from the TREE website:


TREE Hosts Diane Ravitch This Wednesday

Join us as we welcome public school champion Diane Ravitch at Vanderbilt University’s Commodore Ballroom this Wednesday, November 19, at 6:30 p.m.  The Commodore Ballroom is located on the first floor of the Student Life Center at 310 25th Avenue South. Parking is available in the 25th Avenue garage.

Diane Ravitch, an author, historian, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education will speak and discuss the hoax of public school education reform. This event is proudly sponsored by Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence (TREE), the TN BATs, and Momma Bears of TN.

Please go to our EventBright page to RSVP.

NOTE: Check-in begins at 4:45. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. Please arrive no later than 6:15 p.m. to guarantee entry. This event is limited in space. Once we sell out, you may add yourself to a waiting list that will provide entry to the event in the place of any reservation that does not arrive by 6:15 p.m.  The waiting list is first-come, first-served. This event is FREE of charge, but premium seats are available with a TREE donation of $40 or more. See the RSVP link to Eventbright for details. We encourage you to come early and stay late to network with attendees.

Update from TREE:  This event is now full.  There is a waiting list for the free tickets.  There are still some VIP front section tickets left for $40 each.  See the link for details.

I attended a community meeting at Jere Baxter Middle School tonight to hear discussion of the East Nashville "Third Way" plan. Jere Baxter is located just off Dickerson Pike and only a few blocks away from the new Rocketship charter school (which is directly across the street from Jenna's Adult Toy Box, but that's an entirely different issue). 

Jere Baxter boasts a beautiful new building, but is severely underenrolled at only 53% capacity. Dr. Register said hundreds of students in the area are now attending new charter schools, which have oversaturated the East Nashville market. (See the correlation here?) 

Jere Baxter serves a population of 97.9% free and reduced lunch students. It has a mobility rate of 58% and a chronic absence rate of 18%. To no one's surprise, this school is struggling. This year, only 15.8% of its students were reading on grade level.

Dr. Register led off the discussion with Jere Baxter's dismal performance and said that no child should be subjected to a "failing" school. A parent responded with the question I had in mind: What actually makes Jere Baxter a "bad" school? Although Dr. Register didn't really answer this question, staff members complained about the lack of continuity - with constantly rotating students, teachers and principals. Teachers asked for greater supports. A parent noted that many students at the school are desperately seeking teachers' attention, and the school needs more staff. One teacher who had taught at both a charter and traditional schools pointed out that guidance counselors at traditional schools are too tied up with testing to actually offer counseling. (This is definitely the case at my child's school.) No one mentioned the elephant in the room - the impact of poverty and mobility on student performance.

The most disturbing part of the discussion for me, however, was the new focus onrecruiting students, rather than discussion of how to best address the huge challenges at the school. According to Dr. Register, the need to compete for students is just a reality now, and traditional schools need to step it up. He went on: Because charter schools are "out recruiting us" (despite the fact that our traditional schools provide more offerings than MNPS charter schools), we must become better recruiters at traditional schools. Other MNPS officials also spoke about the need to "sell" and market our schools and go door-to-door looking for students (like our charter schools). One teacher pointed out that charter schools often host huge BBQ dinners to recruit families and (only somewhat jokingly) asked for a budget for BBQ! 

This focus on recruitment and competition is all a direct result of the national, state, and local attacks on public education, created by those who view our schools as markets, our families as consumers, and our children as mass-produced commodities. 

Then, a voice of reason spoke up. A teacher said, "I went to school to be a teacher. Not a business person. Not a marketer. Not a recruiter." She asked: When can I do my job and teach? Where are my supports?

So after tonight's meeting, here are my questions: Is it really a good idea to require parents to compete for spots at coveted "choice" schools and ask teachers to become recruiters for the best test takers? Where is community in all this "choice," competition and winning? 

What has happened to the ideal that we will work together to build healthy communities and ensure that every neighbor is welcomed and accepted? We should make sure that children who have special needs, immigrant children who can't speak English, those with behavioral problems, and those who simply struggle in school are just as welcome as children who perform best in school, and that our struggling students will receive the extra support that they require. We should work together to support our schools in addressing these difficult issues and never give up on a single child.

