Archives for category: Portfolio District
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Texas: A Power Grab to Squeeze the Public Out of Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2019 //
16

Parent activist Lynn Davenport posted this warning about a “public-private partnership” that leaves out the public. Corporate interests are plotting to privatize public schools while hiding behind the facade of the “portfolio model,” a term used to deceive the public of Grand Theft Public Schools.

Davenport writes:

The new oil in Midland is student data. The Midland Collective Impact initiative under Educate Texas was launched in October 2015. I’ve written extensively on what “collective impact” really means and how there’s no “public” in public-private partnerships. Although Educate Texas concluded its work with the initiative in April 2017, Educate Midland continues with the collective impact framework which is one giant data grab. Key Midland funders include the Abell-Hanger Foundation, Scharbauer Foundation and Henry Foundation. Scharbauer Foundation wrote a letter to the TEA endorsing the Transformation Zone grant and Abell-Hanger Foundation piloted an outcome measurement system.

What data did Educate Midland and MISD give to them? Do parents have to consent to the data being collected for use by foundations? As a charter operator governing partner does the Educate Midland board have access to academic and behavior data of children to be used for “educational research.”

The “portofolio model” allows appointed boards to govern public schools with taxpayer funds. Article VII of the Texas Constitution makes provision for public free education. If we replace elected trustees with appointed boards, that is taxation without representation. Once our voice is removed, we will likely never get it back.

To read more about the scandalous effort to privatize the public schools in Midland, read Lynn Davenport’s additional report here. 

 

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Portfolio District, Privatization, Texas

Jane Nylund: Oakland Is in the Sights of the “Destroy Public Education” Crowd, Who Control the Board

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2019 //
7

Jane Nylund, parent activist in Oakland, wrote the following warning after reading about the ouster of the Disrupters in Denver. Parents and activists and concerned citizens must organize and oust the agents of Disruption:

 

Oakland also must flip 4 board seats next year. The Walton-bought board has recently closed two schools, Roots and Kaiser Elementary, and there is talk of accelerating the “Blueprint process”, which is basically a plan to close and consolidate schools. Oakland’s portfolio model, which was only supposed to close “low performing” schools (nearly all of which were privatized into charters), has now morphed into the Citywide plan, in which no school is safe from the threat of closure. Kaiser was an exemplary model for a popular, well-supported, diverse neighborhood public school that attracted families both within and outside its boundaries. It also supported a significant number of LGBT families. It’s enrollment had been steady for years. Its closure (and planned consolidation with Sankofa, a struggling elementary school several miles away with a freeway in between) means that the beautiful piece of property where Kaiser is located (with SF bay views) will either be sold or handed over to a charter. Kaiser’s closure was a sacrifice, a political pawn in the school closure game, to show that the school board can be “bold” and not just close schools in high-needs neighborhoods. Look at us, we can close anything, and we will! This is the not-so-new normal for OUSD.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Denver, Disruption, Education Industry, Oakland, Portfolio District, Privatization, Shame

Houston: The Double Standard That Favors Charters

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2019 //
6

W. J. Gumbert left the following comment about the state takeover of Houston, based on the low test scores of one high school. For the uninitiated, Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hate public schools. John Arnold is a billionaire who made his money as an energy trader at Enron and now campaigns against public sector pensions and in favor of charter schools.

Gumbert writes:

Let’s remember that charters close their low performing campuses enrolling economically disadvantaged students to circumvent accountability. Wheatley HS is 93.8% economically disadvantaged, 78.9% “at-risk”, 20.5% special education and student mobility is 28.5%. Wheatley would be evaluated under the “alternative academic accountability standards if it was operated by a charter. Regardless, TEA assigned HISD an academic accountability rating of 88.

