Thanks to former Metro Schools chief, Jesse Register, and former mayor, Karl Dean, a state-approved "partnership" now exists between Metro Schools and the private teacher education sweatshop, Relay Graduate School of Education.
Relay was created a few years back to train an ongoing supply of indoctrination agents and penal pedagogues in the intellectual and cultural sterilization methods that have made "no excuses" charter schools the social control solution preferred most among white billionaires and their hedge fund managers.
Relay is a program designed to turn would-be teachers into instructional robots, where trainee teachers work with previously programmed mentors to learn how to crank out test scores and compliant behaviors from disadvantaged children. For its theoretical, conceptual, and practical orientation, such as it is, Relay depends largely upon a single book written by a Harvard MBA, Doug Lemov, who is one of the charter kingpins who started Relay.
If the new trainees cannot extract the target test scores from students that Relay demands, they do not receive their "masters" degree at the end of their training.
Once deemed competent by Relay, however, the young neophyte teacher/programmers are eligible, themselves, to become trainer-professors of new Relay recruits. And before you know it, the most rabid trainer becomes her own new dean in a new Relay storefront.
Relay's first Dean in Nashville is Linda Mendez Lentz, whose academic preparation is comprised entirely of a Bachelors Degree from the University of Kansas just 8 years ago. After she and another corporate charter zealot founded a charter school in Nashville, Linda told the Nashville Scene in 2011,
Without a graduate degree, publications, research, or academic service records, Linda might appear less prepared than the professors in her new "graduate" school. Not to worry--there are no professors at Relay. There are just other teachers who have been brainwashed to install the hard-boiled traditionalism of Doug Lemov's penal pedagogical program into enthused and shiny new corporate ed vehicles who will soon become burned out wrecks.
Where do these new teacher-millenials go after their miseducation at Relay and before they crash a couple of years down the road? Well, of course, they are sent into the poorest schools where the most neglected children need the most professional, mature teachers. There they practice the "art and science" of No Excuses Eugenics aimed to brainwash and neurologically rewire children in ways that re-grow the grit that has been ground away by poverty.
It's impossibly hard work and bound to burn out all but the most cynical and detached--these become the new professors and deans of the Relay College.
Relay was created a few years back to train an ongoing supply of indoctrination agents and penal pedagogues in the intellectual and cultural sterilization methods that have made "no excuses" charter schools the social control solution preferred most among white billionaires and their hedge fund managers.
Relay is a program designed to turn would-be teachers into instructional robots, where trainee teachers work with previously programmed mentors to learn how to crank out test scores and compliant behaviors from disadvantaged children. For its theoretical, conceptual, and practical orientation, such as it is, Relay depends largely upon a single book written by a Harvard MBA, Doug Lemov, who is one of the charter kingpins who started Relay.
If the new trainees cannot extract the target test scores from students that Relay demands, they do not receive their "masters" degree at the end of their training.
Once deemed competent by Relay, however, the young neophyte teacher/programmers are eligible, themselves, to become trainer-professors of new Relay recruits. And before you know it, the most rabid trainer becomes her own new dean in a new Relay storefront.
Relay's first Dean in Nashville is Linda Mendez Lentz, whose academic preparation is comprised entirely of a Bachelors Degree from the University of Kansas just 8 years ago. After she and another corporate charter zealot founded a charter school in Nashville, Linda told the Nashville Scene in 2011,
"When we talk about our approach as a school, we're a no-excuses charter school," Mendez explains one morning over coffee at Fido. "That means there's no excuse for why our students can't achieve rigorous academic success. We don't care if they are coming in five grade levels behind. We don't care if their families live in poverty. . . "Relay's new Dean in Nashville rose quickly from Teach for America, where she taught two years after getting her B.S. in English from the University of Kansas. That was followed by short stint at the Kansas Department of Corrections as a victim advocate, and then Linda was launched into charter school administration.
Without a graduate degree, publications, research, or academic service records, Linda might appear less prepared than the professors in her new "graduate" school. Not to worry--there are no professors at Relay. There are just other teachers who have been brainwashed to install the hard-boiled traditionalism of Doug Lemov's penal pedagogical program into enthused and shiny new corporate ed vehicles who will soon become burned out wrecks.
Where do these new teacher-millenials go after their miseducation at Relay and before they crash a couple of years down the road? Well, of course, they are sent into the poorest schools where the most neglected children need the most professional, mature teachers. There they practice the "art and science" of No Excuses Eugenics aimed to brainwash and neurologically rewire children in ways that re-grow the grit that has been ground away by poverty.
It's impossibly hard work and bound to burn out all but the most cynical and detached--these become the new professors and deans of the Relay College.
