TN Taliban Plans to Seize Memphis Schools

MEMPHIS: “Tennessee House Republican leaders will push a plan in 2026 to install a Memphis-Shelby County schools oversight panel to seize significant decision-making authority from the locally elected school board…” 🤔 GOP = Government Overreach Party www.timesfreepress.com/news/2025/de...

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— The Tennessee Holler (@thetnholler.bsky.social) December 25, 2025 at 3:25 PM

State Money Without State Tests for Memphis Private Schools?

The plan to culturally sterilize all of Memphis's poor black kids in lockdown, segregated corporate charter schools has run into stiff opposition from parents and some Memphis school board members in recent years.

Most of the federal Race to the Top money for such a venture has dried up, along with the cash from the Gates Foundation.  The Waltons are still pumping money into the paternalistic Teach for America in Memphis, as well as other corporate white missionary preparation programs, but much of the enthusiasm for turning Memphis into Corporate Teacher Town has waned.

One can imagine the half-empty craft beer joints and coffee boutiques, as the edupreneurial leeches who rushed into Memphis over the past decade are now moving on to other urban areas to seize onto less anemic hosts.

With the charter balloon now coming back to earth, the future of the "Broken Windows" KIPP schooling model in Memphis is up for grabs, which means the private and church schools in Memphis have now entered into the multi-billion dollar contest to lay claim to state education funds once dedicated to public schools. 

A school voucher bill has been introduced by scurrilous members of the Tennessee Taliban, aka the General Assembly, that is aimed to privatize ONLY Memphis, and it has been sailing through legislative committees until this week, when it hit a real snag.  It seems that the more desperate private schools in Memphis are eager to get the state cash for their share of the poor children they would otherwise shun, were it not for the $6,000 vouchers in their lunch pails each year, but only if they do not have to take the same state tests that have been used to demonize and detonate the public schools in the poor areas of the state. 

The panel voted narrowly to amend the bill so that voucher participants could take tests in their private schools that are different from what their counterparts take in public schools. But lawmakers stopped short of sending the amended bill to their finance committee after Rep. Mike Stewart, who opposes vouchers, moved to adjourn.

Meanwhile, income inequality continues to rot the remaining social fabric in Tennessee's slave and cotton capital, even as the surrounding leafy suburban towns get ready for prom, graduation, and summers of travel before going off to college.

Corporate Ed Candidate Loses in Memphis School Board Race

In the only contested school board race in Memphis this year, the corporate charter behemoth lost. Stephanie Love, an incumbent who has advocated for public neighborhood schools and against the ASD, won over a candidate, Sharon Fields, who was funded by the charter industry.  Love finished with almost 60 percent of the vote.

. . . .The single contested race mirrored several state races, as education reform groups, which often advocate for charter schools, took an interest at both the state and local level.

Fields is the office manager and family coordinator for the Libertas School of Memphis, a charter school under the state-run Achievement School District. She had received $5,000 donations each from two PACs, Education Reform Now Advocacy and Tennesseans for Putting Students First. Similar groups have also funded candidates running for state office who have ties to either charters or the ASD.

Although Love has children in both ASD and SCS schools, she has frequently spoken out against the state-run schools and has even advised parents not to send their kids to them.  . . .

ASD Advisory Councils in Memphis Calls ASD Process a "Scam"

Last week Shelby County Schools called for a halt to Achievement School District takeovers in and around Memphis.

This week it seems the ASD hostile school takeover scheme has hit another snag, when a group set up by ASD to rubber stamp its plans called the process a "scam."  From the Commercial Appeal:

The group of people the state-run Achievement School District picked to add transparency to the school takeover process turned against the ASD on Monday, claiming the matching process was "a scam" meant to give the illusion of community input.

The group held a news conference in front of the Shelby County Schools administration building, although a statement from SCS said the district was not directly involved in the event. No one from the SCS administration was present, but board member Stephanie Love attended and spoke.

She, along with members of the neighborhood advisory councils that evaluated charter operators, called for families in the four schools slated for ASD takeover not to attend those schools next year.