At the same time as HISD’s takeover, TEA has approved the following charters, operated by appointed boards, to expand despite operating campuses with a lower rating than Wheatley HS:

KIPP Texas – 4 campuses rated 46-54
International Leadership of Texas – 3 campuses rated 45-58
Harmony Science Academy (Waco) – 51
Jubilee Academies – 3 campuses rated 50-51
Great Hearts – 56

The takeover of HISD is SOLELY to allow TEA, Abbott, Lt. Dan and crew to implement the largest portfolio of privately operated charters in the nation. It is not a coincidence that John and Laura Arnold reside in Houston, have funded the expansion of the portfolio model and are funding IDEA’s expansion in Houston. It is time for everyone that cares about kids and democracy to take a stand!!!!!

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Hoax, Houston, Portfolio District, Privatization, Texas

Bill Phillis: Beware the Privatizers Running for Local School Board Seats

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2019 //
9

Imagine a brand new nonprofit organization starting with more than $200 million. The usual group of billionaires has funded an organization called the City Fund, whose main purpose seems to be to buy local school board elections. Thus far, they have targeted Atlanta, Indianapolis, Newark, Denver, San Antonio, St. Louis, and Nashville, but they may have added or subtracted other sites. The City Fund is active in several elections. If they gain control, they will replace public schools with privately managed charter schools. The privatizers are really good at Disruption, not at improving schools or education.

William Phillis warns that the City Fund is active in Ohio, where most charter schools are rated D or F, lower-performing than even the urban districts they seek to dominate.
Charter zealots are running for board of education seats throughout the nation: Ohio is vulnerable
The warning issued by the Cincinnati Education Justice Coalition should attract the attention of all traditional public school advocates.
The charter industry is immersed in cash from the federal government, philanthropists, billionaire charter-friendly folks and, of course, funds siphoned from school districts. The charter establishment uses a toolkit full of strategies to expand its footprint in American education such as:
·        State takeover tactics
·        Portfolio school districts
·        Teach for America alliances
·        Political campaign contributions that overflow politicians’ coffers
Packing school boards with charter activists is a winner-take-all tactic they also use.
Ohio is not immune from any of the charter-promoting tactics. In fact, Ohio’s loosey-goosey regulations for the charter industry attract entrepreneurial opportunists and a variety of non-educators to the charter world.
Some school districts have already been taken over by charter-addicted board members who are bent on privatizing the public common school.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ohio, Portfolio District, Privatization

Lynn Davenport: Look Out, Texas, Here Comes Kitamba Consultants to Privatize Your Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
April 17, 2019 //
12

Lynn Davenport is a parent activist in Texas. She wrote the following post to alert her fellow Texans about the invasion of Kitamba Consultants, who bring with them the so-called “portfolio model” of privatization.

 

She writes:

The LA teacher strike thwarted a concealed plot to use Kitamba consultants to reinvent LAUSD with a portfolio model of privatization. Kitamba has a contract with TEA right now for these districts, including RISD:

tea1

I just got a 228 page public information request from the Texas Education Agency and Region 13 service center in Austin for their MOU with Kitamba.

Texas is spending big bucks on the same Kitamba consultants exposed in the LAUSD strikes against philanthropist/private equity reformer and Supt Austin Beutner:

https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/04/09/los-angeles-consultants-recommendations-reimagine-kitamba-consultants/
“Created by the consulting firm Kitamba, the documents lay out an aggressive timeline for assigning schools to 32 support networks, giving principals more power, and cutting the central office by fall 2019.

The January strike appears to have derailed the plans. A spokesperson for Los Angeles Unified declined to comment.

During the January strike, United Teachers of Los Angeles criticized what it described as the district’s portfolio plan and its partnership with Kitamba. (A spokesperson at the time said Los Angeles Unified is not pursuing a portfolio approach.) Kitamba won a $765,000 contract for its work, paid by a slate of outside donors, including the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.

Details of Kitamba’s contract and scope of work were reported in February by the Los Angeles Times after school board member Scott Schmerelson criticized Beutner for not disclosing contracts with consultants, including Kitamba, or the work they had done for the district.”