In the end, this all seems to be a numbers game. Last year, Memphis closed down several of its "failing" schools, which increased Nashville's number of "failing" schools. We can now respond by shutting down our own "failing" schools (poof- no more "bad" schools!) and play the game of competing to win. Or we can take the brave step of not buying into all of this market-driven insanity. 

In short, we can choose to educate children, or we can sell out by "marketing" our "product" to "customers." 

We can have chaos, or we can have community.

What would happen if MNPS refused to play the "reform" numbers game anymore? What if we just decided to stand up to the bullies? Instead of merely shuffling students around to make our numbers look better, we, as a district, could decide that shuffling struggling students around is not the answer, even though it may momentarily make MNPS look better on the State Report Card. We could decide that we value each individual student and recognize that just moving "failing" students from school to school does nothing to address their academic problems. Instead of rubber-stamping military-style schools that get great scores, but don't offer healthy social/emotional learning opportunities, physical activity or enrichment, we could demand a focus on best practices. We could acknowledge that there are no miracle school cures, just like there are no miracle diet cures, and invest time, energy and long-term resources into our existing schools. We could create a budget that allows for extra support staff in the schools with the most challenging populations.
We could acknowledge that real school reform takes time. 

I believe these are the discussions we need to undertake. Who's with me?

This article excerpt is shared with permission of its author:

Run schools like a business? Flip that theory to see flaws
by Lisa Woods, originally posted on 7/20/2014 at News & Record

I would like to posit a scenario where “job performance and value” are based on the following objectives and conditions:

• You are meeting with 35 clients in a room designed to hold 20. 
• The air conditioning and/or heat may or may not be working, and your roof leaks in three places, one of which is the table where your customers are gathered.
• Of the 35, five do not speak English, and no interpreters are provided.
• Fifteen are there because they are forced by their “bosses” to be there but hate your product.
• Eight do not have the funds to purchase your product.
• Seven have no prior experience with your product and have no idea what it is or how to use it.
• Two are removed for fighting over a chair.
• Only two-thirds of your clients appear well-rested and well-fed.

You are expected to:

• Make your presentation in 40 minutes.
• Have up-to-date, professionally created information concerning your product.
• Keep complete paperwork and assessments of product understanding for each client and remediate where there is lack of understanding.
• Use at least three different methods of conveying your information: visual, auditory and hands-on.

The “criterion” for measuring your “worth and value” is that no less than 100 percent of your clients must buy and have the knowledge to assemble and use your product, both creatively and critically, and in conjunction with other products your company produces, of which you have working but limited knowledge.

Only half of the clients arrive with the necessary materials to be successful in their understanding of your product, and your presentation is disrupted at least five times during the 40 minutes.

You have an outdated product manual and one old computer, but no presentation equipment. Your company’s budget has been cut every year for the past 10 years, the latest by a third. Does this mean you only create two-thirds of a presentation? These cuts include your mandatory training and presentation materials (current ones available to you are outdated by five years).

You have no assistant, and you must do all the paperwork, research your knowledge deficiencies and produce professional-looking, updated materials during the 40 minutes allotted to you during the professional day. You cannot use your 30-minute lunch break. Half is spent monitoring other clients who are not your own.
Your company cannot afford to train you in areas of its product line where you may be deficient, yet you are expected to have this knowledge and incorporate it into your product presentation in a meaningful way.

You haven’t had a raise in eight years and your benefits have been purged, nor do you receive a commission for any product you sell. Do you purchase all the materials needed so your presentation is effective? Will you pay for the mandatory training necessary to do your job in a competent and professional manner?

School is not a business

Does this business model seem viable? Of course not.

Nor would it be appropriate for me to come to your job and evaluate you on a set of standards for which I have no experience or knowledge beyond use of your product (assuming from your presentation that I understand it). This is an absurd comparison, yet schools are continuously compared to a business model, which, when reversed, would be considered stupid by those in “business,” for there would be little if any profit, and the expectations of 100 percent success are delusional at best.

