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NOLA Research Unit Issues Glowing Report, Wins $10 Million from DeVos

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2018 //
21

Which game shall we play: Follow the Money or Connect the Dots?

Only two days ago, the Education Research Alliance at Tulane University released a glowing report about the privatization of public schools in New Orleans.

Only one day later, the U.S. Department of Education awarded the team a grant of $10 Million to continue their work on market-driven school choice.

With $10 Million, maybe they will get around to checking with researchers who don’t agree with their findings, such as those I cited in this post.

And I hope the team at Tulane-ERA will answer this puzzle:

Louisiana is one of the lowest scoring states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“The Nation’s Report Card”). Its scores declined significantly from 2015-2017. New Orleans is the largest school district in the state. If its results are amazing, why did the state drop to 48th in the nation in 8th grade reading and 50th in the nation on the 8th grade math on NAEP? This doesn’t add up.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Louisiana, New Orleans, School Choice

Tom Ultican: Privatizing Charters Invade San Joaquin Valley in California

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2018 //
8

Tom Ultican has been documenting the advance of the Destroy Public Education Movement in different cities. Now, he shows, they are pushing into rural areas, into California’s San Joaquin Valley.

“Efforts to privatize public schools in the San Joaquin (pronounced: whah-keen) Valley are accelerating. Five disparate yet mutually reinforcing groups are leading this destroy public education (DPE) movement. For school year 2017-2018, Taxpayers sent $11.5 billion to educate K-12 students in the valley and a full $1 billion of that money was siphoned off to charter schools. This meant that education funding for 92% of students attending public schools has been significantly reduced on a per student basis.

“In July 2017, California’s State Superintendent of Education, Tom Torlakson, announced that the revised 2017-2018 budget for K-12 education totaled $92.5 billion. Dividing this number by the total of students enrolled statewide provides an average spending per enrolled student ($14,870). The spending numbers reported above were found by multiplying $14,870 by the number of students enrolled.

“The five groups motivating the privatization of public schools are:

“People who want taxpayer supported religious schools.

“Groups who want segregated schools.

“Entrepreneurs profiting from school management and school real estate deals.

“The technology industry using wealth and lobbying power to place products into schools and support technology driven charter schools.

“Ideologues who fervently believe that market-based solutions are always superior.

“The Big Valley

“The San Joaquin Valley is America’s top agricultural producing region, sometimes called “the nation’s salad bowl” for the great array of fruits and vegetables grown in its fertile soil. Starting near the port of Stockton, the valley is 250 miles long and is bordered on the west by coastal mountain ranges. Its eastern boundary is part of the southern two-thirds of the Sierra bioregion, which features Yosemite, Kings Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks. The valley ends at the San Gabriel Mountains in the south.

“Seven counties (Stanislaus, San Joaquin, Merced, Tulare, Kings, Fresno and Kern) govern the valley. Its three major cities are Fresno (population 525,000), Stockton (population 310,000) and Bakersfield (population 380,000). The entire valley has a population of more than 4 million with 845,369 K-12 students enrolled for the 2017-2018 school year….

“In her 2017 report on California’s out of control charter school system, Carol Burris made a point about the unsavory nature of the independent study charter school. She pointed out that these schools have poor attendance, and terrible graduation rates. Unfortunately, they are easy to set up and very profitable. Of all the independent study charters, the virtual charters have the worst performance data and are widely seen as fraudulent. About one-third of the valley’s charters are independent study and half of those are virtual.”

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

NYC Charter CEOS Get Huge Paychecks

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
11

The New York Post reported on the really huge payouts that charter CEOs receive in NYC.

Eva Moskowitz received total compensation of $782,175 in 2016. It is surely larger by now.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/14/charter-school-ceos-get-massive-paychecks-thanks-to-private-donors/

“Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the 46-school Success Academy network, received a pay package totaling $782,175 in 2016.

“The nonprofit network paid Moskowitz $195,000 in base compensation and she received another $255,000 in salary plus a $300,000 bonus from the affiliated Success Foundation.