Rajeev Bajaj is a Broadie:

tea2

I researched all of this during my System of Great Schools LinkedIn article in December, I just didn’t see the magnitude of the Kitamba contract at the time:

tea3

Please read my SGS Takeover article again:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/privatization-system-great-schools-takeover-lynn-davenport

tea4

Blogger Bekah McNeel found that, “In 2017 the Laura and John Arnold Foundation gave a two-year $85,000 grant to the TEA through Education Service Center Region XIII “to support the Texas Education Agency’s System of Great Schools Network, a program for districts interested in the portfolio model of school governance.”
http://bekahmcneel.com/in-becoming-a-system-of-great-schools-saisd-is-fighting-for-its-life/

Interesting that Dallas mayoral candidate Lynn McBee’s org was mentioned:

tea5

 

We need to stop this with the help of Texas AFT, parents, and trustees who see the harm of the portfolio model. We also need to loop in the California union to get their advice. I would like to hire Brett Shipp Media to help expose this. If we don’t stop it, our neighborhood schools, teachers, and elected boards will be eliminated in favor of a charter-like model of “autonomy”.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Portfolio District, Privatization, Propaganda, Texas

Tom Ultican: Atlanta School Board Votes for Privatization

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2019 //
8

 

Tom Ultican has been writing about differentcities where the Destroy Public Education Movement has made extraordinary gains. Atlanta has fallen into the clutches of the DPE as a result of Teach for America’s success in electing its alumni to the school board, which hired a superintendent committedto the DPE agenda.

Ultican writes:

“On March 4, the Atlanta Public School (APS) board voted 5 to 3 to begin adopting the “System of Excellent Schools.” That is Atlanta’s euphemistic name for the portfolio district model which systematically ends democratic governance of public schools. The portfolio model was a response to John Chubb’s and Terry Moe’s 1990 book, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, which claimed that poor academic performance was “one of the prices Americans pay for choosing to exercise direct democratic control over their schools.”

“A Rand Corporation researcher named Paul Hill who founded the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) began working out the mechanics of ending democratic control of public education. His solution to ending demon democracy – which is extremely unpopular with many billionaires – was the portfolio model of school governance.

“The portfolio model of school governance directs closing schools that score in the bottom 5% on standardized testing and reopening them as charter schools or Innovation schools. In either case, the local community loses their right to hold elected leaders accountable, because the schools are removed from the school board’s portfolio. It is a plan that guarantees school churn in poor neighborhoods, venerates disruption and dismisses the value of stability and community history.

Atlanta’s Comprador Regime

“Atlanta resident Ed Johnson compared what is happening in APS to a “comprador regime” serving today’s neocolonialists. In the 19th century, a comprador was a native servant doing the bidding of his European masters; the new compradors are doing the bidding of billionaires privatizing public education.

”Chalkbeat reported that Atlanta is one of seven US cities The City Fund has targeted for implementation of the portfolio district governance model. The city fund was founded in 2018 by two billionaires, John Arnold the former Enron executive who did not go to prison and Reed Hastings the founder and CEO of Netflix. Neerav Kingsland, Executive Director of The City Fund, stated, “Along with the Hastings Fund and the Arnold Foundation, we’ve also received funds from the Dell Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Ballmer Group.”

“City Fund has designated RedefinED as their representative in Atlanta. Ed Chang, the Executive Director of RedefinED, is an example of the billionaire created education “reform” leader recruited initially by Teach for America (TFA).

“TFA is the billionaire financed destroy-public-education (DPE) army. TFA teachers are not qualified to be in a classroom. They are new college graduates with no legitimate teacher training nor any academic study of education theory. Originally, TFA was proposed as an emergency corps of teachers for states like West Virginia who were having trouble attracting qualified professional educators. Then billionaires started financing TFA. They pushed through laws defining TFA teachers as “highly qualified” and purchased spurious research claiming TFA teachers were effective. If your child is in a TFA teacher’s classroom, they are being cheated out of a professionally delivered education. However, TFA provides the DPE billionaires a group of young ambitious people who suffer from group think bordering on cult like indoctrination.

