More on Broad Foundation and Education Genocide in Philadelphia

From Ken Derstine in Philadelphia:

November 29, 2013

By Ken Derstine

November 29, 2013

By Ken Derstine

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” – Mark Twain

Further research into the Broad Foundation’s role in corporate education reform in Philadelphia

It is hard to believe that only a little over two years have passed since Arlene Ackerman was bought out of her contract on August 22^nd, 2011. The changes in the Philadelphia School District have been so overwhelming and rapid that it seems the events happened a much longer time ago.

In the past I have written about the role The Broad Foundation is playing in corporate education reform in Philadelphia, in particular in my February 24, 2013 article, which was published at the time by Substance News in Chicago and is now on my blog, “Who is Eli Broad and why is he trying to destroy public education?.  http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/ In particular see the section The Broad Superintendents Academy. Also see my June 3, 2013 article “ The 2013-14 “Doomsday Budget of the School District of Philadelphia: How Did It Come to This”” http://tinyurl.com/kh2d9nw

In the light of the passage of time and recent developments, I have done a reexamination of the influence of the Broad Foundation in corporate education reform in Philadelphia. My February 24th article went into some of this but did not include the detail I give below, plus at the end of this article I detail a new development.

In the February 24^th article I detail that Arlene Ackerman joined the board of the Broad Foundation on March 19, 2009 while she was Superintendent in Philadelphia. http://tinyurl.com/89sfrzv Prior to this on March 15, 2007 she was appointed the first Superintendent in Residence of the Broad Superintendents Academy. This article, Dr. Arlene Ackerman Intersects the Worlds of Teachers College and the Broad Institute, details her role at the Broad Superintendents Academy. It says,

Enter Arlene Ackerman, the Christian A. Johnson Professor of Outstanding Educational Practice, Organization and Leadership at Teachers College (TC), Columbia University, who has just been appointed the first Broad Superintendent in Residence. Based in L.A., the position—a first for the Broad Foundation—will give Dr. Ackerman a highly visible role in directing, mentoring and serving as executive coach in one of the nation’s largest urban school systems. She will be in charge of advising an initial cohort of 14 aspiring superintendents, each of whom will be given a faculty mentor, and guiding them in areas related to governance, infrastructure, leadership. She will continue her work at Columbia and use both positions to reinforce common goals.

http://tinyurl.com/my5mbh6

Ackerman was appointed Superintendent in Philadelphia on February 19, 2008. She had previously been Superintendent of San Francisco schools where she resigned on September 6, 2005 when the School Board voted unanimously to invoke the “compatibility clause” in her contract, and bought out her contract for $375,000. http://tinyurl.com/m23j75q

She is listed on the Broad Foundation Board of Directors in their 2009-2010 Annual Report (http://tinyurl.com/6w5sps2

 Page 25).

She is not listed on board in the 2011-2012 Annual Report. (Sidenote: Ed Rendell is listed on The Broad Prize Selection Jury in this report. Page 55 http://tinyurl.com/9wqv9um ) However, I want to make it clear, and the reason I did this latest research, there is evidence that Ackerman was deeply involved with The Broad Foundation during her whole time in Philadelphia whether or not she was on the board of the Broad Foundation in 2011-2012.

When she got into the dispute with Mayor Nutter and Dwight Evans over which charter management company would be given management of Martin Luther King High School, Mayor Nutter had Joan Markman, his Chief Integrity Officer, do an investigation whose findings were published in the 26 page document Fact Finding Report to Mayor Michael A. Nutter Concerning Charter Operator Selection Process At Martin Luther King High School, September 21, 2011.

http://thenotebook.org/sites/default/files/MLK%20Report.pdf

(If you have never read this, it is very interesting and important reading. If you have, two years later these events seem even more significant and it’s worth a reread.)

On two occasions, this report states that trainees from the Broad Superintendent Academy were present during the interviews with Ackerman about the dispute.

Page 8

Evans then attempted to convince Ackerman to reject the vote of the SAC (the parent organization at MLK) in communications in the days before the March 16, 2011, SRC meeting at which the SRC was scheduled to vote. In at least one telephone call from Evans, she refused to do so. Her refusal was witnessed not only by members of her staff, but at least one visiting fellow of the Broad Superintendent Academy who was shadowing Ackerman during the week of March 14, 2011, and who was present in Ackerman’s office as she argued with Evans in a telephone conversation the day before the SRC vote.

