graduation%20and%20Attendance%20Outcomes%20-%20Alvarez%26Marsal.pdf

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/before-a-graduation-scandal-made-headlines-teachers-at-dcs-ballou-high-raised-an-alarm/2018/01/06/ad49f198-df6a-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html?utm_term=.d92ab9db4468

Click to access Report%20on%20DCPS%20Graduation%20and%20Attendance%20Outcomes%20-%20Alvarez%26Marsal.pdf

The unraveling of D.C.’s claims of transformational success is crucial because it was once the heart of the Billionaires Boys Club’s vision for American schools. Nobody dared to claim that Oakland was a great success, but as the Motoko Rich’s article articulates, it became the “Heart of Drive to Transform Urban Schools.”

Not only did Broad train four of Oakland’s superintendents, but:

It has granted about $6 million for staff development and other programs over the last decade. The Broad Center, which runs the superintendents’ academy, has subsidized the salaries of at least 10 ex-business managers who moved into administrative jobs at the district office.

Broadies may have had “modest success in raising student achievement” but in the environment they created there is no reason to believe that those “achievement” gains are real. It failed to solve the district’s financial problems, and it dramatically expanded charters.

So, what is next?

Broad has been helping to fund the campaigns to elect its corporate reformers in elections throughout California. Its failure to improve Los Angeles, Oakland, and other districts is interpreted as more evidence against public education norms. Rather than admit that their social engineering has failed, Broad et. al are doubling down on the edu-politics of destruction.

Categories Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Oakland

Tom Ultican: How NCLB and Charters Killed the Public Schools of Inglewood, California

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2018 //
14

This is the most important story you will read today. It is a warning about where School Choice is heading, what it will do to the democratic institution of the public schools, what it has already done to the schools of one district in California. If we don’t reverse the tide, more districts will be drowned by choice and debt.

Retired physics teacher Tom Ultican has been researching the Destroy Pubkic Education movement. This movement creates nothing positive. It tears down what once belonged to the community, paid for with their tax dollars.

The story of Inglewood, California, is a textbook case of the destruction of a small district, brought low by NCLB, then strangled and left for dead by a series of Broad-trained superintendents and the steady expansion of privately managed charter schools.

The story of Inglewood is an indictment of the so-called reform movement, which destroyed the public schools of that district.

Are Public Schools in Inglewood, California a Warning?

Ultican begins:

“In 2006, the relatively small Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD) had over 18,000 students and was a fiscally sound competent system. Today, IUSD has 8,400 students, is 30% privatized and drowning in debt. In 2012, the state of California took over the district, usurped the authority of the elected school board and installed a “State Trustee” to run it. IUSD is on its sixth state appointed trustee in six years.

“This crisis was created by politicians and wealthy elites. It did not just happen. Understanding the privatization of Inglewood’s schools through the choice agenda is instructive of the path that could lead to the end of public schools in California…

“NCLB set the table. Students in poor communities were guaranteed to produce bad test results. Billionaires were pouring huge money into developing the charter school industry. State leaders were putting privatization friendly leaders in charge of school districts. The state trustees were never in place long enough to provide stable leadership.

“Eli Broad attended public school and went on to become the only person ever to develop two Fortune 500 companies, Sun America and KB Homes. Broad, who is worth $6 billion, decided that public schools should be privatized and established a school for administrators to promote his ideology.

“In Oakland, the first state trustee was a Broad Academy graduate named Randy Ward and three more of the next 6 superintendents who followed Ward were also Broad trained. Oakland suffered nine superintendents in 13 years.

“In Inglewood, one trustee was a charter school founder who was concurrently serving as a board member of the charter school and the last two superintendents were Broad trained. Inglewood received six state appointed trustees in six years.

“How much longer before large school districts like San Diego and Los Angeles – with 25% or more of their students in privatized schools – are forced into bankruptcy and taken over by the state? Both districts are currently running massive deficits caused primarily by charter school privatization and unfair special education costs.”

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, California, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization, Testing

John Thompson on Broadies in Dallas and Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2018 //
5

John Thompson has been researching the tenures of Broadie Superintendents, who sem to have been trained to be tough top down administrators.