“Chang is originally from Chicago where he trained to be a physical therapist. He came south as a TFA seventh grade science teacher. Chang helped found an Atlanta charter school and through that experience received a Building Excellent Schools (BES) fellowship. BES claims to train “high-capacity individuals to take on the demanding and urgent work of leading high-achieving, college preparatory urban charter schools.”

“After his subsequent charter school proposal was rejected, Chang started doing strategy work for the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). This led him to a yearlong Fisher Fellowship training to start and run a KIPP charter school. In 2009, he opened KIPP STRIVE Academy in Atlanta.

“While complicit in stealing neighborhood public schools from Atlanta’s poorest communities, Chang says with a straight face, “Education is the civil rights movement of today.”

“Chang now has more than a decade working in billionaire financed DPE organizations. He started in TFA, had two billionaire supported “fellowships” and now has millions of dollars to use as the Executive Director of RedefinED. It is quite common for TFA alums like Chang to end up on the boards of multiple education “reform” organizations.

“Under Chang’s direction, RedefinED has provided monetary support for both the fake teacher program, TFA, and the fake graduate school, Relay. In addition, they have given funds to the Georgia Charter School Association, Purpose Built Schools, Kindezi School, KIPP and Resurgence Hall.”

Keep reading to learn the scope of the civic disaster in Atlanta, where DPE is rapidly applying its failed ideas and dismantling public education.

The sad part of DPE is that it proclaims lofty goals but eventually has to confront its failures, which are predictable.

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

Edward Johnson: Does the Atlanta School Board Know Who Dr. Alonzo A. Crim Was?

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2019 //
6

 

Ed Johnson fights day after day to try to budge the Atlanta School Board, which is following the disastrous path of corporate reform, which has failed everywhere. The Atlanta School Board is controlled by individuals who formerly were part of Teach for America, and it is their dream to turn Atlanta in a portfolio district with many privately managed schools.

He writes:

 

Does pursuing “Excellent Schools” make the APSL fit to even say the name Alonzo A. Crim?

 

“The anticipated closure of Crim High School creates a need to formally recognize the legacy of Dr. Alonzo A. Crim, a former Superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools and the first African-American to lead the school district in that role. The Board appointed an ad hoc committee to make a recommendation for honoring Dr. Crim. … [T]he ad hoc committee is recommending that the Atlanta Public Schools central office be named ‘The Alonzo A. Crim Center for Learning and Leadership.’”

 

Yes, it is proper and fitting for the Atlanta Public Schools (APS) central office to carry the name “Alonzo A. Crim.”  That need never be the question.

 

However, with is not proper and fitting is the obviously limited and racialist reason the APSL (Atlanta Board of Education members and Superintendent) state for formally recognizing Dr. Crim’s legacy.

 

Stating only that Dr. Crim was “the first African-American to lead” APS is insignificant in the face of the fact that Dr. Crim was, first and foremost, an “education man,” or educationist, unlike any one of them.

 

You see, Dr. Crim understood that people such as the APSL “who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get school reform wrong.”  Dr. Crim understood “such people opt for a demand model of learning rather than a support model of learning.”

 

Dr. Crim understood that people such as the APSL “who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get improvement wrong.”  Dr. Crim understood “such people opt for rigor and maximum difficulty rather than optimum difficulty.  Harder is better, they believe.”

 

Dr. Crim understood that people such as the APSL “who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get teaching and learning wrong.”  Dr. Crim understood “such people opt to focus on uniform and specific skills rather than understanding.”

 

Dr. Crim understood that people such as the APSL “who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get evaluation wrong.”  Dr. Crim understood “such people opt for critical reliance on standardized test results and all manner of measures rather than helping kids become better thinkers and learners.”

 

And Dr. Crim understood that people such as the APSL “who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such utterly misunderstand motivation.”  Dr. Crim understood “such people opt to force kids to overly focus on how well they are doing rather than on what they are doing.”  Dr. Crim understood “such people believe excellence means being top-ranked.”