"I am asking every parent whose school was taken over: Do not send your children to that school," Love said. "You begin to call the board and you tell us that you want us to put your children in a Shelby County school." . . . .

ASD Profiteers in Memphis Rebuffed at Raleigh Egypt Middle

The corporate predators of Scholars Academy have their work cut out for them in the Raleigh Egypt community of Memphis.  This is a clear example of how parents organized and united can say no to this exploitative privatizers.

Call this number and let Scholars Academy know how you feel about another community school being sacrificed to benefit big business: 901-305-9983.

TeacherTown Ranked 93rd Out of 95 for Child Well-Being

Until recently the non-profit corporate parasites feeding off Gates cash, along with the education industry profiteers feeding off the taxpayers, were waging a public relations campaign to have Memphis known nationwide as Teacher Town.  What sadness, particularly when thousands of real teachers have been replaced by the clueless temps from Teach for America and the fundamentalist missionaries from the Memphis Teacher Residency.

But despite all the ads, blogs, tweets, TFA propaganda, and endless FB posts crafted to appeal to unemployed millennials looking for the meanest kind of occupational self-flagellation and the coolest mini-brewery, the ed biz in Memphis is on a rocky road.

Because of persistent resistance from UMemphis faculty and other citizens, Relay has pulled the plug on setting up operations on campus, and a number of out-of-state high rolling charter companies have cancelled plans to open concentrated testing camps in Memphis.  And as the TeacherTown website has become an empty shell, the big PR push to "Choose901" (901 is the Memphis area code) has scaled back so that naive millennials can no longer buy those awesome Choose901 t-shirts.  Sorry, store closed.

Recently CorpEd's local blogger and charter disciple, Jon Alfuth, pulled the plug on his Bluff City Education blog, declaring that ground zero for charter privatization had shifted to Nashville.  Hah!  Obviously, Alfuth knows less about Nashville than he does Memphis.

All this comes as news arrives that, in a state that ranks 36th in child well-being, Memphis/Shelby County ranks 93rd out of 95 counties.  And while poverty, racism, and segregation continue to be ignored, Memphis offers yet another prime example of failure by the corporate education losers.  How long can we afford to allow these self-serving fools to divert attention away from the real problems facing urban America?

High School Charter Expansion in Memphis Assisted by Green Dot Exec on School Board

Yesterday the Commercial Appeal reported that the next corporate assault on Memphis public schools will be directed toward the hostile takeover of high schools next year.  Although the upper grades corporate charter chain, Green Dot, was not mentioned in the story, the California corporation is already advertising for instructional and admin positions in Memphis.  From current Green Dot ad for a finance and operations director in Memphis (my bolds):

The Green Dot Public Schools Tennessee Director of Finance & Operations will support up to 10 schools in Memphis as they are added into the Green Dot network.  For the 2015-2106 school year, the Director will be responsible for supporting two existing schools as well as 1-2 new schools for the 2016-2017 school year. He/she will partner with Green Dot’s National Expansion Growth Team, Green Dot National Departments, the Memphis Executive Director, and Home Office team members to set up processes and systems to support the operations and finances of Green Dot Tennessee schools. 

And why wouldn't Green Dot be confident of big growth opportunities in Memphis, especially since they have an executive, Miska Bibbs, serving their corporate agenda while also serving on the Shelby County School Board.  Last year the multi-tasking Ms. Bibbs chaperoned a group of Fairley parents and students to Los Angeles to see Green Dot in action. Photo below.  This year Green Dot has taken over Fairley.

No doubt this will be embarrassing enough that the SCS School Board will insist on Bibbs resigning her Green Dot post.  And why shouldn't she? She has already done her job and earned her keep.

Below is my posted comment on the Commercial Appeal story announcing big growth in high school charter operations in Memphis:

If we follow the mandate to change what's failing, there are a couple of things I would address before shutting more community schools and turning them over to corporate operators.  It's hard to say what would be first, but here goes:

1) Change the failed accountability system that has been used since 2002 to verify over and over that where poverty is high, test scores are low. If there were some remedy coming out of this truth that we have known for generations, that would be good. But there is not.