Page 13 (This takes place in the evening, after the March 16th, SRC meeting which approved Mosaica for the management of Martin Luther King High School, which angered Dwight Evans.)

The meeting (between Evans and Porter of Mosaica) appears to have lasted for 20-30 minutes. Porter (John Porter, President of Mosaica Turnaround Partners whom Ackerman was backing for management of Martin Luther King High School) - who said he was “in shock” and whom Nunery described to us as “shaking” — left the building and got into a taxi. Nunery went upstairs to Ackerman’s office, where Ackerman was debriefing a second Broad Superintendent Academy fellow who was shadowing her for the week. Witnesses who were present at that time, including the Broad Academy fellow, recalled Nunery entering visibly shaken and saying he had just attended a meeting that was like a scene from “The Godfather”.

After Porter was pressured by Evans to withdraw Mosaica from management of MLK at this March 16th meeting, Porter met with Ackerman that evening. There were later differing explanations (see the report) from Archie and Ackerman about what caused Porter to withdraw Mosaica from management of MLK the next day even though it had just been approved by the SRC the day before. Once again, however, this dispute shows the deep involvement with The Broad Foundation that Ackerman brought to Philadelphia.

Page 18

Both Ackerman and Porter told us that after Porter left in a taxi and Ackerman learned from Nunery about the Evans meeting, she contacted Porter. Nunery, Ackerman, and Porter described Ackerman as distressed to learn that Evans tried to pressure Porter and Mosaica away from MLK. Ackerman had known Porter from when she was an instructor and he was a fellow in the Broad Academy program several years before. She and Porter then met at the Marriot Hotel restaurant to discuss what had transpired at the meeting with Evans. The two discussed the difficulties Mosaica might face operating MLK in the face of Evan’s hostility…

In this research I have focused on the report written for the Mayor about the dispute over MLK. These events took place on March 16th, 2011. Nutter is not mentioned in the report, but SRC Chairman Robert Archie, who was appointed by Nutter, was very involved and the report makes it clear that Archie intervened to support Evans against Porter and Ackerman. 

Nutter apparently made a decision in late June that Ackerman must go when Ackerman got into a public dispute with him over full day kindergarten announcing she was moving funds to finance full day kindergarten from federal Title I programs even as Nutter was lobbying Harrisburg for funding. She was given an infamous $905,000 buy-out of her contract on August 22, 2011.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/school_files/Arlene-Ackerman-is-out-as-Philly-superintendent.html

Note: The report to Mayor Nutter about the March 16^th dispute over MLK was released September 21^st, a month after Ackerman had resigned.

Since the Boston Consulting Group was brought into the District shortly after Ackerman left, the District has been subjected to one of the world’s top corporate raider firms. (See “Who’s Killing Philly public schools?” http://tinyurl.com/o23eamd ) and “Who’s (still) killing Philly public schools?” http://tinyurl.com/k994xhp by Daniel Denvir.

Ackerman may have left, but she left behind many representatives from The Broad Foundation in administrative positions, including her successor William Hite, Broad Superintendent Class of 2005 http://tinyurl.com/l74njlh, who was appointed to carry out the BCG plans on June 29, 2012.

Recently, William Hite appointed David Hardy as Chief Academics Support Officer in the School District. His background from the Philadelphia Daily News, November 8, 2013 http://articles.philly.com/2013-11-08/news/43827137_1_hardy-brooklyn-universal-companies

Hardy previously worked for the New Jersey Department of Education as head of a regional education office that aimed to turn around underperforming schools in Burlington and Camden counties.

Before being hired for that position in August 2012, Hardy had been principal of the Achievement First  http://tinyurl.com/mgs3a8t East New York Charter School in Brooklyn since its September 2009 founding.

Previously, he worked as a principal-in-residence at another Achievement First school in Brooklyn. Hardy was also a Teach for America volunteer in 2003 for Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida.