 

How do I know Dr. Crim understood this about people such as the APSL?

 

Because I asked him, as did the AJC, at my invitation.

 

You see, back on 23 March 2000, Dr. Crim listened to Social Psychologist and former teacher Alfie Kohn lecture on and argue these understandings at Georgia State University.

 

At the end of Dr. Kohn’s lecture, I approached Dr. Crim, introduced myself as President of the Atlanta Area Deming Study Group, and asked his opinion of the understandings Dr. Kohn made.  To my delight, Dr. Crim replied: “Alfie is right on.  He gets it!”

 

With those words, Dr. Crim renewed my hope for the future of public education, in general, and Atlanta Public Schools, in particular.  Still, I had one concern: has Dr. Crim the moral and ethical courage to publicly lend his voice to the matter?

 

To put my concern to rest, I contacted the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reporter who covered Dr. Kohn’s lecture with the idea to interview Dr. Crim.

 

The AJC reporter subsequently interviewed Dr. Crim, and reported: “‘I think [Kohn is] right on the money,’ said one member of the audience, former Atlanta school Superintendent Alonzo Crim, now a GSU education professor.  ‘Just as Kohn said, we’re trying to go back to the ’20s and make our schools factories.’”  (“Uphill battle: Many teachers think using standardized tests to measure specific objectives will change education for the worse,” AJC, 16 April 2000.)

 

Obviously, the APSL do not “get it!”

 

For if they did “get it,” they would know their chasing after implementing The City Fund’s so-called portfolio of schools idea that is utterly and totally void of educational value and calling what they do “Creating a System of Excellent Schools” flies in the face of Dr. Crim’s legacy.

 

Words simply refuse to come for describing just how unfit the APSL are to even speak Dr. Crim’s name, let alone THEY put his name on anything.

 

The APSL putting the name Alonzo A. Crim on Atlanta Public Schools central office facility is on the order of David Duke saying he “has respect for” Spike Lee.  I mean, gosh damn!

 

Compounding the matter are members of what The Black Agenda Report say is the Black Mis-Leadership Class.  Without question, a chief among the Black Mis-Leadership Class members is Dr. Michael L. Lomax, President and CEO of United Negro College Fund (UNCF).

 

Lomax was a cheerleader for school reformer Beverly Hall, and we know how godawful that turned out.  Lomax was a cheerleader for school reformer Michelle Rhee, and we know how disastrously “rheeform” turned out.  In short, whether he realizes it or not, will admit it or not, Lomax’s record is one of continuing efforts to destroy the very thing that allowed the UNCF to come to be—you know, that thing called democracy.  His op-ed The Atlanta Voice recently published, entitled “I support APS’s upcoming vote on school-rating system,” proves the point, yet again.

 

Still, the mindboggling question is, how does such educated ignorance come to be?

 

Unlike Dr. Crim and the renewed hope he wrought for the future of Atlanta Public Schools, the currently serving Atlanta Board of Education and Superintendent, in partnership with Michael Lomax and other Black Mis-Leadership Class members, have utterly destroyed that hope.

 

They are nothing on the order of being the education man Dr. Crim was.

 

And, in their arrogance, they refuse to learn to know it.  Why?

 

“[Dr. W. Edwards] Deming was a visionary, whose belief in continual improvement led to a set of transformational theories and teachings that changed the way we think about quality, management, and leadership. He believed in a world where there is joy in learning and joy in work—where ‘everyone will win.’”

 

Ed Johnson

Advocate for Quality in Public Education

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

 

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

Atlanta: A Public Protest Against the “Portfolio Model”

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2019 //
17

The Atlanta School Board is controlled by a slate of former Teach for America teachers. They are devoted to privately managed charter schools. They don’t seem to have any ideas about how to improve public schools other than to outsource them. They are determined to impose a portfolio district model that welcomes more charter operators staffed by temps like they once were.