National studies show charter schools that replace public schools are no better at changing the stubborn fact that the poverty gap is, indeed, the test achievement gap, even though a great deal of attention goes to those charters that appear to have the miracle scores that would seem to defy reality. How do they do it? Let me point out which charters I am talking about:

a) those charters that receive extra money from investors looking for big tax breaks and bigger real estate deals;
b) those charters that are laser focused on test results to the detriment of healthy child development and intellectual growth;
c) those charters that issue total compliance contracts between families and schools that demand meeting expectations or else, which leads to massive de-selection of low performers and problem students who end up in the remaining public schools;
d) those charters that burn through, every two years, idealistic amateur non-teachers [see Green Dot ad here] who are fed up and exhausted by the time they learn to teach on the children of the poor;
e) those charters with fewer special education kids and English language learners;
f) those charters that abuse and humiliate children to grind out higher test scores that are used to build corporate charter brand names and add more school contracts;
g) those charters that spend 50 percent more time in schools constantly prepping for the next standardized tests;
h) those charters that impose cultural sterilization and brainwashing techniques that are presented as character training--techniques that no middle class parent would ever allow.

2) Change the way we attempt education reform. Rather than pretending that taxpayers should believe that corporate amateurs can get results that educational professionals cannot, let us move the focus from what happens inside the school building to what happens in our society, which includes the school. Schools, alone, either corporate or public, cannot alleviate the effects of poverty. As the great educator, Jean Anyon said, "Trying to Fix an Urban School without Fixing the Neighborhood in Which It is Embedded is Like Trying to Clean the Air on One Side of a Screen Door."

As long as we ignore the poverty, segregation, institutional racism, and lack of cultural, social, and economic opportunities in the communities where we expect miracle schools to defy realities, one lucrative corporate cure will follow another, and the taxpayers will be left holding the bill with nothing to show in return except a deeply eroded democracy and children turned into deracinated robots whose sanctioned exploitation should bring us the shame we surely deserve.

The Community Schools Legal Defense Fund of Memphis will be on street corners beginning Tuesday near South Hollywood. Give generously to keep public schools public and to make them better.

No Excuses, the Sequel

I had 90 seconds last evening in Memphis to share my views on the corporate school segregation plan in Memphis.  I almost rushed through this before I was escorted from the podium by one of Memphis' finest:

Like many others, I am here tonight to question the corporate education plan to replace community schools in Memphis with corporate welfare ASD schools or the homegrown equivalents in the IZone. 

As noted by Yes Prep officials in a rare acknowledgement of reality, the "political climate" in Memphis has, indeed, changed.

Sadly, SCS remains dominated by non-educators and corporate advisors, who echo billionaire ideologues’ intent on remaking public services to benefit corporations who then impose austerity for public employees and the children they serve. 

And if anyone has the audacity to question the fanciful corporate goals imposed on schools, he or she is dismissed as making excuses.  No excuses, the corporistas say in unison.

I am here to tell you tonight that parents, teachers, students and their supporters are tired of the excuses, too. 

We are tired of excuses for closing community schools, which are central to any cultural cohesion in neighborhoods that are hanging on to survive.

We are tired of excuses for offering replacement schools without libraries, science labs, counselors, art, music, and athletics. 

We are tired of excuses for replacing professional teachers with educational amateurs who impose draconian teaching methods and inhumane discipline that no middle class parents would ever allow for their children.

We are tired of excuses for not providing community schools with resources, staff, support services, and trust that the SCS Board only offers to corporate mercenaries who then leave town when the taxpayers ask too many questions.

We are tired of excuses for accepting corporate philanthropists’ plans that are marched out under the banner of civil rights and equality, when, in fact, these schemes represent the grossest examples of educational justice in black face.

We are tired, finally, of SCS Board excuses for embracing the god-awful ASD and its home grown version, the IZone, both of which are designed to culturally sterilize children and turn the teaching profession into temp work that assures a constant churn and that requires no long term investment.