“The foundation was set up in 2012 with a mission to support the Success Academy schools. It has taken in $1 million in donations in the last two years – with the cash coming each year, all from a single undisclosed donor.

“A Success Academy spokeswoman said the foundation’s sole function was “supplementing the compensation of the CEO.”

“The city’s 227 charter schools are privately run, but get public money for each student and also raise private donations. Nearly half belong to nonprofit management organizations like the Success Academy network, which get a mix of government grants, private donations and fees from the schools they oversee.

“Geoffrey Canada, who stepped down as CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone in 2014, received a whopping $1 million bonus the following year when he began serving as president of the nonprofit organization which operates two charter schools and a variety of other programs.

“Anne Williams-Isom, who replaced Canada as CEO, received total compensation of $734,299 in 2016, including a base salary of $278,793 and a $212,955 bonus, along with deferred compensation of $234,514, according to the organization’s tax filing.

“A Harlem Children’s Zone spokesman said Canada’s bonus was cash that accumulated in a deferred compensation plan designed to “help retain its most senior staff.” He said the compensation and Williams-Isom’s pay came from private funds.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Funding

Stuart Egan: Who Is Behind the Assault on Public Education in North Carolina?

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
4

NBCT High School Teacher Stuart Egan writes here that public school enrollment in North Carolina has dropped to 81%,just as the Tea Party Republicans hoped. As public schools are starved of resources, growing numbers switch to religious schools, charter schools, virtual charters and Home schools.

Who has made this happen, in addition to the Tea Party?

“Consider the following national entities:

*Teach For America
*Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
*Walton Family Foundation
*Eli Broad Foundation
*KIPP Charter Schools
*Democrats For Educational Reform
*Educational Reform Now
*StudentsFirst
*America Succeeds
*50CAN
*American Legislative Exchange Council
*National Heritage Academies
*Charter School USA
*Team CFA
*American Federation for Children

“They are all at play in North Carolina, totally enabled by the powers-that-be in the NC General Assembly and their supportive organizations.”

Think of it: 81% of the students in the state attend public schools, but they don’t matter!

To make matters worse, all the alternatives are worse than a well-funded public school.

North Carolina’s education is slipping into a deep hole. It is funding failure.

Betsy DeVos can add another notch to her belt unless the citizens rise up to save their schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Funding, North Carolina, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Attention, David Leonhardt: To Learn the Real Story about Reform in New Orleans, Interview BOTH Sides

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
33

David Leonhardt writes for the New York Times. In today’s newspaper, he writes about the miraculous results of the charter takeover of New Orleans. Leonhardt bought every phony claim made by the charter industry because he did not interview any critics. This is not good journalism.

He did not interview Mercedes Schneider, the Louisiana researcher-teacher who has written many times about New Orleans and who debunked the New Orleans Miracle here. In addition to teaching high school students in English, Schneider has a doctorate in statistics and research methodology. If Leonhardt had interviewed her, she would have explained that the average ACT scores for charter schools in New Orleans are low and stagnant.

He did not interview Professor Andrea Gabor, the Bloomberg Professor of Business Journalism at Baruch College, who debunked the New Orleans miracle in her brilliant new book “After the Education Wars.” If he didn’t have time to read her book, he could have prepared for his trip to New Orleans by reading her article in “The New York Times” about the myth of the New Orleans “makeover.”

He did not interview Professor Kristen Buras of Georgia State University, who debunked the New Orleans Miracle in her book, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance. Her latest article, written with veteran New Orleans Educator Raynard Sanders, is here. Its title: “History Rewritten: Masking the Failure of the Recovery School District.”

In a report published by the Council on Foreign Relations in 2012 (in which she dissented about charter school “miracles”), Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University called New Orleans “the lowest-performing district in one of the nation’s lowest-performing states.”

He did not interview the many parents who have complained about the fact that 40% of the charter schools are rated D or F, and that these failing charters are more than 90% black.

He did interview the people who have made a career selling the New Orleans Miracle. He fell for every boast they made.

