Broadie Supt. Illegally Hires Broad Trainee at Public Expense

Since being hired over more qualified candidates for the position of Knox County superintendent, Jim McIntyre has distinguished himself as a loyal stooge of Eli Broad's corporate efficiency training camp, where he learned undemocratic practices that he has brought to his public responsibilities in East Tennessee. 

Last fall he illegally put the KCS on the hook for almost a hundred thousand dollars to pay a Broad trainee to practice her austerity lessons in Knoxville. 

This week County Commission rejected payment due the Broad clone.  When will Knoxville have enough of McIntyre, another sad example of big business run amok among public institutions!

(WBIR - KNOXVILLE) - At its regular meeting Monday evening, the Knox County Commission retroactively rejected a controversial grant agreement with the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems.

The embattled grant agreement laid out the terms of employment for a Broad Center fellow, Christy Hendler, as she worked for KCS during the 2014-15 school year.

The Broad Center is, essentially, a training program for people with executive leadership experience aspiring to become school district superintendents and other leaders within large education systems.

Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre is himself a Broad graduate.

McIntyre accepted the grant agreement for Hendler's employment back in September, without seeking the approval of the KC Board of Education or Knox County Commission.

In April, county Law Director Bud Armstrong informed Board of Education members McIntyre had no authority to do that, since the grant has a matching fund requirement, among other reasons.

RELATED: BOE, law director question superintendent's Broad grant acceptance

In the arrangement, the Broad Center agreed to give KCS a grant totaling up to $29,700, to be put toward Hendler's salary. In exchange, the district would foot the rest of her salary, plus pay benefits.
The baseline salary for a Broad fellow, according to the Broad Academy, is $90,000. The Broad grant would pay for up to $29,700 of that.

With McIntyre's unauthorized acceptance of the grant agreement, Hendler has been working as the district's director of planning and improvement. Her time with the school system as a Broad fellow is set to end at the end of July.

That means KCS - and therefore taxpayers - have been footing the bill this whole time for not only the difference ($90k salary - $29.7k grant = $60,300 taxpayer responsibility), but also for the cost of benefits. The district estimates that at about $27,000, putting taxpayers on the hook for a total of $87,300.

However, because McIntyre accepted the grant agreement back in September, both the Knox County Board of Education and the County Commission had to vote to retroactively approve the grant agreement.

In a 5-4 decision late this spring, the BOE narrowly approved the agreement.

On Monday evening, however, Knox County commissioners returned a surprise vote.

At their work session last Monday, a majority of commissioners indicated they would be in favor of approving the agreement, recommending its approval 7 to 3, with one commissioner opting to pass.
Within a week, six commissioners had changed their mind.

Nine voted against approving the agreement. Commissioner Amy Broyles was not present.

Chairman Brad Anders, who voted "yes" at the work session but then voted "no" Monday night, said "there was more study and questions raised over the week," and agreed it was quite a change.

"The thing that I used as a measure," he said, was that McIntyre's approval "was improperly done and you can't condone that."

Commissioner Sam McKenzie was the lone "yes," though he explained himself prior to the vote.
"The water's over the dam...these funds are pretty much spent," McKenzie told his fellow commissioners, urging fiscal responsibility. "We're basically turning down $30,000...the money's been spent, so we're going to have to take out - at this point - $30,000 out of a potential teacher's assistant or potential, I don't know, across-the-street hire or, you know, toilet paper or something. That money has to come from somewhere to pay this money because it's pretty much been spent."

"This, to me, is just the clean-up," McKenzie continued. "If folks want to make a point, I think there are better places to make a point than us paying $30,000."

Commissioner Charles Busler said he understood McKenzie's point, but said, "the money was spent before it was approved, and that should bother us to no end....I mean, how could we look at the people that voted us in office and say, 'Oh, they went ahead and spent it, so it's spent anyway, so we're not going to do anything about it.'?"

In the pre-vote deliberations, Commissioner Randy Smith asked McIntyre: "Do you feel this is a wise spending of taxpayers' money?"

McIntyre told the commission he does think Hendler's salary has been worth the cost.

"She's been able to work with our operational areas to identify key performance indicators, to ensure that they're as efficient and effective as they can be," he told the commission. "She has been leading and facilitating some of the work around, 'How do we make sure that all the student assessments that we do are either required by the federal government or are valuable to inform instruction for our teachers?' And so, yes, I believe it's been-- it is a good investment of resources, and it's been valuable to our school system to have access to the skills and abilities that she's brought to the table."

Several commissioners mentioned getting several dozen emails from constituents, urging them to reject the grant agreement.

McKenzie, however, cautioned, "We represent 500,000 people. Thirty people sending me an email does not mean we're doing the people's business. That does not mean that. No way does that mean that. ...Listen, but don't say that that's indicative or representative of all the people, because it's not."
Armstrong told commissioners what a "no" vote would mean.

"If it's not approved by this body, then the grant is rejected," Armstrong said. "Then the Board of Education will have to then contact the grantor, and then they'll have to work out something with the grantor and see where it goes from there. There's not a clear-cut answer yes or no."

Bob Thomas, KCS assistant superintendent of administrative services, confirmed to the commission the Broad Center grant has been received and already spent on Hendler's salary.

Asked if the $29,700 will have to be paid back to the Broad Center, Armstrong said those are issues "that I will have to address with the school board and the legalities of where it leaves them."

After the overwhelming, near-majority rejection of the grant agreement, McIntyre said he'll now wait and see what the county law director and BOE decide to do.

"Some of the commissioners indicated one of the possibilities: We might have to send the money back, and I don't know. We'll have to figure that out, and I'll defer to the law director's office and to the school board to sort all that out," he told WBIR. "This is, you know, $30,000. We have a $430 million budget, and so, you know, this is a relatively modest set of resources in the big picture of our overall budget."

McIntyre acknowledged this was a grant agreement approval process with flaws.

"At times there are things that come through the process that don't get handled properly. We try to rectify those and correct those and make sure that they're handled properly in the end, and this was really what this was about," McIntyre said. "It was about, 'How do we address the deficiencies in this process? How do we make sure we get it right?'"

Asked if the district will keep Hendler on as a regular employee after the end of July, McIntyre said, "that's really a separate decision from the grant agreement or from the grant itself, and we'll certainly evaluate that as we do with all employees, moving forward."

LA Times will support John Deasy so long as their customers are corporate advertisers, rather than LAUSD schoolchildren

I was interested in the fact that the scandal over Deasy's PhD hit the headlines at the same time he was hired by Gates. His financial connections with Robert Felner date back to his Santa Monica days — Susan Ohanian

Reaching dizzying heights of comedic apologetics for beleaguered Broad Superintendent Academy graduate John Deasy, the Los Angeles Times has penned daily editorials and articles pleading the public to pressure our elected school board into laying down and ignoring Deasy's latest batch of failures. Like any first year law student I've been very busy. Too busy to respond to all of their wrongheaded propaganda, but today's editorial forced me to divert my attentions. I responded thusly:

Another breathtakingly mendacious editorial by the stenographers of plutocracy—also known as the Los Angeles Times. Ignoring the vicious attacks on our elected school board members, and the poisonous vitriol towards our working class teachers this ham-fisted screed metes out, let's look at some of the lies of omission regarding the individual who was ignominiously run out of both Prince George's County and Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School Districts.