We are here to say, finally, no more excuses for doing what you were elected and appointed to do.

The ASD and IZone Plan to Bankrupt Public Education and Destroy the Teaching Profession

 The Commercial Appeal has a story today about the planned shuffling of schoolchildren to serve the needs of the corporate reform welfare artists who are lined up at the public school feeding trough in Memphis.

. . . . In three years, the ASD has taken 7,100 students and the $11,000 SCS would get each year for each student. Next year, ASD enrollment is projected to hit 9,200.

To fight back, the SCS board is expected to close South Side Middle and move its 300 students to Riverview K-8, more than three miles away. Riverview is already safe from ASD takeover because it is an iZone school. . . .

My comment left at the CA website:

My calculator tells me that 9,200 ASD students x $11,000 per student = $101,200,000 every year going from public schools to the ASD corporate reform school operators, which have no public oversight or input. This massive giveaway will result in more austerity measures for the surviving schools of SCS, tighter thumb screws on teachers, and more teacher pay based on test scores, all of which will NEVER attract the kinds of experienced, caring, and professional teachers that the neediest children require. All of the professional teachers are fired when the ASD or its homegrown version, the I-Zone, take over schools like South Side and Airways. And what professional teacher wants to teach where know-nothing school "leaders" have the authority to hire and fire for any reason.

Therefore, the rationale that the clueless Hopson uses for ending co-location is just blather. The real rationale is real estate and real dollars. He and the corporate school board (Bibb actually works for Green Dot Charter Schools) will never attract any teachers other than the desperately unemployed ones and those temporary beginners from Teach for America and its spin-offs. What teacher in his right mind would step into this cauldron of corporate corruption?! 

The Gates Plan for Memphis has shown itself for the anti-public and incompetent business efficiency scheme that it is. Fortunately, the parents and teachers of Memphis are not going to allow their children and students to be used as pawns in a billion dollar hostile takeover, whether it is labeled ASD or IZone. The SCS Board meeting at 5:30 on Tuesday. Be there.

Charter School Takeover Cycle Begins Again for a New Year

The SCS School Board is now weighing more cuts for school children of Shelby County in order to pay for the billionaires' plan to replace public schools for the poor with corporate reform schools designed to deliver a more passive and compliant work force for the dead end job markets of Memphis.  Foreign language programs are on the chopping block, along with teachers and the few remaining librarians in the system.  When middle class parents of Shelby County come to realize that Caitlin and Seth are being affected by the Gates plan to put black children into lockdown zero tolerance hell schools, maybe something will happen to bring an end to the mockery of democracy that the Shelby County School Board epitomizes. 

The Transition Planning Commission report, which includes details of the $212 million donut hole created by the Hyde/Gates plan, has been scrubbed from the Web.  If you want a copy of the Report, email me at ontogenyx@gmail.com

CorpEd Reeling in Memphis as ASD's Barbic Threatens the Impossible

The corporate school takeover model in New Orleans that has failed everyone except for corporate socialists is not going down so well in the attempted replication in Memphis.  The lawyer/superintendent, Dorsey Hopson, who was put in charge of coordinating the giveaway of Memphis schools to the corporate welfare kings and queens of the charter school/real estate industry, is finding his task a bit more complicated than delivering the closing argument that he anticipated would win the day for the corporate reform schools.  

At this point, parents, teachers, and students in Memphis don't know which liar to believe less, as Hopson and ASD superintendent, Chris Barbic, bob and weave and blame one another in order to avoid getting hammered by citizens with hard questions.  Parents want to know why some their schools are being given away, at least the ones with better facilities--the ones that the profiteers want to confiscate for their charter school prison programs.  

Parents and teachers want to know why SCS plans to crowd hundreds of their children into surviving public schools so that a handful of charter school students can occupy entire school buildings, one class at a time. 

They want to know why, if there is an education crisis in Memphis, that KIPP and Yes Prep and the other corporate reform schools are given four years to get a whole school up and running.  

They want to know which politicians are getting paid commissions for every child handed into into the charter chain gangs.  