That Hardy started his career with Teach for America is significant. I do not know of documentation about the number of TFA teachers in Philadelphia, but TFA has been deeply involved in Philadelphia since 2008. In an article on my blog, “Starved Schools Taken Off of Life Support” http://tinyurl.com/kkk8yxf, I wrote this about H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, co-owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News and his support of TFA:

In 2009, H.F. Lenfest’s Lenfest Foundation announced a $10 million matching grant to expand Teach for America in Philadelphia over ten years. TFA said it was “the largest grant offer a regional Teach for America program has ever received”. http://tinyurl.com/pg8wr8w

For information about the origins of NJ’s Regional Achievement Centers, of which Camden is one of seven and which Harding headed until he was brought to the Philadelphia School District by Hite in mid-November, 2013, see this article from the Jersey Jazzman blog:

Eli Broad Buys News Jersey’s Schools (June 5, 2012)

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/06/eli-broad-buys-new-jerseys-schools.html

Note: NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf is a graduate of the Broad Superintendent Academy Class of 2004. He was previously president and chief operating officer of Edison Schools.

http://www.broadcenter.org/academy/network/profile/christopher-cerf

For a graphic view of how Cerf has employed the Broad Foundation’s business methods of “creative destruction” whose basic tenet is to starve the public schools as the method of making charter schools appealing to parents, see this documentary from Princeton Community Television about the destructive impact that Cerf and the Christie administration have had in Trenton, New Jersey.

https://vimeo.com/79505696

Getting back to David Harding, look at this July 30, 2013 article by Jersey Jazzman:

http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/07/njdoe-commissioner-chris-cerf-knows-how.html

Hardy is not mentioned in the article, but look at the comments to the article! He has quite a reputation in NYC and New Jersey! (Check out the comment with the NY Daily News link to “10-year-old autistic boy, Brandon Strong, punished for behavior caused by his condition” http://tinyurl.com/l7z4dmv that shows Hardy is clueless about the needs of Special Education students which is also mentioned in the comments to the Jersey Jazzman article.)

Finally, Ackerman went to Santa Fe, New Mexico after leaving Philadelphia where she became a national spokeswoman for school vouchers and charter schools until her passing in February 2013. http://tinyurl.com/k8q4wh9

She brought with her to Santa Fe Joel Boyd who had overseen the Promise Academies Ackerman had set up in Philadelphia in 2008 as part of her Imagine 2014 plan.

http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-6887-starting-over.html (Read the comments.)

To see how his appointment as Santa Fe School Superintendent was viewed in Santa Fe, see this August 24, 2012 article by a Santa Fe parent on the Parents Across America website.

 http://tinyurl.com/lnl6jce

If any links are defective, this article can be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/kkh5s2o

Harry and the Common Core

A couple of nights ago I was at a small gathering where Harry's mom was responding to comments about how much Harry, now "five and a half" as he is quick to tell you, has shot up in the past few months.

Oh, he's doing great, says Harry's mom, except for a bit of a dexterity problem in his hands.  

And how do we know of this problem?  It has been pointed out by Harry's kindergarten teacher when he does his practice tests by clicking with the mouse pointer.  (Unlike most of Tennessee's schools, Harry's Germantown school already has all the technology in place that will be needed to take all the new tests online).

And since the tests are timed, well, any glitch in Harry's motor skills can bring down his score on the real test later on, which can bring down his teacher's evaluation scores, and you see where this is going.

Harry's mom is learning a great deal, too, during his first year of school.  She has learned already of something called the Common Core that makes it necessary for the kindergarten teachers to eliminate nap time in order to get across all those skills that Harry is doing his best at clicking in to prove he has learned them.  She has learned of the detailed report cards that have noted how Harry does not track the teacher at all times and that he prefers to do things at his own pace.  Areas to work on, the teacher says.

Harry's mom and the other moms are not happy about the loss of nap time and all the practice testing.  The children come home tired and cranky and not up to enjoying play and family time.

Without looking up from his Legos over near the fireplace, Harry says, "I don't like hands, but I like football."