Putting aside Deasy's relationship to convicted felon Robert Felner, and the concerns regarding the irregularities of Deasy's academic credentials, here is a "greatest hits" list of Deasy's tenure at LAUSD.

• Implemented costly and academically discredited DIBELS®, a product of a company called the Dynamic Measurement Group, which is neither State nor Federally mandated.
• Squandered an additional $18 million on SAP consultants to fix issues that happened under his predecessors, rather than demand contract performance from original deal.
• Spent countless millions implementing his widely discredited VAM/AGT scam, a pseudoscience that recently saw even the American Statistical Association release a scathing report about.
• Deasy's callous and improper handling of the Miramonte scandal.
• The MiSiS disaster, which any competent administrator would have avoided. Even the somewhat conservative AALA severely criticized Deasy's many missteps on this.
• The unethical, improper, and possibly illegal handling of the Pearson plc and Apple Inc. contracts. The details of which could result in indictments.

Any one of these would have ousted a Superintendent, but because Deasy has Eli Broad immunity, He has been able to avoid termination, and perhaps even criminal prosecution. It's time for this reign of incompetence to end.

Dr. Cynthia Liu, of K12NN fame, had some additional Deasy "hits" that I failed to list. They are reproduced here.

Two things from K12NN if you're writing to the LA Times to urge that Deasy resign:

Examples of gross incompetence by Deasy: 4th largest CA school district Fresno USD conducted an external FCMAT tech review of their district's needs before embarking on any new purchases or upgrades. Second largest CA school district, San Diego USD, did its own year-long tech review and spoke to teachers, parents, students, IT support staff, other school staff, and administrators about the technology strategic plan, then used a specific tech bond to fund the rollout.

• Why Didn’t LAUSD Perform A Tech Review Before iPad/MiSiS Purchase?
• Los Angeles Unified Must Refocus: Five Ways Bad Ed Tech Deals in LAUSD Hurt Kids Right Now

The Los Angeles Times keeps insisting their obsequious support for Deasy is based on "his sense of urgency". There's a word for urgency without intelligence, reasonableness, or forethought — that word is recklessness. The last thing our school district needs is an individual whose recklessness remains unabated and unchecked. Deasy needs to resign. Now.

Deasy the Dauphine of LAUSD returns to his "let them eat ebooks" theme

"These "data-driven" investors are not so much interested in students' scores, as in the opportunities to cut costs by using online technology... The central question, says education entrepreneur John Katzman is "How do we use technology so that we require fewer qualified teachers?"" — Jeff Faux

A "RIFed" (laid off) Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teacher posted a link to an LA Times piece on my facebook page this morning with the following note: "I'm laid off, but let's buy more equipment."

LAUSD's tablet plan doesn't compute was surprisingly critical of the Broadyte Superintendent given they usually treat him with the reverence that sycophant monarchists afforded that Dauphine of France whose flippant attitudes towards the lower classes were much like Deasy's. In fact it might be the first ever Times editorial mildly critical of Deasy and his corporate reforms.

I posted the following comments:

Tablets like iPads are wonderful, but they're a long way from being a reasonable replacement for school libraries and students having access to books.

According to research cited by Dr. Stephen Krashen "ebooks only account for one-half of one percent of school library collections, and this is predicted to increase to only 7.8% in five years."

In other words, the content isn't there, so bringing in technology is an abject waste of funds. Deasy has been on the wrong side of this from the get go. It makes me wonder if he has stock holdings in firms that provide tablets.

For a background on this topic and links to the research see: John Deasy's Queen Antoinette moment: "let them eat ebooks". This isn't about being anti-technology, it's about budget priorities and understanding the limits of both technology and the availability (or dearth thereof) of academic content in digital format. A hipster corporate reformer recently called me a Luddite, I guess he doesn't know what I do at my day job. Let it suffice that I know a little bit about that whole technology thing.

The point is that purchasing technology for technology's sake isn't just wasteful, it's criminal, especially during the budget crisis our district is suffering. LAUSD needs to restore school libraries, classroom libraries, reduce class sizes, hire back librarians, teachers, and other educators first. Then we can talk about introducing more technology when appropriate and when the content is there.

Tami Abdollah and John Deasy gush that 'Size Matters'

"Just continue to follow the money. This Race to the Trough will make the Reading First crooks under Bush look like dopey Boy Scouts." — Professor Jim Horn

The neoliberal cabal at Southern California's KPCC can't cheerlead for school privatization loud or frequently enough. Not content with Pat Morrison lobbing softballs to Broad Superintendent Academy graduate and former Gates Foundation employee John Deasy once a week, KPCC's intrepid education beat reporters are always looking for the latest anti-public-school story angle.

Tami Abdollah's latest piece, Size matters in new district-level 'Race to the Top' competition, is a fluffy homage to Deasy and fellow poverty pimp Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The light-on-facts article enthusiastically reports the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) "has worked to institute a lot of the" corporate reforms and privatization requirements that Duncan, Gates, Broad and Coleman want to see for Race to the Top.

I chimed in with the following commentary:

There's a fundamental misunderstanding of Race to the Top (RTTT) in this article. RTTT funds, if granted, are not for things that actually improve education like smaller class sizes or researched backed academic programs including project based learning and the like.

Instead RTTT funds are earmarked for The Gates Foundation and Education Department's pet projects that don't help educational outcomes at all. If anything, they exacerbate problems. RTTT funds are for more profligate data tracking systems. More mind-numbing standardized tests and test preparation for students already averse to school because of a glut of standardized tests. Moreover, RTTT is to be used for highly discredited pseudo-sciences including VAM/AGT.

The district would be better off finding legitimate sources of funding that they can put into classrooms and school libraries. RTTT represents a windfall for testing companies, publishers, and technology firms, but offers nothing for actual improvement to pedagogy. Pearson, Microsoft, and McGraw Hill stand to gain from LAUSD garnering RTTT.

Schoolchildren, educators, and our communities all stand to lose if LAUSD does somehow get tangled up in Duncan's RTTT bribe scheme.

Broadie PerfPay Plan Gets Smacked Down

by Jim Horn and Anonymous Knoxvillian


The Broad Agenda for Tennessee public schools was crippled last evening when Knox County Commissioners rejected the McIntyre school budget increase to fund a meritless performance pay plan for teachers.


For months now the Broad Machine, steered in Knoxville by Supt. Jim McIntyre, has been on a non-stop PR campaign to waste public dollars on a tried-and-failed merit pay plan.  Despite unerring support by the TN Business Roundtable, the local Chamber of Commerce, the local corporate media (print and non-print), and untold millions in behind-the-scenes funding of astroturf groups pretending to be education advocates, the $35 million dollar plan did not even make it to the floor for a vote at last evening's County Commission meeting.


Numerous commissioners and the mayor all went on record stating that they had been contacted by hundreds of teachers who were against the budget but feared for their jobs by saying so.  Although KNS spun the story to make it look like "school employees" were speaking in favor of the plan prior to the meeting, 90% of those speaking were from the Support our Schools astroturf group and their Chamber of Commerce cronies.  The few legitimate school employees (maybe 5) who spoke in favor were either "dead ended" principals looking for a Central Office slot or well-meaning but naive classroom teachers who fell for the constant bullying from McIntyre's board to "be seen" or else.


