The New Gold Rush by TFA in Camden

Most critics of Teach of America focus on the criminally-miseducative practice of using white inexperienced Ivy League missionaries, most of whom remain blind to their own racism, to impose a form of corporate counter-insurgency in the poorest urban areas of America, where children need the most professional and experienced teachers.  

The paternalist mission in these communities is to enforce "broken windows" schooling, which uses psychological manipulations to achieve a kind of brutal corporate culture based on TFA's troops patrolling classrooms during their two year commitments to continuously intervene and assess, assess and intervene. 

Most people don't focus on what happens to TFA corp members after their enlistments are up.  Many of these converts of their own propaganda return to grad school or to careers, with the self-satisfaction that comes to those who believe in the indispensability of their own corrective powers to fix the poor through repeated injections of corporate positive psychology. 

Other TFA veterans, however, move on to fulfill the other big piece of the TFA mission: educational misleadership.  

Camden, NJ represents a case study waiting to be studied, and it could lay bare TFA's lucrative, inhumane, and self-serving business model, now masquerading as education.  

A former TFA Corp member is now superintendent in Camden, and others from the paternal cult of TFA are descending on Camden like a horde of locusts. 

After another year of facilitating massive layoffs and closing more public schools, our state-appointed superintendent of the Camden City School District is sustaining his efforts to destroy public education in Camden. A former Teach for America staffer with roughly only 18 months’ teaching experience and former Goldman Sachs analyst, Paymon Rouhanifard was dispatched to Camden as a superintendent though lacking the requisite education, practical experience and certification qualifying him for the position. Yet, here in Camden, Rouhanifard has presided over this school system with absolute authority for four years. Though the Municipal Redevelopment Act of 2002 mandated the return of local control of Camden’s school board in 2014, the district, under the direction of Rouhanifard, employed the services of powerful attorney William Tambussi to continue to deny residents of their right to vote for their school board members.

Why does that matter? Many consequential decisions impacting this school district have been made by one man who lacks even the qualifications to be a teacher, yet is paid north of $200,000 per year to fill the most vital position in any school district! Important and far-reaching personnel decisions have been made solely by Rouhanifard that, ordinarily, come under board scrutiny and require board approval. Under Rouhanifard’s administration, there has been an explosion in the hiring of former Teach for America and The New Teacher Project corps members to managerial and executive-level positions with six-figure salaries; questionable hiring of assistant and deputy superintendents with suspect backgrounds; and the hiring of politically connected yet less-than-deserving millennials (a relative of Gov. Chris Christie, relatives and in-laws of television executives, an in-law to a former Democratic presidential candidate) with exorbitant salaries most district employees (with more experience in education, connection to the community and credentials) will never earn.

Tony Bennett's Chewytrain Lands in Camden

by Doug Martin

One of the most embarrassing moments of Tony Bennett’s rein as Indiana’s corporate school chief (and there were many) was when his partner Dale Chu (better known as @chewytrain), happy as a teenage girl at a Jonas Brothers' concert (one of the Jonas Brothers, by the way, loves to perform at for-profit school Rocketship events), tweeted his admiration of the filthy rich out to privatize education at a Jeb Bush/Rupert Murdoch shindig in San Francisco.

The Ivy Leaguer and former charter school principal who resigned with Bennett in Florida after it was revealed that Bennett changed the grade of a donor’s charter school in Indiana, Chu is at it again, this time in Camden, New Jersey, where the corporate school takeover has been in full swing, as Jersey Jazzman has detailed, since Chris Christie, a former Edison Schools lobbyist, and Chris Cerf, Tony Bennett’s con man at Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, has made it an agenda.

In fact, there is a possible investigation brewing in nearby Newark, thanks to Christie and Cory Booker, the former corporate Democratic mayor and waterboy for Walmart and the Bradley Foundation's Black Alliance for Educational Options.  

Chu is now pulling in $160,000 ($10,000 more than he made in Florida) as the project director of the Camden City Schools  (page 83 in PDF box) where he’s doing “teacher talks” this month because, according to Chu, only three high school students in the entire city of Camden are college-ready. 

So that Jeb Bush would know about this Camden student "failure," Chu tagged him in one of his tweets.  As I recently mentioned to the good folks in Clay County Indiana, Jeb Bush was really the Indiana supt. of education when Chu was here, inviting friends at Charter Schools USA and Edison Learning to take over so-called "failing" schools and lobbying for online learning outfits like Pearson’s Connections Academy which invaded a community-led rural charter school to rake in millions.

As Rutgers professor Stephen Danley has pointed out, Camden "parents and residents must choose between crumbling district schools and shiny charter schools" in "a manufactured crisis caused by the refusal to fund repairs of district buildings."