A group of Atlanta citizens, led by Edward Johnson, perennial fighter for incremental improvement, not disruption, has presented a petition to the School Board:

 

An Open Letter to Atlanta Board of Education:
Why the Portfolio Privatization Plan for Atlanta is a Bad Idea

 

We, the undersigned, request that members of the Atlanta Board of Education vote against any resolution or resolutions brought before the Board on March 4, 2019, or at any other time, that would establish any aspects of the would-be Excellent Schools Framework in the Atlanta Public Schools district.
 
The Excellent Schools Framework, which is based on the so-called Portfolio of Schools plan, is another corporate privatization effort intended to, in effect, turn over our public schools to private companies and establish charter schools that use public money for what are essentially private schools.  Our public schools are not stocks and bonds in an investment portfolio to be bought, sold, and speculated. Our public schools are where children ought to be nurtured, protected, and educated.
 
We know that, in addition to privatization, school closures and attacks on teachers will accompany any implementation of the Portfolio of Schools plan, which the Atlanta Board of Education’s would-be Excellent Schools Framework is based on.  No research exists that indicates the so-called Portfolio of Schools plan actually leads to improving learning for students and teaching for teachers.
 
We also know The City Fund is promoting the so-called Portfolio of Schools plan, with $200 million raised to use to influence targeted urban public school districts to adopt, adapt, and implement the plan.  The City Fund’s local designated entity, RedefinED, has used its money to organize astroturf support for this plan.
 
This proposal is especially disturbing, coming at the time when the Board and Superintendent have already set hundreds of billions of dollars to go to billionaire social impact investors and real estate developers in “The Gulch” deal, downtown.
 
We urge you, the Atlanta Board of Education, to forgo your Excellent Schools Framework and, instead, adopt evidence-based models, such as the Community Schools model, that actually work for children.
 
Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Portfolio District, Privatization

Help NPE-Action Keep Score on the 2020 Presidential Candidates

By dianeravitch
February 24, 2019 //
16

The Network for Public Education Action fund is developing a web-based score card for the 2020 presidential candidates.

We need YOUR help!

We want to keep score on where the candidates stand on issues that matter to students, teachers, parents, and public schools.

We want to know if they support public schools or if they support privatization.

We will keep the website updated based on the candidates’ public statements on television and at town halls.

We will check their funding reports to see if they are funded by the usual privatization-friendly billionaires and hedge-fund managers.

We urge you to attend their town halls and ask them questions about funding for public schools, about charters and vouchers, about testing, about federal policy requiring (unnecessary) annual testing, and about (unnecessary) federal funding for charter schools.

We need your help to keep our score care up to date once it is up and running.

We will not let education be forgotten in the 2020 race!

https://npeaction.org/npe-action-2020-presidential-candidates-project/

Climate change. Health care. Taxes. These are topics that 2020 Presidential hopefuls are happy to discuss.  But as important as these topics are, we cannot let our public schools be ignored.

That is why we started The NPE Action 2020 Candidates Project.

In cities across this nation, public schools are disappearing. The city of New Orleans is now a system of privately run charter schools. Vouchers and voucher “workarounds” send taxpayer money from public schools to private and religious schools. Religious schools are flipping themselves into charter schools in order to get public funds. The Koch Brothers have promised to target five states in which they will work to make public education disappear.

Private “choice” is trumping public voice. Test scores are the rationale to shut and shutter community schools even though charter school test scores are not better than those of public schools, and studies show that students who leave public schools with vouchers often do worse.