Did anyone tell him that Louisiana is one of the lowest scoring states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (“The Nation’s Report Card”), and that its scores declined significantly from 2015-2017? New Orleans is the largest school district in the state. If its results are as amazing as Leonhardt thinks, why did the state drop to 48th in the nation in 8th grade reading and 50th in 8th grade math on NAEP? Maybe he can explain this in another column.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Hoax, New Orleans

Philadelphia: Charters Ask School Board to Lower Standards for Them

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
8

Lisa Haver and Deborah Grill, leaders of the activist group Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools, wrote a commentary calling out the school board for its deference to charters, which are now asking to be held to lowered standards.

Forget about transparency or accountability if you are in the charter industry. Even the school board asks permission from the charters to regulate them and holds closed-door meetings to negotiate what they are willing to do.

They begin:

Philadelphia charter school operators and advocates have long maintained that if they were freed from the bureaucracy and regulations imposed on public schools, charters would be able to quickly and consistently raise student achievement. The School Reform Commission bought into that argument, approving new charters in almost every year of its 17-year reign.

The SRC also turned over control of more than 20 neighborhood schools to charter operators through its Renaissance initiative, whose provisions include “stringent academic requirements” that would be used “as a basis for a decision to renew, not renew or revoke a Renaissance school at the end of its [five-year] term.”

But when the data show many of those schools failing to achieve anything close to the “dramatic gains” promised, the SRC did not hold those charters accountable.

Recently, charter operators have actually lobbied the District to lower the standards by which their schools are evaluated. A June 11 Philadelphia Public School Notebook/WHYY story, “Philadelphia School District nearing new accountability rules for charters,” revealed that secret negotiations had taken place between District and charter officials about changes in the rating system, which “was developed with substantial input from the charter operators themselves.” This is not the first time charter operators and District officials have met in secret: They conducted closed-door meetings from fall 2016 through spring 2017 to formulate public policy about charters.

Belmont Charter CEO Jennifer Faustman argued that it’s not fair to compare charters who took over poor-performing District schools, saying, “You’re basically being challenged to exceed the District.”

But hasn’t that been the justification for creating and expanding charters — that they would always do better than public schools? Belmont Charter would not sign its 2017 renewal agreement, citing unfairness of conditions, even though Belmont failed to meet standards in all three categories—academic, financial, and organizational.

District officials contend that the new rubric is “fair” to charter operators, but do not explain how it is fair to the students or their parents. Theoretically, a charter school could earn a 45 percent academic grade even with near-zero proficiency rates. That is, a charter could be renewed as long as it showed improved attendance and growth — if not actual academic achievement. Incredibly, the charter coalition finds that expectation too high. They are holding out for a 40 percent passing grade.

Then-SRC Chair Estelle Richman told reporters that the charter “performance framework” has undergone “more than 60 negotiated changes” in the last year and that the “charter agreements incorporate a revised performance framework which provides charter schools with transparent and predictable accountability and ensures charter schools are quality options for students and families.”

Transparency, apparently, should be extended to charter operators but not to the public. If charters are truly public schools, as charter operators contend, then all policy discussions, including changes in the rating system, must be open to the public. Nor did Richman explain why the SRC felt the need to consult those being regulated on how they wished to be regulated.

Last month, in one of its final actions, the SRC approved 10 charter renewals. Four others, including two Mastery charters, were not on the agenda, reportedly because they rejected conditions suggested by the District.

Who is in charge? Why no accountability? Why are standards higher for public schools than for charters? What about all those promises?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Philadelphia

Indiana: The Damage Done to Public Schools by Privatization

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2018 //
11

Darcie Cimarusti writes in Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet about the calculated devastation done to Indiana’s once-great public schools by privatizers, chief among them Mike Pence, former governor Mitch Daniels, David Harris of the Mind Trust, and Stand for Children (which long ago abandoned its credentials as a progressive organization).

Darcie is a school board member in New Jersey, an education blogger, parent, and part-time staff at the Network for Public Education, where her work has been invaluable.

The Indianapolis story is especially sad, because the privatization movement was bipartisan. Democrats joined in the plunder with Republicans. Please bear in mind that David Harris of Mind Trust claims to be a Democrat, even though he has paved the way for privatization and continues to do so, and Bart Peterson was the Democratic mayor of Indianapolis. Both of them might just as well be on the staff of Betsy DeVos.