Think about what is provided for you to succeed at your job and imagine how you could meet your goals with the conditions described above.

Is “100 percent high quality” an adequate and realistic assumption for the quality of your workforce? Does your company have any poor employees? If an employee shows promise but needs help, is it provided, or is she fired immediately? Are the same criteria used at all levels of employment for all people? Must your employer have a reason to terminate an employee or can it fire someone it doesn’t like?

There are so many blanket statements made implying that most teachers are incompetent and only want more money. This is offensive.

Reality check: Most teachers do so for their love of learning and children and to make our community and beyond a better place. None would ever delude herself into thinking there is a lot of money in this career. For most, it is a vocation, not a job.

Bad teachers don’t stay

Because our state provides no right to collective bargaining, tenure is job protection. In my 30-plus years as an educator, I have rarely seen ineffective teachers remain long on the job. Are there some? Sure, but basic statistics will tell that a 10,000-employee company (Guilford County Schools) will have a statistical spread where “average” and “high average” is the largest chunk, and hopefully the smallest percentage is the “least effective.”

Does it bother me when I know there are less-effective teachers making the same pay I do? Sure, but complaining about it won’t make my compensation commensurate with my value and work product. Look at the current teacher assessment instrument. While it needs improvement, I can’t imagine that someone who is incompetent and showing no improvement would last long.

Tenure is not granted willy-nilly at the “magic” four years. Nor does it guarantee a job.

If a teacher’s evaluations are not up to a specific standard, the teacher is put on probation. And if no improvement is made, goodbye! And, with the continuous cuts and diversion of funds through vouchers to parochial schools, who knows how many public school teaching jobs will be left?

Tenure does not guarantee quality teachers, but applying the business model to schools is as absurd as applying the “school reality” to business. Until a better and fairer assessment and compensation structure is created, those “in the trenches” are actually consulted, and the reality of our working environment is considered and remedied, the symbolic little gesture of tenure will be an important one to insure that excellent teachers remain in North Carolina.

Lisa Woods, a master teacher at Weaver Academy for the Performing and Visual Arts, has taught in the Greensboro and Guilford County school systems since 1989. She holds an MFA and National Board certification and has completed all coursework for a master’s in education. She was on the national faculty for the National Paideia Center in Chapel Hill and has taught studio art from grade school to the college/graduate level.

 Click HERE to read the story of the blueberries
which will radically change your perception about students

The Achievement School District of Tennessee, or ASD, was modeled after the Louisiana Recovery School District, or RSD.  The superintendent of the ASD is a friend of mine from my days as a TFAer in Houston, Chris Barbic.  The goal of the ASD is to take over the schools in the bottom 5% in terms of test scores in the state and within five years get the scores up so those same schools are in the top 25%.  The schools, as I originally understood it, would have the same zoned students after the were taken over by (they use the euphemism ‘matched with’) the usual suspects of TFA charter chains, like KIPP and Rocketship.  The first cohort of the ASD was 6 schools started in the 2012-2013 school year.  This grew to 17 schools in 2013-2014, and now 23 schools for 2014-2015.  I was skeptical of this plan from the beginning.  As I wrote to Chris in one of my open letters, still unanswered, I felt like this was a goal that can only be achieved by some sort of cheating or lying.  One cheat that is happening is that many of the charter schools did not take over existing schools but became new schools which phased in one grade at a time.  This makes it pretty hard to say that a school that never existed was originally in the bottom 5% of schools.

As reformers are all about accountability and data, the ASD, of course, issues yearly reports about the progress that it is making toward the goal of moving the schools in the bottom 5% to the top 25% in five years.  This year Tennessee has been very slow in releasing their state test scores.  In early July they first released data for the State.  On these, the average scores in the state were not very good.  On average, as I wrote about here, 3-8 math scores went up by a percent while 3-8 reading scores went down by a percent.  At the end of July they released the data for the individual districts.  In that release, we learned that the ASD scores increased more than the state averages.  I wrote here, about how that really wasn’t saying very much, particularly since the 4% the ASD reading scores had gone up by still meant that the 2013-2014 reading scores were lower than the 2011-2012 ASD reading scores.  Then, in August, they finally released the final part of their data, the ‘growth’ scores of the districts and the test scores and growth scores for the individual schools.