Reader Highlights Logick of New York Times Editorial Board

Brent Staples and the other pampered fools on the New York Times editorial board are at it again, this time advising the new mayor on how to do to teachers what they  would never dream of doing to themselves.  Below is an excerpt on the seniority issue, followed by one of the 175 comments that lays bare the bankruptcy of thought that characterizes every utterance on education by the billionaires' boys at America's newspaper of record:

. . . . Seniority trumps everything and is treated as a proxy for excellence. Under current rules, a school that has an enrollment shortfall or budget problem and has to cut one of its five math teachers cuts the least senior teacher, period. In progressive systems like the one in Washington, D.C., which has made big gains on federal assessment tests, decisions about which teachers to cut are based on a combination of factors, including how they stack up on evaluations and whether they possess special skills. The goal is to keep the most talented teachers. 

Similarly, the salary schedule in New York is calculated to reward longevity, requiring 22 years to get to the top level. Teachers are also rewarded for work toward advanced degrees, but this coursework does not necessarily have any bearing on how poorly or well they teach. . . .

Response by James in Chicago:

If seniority doesn't matter, and youthful energy and smarts are everything, why stop with the teaching profession? Every business, including the journalism industry (are you listening, NYT?) should adopt a performance-based compensation system. For journalism, it shouldn't matter how long you've been reporting news. If a new graduate from an elite journalism school can write a better editorial at the New York Times, why not replace the old guard? Similarly, our military should forego seniority in its promotions. Newer, younger, and high performing soldiers should replace high ranking, experienced officers. The same with the airline industry. Let inexperienced but bright and high performing pilots replace those old, lazy captains who are protected by the unions. Hospitals should rid themselves of experienced doctors and replace them with new ones with Harvard smarts and youthful energy. Older corporate CEO's should make room for the new kid from Yale; maybe we can avoid more Wall Street crashes, mine disasters, and Deep Water Horizon-type catastrophes. 

 Anyway, this editorial is distinguished by an obsessive focus on teachers, which has prevented overdue acknowledgement of negative social conditions in many urban neighborhoods. That is very revealing.

IAP Announces New Price for TMoE

For those trying to order The Mismeasure of Education from Amazon, I apologize for their being out of stock, AGAIN.  My advice: forget Amazon.

Information Age now has both hardback and paperback with a new promotional price.  Another best reason this season not to buy from the exploitative worker warehouse at Amazon!

Why I Won't Be Buying a New Subaru to Benefit TFA

A letter I sent to a very nice salesman at the Memphis Subaru dealership this morning:

To: davidellison@jimkerassubarusoa.dealer.com

Dear David,

I saw a friend the other night who bought a new Subaru from you earlier this Fall, and I was admiring his car.  With one of my cars on the verge of needing a new timing belt, I was planning to visit your place just after the Christmas rush to take advantage, perhaps, of any kind of year-end deals.  

All that changed, however, when I saw the Subaru ad yesterday that listed the miseducative outfit, Teach for America, as a recipient of your corporate giving program. Because TFA is one of the most destructive corporate education reform initiatives yet established to further limit access of urban children to the possibility of mature caring teachers, I wanted to let you know that I won't be visiting your showroom. You see, I am an educator who believes that untrained corporate temps are not the solution to the problems facing poor urban and rural public schools.

Just as I do not buy my groceries or incidentals at Walmart because of their TFA sponsorship, and just as I do not send my goods via FedEx because of their TFA support, I will not be test driving or buying a new Subaru--even though I like your product line very much.  

If your company wants to do something for education and children, Subaru might consider offering teacher education scholarships for the best, brightest, and poorest minority students to become professional teachers, ones with some real understanding of the challenges of being poor, rather than the cultivated misunderstanding of white post-adolescent missionaries coached to believe that their privileged guilt naturally carries with it some superior capacity to cure cancer with aspirin.  

Or better yet--your company may consider relocating some of your Subaru production to areas of America where large swaths of our population are contained by joblessness, racism, and a loss of hope.  Now that would be some real teaching for America that could yield benefits beyond what we mere educators could ever accomplish.

Sincerely,

Jim Horn

Peter McLaren's Review of The Mismeasure of Education

We posted a piece of Peter's remarks in the advance reviews, but his inimitable style and rhetorical sweep here is classic McLaren.  Both humbling and gratifying:

It is no exaggeration to say that public education is under threat of extinction. The uneven but inexorable progress of neoliberal economic policies clearly provided the incubus for transferring the magisterium of education in its entirety to the business community. The world-producing power of the corporate media has not only helped to create a privatized, discount store version of democracy that is allied with the arrogance and greed of the ruling class, but it has turned the public against itself in its support of privatizing schools. The chiliasm of gloom surrounding public schooling that has been fostered by the corporate attack on teachers, teachers unions and those who see the privatization of education as a consolatory fantasy designed to line the pockets of corporate investors by selling hope to aggrieved communities, is not likely to abate anytime soon. 

