Blogger asks: How can Teach for America stop making enemies?

Blogger John Thompson has an answer for Teach for America CEO Elisa Villanueva-Beard’s complaint that many progressives and union activists aren’t happy with TFA.

"It's disheartening,” she says, “that people who should be our partners in a larger movement for social justice are fighting the wrong enemy."

Thompson says she has it backwards. TFA declared war on public education when it threw in its lot with “the test-driven school ‘reform’ movement that started this educational civil war by scapegoating teachers who have different beliefs regarding the best ways to improve schools.”

“The problem,” Thompson writes, “is the propaganda spread by too many former TFAers who quickly rose to political prominence. After spending a couple of years or so in the classroom, too many of them feel entitled to impose their cheap and easy silver bullets of ‘High Expectations!’ and ‘No Excuses!’ as if they could reverse the legacies of extreme poverty.”

From Superintendent John White at the top, and generously sprinkled through the ranks at the State Department of Education, are exactly the types of whom Thompson writes.

Why do so many now see Terach for America as the enemy? We can start, Thompson writes, with “the way that Teach For America, along with a host of other education reformers, from Bill Gates to the Walton family, have systematically denied the role of poverty, and insisted that its increase be studiously ignored in favor of an emphasis on high stakes tests. We could address the contemporary school reform movement which threatens to make career teachers an endangered species. This neither fights poverty, nor helps poor children -- in fact it does the opposite.

“When Gates and the ‘Billionaires Boys Club ignore education research and impose their opinions on schools throughout this diverse nation, that is a huge problem. The hubris (and, perhaps, profit motives) that prompts their dictates is an enemy. And, don't get me started on the anti-teacher public relations campaigns that the big boys fund.”

BESE member stays, but ethics board vice-chair goes

The dispute over whether BESE member Kira Orange-Jones should resign because of a conflict of interest (she is executive director of Teach for America in New Orleans, and BESE funds TFA) has claimed a victim, but it’s not Orange-Jones.


As reported here by the New Orleans Tribune, Scott Schneider has resigned his post as vice-chair of the Board of Ethics, perhaps because of news reports about his role in the Orange-Jones scandal.

It happens that staff attorneys for the ethics board recommended that the state’s ethics code “would prohibit Kira Orange Jones, while she serves as a member, from providing compensated services to Teach For America at a time when TFA has or is seeking a contractual, business or financial relationship with either the Louisiana Department of Education or the Recovery School District.”

According to The Tribune, Schneider convinced the ethics board to overrule its staff attorneys and declare that Orange-Jones has no conflict of interest.

In the process, though, Schneider neglected to mention that his employer, Tulane University, has a strong partnership with Teach for America.

Orange-Jones is still on BESE, but Schneider is gone from the ethics board.

Post-Thanksgiving catch-up

The education world did not stop turning just because teachers and school employees had a few days off for Thanksgiving. Here, briefly, are a few things you might have missed:

BESE election: Following the November 19 general election. Governor Bobby Jindal is in complete command of the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Eduction. Candidates favored by the governor and others who believe in his style of "reform" swept all three BESE runoffs: Kira Orange-Jones won District 2, Chas Roemer took District 6 and Carolyn Hill won District 8.

According to this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell, that means the governor "could have the support of nine or 10 members after months of 6-5 votes on key school topics."

The governor's only disappointment in the BESE races came in District 3, where St. Martin Parish School Board Human Relations Director Lottie Beebe defeated long-time incumbent Glenny Lee Bouquet in the October 22 primary.

In this article by Gannett's Mike Hasten, Gov. Jindal reports that he is happy with the new, right-leaning BESE. The new members seem to be struggling to maintain their own identity, but will that last when the governor applies pressure?

Expensive charter school: One charter school in Jefferson Parish spends $87,500 per student, according to this article by Times-Picayune reporter Barri Bronston. The school, which was established to serve students who have been expelled from middle schools for various offenses, has seven teachers and eight students.

That news prompted the Monroe News Star editorial writer to question, in very understated fashion, the wisdom of spending that much money on one school: "it's important to note that even charter schools require some close supervision."

"Within our local systems," the editorial notes, " you could ask Ouachita Parish Superintendent Bob Webber or Monroe City Schools Superintendent Kathleen Harris what they could do with $87,500 per student, and we are quite certain either one of them would respond that an investment of that much public money per student would result in a world-class school system."

Teach for America: The growing influence of Teach for America was explored in this article by Times Picayune reporter Andrew Vanacore.

Once seen as a sort of Peace Corps that brought idealistic young college graduates into hard-to-staff schools, Teach for America has become a political as well as educational force to be reckoned with.