A year ago the ASD, despite the fact that their reading scores dropped by almost 5%, somehow scored the highest possible score, a 5 out of 5 on the Tennessee ‘growth’ metric.  This was, they said, a sign that things were moving in the right direction.  This year, however, despite the fact that at the end of July we learned that the ASD ‘grew’ better than the state did in general, the final report in mid-August revealed that the ASD didn’t get another 5 in ‘growth.’  For the 2013-2014 school year, they got the lowest possible growth score, a 1.

You’d think that this would damper their spirits, but as they’ve got to show that they’re still on track to reach the goal of moving the schools from the bottom 5% to the top 25%, they released a report highlighting some of their successes.  It turns out that some of the schools are doing quite well while others are bringing down the growth average.

They even produced this nifty scatter plot showing how some of the schools are well on their way to cracking the top 25%.

So, according to this graph, there are four schools that are really moving up the charts, and one of them, oh my! Frayser 9GA is way up there, having moved from the bottom 5%, apparently, to nearly the top 50%!  Most of of the other schools haven’t made much movement, however.  In the ASD report, there were some graphs showing how different schools ‘grew’ from last year to this year.

So there are schools getting it done, like Frayser 9GA, and other schools that are still failing, like, say, Westside Achievement Middle School, with its declining scores in both categories.

So I did what no Tennessee education reporters have the ingenuity to do, I did some research and analysis.  The first thing I noticed was the fine print at the bottom of the scatter plot showing the movement of some of the schools.

Notes:  1-yr success rates; 2014 percentile calculations based on 2013 data;  Carver and Frayser HS used for historical data for GRAD and F9GA, respectively.

Hmmmmm.  What does that mean?  So I investigated further.  What I learned is that Frayser 9GA isn’t, technically, a school for which it is possible to calculate the growth between 2013 and 2014.  Also, it is debatable, if it can be counted as a school at all.  Here’s why:

Westside Achievement Middle school, the one that had the dropping scores in the bar graphs above, serves students in grades 6-8.  They were one of the original 6 ASD schools in 2012-2013.  Rather than send their eighth graders to Frayser High School in 2013-2014, they decided to expand Westside Achievement Middle school to have a 9th grade in their building.  They enrolled 99 students and called the ‘school’ Frayser 9GA for ‘9th Grade Academy.’  2013-2014 was the first year that this school existed, which is why comparing their scores for their 99 9th graders to the scores of already existing Frayser high school is not a fair comparison.  This article from the local Memphis newspaper explains that 85% of the 8th grade class at Westside Achievement Achievement Middle School wanted to continue at that school for the new 9th grade program.

Now in the 2013-2014 school year, Westside Achievement Middle School dropped from a 5 on their ‘growth’ to the lowest possible 1.

But the ASD decided to call the 9th grader program at Westside Achievement Middle School, all 99 students there, its own ‘school’ rather than what it actually is, a grade in the school.  It is not playing by the rules to pick a grade out of a school, call it its own school and then plot it on a graph as if it was an actual school that was once in the bottom 5% of schools and that with the help of the ASD catapulted to the top 50%.  So the question is, how is it that this school is failing to grow their 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in 2013-2014, yet they are getting miraculous results with their 9th graders?  And what would the score for this school be if they counted the four grades as one school rather than pulling out the 9th grade class and calling that its own school? Arne Duncan was in Tennessee today and spent time with Chris Barbic and even took a selfie with him.  Tennessee and the ASD are favorites of Duncan to tout his success.

It is fortunate for Duncan that he will be out of office when the house of cards that is the ASD comes tumbling down, three years from now.  I’ve noticed that many reformers have been going into hiding lately:  Wendy Kopp stepped down from being CEO of TFA.  Michelle Rhee stepped down from being CEO of StudentsFirst.  Others will surely follow into the safety of their underground bunkers.  Duncan will leave office and will surely find a safe place to hide from all the questions as the reform movement continues to collapse.  What will happen to my old friend Chris Barbic when this all goes down?  He’s always been a decent guy.  I worry he might be the only one with enough principle to go down with the ship while the others cowardly abandon it.