Chu must be happy.  The powers-that-be in the Christie/Jeb Bush clan have at least opened up the bridge for Chewytrain to come, cash in, and weep in admiration of the 1 percent again.

Jay Saper on TFA and Subsequent KIPP Recruiting Experience

I talked with an amazing young man the other day about his getting booted out of TFA during the early fall of 2013. His name is Jay Saper, and, despite his recent experiences, he remains articulate, confident, and eager to become a real teacher with real teacher preparation and credentials. From our long conversation, it became apparent to me that he is much too empathetic to be successful in an organization like Teach for America, which values achievement scores and its corporate branding over the welfare of children and parents.

This is not to deny that there are many well-intentioned young privileged idealists from Ivy League schools who come in to Teach for America with the same goals with which Jay started. Few of them I would guess carry the fire that Jay possesses, with a commitment to democratic principles and social justice that he embodies and that he lives.

You see, Jay was assigned to Philadelphia at a time when thousands of experienced teachers were being let go, only to be replaced in many instances by the young corporate missionaries from TFA. When Jay went into a school for an interview with the principal, one of the first things he asked was why the school would hire teachers with five weeks of training, when mature experienced teachers were begging for jobs. Needless to say, Jay had a hard time getting placed and the TFA hierarchy cut him loose.

I was impressed with Jay's insights into the psychology of TFA. As a pedagogical sweatshop for  privileged college grads who have never known failure, but only the success that their advantages have enabled, TFA is able to manipulate that fear of failure that lies just beneath the surface of the over-tested, though never-tested, and to focus that fear through TFA's ideological lens that shrinks the effects of poverty and magnifies the potential contribution of would-be teachers to accomplish what schools and teachers will never accomplish alone. That is why, Jay said, that TFA Corps members are willing to work to the point of nervous breakdowns, lost relationships, hair falling out, etc.  

What is out of reach is made to appear close up by TFA trainers, as in one instance in particular that Jay related to me.  One of the many videos used during Jay's training showed a young TFA teacher doing amazing lessons in an elementary classroom. What the trainers did not tell the young initiates was that the teacher, who Jay actually recognized as someone from his hometown, was one of those rare TFA teachers who had spent four years in an elementary education program prior to coming to TFA. 

Jay had written to me following an interview that I posted at Schools Matter with a former KIPP teacher. He told me in his email that soon after he was cut from TFA that he was invited, via email, to attend a KIPP recruiting session for TFA teachers and alums at a restaurant in Philadelphia with free food and drinks. The way Jay described the session sounded like a cross between college mixer and a corporate sales meeting. Plenty of alcohol and hobnobbing, with an abundance of counterfeit $5000 bills all around the room. Recruiters explained that those attending could exchange those bills for real ones signing with KIPP or by providing leads to KIPP for new prospects who were signed as KIPP teachers.

As Jay said in his email, one of the recruiters confidently proclaimed that within seven years KIPP would have 10 schools in Newark and five in Camden.  It was tons of fun, Jay said, "and by that I mean fascinating (at least for someone who wrote an undergraduate thesis on Wall Street recruitment and resistance). As I do not drink or eat meat, was not enthralled, but this was certainly the reason why most folks came."  He added that it was a bit odd being wined and dined as teachers, at a time when most Philadelphia teachers did not have copy paper.

With the current public relations nightmare that KIPP's most recent abuses have generated, one may wonder if such plans are, perhaps, a bit grandiose. Recent news reports out of New Jersey indicate a slowing down of the steamroller in Camden. From New Jersey Spotlight:

. . . .The new KIPP-Cooper-Norcross Academy in Lanning Square, one of up to five schools that the project would lead to, was slated to open in a new building in September. But the head of the KIPP team in New Jersey yesterday said that was all but certain not to happen, with design and construction bids still out.

Questions about how the project would be financed and how its space allotted slowed the construction process, said Ryan Hill, president of the TEAM charter school network, KIPP’s New Jersey organization that would lead the new school.

He said instead there would likely be temporary space erected on the site for next fall, as construction is completed. His organization will start information sessions for prospective students in the next month or two. . . .

Storm Brewing Over KIPP Re-Vote in Camden

We posted here in August on the corporate reform school plan for Camden, and we posted here on the School Board's courageous vote to say NO to the KIPP correctional facilities at the center of the Norcross Plan.

Now apparently Norcross and his army of lawyers can't take NO for an answer, and they are planning a meeting whose date and location they would like to keep as closely guarded as possible.

Now the KIPP plan is tentatively planned to be heard again tomorrow at the Camden School Board meeting.  