Time will tell as to how McIntyre proceeds from here.  As the KCS budget HAS been funded well in excess of "maintainence of effort" for FY2013,  any threat of additional teacher layoffs, pay freezes, or program cuts will obviously be seen as unnecessary - and disingenuous and manipulative on McIntyre's part.  As for PerfPay, McIntyre set that as policy in August 2011 on the assumption that it WOULD be funded.  Now that it is NOT funded, who knows what will happen?  


It has been discovered through some good detective work by local bloggers that one of McIntyre's local Broad Residents, Nokia Townes (formerly of Wachovia Bank) purchased the "APEX" perfpay plan last summer from Battelle for Kids, Inc.  How many school board members knew this??


In a letter to school employees today, McIntyre does not mention the crushing defeat of the de-funded perfpay scheme.  Instead, he claims victory for the $7 million increase that Commissioners did approve, mainly for parrot learning direct instruction programs for Knoxville's poorest children (do follow the link if you don't know what this brand of bare-knuckled mind scrubbing is about).  


Perhaps Broad will find a new home for his loyal stooge, one where the citizenry doesn't mind having its schools run an ancient oligarch three time zones away.

New Jersey's Cerfdom Brings Treasure to Corporate Broadies

Below is an email I received from a former NJ DOE employee whose moral fatigue forced her from a good paying job with the State.  Read it and then you will know why the Eli Broad calls his kind of philanthropy investments rather than grants. _______________________ I am a former NJ DOE employee who resigned recently because I could no longer be a part of the extortion and fraud that is taking part there under the Broad Administration of Chris Cerf, Penny MacCormack, Peter Shulman, Bing Howell, ad nauseum. Cerf first tried to get rid of the County Exec Superintendents offices, but was stopped when the legislature reminded him that they were created by statute.  How inconvenient!  So he hired a Broad Intern (for $90,000 named Rochelle Sinclair) who came up with the idea to overlay the state with 7 Regional Achievement Centers (RACs) staffed with "Education Rockstars" from around the country (read Broad Academy grads) who would go in to schools that were failing, assess them, replace the principals and hire new teachers (Teacher 4 America, anyone?).  The problem was the cost. Enter Arne Duncan and the NCLB waiver, plus the Race to the Top funding.  Now Penny MacCormack is trying to divert the SES money we still have ($56 million)., to pay for the RACs.  Oh, and we have thrown out the NCLB report cards and replaced them with our own in-house "measures of proficiency" which is a lot of speculative data manipulated by another bunch of Broad interns since none of the in-house data people would go along with this scheme.  They have all been "rubber roomed" in other departments for not being "team players." So far, so good.  Now, armed with his new proficiency data, Cerf has swooped down on a bunch of "underperforming" charter schools, presenting them with two options:  we pull your charter, close you down, and your kids are on the street OR you select from this DOE-approved list of Charter Management Organizations (more Broad buddies) who will TAKE OVER YOUR CHARTER.  This is extortion.  The first to fall will be Paul Robeson Charter in Trenton which has a fund balance of $1.6 million.  They are even forcing them to change the name of the school to Scholars Academy!!! Save us from the pirates of education reform.  I know you guys are not really fond of charters, but Cerf is after the public schools, too.  (See Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, and Camden).  First he comes for the charters, then he comes for the public schools.   http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2012/05/administration_to_resign_to_ke.html http://www.courierpostonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012305010023 http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/12/0517/2208/

Highs And Lows? More like a Year of Woe! Deasy has got to go.

I was interested in the fact that the scandal over Deasy's PhD hit the headlines at the same time he was hired by Gates. His financial connections with Robert Felner date back to his Santa Monica days — Susan Ohanian

Last week the Los Angeles press was effusive with anniversary homages to Eli Broad and Bill Gates' personally selected poverty pimp, Superintendent John Deasy. Short on facts and long on neoliberal cheerleading, the articles paint the man who has shuttered libraries and killed programs depended on by countless desperate poor and immigrant families as some kind of thoughtful hero. The Huffington Post jumped on the bandwagon, paying political tribute to the pirate king. My comments on The Huffington Post's Lucy Blodget's gushing love letter to Deasy are duplicated here:

The debut has been disastrous. Deasy squandered hundreds of millions of dollars on highly discredited programs like VAM/AGT. He spent millions more on costly tests that aren't mandated. Meanwhile, programs critical to impoverished and immigrant communities were cut entirely including: SRLDP, EEC, Elementary Arts, and Adult Education. I document much of Deasy's 1% spending spree in NCL: http://blog.ncladvocacy.org/2012/03/on-adult-educations-critical-role-in-social-justice-2/#notes

Peer reviewed academic studies find only three things improve student performance when poverty is accounted for. Reduced class size, teacher experience, and access to books. My Schools Matter writing colleague Professor Krashen has done expensive research on the latter. Deasy's response to allowing poor children access to books? Close countless school libraries and fire numerous librarians, while telling poor children to buy iPads. I discuss this tragic incident in: http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/09/john-deasys-queen-antoinette-moment-let.html

Others mentioned his stealing Title I and III funds to pay for his VAM/AGT white whale, and elimination of the only voice community and parents had in councils. Eliminating parental input, he brings in the vile Maria Casillas, whose long career in service to the lucrative charter-voucher industry belies Deasy's purposes.

On balance Deasy has been everything one would expect the plutocrats Broad and Gates to unleash on the working people of Los Angeles. We need a schoolboard that will eliminate him and get a superintendent that will place pupils above profits.

I also took issue with another Deasy fanfare in the Los Angeles Times, but chose to comment on a single turn of phrase which was incredulous, even by their standards.

One of you penned: "...diverse organizations as the Chamber of Commerce, the United Way, the Urban League and InnerCity Struggle, an Eastside community group."

Since both Urban League and Inner City Struggle are funded by the United Way, just how "diverse" are these groups?

Moreover, outside the plutocrat Billionaire Boys Club that comprises United Way's Tocqueville Society, the vast majority of their donors are the well heeled and quite reactionary members of the Chamber of Commerce.

In other words, diversity would be the last word that one would use to describe an essentially monolithic set of groups with an identical right-wing privatization agenda.

Two recent essays speaking truth to Deasy's power are valuable and enjoyable reads.

LAUSD’s Dark Lord, Dr. John Deasy

by John Mears

LAUSD Superintendent of Schools John Deasy Must Go

by Joseph K.

Of course, if my current endeavors are successful, one of the first things I'll do is push to start a search for a qualified Superintendent for LAUSD, since no such search was conducted when Ramon Cortines stepped down.

The Susan Ohanian piece quoted above says: "Many speculate that the Gates job was just a holding pattern for the Los Angeles appointment, which will give him the opportunity to turn LA in to the Gates model district." The broad base of community members, parents, and educators that I work with on a constant basis don't want a "Gates model district," we want a social justice model district.

Eli Broad's Jim McIntyre Goes After More Tax Dollars to Fund Broad Initiatives

Knoxville's Branch Office of the Billionaire Boys Club has a new campaign to come up with $35,000,000 over the next five years to push forward the corporate reform agenda in East Tennessee.  Local Broadie, Supt. Jim McIntyre, has placed the first bug in the ear of Knox County taxpayers at a televised meeting at Fulton High School:

"You get that raise one time, but (it) continues in your base salary," he said during a community forum held at Fulton High School. "Knox County Schools is asking for a raise of $35 million and that's probably the simplest way to put this."  

So if Knox County children and parents are the recipients of this $35,000,000 raise, they, too, are also the ones to pay for that raise. Simple, indeed.  Or simple-minded? 