The Achievement School District (ASD) in Tennessee is an attempt to replicate the ‘success’ of the Recovery School District (RSD) in Louisiana.  The main difference is that while Louisiana’s RSD was set into action because of a natural disaster, Hurricane Katrina, Tennessee’s ASD was set into action because of a man made disaster, Hurricane Kevin Huffman, the commissioner of education in Tennessee, and an old acquaintance of mine from the days when we were both in TFA in Houston in the early 1990s.  (I was Houston 1991 and Huffman was Houston 1992).  In charge of the ASD is someone who was a good friend of mine back in Houston, Chris Barbic.  Chris started the YES chain of charter schools.

The goal of the ASD is to take the bottom 5% of schools in Tennessee and in five years transform them into schools that are in the top 25% of schools in Tennessee.  As Tennessee schools are supposedly all improving at record rates, this would require that the ASD school progress at much faster rates to get from the bottom to near the top.

Last year I wrote my first annual report on the status of the ASD in a post called The Underachievement School District.  At that time, they boasted that they got the highest growth score possible, a 5 out of 5, but also revealed that their reading scores dropped from 18.1% proficient in 2012 to 13.6% proficient in 2013 while the rest of the state rose from 49.9% proficient to 50.3% proficient.  I questioned the validity of the five point growth scale based on these numbers.

The state tests in Tennessee are called the TCAPs.  This year there was a fiasco where the TCAP score release was delayed so long that schools were not able to use the scores in the student’s grades.  Tennessee is all about ‘accountability’ so this was one more straw that made parents and also Republican state legislators to call for Huffman’s resignation.

Early July 2014, I wrote about how the state released a summary of the TCAP scores.  It was revealed that 3-8 math increased by less than 1% while 3-8 reading went down by less than 1%.  Nothing to celebrate there.  Instead they focused on supposed high school ‘gains.’  This was ironic to me since Tennessee was so proud of their grade 4 and grade 8 NAEP gains yet when the 12th grade NAEP showed that Tennessee didn’t do so well there, they said that they can’t be held responsible for high schoolers since those students had most of their academic careers before the reforms set it.  So they can’t take blame when high schoolers do poorly, but they will take the credit when they do well.

Tennessee is releasing TCAP results in stages.  The big picture came out around July 4th, the school results are coming, they say, around August 15th, and the district results were released today, July 30th.  With the release of the district data, they also had some press releases telling the newspapers what to say.  In the whole country I’d say that the education reporters in Tennessee are the worst.  They just take whatever the press releases say and print that without any delving into the numbers themselves.  It is a shame I have to do their job for them, but I guess someone’s got to do it.

With the release of the district data, there are the Louisiana style invented statistics like this one:

• From 2011 to 2014, the percentage of districts with the majority of their students proficient or advanced in 3-8 math increased from 18 percent to 57 percent.
  
  

Keep in mind that for the whole state of Tennessee, the percent of students passing 3-8 math rose about 10% from 41% to 51% between 2011 and 2014.  How this translated from 18% of districts having half the students pass to 57% having half the students pass is something that can very well happen when everyone is hovering near 50%.  It is a made up stat since there was so little to celebrate with the flat math and reading, including reading going down by about 1%.

So I was interested to see how the ASD fared.  Looking over their scores, 21.8% passing 3-8 math and 17% passing 3-8 reading, the first thing I looked for is what sort of progress they are making in going from the bottom 5% to the top 25% in five years.  Two years in and they are still in the bottom 5%, dead last with the second to last district not even close to them.  They will surely have to pick up the pace on their growth.

Then I saw this tweet

and thought, “that’s interesting.”  The link led me to a pathetic attempt to dress up the horrible numbers posted by the ASD this year.  I went to the link and found a page with the headline “ASD Grows Faster than State in Reading and Math, High Schools Make Double Digit Gains.”