Please use this list below to call or email Camden school board members to thank them for supporting public education in NJ, rather than the total compliance corporate reform schools that Norcross and KIPP have planned for urban children.


Administration Building
201 North Front Street 8th floor
Camden, New Jersey 08102
(856) 966-2000

Ms. Kathryn Blackshear 
President

Mrs. Martha F. Wilson
Vice President

Mr. Sean M. Brown

Ms. Barbara A. Coscarello

Ms. Sara T. Davis

Mr. Raymond L. Lamboy

Mrs. Felisha Reyes-Morton

Kathryn Ribay

Mr. Brian E. Turner

Camden Says No to KIPP Correctional Complex

On August 6 we posted on a corporate sweetheart deal to bilk the city of Camden, NJ out of untold millions to create a total compliance corporate school site in Camden.  The plan included no analysis of how much money the local public schools would lose to KIPP and the hooligan charter operators from Philadelphia, but on Wednesday of this week, the local board said NO to the plan.   

. . . . The effect of the new schools on the existing district factored into some board members' decisions Wednesday, they said.

Between $18 million to $22 million for each proposal would be diverted from the district in per-pupil costs, according to a quick estimate by the district business administrator, Celeste Ricketts. Because the Renaissance proposals could mean the shift of more than 4,000 students from the district and result in consolidation of schools, Ricketts said, she could not estimate the total loss or cost to the district if the proposals went through.

Between $18 million to $22 million for each proposal would be diverted from the district in per-pupil costs, according to a quick estimate by the district business administrator, Celeste Ricketts. Because the Renaissance proposals could mean the shift of more than 4,000 students from the district and result in consolidation of schools, Ricketts said, she could not estimate the total loss or cost to the district if the proposals went through.. . .

The question now: Will the Nation's largest governor and his poodle commissioner, Chris Cerf, follow oil magnate, Bill Haslam's lead in Tennessee, in setting aside democracy to assure the privatization of public schools.  

This vote in Camden represents another example that citizens are awakened to the corporate takeover and bleeding out of public schools.  Now the citizens of Camden should demand a state commitment to improve poverty rates and to create new public schools, rather than turning their children's education over to profiteers and modern day eugenicists.  

KIPP at Center of Corruption in Camden

KIPP, Inc. has joined forces with the most corrupt and ruthless charter school operator that Philadelphia has to offer, in a takeover bid for large chunks of one of the most vulnerable school communities in America.

Find on this money train, too, a posse of political predators and hungry hangers-on eager to fill their pockets from bleeding dry the public funds for Camden schools. And don't forget the other partner in this business deal, the Cooper Foundation, headed by George Norcross III, whose medical complex sits next door to where the planned KIPP incarceration camp is to be built.

 Norcross's brother, Donald Norcross, sponsored the legislation in Trenton to make the whole deal possible.  Oh, yes, something not in the excellent report below--the "operators" behind the plan are offering $500,000 to the Camden Schools for this property, which is worth millions to a sprawling hospital corporation looking to expand.

So if the whole deal goes bust after 5 years, which has been KIPP's history in Camden, Norcross's corporation will be standing be to do something with that property, yes?

Here is a terrific piece of reporting by the Courier-Journal of Cherry Hill, just down the road from Camden, NJ.  The reporter is Kevin Shelly.

CAMDEN — The school board is weighing Hope Act school proposals that, if approved, could cause thousands of students and tens of millions of dollars to leave the public school system.

The proposals would put schools in three neighborhoods:

• In North Camden, at a site bound by 8th and 9th streets and Linden and Pearl streets. This site is controlled by billboard businessman, lawyer and educational entrepreneur Vahan G. Gureghian, who operates the Chester Community Charter School, Pennsylvania’s largest. A project representative won’t comment on the proposed Benjamin Franklin Academy, which would initially serve 400 students in grades K-6. It would add a grade every year until it reaches grade 12.

• In the Gateway area, at 7th Street and Kaighn Avenue. A K-12 school for 1,200 students is proposed by Philadelphia record producer Kenny Gamble’s Universal Companies, a charter school operator in Philadelphia.

• In Lanning Square, at the site of a former public school at Broadway and Washington Street. A partnership of charitable foundations and a California-based charter operator, have proposed a campus of five schools eventually serving more than 2,800 students. The foundations are affiliated with George E. Norcross III, chairman of Cooper Health System.

Here is a look at the applicants:

• Little is known about the planned Benjamin Franklin Academy, the only applicant to keep its submission private. Camden’s planning board approved the North Camden site as a conventional charter school location for Gureghian in December 2011, before passage of the Hope Act.

Morris Smith, a Collingswood attorney and project spokesman, said he wants the school board to vet the proposal before going public. Smith also refers repeatedly to his “client,” rather than using Gureghian’s name.