What is Slim Jim planning to do this "raise?"  Well, the biggest chunk and the largest increase by far will go to "strategic compensation," which is to say bonus pay for test scores.  (Knox County citizens should go here to download the research report from Vanderbilt University that shows no positive effect of bonus pay for raising achievement as measured by test scores.) That amount goes from $0.00 in FY13 to $11,000,000 in FY17, for a total of $27,000,000 over five years.  Another big increase will go to "technology," which means in Broadie talk, getting all schools wired to do year-round testing online, as envisioned by Broad/Gates and the rest of BBC.  And then there is the huge increase for instructional time, which translated means longer school days and/or school year.  That goes from $500,000 to $7.25 million over five years, for a total of $23 million. 

If my math is right, these increases alone have just eaten up about $58 million.  Wonder what programs will be cut to pay for the amount in excess of the 35 million dollar "raise."  Stay tuned for announcements on the next public forum.  (Click chart to enlarge)

McIntyre's Austerity Plan for Cutting $7M Ignores $27M in the Bank

Last Fall Eli Broad's Tennessee transplant, Supt. James McIntyre, laid out his wish list for slashing teachers and privatizing services in Knoxville, Tennessee Schools, all based on a purported shortfall of $7 million from a $384+ million dollar budget:

Facing a looming budget deficit of at least $7 million, Knox County Schools' Superintendent Dr. Jim McIntyre is outlining a number of drastic cuts.

In a memo to the Board of Education, McIntyre said outsourcing custodial services, closing small schools, and adjusting school start times are areas in which significant savings could be realized. He also said adjustments to high school staffing levels and re-evaluating the policies for community use of school facilities would help eliminate the deficit.

"None of the areas analyzed present options that are without significant impact on one or more segments of our population, and most of the options in each analysis would require changes not just in operations but to what may be seen as a philosophy of support or service," McIntyre wrote. . . .

Looming, I tell you!  Now with this find by Knoxville blogger, Mike Donila, one must ask if McIntryre was unaware of school assets or was he determined to create a false crisis in order to save his Club LeConte cronies a few tax dollars.

Below is page 202 of Knox County's last Comprehensive Annual Financial Report for 2011, which shows a $27,000,000 unassigned fund balance (click to enlarge):

When Capricious Young says no experience required, she requires no experience

"We are told that this 'reform' alliance of everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the Walton family to leading hedge funders spends huge amounts of money pushing for radical changes to public schools because they suddenly decided that they care about destitute children, and now want to see all kids get a great education." — David Sirota

In Los Angeles, nobody has been more adept at stuffing public money into their pockets via charter-voucher sector windfalls than Caprice Young. Her early career showed a trajectory of opportunism and greed that would place her in ever more lucrative positions as time progressed.

As a young Coro Fellow she worked under Republican Mayor Richard Riordan like fellow education privatizer Ben Austin. Deep pocketed interests aligned against public education saw her as the perfect privatization minded candidate and backed her successful campaign for the Board of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Her mean spirited anti-community and even stronger anti-labor stripes couldn't have been more apparent during her corporate reform oriented tenure. Voters soon saw her true intentions and clear motives, hence she promptly and ignominiously lost her position on the LAUSD Board after a single term.

Young was then approached by the racist, bigoted, anti-immigrant nativist Steve Poizner and the two of them founded the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) in order to grow charter-voucher market share and create more profitable opportunities for their fellow privatizers. She did so at a dizzying pace, boasting of nearly doubling the number of lucrative privately run charter schools in California during her tenure. Poizner and company compensated Young quite handsomely:

"Jed's predecessor, Caprice Young, made over $250,000 for her work at the CCSA. Check out the cast of characters on CCSA's board of directors. Until recently, a Broad COO, Kevin Hall, and Kevin Johnson served on the groups board as well." — Kenneth Libby (Schools Matter)

Shortly after she did a stint working for predatory capitalist and junk bond felon Michael Milken at his highly profitable Knowledge Universe. Young is also closely associated with the Broad Residency Program.

Young's husband, Mark Dierking, is no stranger to making boatloads of cash from the dwindling trough of the public commons either. He's the Director of Real Estate Planning/Strategy at Knowledge Learning Corporation, a firm with revenues of $8.4 Billion. How big is the charter-voucher school real estate bubble? Big enough to attract big names like Goldman Sachs, Andre Agassi, Citibank, and Richard Riordan to the lucrative land grab ventures. Big enough that Gloria Romero was rewarded with a cushy six-figure job as CEO at Democrats for Education Reform in California for her servile gift the privately managed charter industry called SB 592, which hands public school property over to charter corporations. That's a Kids first agenda.

Young went on to found a K-12 equivalent of predatory for-profit colleges like Kaplan, University of Phoenix, and American Career College. Her successful swindle was called KC Distance Learning, which she sold off in the Summer of 2010 to fellow flimflam artists K12 Inc. for an astonishing $63.1 Million. That decision, like every move in her entire calculated career, was for the kids and the kids alone. Young's old buddy Dick Riordan then tapped her to try to save the sinking ICEF ship, but she was replaced by fellow privatizer Parker Hudnut in short order.

Given how busy Young has been, and how wealthy she has gotten over the years, one would think she would take a break. Yet it turns out her insatiable lust for money and power never ceases, nor does her hatred of educators and organized labor. A reader sent me an email about her latest venture, and their analysis says so much about Young and the corporate school privatization putsch's designs on deprofessionalizing teaching altogether.

Robert,

I looked up Caprice's new job.... "CEO" of a newly-formed company... "EnCorps". 

I'm trying to piece this together, but it appears that the charters in L.A. and San Francisco are hard up for Math and Science teachers, but the bosses don't want to have to deal with fullly-credentialed teachers, and their accompanying demands for a decent wage, decent benefits, decent job conditions, etc.

They want desperate, compliant, cheap labor that can teach those hard-to-place subjects of Math and Science.

Enter... EnCorps... a sort of Teach for America for career-changers with Math and Science backgrounds in the private sector, and who are desperate for any kind of work. 

The FAQ's page seems strikingly familiar to TFA... i.e. the questions being asked of candidates, are almost identical to the TFA application.  Here it is:

http://www.EnCorpsteachers.org/FAQ

What's bothersome is that having a teaching credential... not just in California, but anywhere in the country... ELIMINATES YOU FROM EVEN BEING CONSIDERED TO BE AN EnCorps FELLOW ???!!

WTF???!!!

It's like an organization is out to recruit people to staff hospitals that are desperate for qualified doctors and nurses, but they then say that anyone with an M.D., or a B.S/M.S in nursing is then disqualified from being recruited into that same organization. 

Check this out:  (bold highlighting is mine, NAME REDACTED)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Eligibility
How do I know if I am eligible for EnCorps?
EnCorps Educators come to us from a diverse range of backgrounds.  In order to meet basic eligibility requirements, a candidate must meet the following criteria:
·       Must be a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) professional
·       Fully eligible to work in the United States
·       Able to pass a background check
·       Have a Bachelor’s degree with a GPA of 2.50 or higher
·       Not be in possession of a teaching credential (in California or any other state with a reciprocal agreement)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A little farther down, it has the following FAQ's:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
If I already have a teaching credential can I apply?
No.  Our program is designed to assist math and science professionals in their transition to teaching careers.  If you are already a credentialed teacher, you are Not eligible to apply.
 