They included this bar graph showing their ‘growth’ over the past two years in math, ELA, and science.  I noticed that while they technically did ‘gain’ 3.4% in their reading scores, they are still 1.1% down from what they were in 2012.  This reminds me a bit of a guy who is gambling and you ask him how he’s doing and he says “I’m up $1,000 in the past hour without mentioning the $1500 he lost in the hour before that.”  Also these bars since they are only being compared to each other do not make it clear how low these scores really are.

But in reform, when convenient, it’s not about score it’s about ‘growth’ compared to the rest of the state.  Well since from 2013 to 2014 the whole state went down by .4% in reading, any ‘growth’ no matter how little by a district is ‘out-gaining’, as the tweets said, their peers.  And since math across the state was flat from 2013 to 2014, rising only by .6%, almost any other possible gain by a district will be better than the state.  Still it made for this impressive looking graph comparing ASD growth to state growth.

Of course the 2.2% bar is quite large the way they did their scale.  But it is accurate that the ASD had better growth than the state between 2013 and 2014.  But the ASD has been around for two years, so wouldn’t it make more sense to compare the ‘growth’ of the ASD to the whole state for the two year period.  Well, they were wise not to, but I was wise to make it for them, and here’s what it looks like:

Suddenly, it’s not so good anymore.  The ASD grew by 1.1% more than the state in that period while the RSD actually went down by .7% more than the state went down.  At this rate of losing .35% of ground each year to the state, the ASD will never get out of the bottom 5% in reading, and for math where there is a 30% difference between the ASD and the Tennessee average, if they creep up at .5% a year it will take 60 years for them to get to the 50% mark, let alone the top 25%.  Here is another graph I made that you won’t find in the press release.  The are those proficiency numbers of the ASD side by side with the Tennessee average.

This demonstrates, as much as anything how the fact that the ASD had a better 1 year ‘growth’ than the state, the two year growth is about the same and that the ASD better start ramping it up if they plan to get their schools from way way back in dead last to beating 75% of the districts in the state of Tennessee in just three years.

But there does need to be something to celebrate so the ASD made up the most outrageous statistic of all and presented it in this graph.

According to this graph it seems that ASD high schools had 42.4% ‘growth’ in English 1, 24.2% ‘growth’ in Algebra 1, and 28.9% ‘growth’ in Biology 1.  Whoah, those are big numbers.  When I went to the page with all the databases I found that there were no numbers at all for the ASD.  Other districts had ‘growths’ generally between -10% and +10%.  But why no ASD?  Then I noticed in the fine print on this graph the very mysterious explanation:

SCORES ARE AN AVERAGE OF FRAYSER 9GA AND GRAD ACADEMY; GROWTH IS BASED ON COMPARABLE SCS HIGH SCHOOLS (I.E., CARVER HS AND FRAYSER HS 9TH GRADE CLASS)

I’ll give a hearty thumbs up to any Tennessee education reporter who gets to the bottom of what this could possibly mean.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I was once good friends with Chris Barbic, and maybe he still sees me as a good guy, though an annoying one.  I hope so.  A year and a half ago he was the recipient of one of my ‘classic Rubinstein’ open letters.  I write him emails from time to time, mostly yelling at him for having become a ‘reformer.’  He hasn’t written me back in a while, actually.  But from time to time he will respond to one of my tweets.  I’ll then tweet back and a bunch of others will usually join in and then Chris, like the groundhog seeing his shadow, but this time it is him seeing his own reflection, and he goes into hiding for a few months.

This concludes this edition of the 2014 report on the Achievement School District.  For sure there will be three more of these 2015, 2016, and 2017.  After that I will determine if the ASD has met their goal of getting the bottom 5% of schools up to the top 25% in just 5 years armed with only a healthy dose of high expectations and a whole bunch of new TFA teachers.