Here is an excerpt from this excellent post:

In 2001, charter school legislation was passed in Indiana, and thanks to [David] Harris’s lobbying, [Bart] Peterson was made the first mayor in the nation with the authority to authorize charters. Harris was named the state’s charter schools chief, reviewing applications and making recommendations to Mayor Peterson. By 2002, the state’s first three charter schools opened.

While still employed by the city of Indianapolis, Harris came up with a plan to “create a venture capital fund to greenlight new school-reform nonprofits,” and in 2006, the Mind Trust was born. The Indianapolis Star editorial board praised Harris’s plan, writing, “The Mind Trust has done this city a tremendous favor with today’s release of its dramatic plan to overhaul Indianapolis Public Schools.”

With millions of dollars from local foundations, specifically the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation and the Lilly Endowment, the Mind Trust enticed national reform entities to Indianapolis, including Teach For America, the New Teacher Project and Stand for Children.

With the arrival of Oregon-based Stand For Children, Indianapolis school board elections started to take on a decidedly different tenor. Until 2010, a few thousand dollars was all that was needed to win a seat. That all changed when Stand For Children, an education reform 501(c)(4), started pouring tens of thousands of dollars into the 2012 elections. Stand’s tax return that year reported that the election of three Indianapolis school board members was a top accomplishment for the organization.

In 2013, reform-minded Superintendent Lewis Ferebee was appointed, and Stand for Children endorsed and financially supported additional candidates in 2014 and 2016, ensuring a pro-reform board majority to support Ferebee and the Mind Trust’s agenda.

Stand for Children also spent $473,172 lobbying Indiana lawmakers on Public Law 1321, which was passed in 2014. Public Law 1321 was based on a 2013 model policy drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Koch-funded member organization of corporate lobbyists and conservative state legislators who craft “model legislation” on issues important to them and then help shepherd it through legislatures. Public Law 1321 allows Indianapolis and other districts across the state to create Innovation Network Schools — schools that are overseen by the school district but managed by private operators. These include privately operated charter schools that gain instant access to existing public buildings and resources.

IPS opened the first Innovation Network school in 2015. Fast-forward to 2018, and the district website lists 20 Innovation Schools in total. The Mind Trust has “incubated” and helped IPS open many of those Innovation Schools, including Daniels’s Purdue Polytechnic High School, with seven more schools in the pipeline.

While the Mind Trust and Stand for Children would have Indianapolis residents believe these reforms are community-driven, in essence, the influence they wield over IPS and the school board is not dissimilar to what happens when a state takes over a school district. The Mind Trust and its web of connections in the statehouse, the mayor’s office, the Chamber of Commerce and countless other high-level organizations, institutions and foundations, both around the city and nationally, determine much of what happens in IPS.

But the longer the Mind Trust operates in the city, the clearer it becomes that these forces are focused on turning IPS schools over to private operators, and often the operators selected by the Mind Trust fail to demonstrate levels of student success higher than the schools they are tapped to replace.

For example, the Mind Trust recruited Matchbook Learning and named it a 2017 Innovation School Fellow, awarding founder Sajan George $400,000 to develop a turnaround school plan for IPS.

George, a favorite son of the national reform crowd, also received start-up funds from The NewSchools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation Next Generation Learning Challenges. He was a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the American Federation for Children (AFC), the school choice juggernaut founded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, when AFC’s conference was held in Indianapolis last year.

Matchbook Learning calls itself a “national nonprofit charter school turnaround management organization,” but in 2017 it operated only two schools — Merit Prep in Newark, New Jersey and Michigan Technical Academy in Detroit, Michigan. Both of Matchbook’s schools were hybrid charters, where students learn in a brick-and-mortar building but receive the majority of their instruction virtually. Both were closed by the end of the 2016-17 school year for lack of growth and poor performance.