If I am credentialed in another state can I apply?
No.  California has reciprocal credential agreements with nearly all other states.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And that's a bad thing?  I mean there are thousands of fully-credentialed MATH/SCIENCE teachers without a job right now in California. 

I'm at a total loss to come up with a good, defensible reason why an organization whose "mission" —to use their own words—is "focused on closing the achievement gap by recruiting math and science professionals" to teach "in high-need schools in low-income communities as our mission dictates" would then turn away those "professionals" most qualified and able to do so.

When you read on, however, you start to get an idea as to why.  The goal of EnCorps'"Boot Camp" training program is to produce teachers who are "CEO's of their classrooms". 

Ay carumba! as Bart Simpson would say.

There's the market-based model at work.

However, if you're a parent in a low-income community—or any community, for that matter—do you want your kids to be taught by:

1) fully-credentialed Math/Science teachers with possibly years/decades of actual teaching experience;

OR

2) totally inexperienced, uncredentialed people just out of a dubious, short "Boot Camp" that trained them into being "CEO's of their classrooms"?

I don't know about you, Robert, but that's not a close call.  Any fully-informed parent would be irate that their principal procured their Math/Science teachers from EnCorps instead of hiring the countless experienced, fully-credentialed teachers who are out there available to work at that parent's school.

Sincerely,

NAME REDACTED

"CEO's of their classrooms" indeed.

No experience required? No, it's required that you have no experience. We wouldn't want the bevy of fully qualified experienced professionals applying for their old jobs back now would we? After all, these days all it takes is five weeks to become a master at anything. Right?

The board of the vile EnCorps, Inc. features the usual suspects, including charlatan Ted Mitchell of NewSchools Venture Fund. None of EnCorps board members or staff are strangers to the profitable school privatization faction. They are all about educating poor kids on the cheap.

Celebrated education professor and author Dr. Diane Ravitch once said:

"The Obama administration is using its unprecedented billions to advance a strategy of deregulation and deprofessionalization."

It should be much more clear now who he's doing that for.

John Deasy's Queen Antoinette moment: "let them eat ebooks"

"Right now, only higher-income readers can afford ebook readers and ebooks." — Dr. Stephen Krashen

On September 14, 2011 former Gates Foundation executive and Broad Superintendents Academy graduate John Deasy gave a much ballyhooed speech at Occidental College. While I may have time in the future to critique his mendacious stream of business-speak, which amounted to a clever corporate couching of school privatization in the language of "civil rights," it was his aloof response to an attendee's pertinent question on school libraries that deserves an immediate response. Here's a quote from an attendee who endured Deasy's verbal assault on public education:

"[O]ne of Rosemary's questions about his shutting school libraries got through. He said libraries would be irrelevant soon as books will move to electronic format. This was after he lamented about the plight of a homeless student living in a tent. I kid you not. I guess the kid in the tent will have to access books on the $800 I-Pad he can't afford."

A pointed and poignant question indeed to Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) Superintendent John Deasy, a man who deliberately gutted LAUSD's libraries in defiance of California's Assembly Bill 114, which was supposed to mandate the district spend its copious surplus funds on retaining the very personnel Deasy and company gleefully laid off. Laid off in a most ignominious fashion by the way, as Hector Tobar's The disgraceful interrogation of L.A. school librarians chronicled. Deasy's vapid and vacuous response to the library question sums up everything about corporate education reforms and shows why Deasy was hand selected to implement the neoliberal agenda in Los Angeles.

As disgusting as Deasy's quote about libraries being irrelevant was, it wasn't surprising considering his astonishing wealth and privilege. For wealthy white males like Deasy, poverty is something you see on television and it's easily solved by applying forms of the meritocracy myth via vile "no excuses" rhetoric and corporate privatization policies cloaked as promoting "high expectations." Deasy's own phrasing of the threadbare right-wing no excuses rhetoric reads as follows: "I actually believe that no other issue—circumstances of poverty, one parent, no parent, race, language proficiency, special need—none of that has a greater affect on the achievement gap than our belief about the ability of youth."

More to the point, Deasy's flippant remark that electronic format books would soon replace libraries has no grounding in reality. Such thinking and policies exacerbate the inequality of access to books in a way that is both classist and racist. A brief, but fact packed essay by Schools Matter's own Dr. Stephen Krashen entitled Kindelizaton: Are Books Obsolete? patently disproves everything Superintendent Deasy claims. Let's look at some of the important facts the essay presents.

Data shows that "ebooks appear to be capturing some of the paperback book market, but certainly not all of it, and not the hard cover or tradebook market. Thus far ebooks make up only a tiny percentage of total school library collections." [1] In other words, while ebooks are making inroads in the profitable popular paperbook sector, there hasn't been a great deal of investment in the more costly and lower volume textbook and hardcover sectors. As a consequence "ebooks only account for one-half of one percent of school library collections, and this is predicted to increase to only 7.8% in five years." [2]

It isn't just that ebooks aren't widespread enough to be considered a suitable replacement for school libraries. It's that access to ebooks is strictly class based:

The problem is the expense. Right now, only higher-income readers can afford ebook readers and ebooks. Kindles, for example, cost at least $100 each, and ebooks cost about $10, beyond the budget for those living in poverty. [3]

A table in Krashen's paper shows only four percent of people with household incomes under $30,000 owned ebook-readers, and that percentage remained constant for the nineteen months prior to publication of the paper. Krashen's conclusion is equally revealing:

The cost of ebook readers and ebooks makes them much less available to students from high-poverty families and under-funded school libraries. (Note that it is usually not possible to share ebooks.) Ebooks are allowing the print-rich to get even print-richer. [4]

It isn't surprising that people who get doctoral degrees from Cracker Jack boxes, or worse, purchase them from convicted criminals like Robert Felner in exchange for six figure grants, might be unaware of such research. More cynical readers might be tempted to suspect Deasy's deep ties to monopolistic software moguls like Bill Gates and technobabble charlatans like Tom Vander Ark as possible explanations for his intentional razing of school libraries in favor of profitable, but income exclusive, ebooks. Those things said, one would like to think the head of one of the largest school districts in the country would have a grasp of the basic fundamentals surrounding pedagogical issues and would be immune from pandering to his deep pocketed associates. Given the frightening lack of capacity of California's schools, outlined in UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access "The Train that is about to Hit," Deasy's notion of "let them eat ebooks" borders on criminal.

Research emphatically puts to lie Deasy's assertion that "libraries would be irrelevant soon as books will move to electronic format." In a state where the ratio of students to librarians is nearly 5,500 to 1 [5], Deasy's outright dismissal of the importance of libraries and books, combined with policies that exacerbate the problem, strongly convict him in his role in neoliberal dismantling of public education. Of course that's Deasy's capacity, he wasn't brought in by the Broad/Gates/Walton Triumvirate to fix LAUSD, he was brought in to destroy it. Collectively we need to reject Deasy's false narrative and demand he spend our funds on libraries and classrooms, not he and his fellow administrators' lavish lifestyles! Collectively we need to fight the privatization of public education!

_____
NOTES

[1] Krashen, Stephen. 2011. Kindelizaton: Are Books Obsolete?. Books and Articles by Stephen D. Krashen. Accessed September 20, 2011. http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/kindelization.pdf

[2-4] Ibid.