Here is his latest report:

Researching failed Broad Academy superintendents has been “déjà vu, all over again.” When No Child Left Behind promised 100% proficiency by 2014, education researchers accurately predicted that efforts would be diverted from teaching and learning to statistical gamesmanship. Being fairly new to education policy, I kept asking myself what reformers were thinking: Had they never heard of Campbell’s Law? If they hadn’t read Catch 22, had they not seen the movie, and its portrayal of the real world effects of imposing absurd, unreachable, quantitative growth targets?

Rightly or wrongly, my summary of Mike Miles’ “reign of error” in Dallas emphasized the dismal results he produced, as well as the human costs of his Broad mandates. I should have given more emphasis to Miles’ surrealistic display of hubris, and his weird dance performance, when he announced the new day he was bringing to Dallas schools. Miles seemed like a caricature of Bob Newhart’s performance of “Major Major” in Mike Nichols’ Catch 22 movie. Miles obviously failed to learn from Major Major being told, “You’re the new squadron commander. … But don’t think it means anything, because it doesn’t. All it means is that you’re the new squadron commander.”

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/10/11/354931351/it-s-2014-all-children-are-supposed-to-be-proficient-under-federal-law

Among the meaningless things that Miles told Dallas was that, by 2020, 90% students would graduate on time, 40% would attain a 21 or higher composite score on the ACT exam or a SAT of 990 on Reading/Math, 75% would be proficient on the “Year 2020 workplace readiness assessments,” and 80% would enter college, the military, or a “career-ready job” straight from high school.

Perhaps the sub-goals were even more illustrative of Miles’ autocratic disconnection from reality. Buy-in would be so great that students in targeted low-performing schools would receive at least 90 minutes of homework every night. By August 2015, he said that 75% of the staff and 70% of the community would “agree or strongly agree with the direction of the district.” At least 60% of teachers on his pay-for-performance evaluation system and 75% of principals would agree that the system is “fair, accurate and rigorous.”

In the real world of 2015, Miles resigned. The Dallas Morning News explained that “in Texas, superintendents are graded by state STAAR results, and DISD scores have stayed flat or dropped under him.” So, what sort of victories could Miles proclaim?

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2015/06/23/dallas-isd-chief-mike-miles-announces-resignation-after-contract-changes-rejected

As he left office, Miles claimed victory in putting the critical pieces needed to transform Dallas into place. Instead of quantifiable gains, he bragged about continued implementation of a rigorous principal evaluation system that uses both performance and student results to measure principal effectiveness; the implementation of the Teacher Excellence Initiative, and fundamentally changing how highly effective teachers are identified and assessed; kicking off an initiative to create 35 choice schools; and increasing the focus on early childhood programs.

In other words, Miles claimed to have produced gains in implementation, innovation, identification, assessment, focus, and kicking things off, but not even he could pretend to have produced concrete, much less measurable, improvements in student learning.

Mike Miles announces resignation as Dallas ISD superintendent

And that leads to the question of whether corporate reformers, especially Broad superintendents, will ever learn the folly of demanding impossible, quantifiable accountability targets. Shouldn’t Philadelphia and its Broad trained leader, William Hite, recall the city’s cheating scandal from 2009 to 2011, when at least 140 educators engaged in improprieties?

I’d say that Philly is another case of déjà vu all over again but – at least for now – Hite seems to be getting away with it. His goals are even more incredible. The goals of his 2015 Action Plan 3.0 are:

• 100% of students will graduate, ready for college and career

• 100% of 8-year-olds will read on grade level

• 100% of schools will have great principals and teachers

• 100% of the funding we need for great schools, and zero deficit

Philadelphia may be on track to meet its 2018 goal of a 66% graduation rate, but those numbers are easily fabricated. They say nothing about the target of 100% college and career readiness. So, what do the reliable NAEP scores say about the district’s student performance?