They want to know why a segregated straight jacket model of school is being imposed only on their children. 

They want to know why they are being manipulated and disrespected by being talked down to by the paid corporate lackeys from the dissemblers from Stand for Children and the Uncle Toms and Aunt Thomasinas from BAEO.  

They want to know why the SCS superintendent is calling their schools "bad" based on junk test scores that reflect the low income of the neighborhoods.  

They want to know why caring, mature teachers are being replaced by white corporate missionaries who learn to teach on their children before moving into new jobs in the Central Office.  

They want to know why SCS has replaced every educator in Central Office with people without leadership or school administrative experience.  

They want to know why investment banker and school board member, Chris Campbell, is so prominent in this giveaway of public resources.

They want to know why the Governor allows the corporate hoodlum, Chris Barbic, to strut around the communities and make such ridiculous and mean-spirited threats:

“I think it’s important to remind everyone that a lot of things we are doing are by choice.  If we wanted to, we could take over all 85 schools next year." 

Meanwhile the confused and deep-into-the-weeds, Dorsey Hopson, seems to think that his best route is make more appearance and tell more lies more prominently in the community.  He has spent the last year and half surrounding himself with more Huffman-like drones from TFA, and now he has this to say in the Commercial Appeal:

"The last six to seven months have been tied up in building an academic team," Hopson said, adding that his focus now will be on community engagement.

"We are going to go out and have discussion about the schools, and about the data and what it means. I am going to ask board members to participate and really make sure the community knows if the data at your school is low, that means you are not attending a good school.

Can a person put in charge of so many children's educational fate really believe that people are as stupid as he pretends they are?  

The Memphis Plan 2.0: Brought to You by Bill Gates and KnowledgeWorks

In a Commercial Appeal story about cuts to teacher raises on April 22 of this year, this came at the end of story by Jane Roberts:

If the board agrees to the goals [Goals 2025], the district has made it clear that the community will have to play a larger role in how they are achieved. It has joined forces with StriveTogether, a Cincinnati-based network that aligns nonprofits, college and other education partners with specific district goals. With parental permission, SCS and the Achievement School District have agreed to share student test scores with organizations here working to lift scores, college access, third-grade literacy rates and kindergarten readiness, hoping they can tailor their programs to help meet specific academic need.

The board did agree, and today Shelby County stands on the brink of another corporate foundation plan to “improve” educational outcomes in Shelby County.  The plan is called 80-90-100, and it has been developed by StriveTogether and EdWorks, both non-profit corporations that are subsidiaries and under the direction of KnowledgeWorks, another non-profit corporation that was created in 2002 by a grant from another non-profit corporation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Gates continues to partner with KnowledgeWorks and to give generously in order to help implement the Gates Foundation vision under the label of the dummy company, KnowledgeWorks.

All of these vastly wealthy non-profit folk want your children’s data to serve as a basis for a coordinated plan to steer education policy from pre-K through college, in every town in America, if they can.

The Gates Foundation, of course, is run by the for-as-much-profit-as-possible former CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates, who you will remember started the demolition of Memphis schools in 2009 with a 90 million dollar money bomb. 

Since Gates started “giving his money away” a few years ago, his wealthy has strangely ballooned by almost $30 billion dollars, so that today Gates is worth $82.4 billion.

But I digress.  Here is a slide below from the plan, Goals 2025, which was developed by many interconnected Gates clones and handed over to their stooge, Supt. Dorsey Hopson.  Memphis has turned into a hive of these TFA alums and Econ majors, now living in Memphis hoping to find the perfect latte and to strike it rich in the growth industry of turning over public schools to the corporate welfare predators lined for a piece of the action.

KnowledgeWorks, StriveTogether, and the other subsidiaries are to be on hand to give Barbic his marching orders, too, and to make it all look like a state and local government operation.  In a sense, it is, since taxpayers are paying the entire bill.  Just ask the investment banker on the SCS Board of Education.

Oh, did I say that KnowledgeWorks CEO is a graduate of the Broad Superintendent Academy?  Small world.