[5] This wonderful infographic from the UCLA IDEA article mentioned above illustrates what the plutocrat class has done to California's education system.

An open letter to Michael Moore from Sharon Higgins

Sharon Higgins is a founding member of Parents Across America and is also the author of three major blogs dedicated to both authentic reform and to exposing the criminal masterminds behind the corporate take over of public education. Her indispensable blogs include: The Broad Report, Charter School Scandals, and The Perimeter Primate. Her impeccable research has yielded invaluable information for activists and public education advocates. Whether you need information on a Broadyte recently infecting your school district, the name of one of the charter school executives who embezzled a half a million dollars, or want to read up on the Gulen Movement's insidious control of much of the charter school industry, Higgins has it covered. In An open letter to Michael Moore from Sharon Higgins she makes an appeal to Michael Moore to take up the cause of defending public education from the philanthrocapitalist vultures and their vile hangers on.

Dear Mr. Moore,

I am one of the people who will have the opportunity to see you at your UC Berkeley book event this Saturday night. It's going to be great to hear you speak!

Yesterday, as I listed to your interview on NPR's Talk of the Nation, I was happy to hear how you have considered doing a documentary about the American school system. I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of people who make that request of you everyday.

It's clear that you are aware of some of the devastating issues facing public education, such as the demoralization of teachers. I was impressed that you knew how Finland's success is the result of great policy decisions made years ago (the type of decisions the country continues to ignore). I was very gratified to hear that you did not like Waiting for Superman.

I believe that you are going to get more and more requests to make a documentary about public education. A lot of public school supporters are extremely upset at how public education is being forced to go down the wrong road. We want the truth to be exposed, and will keep turning to you for help.

That alarming truth is that our nation's public education system is in the process of being dismantled and privatized in the name of "education reform." The strategies being used are right out of the disaster capitalism playbook, with both Republicans and Democrats in support of the plan (including President Obama's administration). A wrong-headed, glorified "business model of education" has been shoved down our throats but it's not working. The school reform we've now been subjected to for years is failing!

Opportunists and predators ("edupreneurs") are having a feeding frenzy on the stream of public school funding. School districts spend millions on consultants and useless programs, and then whittle away at teachers, librarians, and electives for kids. Privately-run, publicly-funded, inadequately-monitored charter schools get preferential treatment and the myth of their superiority is constantly parroted. [continues...]

Read the entire story here.

Broad's Deborah Gist Out to Make Teacher Certification Decisions in RI Based on Test Scores

The Oligarchs' diversified portfolio of assaults on public education is in full operation, and it is largely directed by Eli Broad's trainees, who have been placed in superintendents' chairs from Los Angeles to Chicago to Providence, RI to Raleigh to Boston, with stops in between.  In many cases, as in Boston, the Broadies provide the personnel, while Bill and Melinda provide the software, if you will.  More later on the new BPS "Gates Compact."

The latest leak from the the Broad/Gates septic think tank is a real doozie.  Rhode Island's Ed Commish, Deborah Gist (Broad Class of '08), just put forward her boss's most extreme use yet of teacher test scores.  While other states like Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Florida are working overtime to make the unconscionable, workable, with new teacher evaluations based on test scores, the Broadies have taken the destruction of the teaching profession one step further down in Providence.  If the Broad plan passes public examination, which is going on this month, even teacher certification will be based on test scores, thus eliminating entirely those annoying Deweyean democrats in the schools of teacher education who have been teaching for years that the public schools are democratic institutions and that poor children should be treated as least as humanely as we do our dogs and parakeets.

In the Broadie's new assault on public education, prospective applicants with a Bachelor's degree may become teachers under a Preliminary or Initial Educator certificate (with or without the 5 weeks of brainwashing from a TFA camp).  Then from year to year students' test scores will determine who gets Professional and Advanced teaching certificates. 

Think this adds any higher stakes to the test score derby?  If it takes full scale manipulation and corruption to end the test score gap, bring it on, say the Broadies. At least we'll be over those whining over-educated losers with all their fancy ideas about child development needs and situated cognition, whatever that is. Please!

A clip from the Providence Journal.  Note that the corrupt outfit, NCTQ, is quoted as if they they had any legitimate expertise in matters of teacher quality or preparation:

PROVIDENCE –– The state Department of Education is proposing dramatic changes to the way teachers are certified, part of Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist’s plan to raise the quality of teaching throughout the state.

For the first time, certification would be tied to a teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom, based on the new evaluation system rolling out this fall.

 Also, certification would be tiered, with new teachers receiving a three-year “initial” certificate, and advancing to a five-year “professional certificate” if their evaluations are satisfactory. To distinguish the top level, teachers who are “highly effective” would be eligible for a seven-year “advanced” certificate.

But the nine-member Rhode Island Certification Policy Advisory Board opposes some elements of the proposal.

Specifically, the advisory board, which includes teachers union officials, the heads of schools of education at the state colleges, and representatives of teachers, principals and superintendents, objects to the omission of a requirement that teachers take college courses for credit — as many other states require.

Instead, the proposal requires teachers to participate in professional-development courses or workshops as determined by their principal, based on their evaluation.

“You need to grow professionally,” said Alexander Sidorkin, dean of the School of Education of Rhode Island College. “The evaluation system is new and we, on the board, don’t believe that all principals in all schools will have their teachers do something significant in terms of professional development.”

The board has recommended the creation of a consortium of higher-education institutions and other organizations that provide professional development that would oversee the quality of the programs and ensure they are relevant.

Over eight years — the length of an initial certificate and a professional certificate — teachers would be expected to receive “a master’s degree or the equivalent,” which is approximately 30 graduate credits, Sidorkin said.

Mary Ann Snider, who is in charge of teacher certification at the state Department of Education, says the new approach would allow principals to target the areas a particular teacher needs to strengthen.

“We don’t want this to be an empty, bureaucratic exercise for teachers,” Snider said. “Through the annual evaluation process, a teacher could learn they don’t have deep enough content knowledge in mathematics, and it may be best that he or she takes a course at a college. For other teachers, it might be they have problems with classroom management, and it could be best for them to partner with a master teacher in their building, and learn from them.”

Arthur McKee, a managing director at the National Council on Teaching Quality, agrees, saying certification should be linked to teacher evaluation.

“By and large, getting a master’s degree in education does not increase effectiveness in the classroom, whatsoever,” he said.

“You want to find out what the teachers need and find the available resources” they need to improve, he said. . . .

And who, pray tell, is Arthur McKee, other than "a managing director" of NCTQ?  Wow, he is "heading up a national review of education schools."  And looky here, he came to NCTQ from the Bridge Foundation, the corporate foundation purse strings that run ed deform in DC.  And before that, he was making a living trying to figure out how to use the homeless to generate tax breaks for the wealthy.  His bio:

Arthur McKee co-lead CityBridge Foundation’s work in education reform in DC, which aims to close the achievement gap in the nation’s capital through strategic investments in PK-12 education. He worked closely with his colleagues in the foundation and the foundation’s partners, developing and implementing the initiative’s strategies in creating models of excellence, attracting and preparing talent in education, and engaging the public in education reform.

Before helping to launch the Foundation’s Early Years Education Initiative in 2006, Arthur investigated the potential of philanthropic strategies in the areas of homeless service provision, workforce development, and asset building.