The Network for Public Education Action’s 2020 Candidates Project will make sure that the issue of school privatization is not ignored. We will grade candidates on their positions regarding charter schools, vouchers, and high-stakes testing. We will grade them by how much they take from the billionaires who believe in the privatization of public schools and score each candidate on the company they keep. They can run for office but they can’t hide from the hard questions we will ask about school privatization.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund, Politics, Portfolio District, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Testing

Atlanta: AFT Leader Asks School Board Leader Jason Esteves to Abandon “Portfolio” Model

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2019 //
10

This letter by the head of the Atlanta AFT local was addressed to the chair of the board of Atlanta Public Schools, who is an alumnus of Teach for America. Four members of the school board are TFA alumni, presumably trained by TFA’s Leadership for Educational Equity and primed to support charter schools, not public schools. What is the connection between TFA and privatization? Why does TFA favor charter schools over public schools? Why would a locally elected school board want to relinquish its responsibilities to corporate charter chains controlled by out of state entities?

February 18, 2019
 
Jason F. Esteves, Board Chair
Atlanta Board of Education
130 Trinity Ave., SW
Atlanta, GA 30303
 
Dear Board Chair Esteves:
 

You are now privileged to hold the position of Treasurer of the Georgia Democratic Party. That party has been pro-public education. Yet you are supporting the “Portfolio of Schools” model for Atlanta Public Schools.  This model is called “Innovative Schools” in Denver. And per your leadership, it is called “Excellent Schools” in Atlanta. “Excellent Schools” is not pro-public education. As you may or may not know, seven cities are being courted in order to turn their schools over to this model. 
In the interest of time and since I’ve not heard back from you, we are asking you once again to meet with some concerned Atlanta public school stakeholders and you are requested to walk away from the Portfolio of Schools plan.   We understand that you, one other board member, and the superintendent chose the facilitator to sell the Portfolio of Schools model to the board.

You, Eshe Collins, Matt Westmoreland, and Courtney English are TFA products.

  • What is the connection between TFA and KIPP?
 
In short, the direction of the board has amounted to preying on citizens and selling the district short. Black elected leadership has closed schools and brought in partnerships.
  • Does the board decide the partnerships or does the superintendent decide?
 
This superintendent served without goals or an evaluation for years.
  • Did the superintendent do her own evaluation, scorecard, and narrative?
  • How close to contract renewal did the board receive that information from the superintendent?
 
The superintendent’s contract is over in 2020. Unlike the previous process where Ann Cramer conducted various activities, we also want to discuss, vet and publish a process for a superintendent search that should be real and open. Unlike the last superintendent search, where we the union had reports from Austin, Texas, and St. Paul, Minnesota, it is time that Atlanta, all of Atlanta, know who is doing what. Atlanta taxpayers are being exploited. It is insane that you are awarding 25 to 40-year contracts to companies that are not about real evidence-based solutions for our children. The superintendent’s School Turnaround Strategy was a failure. The Strategic Plan was a failure. “Excellent Schools” is a private takeover with failure built in. You are closing schools, giving large charter companies contracts at the taxpayer’s expense and restructuring communities. Some members on the board are disengaged in the community, keeping big funding sources pleased in order to stay in the political arena.
  • Are you planning on running for City Council?
 
You ran for the state house and now you are on the Board of Education. You are Afro-Latino.
  • Are you aware of the Austin Latino Chamber of Commerce Op-Ed per the now Atlanta Superintendent?
 
We applaud you for forming relationships with the Latino Business Community, but per the Latinos and Hispanics in APS, we have not seen a comprehensive engagement plan with them.
 
Please walk away from the Portfolio of Schools plan and paradigm and, when and if you are ready, we are ready to help with evidence-based solutions that work in public schools. Please review the NCSL, OECD and PISA reports. The GFT asked former Senator Vincent Fort to sponsor the Community Schools Bill. It passed the Senate 50 to 1 a few years back. Senator Emmanuel Jones is sponsoring it during this session. By the way, when you close schools you destroy communities and gentrify.  Controlled agendas hurt people at-large. Please help champion the Community Schools Bill as the Chair of the Democratic Party supports it.

Thank you.

 
Sincerely,
 
 
Verdaillia Turner, President, Atlanta Federation of Teachers
VT/ksf
 

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, KIPP Charter Schools, Portfolio District, Privatization, Teach for America
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