In a desperate attempt to save Kevin Huffman's credibility and job, a petition was started by rich people.  The signatures on the petition are an elite "who's-who" list of people who get generous paychecks from the reformy charter gravy-train.  There are quite a few "name not displayed" entries on the petition, but from doing internet searches of the people who did sign their name, it is easy to see that these people are enemies of public schools. For example:

• Rebecca Lieberman (managing director of school and sector initiatives for the Charter School Center) was quoted in the Tennesseean's article about the petition.  Lieberman has a nice, cushy job at the Charter Incubator.  According to the 2012 990 tax filing, she made a nice salary of $102,673. (their 2013 990 isn't available, but we bet she made even more last year).  Her organization hit the jackpot financially under Huffman's leadership.  The CEO's salary at the Charter Incubatorincreased a whopping $73,586 in one year! (from $120,750 in 2011 to$176,336 in 2012).  2012 was obviously a boom year for their organization, because they also added a COO position for Justin Testerman with a sweet salary of $127,015.  Nope, you certainly can't make that kind of salary as a public school teacher!
• Teach for America corps members, Derik Ohanian, who taught as a temporary teacher through Teach for America, was then super-launched into an internship with the White House for 4 months over the summer, and then landed a sweet job with the TN Department of Education (working under his boss, Kevin Huffman) as a "Leadership Coaching Consultant" for the past 5 months.  His signature surely bought some brownie points from his boss.
• Achievement School District staffers also signed the petition, of course, like Margo Roen and Alex Little.  Their jobs depend on Huffman, so it makes sense they'd sign it.
• Elissa Kim is a no-brainer signing her name since she works as Executive Vice President for Recruitment and Admissions for Teach For America.   Kevin Huffman was her former co-worker at TFA.  Huffman signing that big $6 million no-bid contract for Tennessee with TFA meant job security for her. Her salary is more than Kevin Huffman's at $224,000 plus benefits. Yes, it is a huge conflict of interest between her job at TFA and the fact that she is on the Metro Nashville Board of Education, but who cares when there is money to be made?  
• John Eason, identified in the Tennesseean article as a “philanthropist,” is really an investor in for-profit management of charter schools (reformers really, really want for-profit charters to be legal in TN and need Huffman to make it happen).  Eason co-founded Beacon Education Management which merged with another firmand now operates under another name in other states.
• The Tennesseean also writes: "Among names on the petition are several founders of publicly financed, privately operated charter schools in Nashville, including Ravi Gupta of RePublic Schools and Todd Dickson of Valor Collegiate Academy. It also includes charter philanthropists such as Townes Duncan and John Eason as well as leaders of the Tennessee Charter School Center."  Quick internet searches show that Valor Collegiate Academy is opening in Nashville, with hopes to open a whole cluster of schools in Nashville.  Cha-ching.  
• Townes Duncan, who fought to remove power from local elected school boards and give control to an un-elected state board allowing charters even more freedom to open in communities where they are not wanted.
• Representative Mark White, devoted water boy for Governor Haslam, signed it and left a touching comment, too.  There's no question of his loyalty and intentions.  We hope the rumor isn't true that Mark White is on the list as a replacement for Huffman's job.  White's contempt for public education and unwillingness to listen to parents & teachers would make him a horrible leader over Tennessee's public schools.

Click HERE to read the real "miracle" of
why TN's NAEP scores jumped so drastically in 2013
and why it won't happen again on the next NAEP.

A quote from a public school Dad:

"It kills me that Charter proponents have so little respect for the public's intelligence that they think they can create something like this and not have it be recognized as a charade starring the normal cast of characters. I also think its worth noting that there are current and aspiring school board members who have signed this petition. Voters need to ask themselves if people who are willing to support the divisive policies of Commissioner Huffman are really the best people to represent them."

Click HERE to read his article

Click HERE to see the petition to remove Huffman

Click HERE to see the Facebook page

Do not be fooled. Follow the money.
See who is really benefiting from Huffman's reforms.
 

Something in me snapped today and I realized that I am finished using the phrase "education reform." 

That's how folks refer to the constellation of ideas firmly entrenched in the White House right now, upheld by almost every governor of every state, red and blue, and most mayors, notably our own. It includes the tenets that privatizing our schools will improve them, that the Common Core State Standards are the fix for all that ails our failing schools, and that testing our students more and more will raise test scores.  