Memphis Students and Parents Demand Green Dot Stay Out of Their School

The Great School Awakening continues in Memphis, where parents, students, and teachers of Raleigh-Egypt High School rallied Friday to demand that the corporate predators from Green Dot Schools stay clear of school property and the property of other local schools on the ASD hit list for next year.  A clip:

As 20 students held signs telling the charter school assigned to take over Raleigh-Egypt High to “Go Home!!” and “Go Away,” community leaders staged a press conference to push for an alternative: iZone school status.

iZone schools — short for Innovation Zone — are turnaround schools run by Shelby County Schools and get extra money from a school improvement grant. The program is an alternative way to improve academic performance.

State Rep. Antonio Parkinson led the rally just off the school grounds Friday afternoon, saying he and others have had behind-the-scenes conversations with the state Department of Education and the Achievement School District officials. Among those standing with Parkinson were Shelby County Schools board member Stephanie Love, Rev. Elliot Shelton of Promise Land Church and Rev. Sammie Holloway of Breath of Life Christian Center. . . .

If You Think Ending Charter Co-location is a Good Idea, Read This!

Posted this morning at Memphis Schools Matter:

A headline by Chalkbeat Tennessee would lead us assume that public schools have scored a big victory: Shelby County to pull kids from schools shared with ASD: Co-location to end next Fall.   

The story attached to the headline, however, clearly shows that assumption to be wrong.  

If this new plan goes forward, ASD charters will get the ENTIRE BUILDING where they are now co-located, and the hundreds of public school students will be moved into segregated testing containment camps run by I-Zone.

Teachers and parents must be at the November 18 meeting in large numbers to make sure this giveaway of public space to corporate reform schools does NOT happen.

Shelby County Schools next fall will slam the brakes on its practice of sharing buildings with Achievement School District charter schools, pulling hundreds of students out of up to 10 schools that otherwise would be co-located with charters, Chalkbeat has learned.

District administrators say the move to end colocation is academically motivated. But it could also benefit the school district by slowing the steady exodus of students from SCS schools to the state-controlled ASD charters. It would also uproot several well-established school communities throughout Memphis and leave some school buildings with just a handful of charter school students in them.

Some ASD charter school operators take over low-performing schools a grade at a time. This practice, known as “phasing in,”allows charters to adjust their teaching model to local conditions as needed, and to share innovative strategies with traditional public school educators, according to charter leaders. . . . 

[Comment: Charters have one strategy, and it is not innovative but, rather, criminally abusive to both students and teachers.]

But colocation has led to morale, recruitment and retention problems among principals and teachers who work for traditional public schools, and who know their jobs will be phased out, said Brad Leon, the district’s chief innovation officer. This has hurt test scores in those schools, Leon said.

“We want our staff focused on student achievement,” Leon said. “We want them focused on the task at hand.”

Ending the colocation practice next year means a significant portion of students and teachers at Shannon, Westwood and Spring Hill elementary schools and Cory and Lester middle schools will be moved to other campuses.

If the ASD follows through with taking over Airways, A. Maceo Walker middle schools and Hawkins Mill, Brookmeade and Denver Elementary schools–all schools in which charter operators are considering phasing in at a grade at a time – students and teachers in the upper grades at those schools now will also be moved.

SCS administrators will present a proposal to board members at the next board meeting,  Nov. 18, detailing plans for those students.

ASD officials said they will not back away from its plans to phase-in charter schools, even if there will be no other students in the building.

Hopson's Next Bad Idea

PHOTO: Tajuana Cheshier/Chalkbeat TN 

Look at what happened in Memphis this week, and then tell me that teachers, students, and parents standing up together doesn't matter.  

Within minutes after parents and teachers lined up to express their disgust with the planned corporate takeover of their schools, Hopson came up with a new scheme, this one hardly better than the first one.

American Way Middle School students protested during Tuesday night's Shelby County School Board business meeting. More than 20 people signed up for public comment with the majority opting to speak against the Achievement School District's takeover process. 