Hybrids such as Matchbook have performed no better in the state of Indiana. An Indiana State Board of Education evaluation of performance data from the 2016 and 2017 school years concluded that “students in virtual and hybrid charter schools do not perform as well as those in brick-and-mortar charter schools.” In 2017 there were five hybrid charters in the state, and according to the state’s own grading system, two hybrid schools received D’s, and the other 3 received F’s.

Matchbook Learning, thanks to the support of the Mind Trust, was granted a charter by the Indianapolis Charter School Board, and selected by the IPS board to “restart” Wendell Phillips School 63.

At School 63, 85 percent of students were black or Hispanic, and 76 percent of students qualified for the federal free-lunch program for children from low-income families. The school was identified as “underperforming” after five years of F’s using the same grading system that gave hybrid charter schools such as Matchbook D and F grades as well.

Despite Matchbook’s history of failure in two different states, and the abysmal performance of hybrid charters across Indiana, only one board member voted against Matchbook’s takeover of School 63 — Elizabeth Gore. Gore, elected to the board in 2016, is the only currently seated board member elected without the financial support of Stand for Children.

“I refuse to turn over the school to a company that obviously has problems to an academic program that I feel has no accountability, a record or sustainability for improving children’s academic growth,” Gore said.

The 2018 election looks like it is shaping up to potentially derail the vision of Indianapolis as a national model for the reform movement. With three of seven seats up for election, and Elizabeth Gore demonstrating she’s not afraid to vote against the Stand for Children-beholden board majority, the balance of power on the board could easily shift.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis, Privatization, Stand for Children

Hawaii: Charter School Will Close Amid Charges of Financial Mismanagement

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2018 //
3

In Hawaii, the state revoked the charter of a school on the Big Island, alleging financial mismanagement and enrollment errors.

Charters open, charters close. The kids are out of luck.

The Hawaii State Public Charter School Commission voted unanimously Monday to revoke the charter of a school on the Big Island after finding 22 contract violations that included allegations of financial mismanagement and enrollment irregularities.

Ka’u Learning Academy is only the second charter school in the state to have its charter revoked. It opened its doors in 2015 in the rural area of Naalehu on Big Island, serving grades 3 to 7. It had a projected 93 students enrolled for the 2018-19 school year….

The revocation of KLA’s charter comes several months after the commission sent the Big Island school a notice of prospect of revocation outlining alleged violations.

Those violations included use of school funds and debit cards for employees’ personal expenses; irregular accounting; failure to comply with collective bargaining agreements; enrollment of students outside designated grade levels that resulted in overpayment of funds to the school; a failure to properly maintain student records; and failure to conduct criminal history background checks.

Additionally, KLA came under investigation by the Hawaii Department of Education for possible testing fraud, including excluding low-performing students from participating in state assessments and using unauthorized personnel to administer those tests. As a result, the school’s 2017 test scores “cannot be considered valid or trustworthy or relied upon and will be invalidated,” the commission outlined in a report.

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

Michigan: Online Charter School Closes Amid Charges of Inflating Enrollment

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
6

The Paris Academy, an online charter school in Saginaw, Michigan, announced it was closing as the Michigan State Police launched an investigation about padded enrollments. The school allegedly was paid for students who were not attending.

Curiously the school was supposedly the top-performing charter school in the state only last September.

A brand new online school in Mid-Michigan is outperforming hundreds of other schools across the state.

“It was a good achievement for everyone all the way around,” said Nancy Paris, the founder of the Paris Academy.

The academy has the 18th highest SAT score statewide. Paris said it is a huge feat for a cyber school in its first year of online learning.

“We were really excited you know to see that we made the top 20 and that we were the number one charter school in the state, so it was like you know hard work paid off,” said Paris.

Thirty-two students took the SAT, averaging 1,174 out of a possible 1,600.

The test measures college readiness among 11th graders. Josiah Klingenberg feels fully prepared to take it this year.

“It feels good to have the opportunity to go to a school being the number one charter school,” Klingenberg said.

The Paris Academy is the only charter school to make the top 20.

But it closed on June 29, and its authorizer dissolved the charter.

Is there an investigative reporter out there who can explain this puzzle?

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

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

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2018 //
2

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
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