In 2011, Philadelphia 4th graders scored 8 points lower than other urban districts in math, but in 2017, they scored 17 points lower. During the same period, Philadelphia 4th graders dropped another four points in reading in comparison to other urban schools. In 2011, Philly’s 8th graders scored 9 points lower in math. By 2017, the gap grew to 14 points. The reading score gap increased by 2 points for 8th graders.

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/districtprofile/overview/XP?cti=PgTab_OT&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=XP&fs=Grade&st=MN&year=2017R3&sg=Gender%3A+Male+vs.+Female&sgv=Difference&ts=Single+Year&tss=2015R3-2017R3&sfj=NL

And while we’re at it, where is Philadelphia in terms of 100% school funding and zero deficit?

Just last month, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said:

The Philadelphia School District needs to spend $150 million on repairs to its 300 buildings, including money for an expansion of a lead paint abatement program. To do so, the district is banking on almost $700 million in additional funding from the city proposed in Kenney’s budget.

Council, however, has publicly expressed qualms about fulfilling the mayor’s full request for schools, which would almost certainly be tied to a property-tax hike.

Of course, that leads to the next logical conclusion. Perhaps Mayor Jim Kenney should take a page from the Broad playbook. He should tell voters that passing the tax increase will solve 100% of the city’s as well as the schools’ problems.

http://www.philly.com/philly/education/mayor-kenney-william-hite-philly-crumbling-schools-lead-paint-repair-20180522.html

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Failure

John Thompson: Three Tumultous Years Under Broadie Mike Miles in Dallas

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2018 //
11

John Thompson, teacher and historian in Oklahoma, has been researching the lives and times of the superintendents trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, funded by billionaire Eli Broad. This post features the three-year tenure of Mike Miles in Dallas. Miles was a West Point graduate, military veteran, and foreign service officer before he entered the Broad program.

My recent series on failed Broad Academy superintendents, and the links sent by commenters, even surprised me. The similarity between the Broadies I’ve tried to communicate with, and the behaviors of their counterparts across the nation is astounding. And as Thomas Frank explains, the long sad story of neoliberal school reform is extra depressing during this time of budget cuts that are so extreme that they have provoked strikes in so many states.
 
To borrow Frank’s excellent terminology, what could have happened in Colorado had corporate reformers not set out to “Fire teachers, specifically,” teach educators “fear and discipline,” and “slay the foot-dragging unions and the red-tape rules.”  For instance, what could we have done to improve schools had the state, and the rest of the country, not gambled on Broad graduates like Mike Miles?
 
 
Sadly, what we know for sure is the discord and the failure Miles produced in Harrison County, Colo. and Dallas, Texas. As Julian Vasquez Heilig documents, during the pre-Miles 2003-2004 school year, 82% of the Harrison County’s students graduated. During the Miles yeas, it fluctuated between 74.1% and below 65%. Heilig then recounts the:
 
 
 
Disconcerting data trends in the years spanning Mr. Miles’ time in Harrison, specifically the rates of attrition at the secondary level and academic performance for minority, Free and Reduced Price Lunch, English Language Learners (ELLs), Special Education, and Students “needing to catch up.”
 
 
Reformers believed Miles’ spin, which exaggerated his gains that occurred in some areas, but teachers didn’t. As Chalkbeat Colorado reported, Miles efforts:
 
Have proven less popular with teachers unions in the state and with some Harrison parents and community members, who are openly advocating the recall of board members supportive of his work. “Prayers answered” wrote one poster about the Dallas announcement on a Facebook page titled “Mike Miles – Get Him Out.”
 
 
When he arrived in Dallas, Miles “told principals during a training session, ‘The best-trained principals in this country are in Colorado Springs. You’re not trained as well as they are, but you will be in one year.’” He mandated a new principal-evaluation system and “hired 60 aspiring school leaders that were trained for a year before letting them compete for principal jobs in the district.” This introduction “was received like a verbal middle finger” to administrators.
 
Even so, Miles said afterwards:
 
I’m not sure I’ll ever get totally used to the amount of scrutiny and some of the negativity. … I mean, I think that’s part of any job—I mean, any job where you’re trying to change things, so I’m not saying that. But, I don’t know, does anybody ever get used to getting beat up?
 