Best known is John White, currently the superintendent of the Recovery School District and Gov. Jindal's pick to replace Paul Pastorek as State Superintendent of Education. But newly minted BESE member Kira Orange-Jones is also a TFT alum, along with the new executive director of BESE and Gov. Jindal's new policy advisor.

A little justice for some Filipino teachers: The Caddo Parish School Board has done the right thing and settled with the U.S. Department of Labor, awarding Filipino teachers in the parish some $1,300 each because of their entanglement with a crooked recruiting firm.

It is a small step to correct a much larger injustice. The settlement only applies to a specific charge brought by the U.S. Department of Labor against the Caddo school board. It leaves open U.S. allegations against other school systems, and does not deal with the LFT complaint, filed with the State Workforce Commission, that Filipino teachers were forced to pay fees that should have been paid by school boards under Louisiana law.

Value Added Model: As the state tests a new teacher evaluation scheme called the Value Added Model, questions are popping up about how fair it will be.

Reporter Sue Lincoln filed this story for the Southern Education Desk, in which LFT President Steve Monaghan questions how well the new system will actually measure teacher effectiveness.

The privatization of public education: In an epic article for The Nation, reporter Lee Fang exposed the "quiet but astonishing national transformation" of public education into a cash machine for big business.

Lobbyists, he writes, have "combin(ed) the financial firepower of their corporate clients with the seeming legitimacy of privatization-minded school-reform think tanks and foundations."

Focusing on virtual schools, he writes, "This legislative juggernaut has coincided with a gold rush of investors clamoring to get a piece of the K-12 education market. It’s big business, and getting bigger: One study estimated that revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion."

Local Federation chapters grow together: Educators in Caddo and Bossier parishes can expect to see their influence grow with the creation of the new Red River United Federation.

As reported here by Mary Nash-Wood of the Shreveport Times, the new organization combines the power of the Caddo Federation of Teachers and Support Personnel and the Bossier Federation of Teachers and School Employees.

"It will essentially be a super group over the two organizations," said CFT President Jackie Lansdale.

U.S. education secretary interfering in LA superintendent selection

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has apparently lent his weight to the cause of John White for State Superintendent of Education.

As Associated Press reporter Melinda Deslatte writes here, Duncan has approached at least two members of the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education on White's behalf.

As reported previously in EdLog, White, a 35-year old Teach for America product with limited educational experience, was selected to run the State Recovery School District, even though he has never been a school district superintendent.

He is Governor Bobby Jindal's choice to replace Paul Pastorek as state superintendent of education, but apparently does not have enough support on BESE to be confirmed. White would need the votes of eight of the 11 board members, but reportedly has solid opposition from four of them.

The two BESE members who report being contacted by Duncan are Linda Johnson from Plaquemine and Louella Givens from New Orleans; both of them have said they oppose White's appointment.

Whither White?

Everybody now knows that newly minted Recovery School District head John White is Gov. Bobby Jindal's pick to replace Paul Pastorek as the state superintendent of education. But who is he, and does he have a realistic chance of becoming superintendent?

White is just 35 years old, and fresh from his last job as deputy chancellor for the New York City school system. His main duty there, according to blogger Mike Deshotels, was "to close down low performing schools and to convert as many schools as possible into charter schools. He was also working on a system to evaluate teachers using student test scores."

Prior to his New York experience, White taught for two years as a Teach for America recruit, and then went to work as the Teach for America executive director in Chicago, according to this New York Times article. Aside from his abbreviated teaching stint, White's academic credentials include certification from the Broad Superintendents Academy.

The Academy's Web site claims that it takes "executives who have experience successfully leading large organizations and a passion for public service" and, after 10 months of training on weekends, "places them in urban school districts to dramatically improve the quality of education for America’s students."

There is no indication that White ever led a large corporation. However, he does have a qualification that seems very important to the Jindal administration - he, along with the new executive director of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the governor's education advisor, emerged from Teach for America.

That distinction does not impress a new coalition of education organizations, which includes the LFT.

As Monroe News-Star reporter Barbara Leader writes here, the coalition wants Jindal and BESE to follow state law, which says that when the state superintendent leaves, he is to be replaced by the deputy superintendent for the remainder of the term, unless it is longer than a year.

There is a deputy superintendent already in place, and there is therefore no need to hurry up and find an interim to fill the job until next January.

And if that's not barrier enough to the governor's wishes, it appears that enough BESE members have problems with White's credentials to block his appointment. This article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell reveals that four of the 11 BESE members would vote against confirming White, and since a two-thirds majority is required, it looks like his outlook is dim.

Not that any of that makes much difference if the governor really has his heart set on White as the new superintendent. Our whole form of government is set up to make Louisiana's governor the most powerful in the nation. There are many levers of power that Jindal can tweak to get his way.