All the more important reason to read this book by James Horn and Denise Wilburn. The Mismeasure of Education is a magnificent work, an elegantly written,  brilliantly argued and erudite exposition on why the “what,” “how” and “why” of effective teaching cannot be adequately demonstrated by sets of algorithms spawned in the ideological laboratories of scientific management at the behest of billionaire investors in instrumentalist approaches to test-based accountability.  At a time in which exercises in “test prep” have now supplanted the Pledge of Allegiance as the most generic form of patriotism in our nation’s schools, this book will serve as a sword of Damocles, hanging over the head of the nation’s educational tribunals and their adsentatores, ingratiators and sycophants in the business community. 

In an age of ‘advocacy philanthropy,’ where the business elite and other financial opportunists sit comfortably at the helm of educational policy-making, where advocates for programs supported by funds from the student loan business to increase access to college for students who must borrow heavily to attend are not judged to be enemies of democracy but rather held up as examples of good citizenship, and where the overall agenda of educational reform is to establish alternatives to public education at public expense, The Mismeasure of Education will have a profound resonance with those who are fed up with the hijacking of our nation’s education system.

This is a book that must be read by everyone interested in the future of our schools. It is a book that advocates real educational justice, for student, teachers, administrators and the public; it is informed by impressive scholarship and compelling argument.  It is surely to become a classic work. 

Should SC Increase Charter School Investment? No!

Charter school advocates are calling for more investment from South Carolina, according to Jamie Self at The State (Columbia, SC):

South Carolina’s public charter schools struggle to find and pay for space, and often end up without access to kitchens, libraries, or places for kids to play – a problem the S.C. General Assembly needs to address, according to a new report.

The challenges that the state’s 49 brick-and-mortar public charter schools face are outlined in a new report, published with help from the Public Charter School Alliance of South Carolina by the Charter School Facilities Initiative, a partnership of federal and state charter school organizations. 

Charter schools in SC, however, are proving to match the growing body of evidence that charter schools produce similar patterns of measurable student outcomes when compared to public schools and that charter schools share and even increase the rising re-segregation of schools in the U.S.

Should SC increase charter school investment? The short answer is, No. But to answer this question fully a few factors should be considered.

First, charter school advocacy is itself a problem; as I have explained before:

Like medicine, then, education and education reform will continue to fail if placed inside the corrosive dynamics of market forces. Instead, the reform of education must include the expertise of educators who are not bound to advocating for customers, but encouraged, rewarded and praised for offering the public the transparent truth about what faces us and what outcomes are the result of any and every endeavor to provide children the opportunity to learn as a member of a free and empowered people.

Education "miracles" do not exist and market forces are neither perfect nor universal silver bullets for any problem - these are conclusions made when we are free of the limitations of advocacy and dedicated to the truth, even when it challenges our beliefs.

Next, if charter schools are a fiscally responsible investment, they should be producing outcomes that distinguish themselves from traditional public schools. However, analyses from two years of report cards for charter schools in SC reveal the clear picture that more investment is not justified (see below for complete analysis of both years' comparisons):

• Using 2011 SC state repost cards and the metric "Schools with Students Like Ours," charter schools performed as follows: 3/53 ABOVE Typical, 17/53 Typical, and 33/53 BELOW Typical.
• Using 2013 SC state repost cards and the metric "Schools with Students Like Ours," charter schools performed as follows: ABOVE Typical 2/52, Typical 20/52, BELOW Typical 22/52.

In other words, almost all charter schools in SC perform about the same or worse than the public schools they are intended to either motivate through market forces to perform better or offer parents better options; neither is likely occurring.

SC should not invest further in charter schools, but should begin decreasing charters while also seeking ways to fund fully and equitably our community public schools—while also abandoning wasteful investments in new standards and testing.

PLEASE SEE THE DATA AND ANALYSES HERE