Archives for category: Teach for America
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Mercedes Schneider Asks: Who Is Jon Schnur and Why Does It Matter?

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2019 //
6

 

In this post, Mercedes Schneider does her trademark “deep dig” into the career of one Jon Schnur. It turns out that he is the quintessential corporate reform careerist.

If you have ever wondered why some people make tons of money in education without ever teaching, study Schnur’s opportunistic and profitable career.

He did it all while working for Clinton, Gore, and Obama, demonstrating the profitable career one can forge with Big Ideas, all the while helping blur and dissolve partisan lines, helping the Democrats lose their identity as champions of public education.

His first big idea was a program that enabled rank amateurs to become principals, although he had never been one himself. His work aligned with that of his Princeton classmate, Wendy Kopp. Both made money by tearing apart the education profession and opening it to amateurs.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Education Reform, Principals, Teach for America

Mercedes Schneider: The Meteoric Rise of a TFA Alum in Charter World

By dianeravitch
July 27, 2019 //
11

 

Mercedes Schneider posted a review of the meteoric rise of a young alumna of TFA. 

West Virginia Public Radio asked this young woman for her opinion of the new charter law in that state. She sharply criticized West Virginia for letting districts act as authorizers, which goes against charter school gospel that the best laws have multiple authorizers that compete to open multiple charter schools.

I read the interview, saw her picture, and I swear I thought she was 14 years old. Maybe 21, since she was a college graduate.

She is now “director for state advocacy and policy with the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.”

What was her relevant experience?

She worked for Michelle Rhee in D.C. as a “program manager,” whatever that is.

She was education policy director for Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, then executive director of the Alabama Coalition for Public Charter Schools. (Bentley, a very far-right Republican, resigned in 2017 because of a sex scandal.)

How many “public” charter schools are there in Alabama? Two.

Reformworld offers great career opportunities for ambitious young people. You can achieve very little, then be asked to opine on public radio about important state legislation that was designed to harm public schools.

Schneider writes:

Alabama’s charter school law allows for multiple authorizers, as NSFA notes on its “start a school –> process” page:

Groups applying to open a charter school in a district that has registered as an authorizer must first apply to the district. Should the district deny the application, applicants can appeal to the Alabama Public Charter School Commission (APCSC). The decision of the APCSC is final. Groups applying to open in a district that has not registered as an authorizer must apply directly to the APCSC.

So then, why only two charter schools in four years? Isn’t market-based reform about quantifiable results?

Why would WV pro-school-choice legislators seek advice from someone whose AL charter school policy advocacy resulted in a scant two schools in four years?

Why, indeed.

Schultz has an impressive title: director for state advocacy and policy for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

No reason to check for the substance behind it.

Categories Accountability, Alabama, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America

Norm Scott: Experience Counts

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2019 //
10

 

Retired New York City Teacher Norm Scott explains here why experience counts.

He writes:

I’ve been watching D-Day movies and finally saw Saving Private Ryan. In pretty much all war movies we see the big differences between grizzled war veterans and the rookies who are often scared to death. It is so clear how important experience is in warfare. I mean what commander wouldn’t want troops who knew the ropes?

In education we often find just the opposite where newbies are preferred. Low salaries. Non-tenured. They won’t talk back and will often do anything asked by administrators, no matter how stupid. And wise in education combat zones like those grizzled sergeants. Too many principals love newbies who they can manipulate.

Over the past few decades the idea that experience makes a difference for a teacher has been disparaged by the ed deformers. Note the growth of Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows where you get 6 weeks of boot camp and are sent into the world to make guinea pigs of students while you learn the ropes.

I was one of those. In 1967 grad students were losing their deferments and going into a 6 week boot camp for new teachers and teaching for two years was a way out and I took it and became a newbie teacher. You know those war movies where the guy is sweating and wracked with fear – Corporal Upham in Private Ryan is the prototype – a coward afraid of combat. I was Upham my first year of teaching. Facing a class of children and keeping them under control was my greatest fear. They were often off the wall. I was envious of these little ladies in my school who had perfect control. When I finally learned how to control a class it was one of the major achievements of my life. I never would have survived as a teacher if I couldn’t. Well, I could have become an administrator.

My friend Arthur Goldstein, who is an ESL teacher and the union leader at Francis Lewis HS, one of the largest and most overcrowded in the city, for the past 15 years has written a very influential education oriented blog called NYC Educator sharing a lot of insights into the many facets of the process and often mystery of teaching.

I wanted to share an excerpt from his posting on June 12 about the coming end of the school year. Arthur has given his finals but still has to keep the students interested. He gives them a surprise test with questions such as: When was the War of 1812? Where does Chinese food come from? What color is the white board? He wondered about a student who got one of these wrong.