Arthur joined the Foundation in 2000. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian history from U.C. Berkeley.  He serves on the boards of DC Preparatory Academy and Princeton AlumniCorps. He and his wife have two school-age children.

Sounds to me like he is the perfect guy to do Eli Broad's "national review of education schools."

A match made in privatization purgatory? Capricious Young and A.J. Duffy!

"Improving education is not the goal. Privatization is the goal... Private interests are just that – private." — Bruce A. Dixon (Managing Editor, "Black Agenda Report")


I recently posted a short essay on political opportunist and public education turncoat A.J. Duffy jumping on the privatization bandwagon. In that essay I mentioned how the Los Angeles Times was using the episode to push their vile privatization agenda via an odious editorial. Right on the heels of the Times' gleeful hit-piece, expounding on their love for all forms of corporate rule, they gave Duffy's newfound partner in poverty pimping, Caprice "Capricious" Young, a platform to further pimp privatization. Young, an unelected board member of Duffy's lucrative foray into the privatization pool was quick to lay on the corporate charter spin. Remember she called Duffy's treacherous betrayal to the public commons a "conversion... to put it in evangelical terms."

After choking back a great deal of bile, I commented thusly:

One of the greatest enemies of public education talks about "mutual respect?" Ms. Young's entire career has reeked of opportunism and greed. Other than stuffing copious amounts of money into her pockets, why is she even qualified to weigh in on education issues? Despicable, duplicitous, and deceitful are adjectives often used to describe this corporate charter charlatan, but I feel those words are too kind to be used on the likes of her. She has never wanted "teacher led schools," and the unelected boards she sits on bears testament to precisely just that. What does she say? "[W]e recruited a solid board, including charter and business leaders" (emphasis mine). Note that the capricious Young doesn't mention educators, community members, or parents in that board composition — the inevitable result of putting public money into private hands.

Unsurprisingly, former Alain Leroy Locke High School teacher Bruce Smith went after me in the comment section of Young's disgusting blowback piece. Smith was one of the sell-out teachers that helped seize Locke for the beleaguered Green Dot Charter Corporation, and then was promptly let go by his corporate masters. Strangely, he still defends Green Dot at every opportunity.

Among other things, Smith claims I "consistently disgrace public discourse about education." Is that what opposing privatization is called? I responded to Smith as follows:

Bruce Smith, please tell us how many educators, community members, and parents are on her board? Or do such people only exist as an afterthought in the lucrative charter-voucher sector? Young is a CORO Fellow [1], an organization well known for producing enemies of the public commons, but are staunch allies to the corporate agenda. Did you know she founded the California Charter School Association (CCSA) along with racist and nativist Steve Poizner? I don't need to know someone to discuss their exploits, Young's actions and vile ideology vilifies her far more than any of my prose. One look at who funds these people should be sufficient to judge them, but perhaps you aren't opposed to plutocracies?

While he's at it, perhaps Smith can explain why his heroine was unable to keep her lucrative gig at ICEF? The plutocrats dropped her like a hot potato once they were able to get Broadyte Parker Hudnut to navigate the sinking ship that is the ICEF privatization program to the ocean floor.

_____
NOTES
[1] Poverty pimping and privatization pushing CORO Fellows list includes: Caprice Young, Yolie Flores-Aguilar, Ryan Smith, Jordan Henry, Ricardo Mireles, Gabe Rose, Wesley George Farrow, Bill Jackson... Anyone knowing of more please feel free to contact me so I can add them to this list.

Knoxville Native Offers Firsthand Account of Life Under Broad's Most Vanilla Corporate Boss

Broad Foundation stooge, Jim McIntyre, is in the news again, at least in the alternative news, since the corporate media of Knoxville has never printed a story that could reflect badly on the Haslam/Chamber of Commerce's pick for school superintendent.  The Metro Pulse says in a solid piece of reporting that McIntyre is having another go at privatizing KCS's janitorial services, an effort that failed last spring.

Could this be a precursor to privatizing the teacher corps of Knoxville--or the entire state?  Don't think I'm joking, for an effort is underway by Michigan's fascist governor, Rick Snyder,  to do just that.  This development puts McIntyre's refusal to acknowledge KCEA as a bargaining collaborating unit until the State makes clear its legislative intent into a whole new light.  Perhaps the Broadies know what is on the planning board for Tennessee parents and teachers if the Oligarchs have their way.

Meanwhile, Knox County parents led by Kari Hancock are challenging the local policy of using student TCAP scores to determine grades and student placements.  The grades part follows on a state law passed by the right-wing TN Legislature, but the student placement business reflects McIntyre's own tilt toward using racist and classist tests to sort children. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

It should be an interesting year for McIntyre, whose new contract continues to pay him over $222,000 per year, more than the Vice-President of the United States makes.  Especially interesting if the cowed teachers of Knoxville begin to speak out, as this lifelong Knoxville native and veteran teacher did an email to me:

. . . . In my own experience, every special education staff person was required to attend a mandatory meeting in which we were told by the SPED director that it was the superintendent's expectation that all KCS staff were to demonstrate "alignment" with his "vision" and policies (although any "vision" or "policy" had yet to be stated) , that we were to make no statements to friends, neighbors, or community members which expressed any doubt regarding or disagreement with his as-yet unstated policies and "vision", and that Knox County was moving in a "new direction" and we could either "get into alignment ("alignment" is one of his favorite buzzwords) or be "left behind" (there was no doubt that this meant "fired").

Our spineless Central Office bureaucrats at the AJ [Andrew Johnson] building downtown scrambled to be the first to kiss the ring of our newly anointed corporate-backed leader so as to protect their own positions as well of their personal fiefdoms which they had established for their friends, relatives, and cronies over the years.  Front-line staff became expendable cannon fodder in show-trial disciplinary actions as Central Office supervisors sacrificed veteran and novice teachers alike to demonstrate their "alignment" with the new regime.

Of course, staff morale plummeted and continued to do so as McIntyre kicked his PR machine into overdrive and ingratiated himself with the local media who were all to eager to serve as his personal echo chamber, hosting him repeatedly on local news programs to field banal, soft-pitch questions from starry-eyed "reporters" whom he regaled with buzzwords and platitudes in his carefully-cultivated and obnoxiously obsequious public persona.  All the while, front-line staff were reminded by their supervisors to remain quiet and "in alignment" as questionable actions were taken to keep themselves and their departments below the new superintendent's radar.  Heaven and earth was moved - regardless of  preexisting KCS policy or even existing state and federal law - to avoid unhappy parents, any threat of  lawsuits, or any negative public discourse for fear it would reflect badly upon the bureaucracy and run counter to McIntyre's PR policy.  Incidents of violence or illegal activities occurring in individual schools were hushed up and glossed over by administrators lest word get out that such things were occurring under McIntyre's leadership.

Meaningful, individualized, and appropriate  programming for SPED students fell by the wayside in favor of a "please all parents at all costs" phony feel-good policy of "inclusion for all" as a beginning move toward reducing the amount of veteran SPED teachers on the payroll   Staff members who dared speak out found themselves facing professional disciplinary action on random "allegations" of wrongdoing with their pending disciplinary action often reported to the press by McIntyre's PR people before the employee was even aware of it - only to be followed by placement on unpaid leave for the duration of an endless "investigation" in hopes of simply starving the offending staff person into exiting the system.   Dog and pony shows were hastily arranged by principals as McIntyre's office, in his much-touted promise to "visit every school" called individual schools to inform them of his intent to "visit"  that day with his entourage of HR staffers and the occasional school board member with the local press corps obediently in tow.