In response to the state’s steady takeover of Memphis schools, Superintendent Dorsey Hopson said Tuesday night that he would propose expanding his own turnaround efforts known as the iZone, and the school board’s chairwoman said she would push for a legislative moratorium on the Achievement School District’s expansion.

The district’s iZone has regularly outperformed the Achievement School District, a state-run district targeted at moving the bottom 5 percent of schools into the top 25 percent.  A full third of the district is eligible to be taken over by the state in the next three years. ASD officials are currently working to determine which seven schools they will hand over to a handful of charter schools next year.

Hopson’s and board Chairwoman Teresa Jones’ comments came shortly after more than 20 parents and teachers accused board members of allowing schools to be taken over by the state and charter schools.

“It’s time for you guys to do your jobs,” said Kenneth Ingram, a parent at American Way Middle School.  “Put a stop to this. Another charter school coming from another state and taking over our school? We’re not going to allow that to happen. Please do your job.”

Neither the board nor the Shelby County Schools administration has legal control over the Achievement School District’s takeovers of low-performing public schools, Hopson and board members repeatedly reminded the public Tuesday. The takeover process has led to contentious protests at several community meetings this week.

Hopson said he will propose to board members in the coming weeks closing several schools and merging them into one school that would join the iZone.  Similar to charter schools, iZone schools are given waivers from state laws, require teachers to reapply for their jobs, and receive extra resources to try innovative strategies to improve test scores.  Unlike charter schools, the iZone schools remain under district control.

“We’ve been kicking around some numbers and without any extra money, we would look at combining two or three schools and bring them in the iZone,” Hopson said. “That would take a few more low-performing schools out of play (for ASD takeover). At the end of the day, though it’s about what is going to be best for the kids.” . . . .

If Hopson and the Shelby County School Board want to match some schools, they should start matching economically disadvantaged schools with those that are not.  Mix the schools so that no more than 40 percent are poor, provide professional development for teachers and principals, infuse new resources, and then give it three years to see if improvements don't materialize. 

Meanwhile, the entire process of labeling schools should be audited to determine whose politcal machinations are involved to make sure that only black schools get set up for closure, when mixed schools like Cordova have weaker test scores.  Cordova, in fact, is on neither the Priority or the Focus list of low-testing state schools.  Who's pulling the strings to make sure the new penal system of pedagogy only comes to black schools?

Resistance to CorpEd Takeover of Memphis Schools Alive and Energized

I met with a group of parents and teachers in South Memphis last evening to discuss ideas and actions to resist the corporate takeover of Memphis's poorest schools.  The group represented teachers/parents from four of the 12 schools on the ASD hit list for 2015: South Side Middle, Wooddale Middle, Raleigh-Egypt High, and Florida-Kansas Elementary. 

Expressing her determination to turn back the assault on the local schools by the Shelby County School Board and the corporate foundations, Toni Jackson said during the meeting, "we've got to stand up--we are fighting for our lives." 

All affected parents and teachers are urged to join this group of teachers and parents on Monday at South Side Middle School, where KIPP, Inc. and Shelby County school board officials are sure to face tough questions and determined resistance.  Parents and teachers do not want their school turned into a corporate reform school chain gang.

Failing KIPP School Set to Take Over Southside Middle School

The Achievement School District (ASD) has a new hit list of Memphis schools, all of them poor and black.  Below is the list copied from the ASD website, which is run by semi-literate businessmen who don't know to turn the spell check off before the turn a Word doc into a pdf:

You will note that South Side Middle School is to be taken over by KIPP Memphis Collegiate Schools.  I did a check on the TN website to see how South Side Middle scores compare to KIPP.  The only KIPP middle school in Memphis with three years of data is KIPP Memphis Collegiate Middle School, whose value-added scores are below, followed by South Side Middle School's VAM scores:

Now you don't have to be Bill Sanders to see which of these two schools has better growth scores (green indicates above the target and red below the target).

In comparing the school level evaluation composites from the state website (click to enlarge), we get another picture of how South Side Middle, now set for takeover, is doing better than the KIPP outfit that is poised to turn it into another franchise (level 5 is best, level 1 is worst).