But this, truly, is not "reform." Some of these are ideas that have been implemented for 25 years all over the country to little effect. 

This is the status quo. 

So I'm not going to call it reform anymore. 

I'm going to call it what it is. Corporate control of education. 

And here's why. In every instance, every plank in the platform, every element of this effort can be traced back to cash--flowing into the coffers of very rich corporate entities and individuals. 

Like Pearson, one of the testing companies that is creating the tests and the test prep materials, all new and improved and Common Core aligned, and who lobbies Congress to mandate more tests. 

Like Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, a huge proponent of charters and innovative uses of technology in schools. What kind of technology does he advocate as the best fix for students today? In Learning Lab modules at his Rocketship Charters kids sit at a computer monitor, streaming video content for 100 minutes per day.  

Or Rupert Murdoch. He is a cheerleader for what he calls a $500 billion industry of education technology including content and assessment.   

Or Bill Gates. His push for the Common Core, the inBloom initiative to harness students' big data, and his vision for the classrooms of the future, which will be heavily dependent on his own technologies. 

The proponents of this snake oil have managed to control the rhetoric for so long that we don't even blink when they say that their education plan is "the civil rights issue of our time." They say this a lot. 

So if we wish to stand up against the corporate control model we are not only anti-reform but anti-civil rights. 

They say they want "excellent teachers," and by this they mean they want to get rid of union teachers and replace them with uncertified, pensionless staff handling up to 50 kids at once who receive their education from handheld devices or monitors. 

They say they want "school choice," which usually means less choice: families can't choose their neighborhood schools that the city has underfunded to the point of death throes, pouring its available money instead into privately supported charters. 

They say they want all children to be "college and career ready," and to ensure this they prescribe as many as 25 standardized bubble tests every year starting in Kindergarten, using a standardized scripted curriculum. 

The testing piece is a critical component of corporate control of education. And it's very important to them that we don't question this. As we saw in Chicago, retribution for opting out of tests is real and administrators don't care if they have to isolate children to get them to rat on their teachers. Anything to stop parents, teachers, and principals from reconsidering what all these tests mean, how they contribute to children's education, and who they benefit. 

But the corporate education controllers will not accept that ordinary well-informed people are questioning their plan. They and the Department of Ed portray dissenters as Tea Party crazies or entitled white suburban moms who cannot face their disappointment that Boopsie is not actually a genius. 

Another grab for narrative control. The only possible opposition comes from insane people or delusional ones. 

But it's getting harder and harder to keep the little man hidden behind the curtain. It's getting harder and harder to uphold the illusion of the actually naked emperor's fancy new suit. 

Little bits of reality pop out now and again. 

Intertangled ugly trails of cash and power come to light--as in the (Chicago) Sun-Times' Dan Mihalopoulos' work on how many Illinois legislators are connected to Turkish power broker Fethullah Gulen and his charter schools. Just as a for instance. 

Or, perhaps, occasions of obvious cruelty to children becoming public. 

Like the CPS schools that have taken away play from 5 year olds by removing kitchens, blocks, paints, dolls, everything from Kindergarten. {TN Parent note: These were removed from TN kindergarten classes several years ago}  Because "Kindergarten is the new first grade" and we have to get these little dudes college and career ready. (I am assuming this also means that 5 is now the new 6.) 

Enough little bits of reality have popped out that folks are starting to notice. The stranglehold grip on the narrative held by the corporate education controllers is beginning to weaken. Because we can all see with our own eyes that it isn't actually civil rights for kids to have their school closed or subjected to a turnaround. It isn't actually higher order critical thinking to bubble in bubbles. And it isn't education and it isn't reform to work toward the dismantling of public schools in our city and our country. 

It's stale old rhetoric that is losing its power. And it can no longer conceal the naked emperor, nor the naked greed of the corporate power grabbers.
 
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Julie Vassilatos blogs as South Side CPS Mom in Chicago. She provides a valuable and important perspective on education everywhere. She graciously gave us permission to share her article with our elected officials and on our TN Parents website