But much has been written about Gureghian, whose for-profit education management firm runs the Chester charter. His otherbusiness is a billboard firm, Matt Outdoor.

Gureghian is a power broker and major GOP donor in suburban Philadelphia. He was the top donor to Pennsylvania’s Republican Gov. Tom Corbett. He began his career as a lawyer, moved on to the billboard business and added education.

He is the founder and CEO of Charter School Management Inc, which operates the non-profit Chester Community Charter School.

Critics see the charter, which educates the majority of Chester’s K-8 students, as a drain on the troubled Chester-Upland school district. More than a third of the district’s budget goes to the charter school and its nearly 3,000 students.

The charter school is known for giving incentives to students, families and teachers in the form of vouchers and even a trip to Disney World.

The reward system — funded in large measure by Gureghian — extends to Pennsylvania’s mandatory statewide math and reading tests, with coupons handed out for high performance,

But the school’s results on those tests are under scrutiny as a result of an examination of erasure patterns where most or all corrected answers were switched from wrong to right. As a result, the charter is prohibited from monitoring its own testing.

• Kenny Gamble, who wrote “Love Train” and dozens of other early 1970s hits with Philadelphia International Records, is the chairman behind Universal’s application.

Universal began as a community development organization, building affordable homes, acquiring real estate and providing health and wellness outreach. It has branched into high-end housing and charter school operation and management.

Universal’s education management is done in-house and is non-profit, as is the parent company, said Rahim Islam, who runs Universal on a day-to-day basis.

Islam said Universal selected the Gateway site because it is vacant land owned by the state School Development Authority, which could make its acquisition simpler. But he said Universal would move if the school board prefers another site.

Islam said Universal “cut its teeth” running K-8 schools in Philadelphia, but that he prefers the K-12 model because it assures a continuum for students and offers better results.

Some critics have questioned whether Universal is an Islamic organization — Islam and Gamble are both Muslim. Islam said their religion sustains them as individuals, but Universal believes religion is a personal choice and is not a part of their business plan.

Universal, which played a role in developing the Catto School in Camden, sees the Hope Act as an opportunity.

“We stand on the concept there are no easy fixes,” said Islam. “Fixing requires fixing the core and that means bringing in stakeholders.”

• Cooper Lanning Square Renaissance School — also known as KIPP Cooper Norcross — is at once the most ambitious and the most controversial.

Ambitious due to its scope and its linkage with Cooper Health System — but also because of George Norcross’ desire to use the school as a model for Camden’s rebirth.

Controversial, in part, due to the names associated with it.

Norcross’s brother, state Sen. Donald Norcross, was a Hope Act sponsor, so it’s no surprise the Lanning Square plan takes full advantage of the law by proposing a cluster of schools as just one application.

And at a press conference announcing the application, George Norcross said he’d like to see more such projects in the city and across the state. He suggested that eight Hope Act schools permitted in Newark and Trenton could be reallocated to Camden if those cities don’t act on the opportunity.

Norcross’ plans for Lanning Square — adjacent to Cooper’s new medical school — circulated in the city even before the Hope Act legislation was signed in January. The reaction hasn’t always been favorable.

The Lanning Square site once held a city school, that was closed and demolished due to structural defects. Some residents want to see a city school return.

The state and city have spent around $10 million on the site, with plans for the School Development Authority to rebuild the Lanning Square School. But those plans remain in limbo, with the SDA having taken the site off its priority list.

One public school advocate, Mo’Neke Ragsdale, recently warned the SDA she intends to sue if the agency does not move forward with its plans for Lanning Square.

Cooper has asked the SDA about acquiring the site; the state agency owns about 60 percent of Lanning Square.

The school district rebuffed a request to have its portion appraised and told lawyers for Cooper it had no interest selling its portion. Susan Bass Levin, leader of the Cooper charitable foundation, has expressed hope that the board will change its mind once it has a chance to absorb the proposal.

KIPP, which stands for Knowledge is Power Program, is a well-established charter chain operator that’s already stumbled in Camden.

The nonprofit operated a charter school here, but eventually took its name off Freedom Academy Charter School. The school has continued to falter and is in jeopardy of closing later this month.

KIPP has said it is proposing a new cluster school model known as TEAM, which is in place in Newark, where the state Department of Education has a long history of oversight.

Like many charters, KIPP has a reputation for hiring young inexperienced teachers at modest salaries, but often being heavy on well-paid administration.

Many of its teachers are graduates of the Teach For America program, which trains college graduates to be teachers in return for a two-year commitment to teaching, mostly in urban settings.

TFA’s founder, Wendy Kopp, is married to Richard Barth, KIPP’s CEO.