Not surprisingly, our own KCEA stood mute in McIntyre's first years here even as their rank-and-file members felt the full force of his top-down, unilateral, anti-teacher,  pro-business policies - responding only with platitude-filled newsletters advising teachers to eat healthy and get plenty of sleep to help manage work-related stress and, more often than not, failing to mount any meaningful defense for front-line members who found themselves "out of alignment" with McIntyre's policies.

McIntyre's first year bled into his second and third as our star-struck elected school board continued to eat out of his Broad-trained hand while the local media continued to report each press release from his office spokesperson as factual "news"  to a public caught up in a teacher-bashing frenzy while our educators stood silent out of fear for their  jobs.   He received one glowing review after another from the school board, citing "widespread support" for his policies and leadership style among teachers and parents while praising the public "visibility" afforded him by his cadre of professional PR people and spokespersons.  His contract was extended before it even neared the point of expiration much to the surprise and disgust of the very same people the school board, in their endless naivete', credited with being among his staunchest supporters.

Even as teacher layoffs were deemed an inevitable result of budgeting realities during the recession, funding was found within the budget  for the establishment of a "Leadership Academy" for corporate-minded aspiring principals within the system.  As school budgets for basic necessities such as paper and toner were slashed to the bone, and as programs of all types were downsized, reduced, and eliminated altogether, money was found to open new facilities owned by politically-connected businessmen and investors hungry for a slice of public money - such as an alternative school opened in a failed shopping mall and a STEM school opened in a turn-of-the-century train station, privately owned  previously underutilized as office and banquet space.  Race To The Top funds "awarded" to the county as a result of McIntyre's policies were used to create an entirely new level of bureaucracy consisting of dozens of new "consultants", "liaisons", "coaches" and "coordinators" who contribute nothing to student achievement.

Even as McIntyre continued to use the current economic situation as political capital and to exploit the national trend of teacher-bashing to sway public opinion to his ends with his push toward laying off teachers, outsourcing services to corporations, and attempting to erode the rights of  established (AKA higher-paid) teachers to due process and fairness in the workplace,  he added two more Broad-trained corporate hacks to his already bloated Central Office management team, creating new positions with meaningless titles out of thin air.

When finally queried during a budget meeting by an astute county commissioner on how such a large central office staff could be considered justifiable in light of the current fiscal reality, McIntyre produced a document outlining the results from a study conducted in 2001 (long before his tenure here), which described the Central Office staffing as numbering 85 positions and as being "adequately staffed".  What McIntyre did NOT divulge, however, was that Central Office staff at the time of that budget meeting was that his Central Office staff  had grown by 400 positions since the 2001 study!  Of course, the KCS organizational chart was quickly reorganized after this false presentation in order to appear "in alignment" with McIntyre's lie.

McIntyre overplayed his hand last year, however, with his attempt to use the pretense of  an "emergency budget crisis" to unilaterally cancel the contractually-obligated annual step-raises of certified staff during a meeting of the school board.  When a lone school board member questioned the appropriateness of this action in light of the intentions not being made public as well as the unilateral nature of his proposal, McIntyre pushed the remaining members to override her in an "emergency" ruling. 

Ultimately, he did not get his way as the school board allowed a referendum to be held by KCEA members regarding this proposal prior to it's adoption into the budget.  Despite McIntyre's PR machine using the local media as a bullhorn to trumpet threats of widespread teacher layoffs if the measure was not passed, the measure found no support amid the rank and file who saw it for the shameless  power play it was.  With McIntyre's hand being slapped away from the cookie jar for the first time, he again took to the press and tapped into the national anti-teacher sentiment to paint the educators whe refused to support his proposal as "not willing to do what is right for students.".

Ultimately, ZERO layoffs occurred, with the only casualty of this fiasco being the revocation of  downtown parking fee reimbursement for McIntyre's central staff  at the insistence of  the County Commission.  And this event is EXACTLY why McIntyre is leveraging the current political and legislative climate in TN to marginalize and render impotent the KCEA.

And today the local media is already reporting glowing reviews from the School Board on his annual evaluation, with yet another early extension of his contract all but certain at the conclusion of tonight's meeting.

I'm sure Eli is proud.

Jim McIntyre: The Tip of Eli Broad's Corporate Education Spear in East Tennessee

(Photo by Sheena Patrick for MetroPulse shows McIntyre (far right) seated next to Gov. Bill Haslam. At left is former TFA cult leader and current TN Education Commissioner, Kevin Huffman)

In March 2008 Broad Academy alumnus, Jim McIntyre (Class of '06), was selected by a 5-4 vote as Superintendent of Schools for Knox County.  This followed backroom machinations by then-Mayor and Pilot Oil exec, Bill Haslam, who last year bought his way to the Governor's Office in Nashville and has since become Gates's and Broad's chief edu-stooge among Southern governors.

In fact, McIntyre was Haslam's choice for Superintendent in early 2008, as expressed here in a letter by Pilot Travel Center's COO, Mitch Steenrod, just days before four Knox County School Board members were flown to Boston for the last McIntyre interview and other "visits" prior to McIntyre's selection:

Subject: Superintendent Candidates
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:45:43 -0400

Honorable Members of Knox County School Board,

Thank you for allowing the Chamber an opportunity to talk with each of the three finalists in the superintendent search. All three were very thoughtful and composed.In my opinion, James McIntyre would be my choice for the position. He had a clear vision of accountability and measurement. He also had a great handle on developmental curriculum and understands the teaching environment in an underserved area.Again, thank you for the opportunity and best of luck with the decision.

Mitch Steenrod
Pilot Travel Centers LLC 

Since his appointment as Superintendent, McIntyre has been a faithful water-carrier for the TN Business Roundtable agenda, as witnessed in his supporting of teacher bonus pay for test scores, downsizing instructional and non-instructional personnel,  outsourcing public jobs such as janitorial services to corporations, and marginalizing teachers and the Knox County Education Association.

McIntyre most recently declared that Knox County would not negotiate with KCEA until the State of TN makes clear the meaning of one to the scores of hostile-to-teachers bills passed this year by the BRT's state legislature.  McIntyre went even further by becoming the first county superintendent in Tennessee to deny leave time to the president of the local TEA affiliate:

Tennessee Education Association President Gera Summerford says so far, Knox County is the first system she’s aware of that’s making changes under the new law.

 “There’s nothing in the law that would prohibit a board of education from continuing with such an agreement,” she says, citing Shelby County, where the education association grants release time for its president despite never participating in collective bargaining. “In fact, it was rather surprising in Knoxville that the K.C.E.A. was notified [the last week of July],” she adds, “when in fact their communication to the school system was back in May, when they knew that there would be a new president and what their terms were.”

McIntyre has also been at the forefront of making state TCAP test scores a significant part of student grades. As a result of his recommendation, the Knox County School Board passed a plan last January to make TCAP scores count 15 percent of student school grades.  So if economically disadvantaged and special needs children were not being treated unfairly enough already, now they have an additional disincentive for going to school. That borderline passing grade on the Biology 6-weeks card?  It just became an F.

And leafy suburbs children are not exempt from this cutting edge stupidity.  For parents of students whose children in the past just made the cut for Honors and AP classes are in the same boat, with names being removed from these classes without any notification to parents.