Arthur has many decades of teaching and here he gets to some of the essence of why experience matters for teachers.

[Arthur writes:]

“One of the things Cuomo didn’t consider when pushing the miserable evaluation law is what it’s like to bomb in front of 34 teenagers. This, of course, is because he’s never taught, and he’s never been through what we go through each and every day. I don’t know about you, but I fear that more than I fear some supervisor with an iPad. I remember it happening to me in my first few years. I remember watching other teachers and wondering exactly what they were doing that I was not. Why are their classes calm while mine is off the wall? I’m not sure there’s an easy response to that. I’d say things got just a little better when I started calling houses. And maybe I’ve grown more confident or authoritative over the years. Mostly, I have more experience and more go-to lesson plans. If I see something not working I can usually push it in another direction and try something at least different, if not always better.”

That’s it. Arthur has the experience to see what is not working and has the confidence he can figure things out. Like the great pitcher whose slider is not working but adjusts. Not to compare teaching to baseball. Or combat. Welllll, maybe. One of my old pals and colleagues, Rockaway resident David Bentley used to tell the story of his first year in a tough school in 1967-68 when a class of children was so out of control he walked into the office of the principal, a tough old bird named Sophie Beller (Lagosi was her nickname) and told her he was quitting and would rather go to Vietnam. She sent him home for the day to recover and he ended up becoming one of the great teachers in my school. Ahhhh, that good ole experience does count.

 

Categories Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching

Gary Rubinstein: TFA Is Shocked, Shocked to Hear That It Is Tied to the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2019 //
12

 

Recently ProPublica published a deeply researched investigation of Teach for America’s close ties to the charter industry. As Gary Rubinstein reports in this post, TFA functionaries responded with shock to this clear statement of fact.  

What is amazing is their defensive reaction to easily documented facts.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America

Noliwe Rooks Speaks About School Privatization and Racial Inequity

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2019 //
17

 

Please watch this six-minute presentation by Noliwe Rooks about her book Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education. 

The video was produced by Bob Greenberg as part of his Brainwaves project.

Rooks is the Director of American Studies and Director of African-American Studies at Cornell University.

Her book is a fascinating history that examines the interest of billionaires in the education of communities of color.

Dr. Rooks will be a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Network for Public Education in Philadelphia in March 27-28, 2020.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Racism, Segregation, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein: This Article is Propaganda for TFA and Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2019 //
22

 

Gary Rubinstein writes here about an article he was surprised to read in  Chalkbeat. 

He was surprised because he expects more of Chalkbeat.

The article lauds a young TFA teacher who has just finished her first year.

He writes:

The basic premise is that Angelique Hines a first year TFA teacher placed in a brand new charter school in Tennessee is featured in a series of interviews by Chalkbeat called “How I Teach.”  The premise of the interview series, according to Chalkbeat is “Here, in a feature we call How I Teach, we ask educators who’ve been recognized for their work how they approach their jobs.”  So already there’s an issue of whether Hines is really an educator who has been recognized for her work.  She has been teaching for 9 months in a brand new charter school that has no track record at all.

One thing we do know is that her students can sit with their hands folded in front of them in a very obedient way.

So the article explains its title.  Hines speaks about how a student said he misses his old school because that school was much more fun.  One example of how the old school was more fun, he says, is that in the old school they watched more movies.

Gary writes that the article assumes that the old school was “bad,” but provides no evidence. The article assumes that students can’t learn and have fun at the same time. The article assumes that the first year teacher “has been recognized” for her work as a teacher but who recognized her and for what? How many teachers are recognized as exemplary at the end of their first year in the classroom?

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America, Teaching, Tennessee

St. Louis: Four New Charters, One Charter Closes

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2019 //
5

 

St. Louis will get four new charters, including another KIPP and a private school that turned charter so families would no longer pay tuition. A charter plagued with financial mismanagement and suspicion of inflated enrollment will close.

Kairos Academies is enrolling sixth-graders for its personalized learning-themed middle and high school opening in the Marine Villa neighborhood. It’s the only entirely new school opening in August. Founders Gavin Schiffres and Jack Krewson are Teach For America alumni who taught briefly in north St. Louis County districts. Krewson is the son of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.

St. Louis College Prep closed in May after it wound up in financial trouble mid-year following revelations of possible attendance inflation by its founder and executive director. Lafayette Preparatory Academy, a nearby elementary school, tried to step in and purchase the building to add its own high school. The deal to purchase the building fell through and plans for a high school have been postponed, according to Susan Marino, Lafayette Prep’s executive director.

The Soulard School, which had been a private school in south St. Louis, is converting to a charter school this fall.