 
The Dallas Morning News described Miles’ approach in a similar manner. It recounted the “frayed relationship” between Miles and his board, illustrated by a first-year board meeting which lasted until 1.03 am. It noted that Miles “isn’t one to dwell on the details of his plans and wants to be judged on results”
 
 
So, what were Miles’ results?
 
As Heinig writes, the Miles approach couldn’t have been more different than the successful policies under his predecessor,   Michael Hinojosa. At first, Miles and his multi-million dollar experiments produced mixed results, but he mostly presided over a district on a downward trajectory.  
 
Retired middle school teacher, Bill Betzen, documented Miles disappointing record in terms of student achievement, as well as the costs to educators. Before Miles, teacher turnover fluctuated between 8.5% and 12.2%, but under Miles it rose to 21.9%. Every year from 2014 to 2016 was the highest Dallas ISD teacher turnover on record! It is now down to about 14%.
 
As a result, the experience levels of all teachers, but especially the newest teachers, fell rapidly. There was a significant increase in inexperienced teachers, including those who didn’t make it through their rookie year.  In the FY2012 school year, 10 teachers left the job before they had completed 3 months in the classroom. By FY 2015, 97 teachers left within 3 months or less.
 
Betzen published charts documenting, “The best concentrated years of progress in Dallas ISD history since WWII were 2007-2013” but “then the progress stopped!” He further shows how the “teacher turnover explosion” increased the number of no-experience teachers by 250%, as principal turnover nearly tripled. The DISD achievement gap, in comparison with the rest of the state, had been steadily decreasing under Hinojosa, but then seven years of progress were wiped out in 2014 and 2015.
 
 
Miles’ biggest defeat grew out of the opening of the new $36 million Dade Middle school. It was later dubbed, “the sixth nail in his coffin.” The Dallas Observer explained, “Dade was where Miles’ shortcomings as a leader — his prickly ego, his tin ear for politics and community relations, his hamfisted personnel decisions — were laid bare.” It was also the conflict which led to his final battle with DISD trustee Bernadette Nutall. This dispute, along with the way that Miles defied the board when firing three principals, led to his resignation.
 
 
 
Miles had previously fought with the school board over a review of his handling of a service contract. An early conflict resulted in Miles’ house being picketed, and near the end of his time in Dallas:
 
Things got worse a few months later when, on Miles’ orders, security guards wrangled Nutall out of Billy Dade Middle School in her district. The superintendent was at the school for a staff meeting after a personnel shake-up. When Nutall showed up uninvited, he accused her of trespassing and interfering.
 
The Oakcliff Advocate acknowledged that “a common criticism of Nutal” is that she is “heavy-handed,” but, “In the Dade situation, however, even her critics believed Miles had gone too far.”
 
 
 
 
After Miles resigned, the Dallas Morning News explained that “in Texas, superintendents are graded by state STAAR results, and DISD scores have stayed flat or dropped under him.” His supporters “praised him for his tireless passion and dedication to education reform.” But Miles “marginalized many who found him to be stubborn and arrogant.” It added, “He also battled a revolving door of top administrators, including his former chief of staff who resigned days before he was indicted on federal bribery charges that led to a prison sentence.”
 
The Morning News wrote about Miles:
 
His tenure was marked by his expansion of the district’s communications, public relations and advertising efforts, creating flashy campaigns touting DISD’s accomplishments. He spoke in grandiose terms, often calling on the district’s “heroes” to carry out his vision. At the news conference Tuesday, Miles compared the district to Camelot and himself to King Arthur.
 
 
After Miles left, Michael Hinojosa returned as superintendent and Dallas schools progressed once again. And that brings us back to the question of what would have happened if educators could have just battled poverty and other problems in our schools, as opposed to fighting off Broadies and other corporate reformers with our left hands, while defending our students from reformers with our right hands.
 
By the way, one reason why I studied the Miles administration was that I hoped to see his infamous video of his dance with students. Apparently it has been taken down, but maybe readers will find and share it. If not, this video documents his hubris:
Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Dallas, Education Reform
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