Now you must tell me whose interests are being served here by this scheme to turn a public school with a committed faculty and parents into another corporate welfare reform school with its penal system of total compliance schooling.

We will meet with South Side Middle parents and teachers at 5:30 today at Glenview Community Center at 1141 S. Barksdale in Memphis.  Be there. 

Haslam Gives Corporate Reform Schools 9 More in Memphis

Although the all-important state tests show TN's Achievement School District has the lowest and the lowest scores of any schools in Memphis or elsewhere in the state, the corporate swindlers are lined up to receive 9 more schools next fall from skinhead ASD superintendent, Chris Barbic. 

But then, we know these school conversions to chain gangs have never been about "achievement" at all but, rather, about the iron-fisted paternalistic control and humiliation of the children of the poor.  It is about the poors' cultural sterilization and behavioral neutering, so that will grow up smiling, self-blaming, and brainwashed to believe anything their white handlers tell them. 

No public school would ever be allowed to do to these children what the KIPPs, Aspires, and Rocketships do behind closed doors without public oversight.  And no middle class child would ever be subjected to such treatment as is regularly meted out in the total compliance corporate segregation camps that our state and federal governments have given their stamps of approval.  The shame of the nation continues unabated.

Will Dog the Bounty Hunter Save School Enrollment in a Dying City?

Every day brings a new reason to wonder why anyone would ever move to Memphis to teach.  Salary schedules are a thing of the past, and pay raises are now bonuses that are based on test scores.  Teachers are in constant fear of being surplussed or excessed or some other term to disguise the ugly truth of teacher firing. 

Pay for advanced degrees has been eliminated, and the oligarchs are pouring millions into alternative certification programs that now jeopardize the future of legitimate teacher education programs at University of Memphis.  White missionary temps fill the remaining downtown bars and eateries after 9 hour days and exchange horror stories.

Gangs of angry and destitute youth have taken to the streets to beat up innocent pedestrians, and with black schools converted to total compliance chain gangs, increasing numbers are just saying no to being treated like animals in test prep factories. 

The Corporate Appeal reported last week that the county school system has lost about 2,500 kids who just didn't show up for school this year. 

With the public coffers drained from paying for corporate charter operators, the toadies on the local school board are coming up with novel ideas to recover that 10,000 dollars for every missing child who has said take your school and shove it.

. . . While district counts were significantly off, equally troubling to the board is that it has 2,000 to 2,400 students it can’t find, which prompted newly elected board member Mike Kernell to suggest a $500 finders fee for agencies that could help get the students to school.

“We have better ways to keep track of dogs than we do children,” he said after a budget meeting. “If we spend $500, we have a lot to gain.”

The district gets about $10,000 in state and local taxes for each student. It gets nothing if they are not in school.  . . .

Will the Shelby County School Board hire a real professional to bring these delinquents back to lockdown high?  It would make a great TV series, you know.

Duncan's Civil Rights in Black Face Tour

The major civil rights initiative of the Obama Administration has been to re-segregate poor black and brown children into corporate education reform schools where they can be culturally sterilized and behaviorally neutered by white middle class missionaries with no experience.  

Duncan's Civil Rights Minstrel Tour will continue this coming week:

"The trip will include stops in Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee and highlight the commitment that those states are making to encourage reform and innovation. Traveling through places that represent the cradle of America’s civil rights effort, the tour will focus on important work being done to close gaps of opportunity that many young Americans face."

Duncan will wind up Tuesday in Memphis, where Gates and RTTT funds performed more effectively than fragmentation bombs ever could to create 8 school systems where there were once two.  

Duncan will be visiting Cornerstone Prep,  which has been Ground Zero for human rights indignities since corporate schools under the Achievement School District took over the job of total compliance enforcement and character remediation in the poorest neighborhoods of Memphis.

How is the Achievement District doing, now that Duncan's $500 million RTTT and Gates's $90 million have bought what they wanted?  

Looking at the State website, the promise to reach the top 25% of Tennessee schools in less than four years from now seems more a pipe dream than any serious goal (click either part of chart to enlarge):