Creative destruction continues to roil St.Louis, aided by TFA.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, St. Louis, Teach for America

North Carolina: State Superintendent Ignores Professionals and Chooses Tech Tool to Assess Youngest Children

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2019 //
14

 

Justin Parmenter, NBCT in North Carolina, writes here about the educational malpractice inflicted on the state’s youngest readers by order of State Superintendent Mark Johnson. A TFA alum, Johnson overruled the recommendations of expert professionals in the state and decided to assess and diagnose children’s reading skill with technology instead of a teacher.

As the 2019-20 school year wound down and teachers began their well-earned summer breaks, Superintendent Mark Johnson dropped an unexpected bombshell: North Carolina schools would be scrapping the mClass reading assessment system and replacing it with the computer-based Istation program.

North Carolina schools have used mClass as the diagnostic reading assessment tool in grades K-3 since the Read to Achieve legislative initiative was implemented in 2013.

Johnson’s announcement of the change referred with no apparent irony to “an unprecedented level of external stakeholder engagement and input” which had gone into making the decision.  He neglected to mention that he had completely ignored the recommendations of those stakeholders.

When the Request for Purchase (RFP) for a Read to Achieve diagnostic reading assessment first went out in the fall of 2018, a statewide committee of experts in curriculum and reading instruction was assembled largely under the direction of Dr. Amy Jablonski, then-Division Director of Integrated Academic and Behavior Services at the Department of Public Instruction, to inform the process.

This team included specialists in general education, special education, and English language learner services, school psychologists, representatives of Institutions for Higher Education, dyslexia experts, and school and district leaders. They reviewed the four vendors that were passed through to the team, including mClass and Istation, working extensively through detailed demonstrations with all four products before determining which would best serve the needs of North Carolina’s children.

The committee presented its recommendation to Superintendent Mark Johnson in December of 2018.  They noted that students and teachers needed a tool which could accurately assess risk in all domains of reading.  They noted the crucial importance of having a teacher actually listen to a child read and sound out words. They noted the legislative requirement of an effective dyslexia screener.  And they recommended that schools continue using the mClass diagnostic tool, which they believed best accomplished all of those things.

Six months later, Superintendent Johnson completely disregarded the recommendations of those professional educators in announcing his unilateral selection of the computer-based Istation diagnostic tool.  

Parmenter goes on to explain why this was a terrible decision.

Superintendent Johnson has all the earmarks of TFA. Uninformed, inexperienced, sure of himself.

Here is hoping he gets tossed out of office and replaced by someone who respects professionalism.

 

Categories Accountability, North Carolina, Teach for America, Technology, Computers

ProPublica: How Teach for America Became An Arm of the Charter School Movement

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2019 //
20

 

ProPublica reports on its investigation of the funding and mission of Teach for America, in which it discovered that TFA is an arm of the charter movement, which aims to replace public schools with non-union private charter school.

This is an eye-popping article, an exemplar of investigative reporting.

It begins:

When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.

Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach For America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school. The two-year grantwas directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles.

Here are some things you will see documented in this article.

TFA is one of the richest nonprofits in the nation.

TFA has received huge gifts from the anti-union, anti-public school Walton Family Foundation.

TFA supplies a large supply of teachers for non-union charter schools.

TFA has used its resources to help its alumni attain positions of power, as state and local superintendents and as state and local school board members, where they advocate for charter schools and TFA. In Colorado, a TFA alum Michael Johnston is running for U.S. Senate and has received huge campaign contributions from allies of TFA and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform).

Read the article to understand the nexus of power that ties TFA to the Waltons and the privatization movement.

To understand how deeply connected TFA is to rightwing politics, note that a member of its national board of trustees is former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who promoted the DeVos agenda of charters and vouchers while in office. Haslam is a billionaire.

The two outside members of the board of TFA’s political arm, Leadership for Educational Equity (sic) are billionaires Emma Bloomberg and Arthur Rock.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America

Gary Rubinstein: What Has TFA Learned about Training Teachers in 29 Years?

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2019 //
25

Gary Rubinstein was one of the earliest members of Teach for America.

In this post, he looks at what has and has not changed in those years.

You’d think that after 29 years, TFA training would have improved.  But since they are supposed to be so data-driven, they should look at the most telling statistic about their quality of training.  The quit rate for TFA has not changed from 29 years ago until this day, approximately 15% don’t complete their two-year commitment, or roughly 1 out of 7 corps members…

We rarely get to see or hear from actual TFA corps members.  I don’t know if they now have to sign some kind of non-disclosure agreement but I find it strange that this group of ‘leaders’ produces not one person live-blogging or live-tweeting their experience.  When pictures of corps members in action are posted, I like to glance at them and see what I can infer from them.  Sometimes I’ll notice that they are student teaching a class where there are only 5 students in the class and I’ll write about how unacceptable it is that TFA has not figured out a way to pack the student teacher classes with actual students.

 

Categories Education Reform, Teach for America
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