Fri
Mar 25 2011
11:31 am
Another new member on Tennessee's "education reform" team
By: Tamara Shepherd

It appears that former Senator Bill Frist has lost his executive director at SCORE, Brad Smith, to the State of Tennessee.

Smith is the new executive assistant to Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman.

Meanwhile, back at SCORE, the new SCORE director's responsibilities, Frist says, will be these:

SCORE plans to significantly expand its public-private partnership activities in 2011 by working closely with the state’s new Governor and new Commissioner of Education. SCORE has especially spent time developing ideas for a multi-million dollar public-private partnership focused on recruiting and developing strong district and school leaders, one of the new Governor’s top priorities.

I note that SCORE will enlist the help of its partner organization, Michelle Rhee's Stand for Children, in the effort. Perhaps Rhee will supply to the task some of those paid community organizers she's now recruiting?

But wait a minute--by "district leaders", does Frist mean "district school superintendents?" If so, don't we community residents generally communicate to our school board members the characteristics we'd like to see in any new "district school superintendent?"

Or are "district leaders" possibly our school board members, themselves? If so, won't we continue to elect them like we always have?

And "school leaders," if Frist means "principals," are generally chosen by "district school superintendents," not by anyone outside a given school system.

When did the state's Education Commissioner and interloping think tanks usurp the traditional rights of (unpaid) community residents and school system employees in this regard?

Tamara Shepherd's picture

More on Brad Smith

Submitted by Tamara Shepherd on Fri, 2011/03/25 - 11:54am.

During his stint in the White House Office of Political Affairs, Brad Smith was among the 37 employees nailed in 2007 for using partisan e-mail accounts through the Republican National Committee, rather than the Office's own non-partisan accounts.

Get to know Smith better at his RedState blog, here.

Stick's picture

Teachers are not the only

Submitted by Stick on Fri, 2011/03/25 - 1:09pm.

Teachers are not the only target of this movement... School boards are a target as well. Noted think-tank trolls Herbert Walberg and Joseph Bast of Hoover Institution fame refer to school boards as a "quaint experiment in the democratic process." Hence, mayoral control is all the rage these days.

As you might recall, the KCSB is considering turning Austin-East over to the Achievement School District. [I do not believe that this issue has been resolved, but I could have missed it.] I'd suspect that this and other such schemes are what Frist has in mind.

For those looking for a way to slow this train down, ensuring that A-E remains a public institution under the nominal control of the community it serves would be a great battle to fight.

Indya's picture

Achievement School district

Submitted by Indya on Sat, 2011/03/26 - 12:40pm.

The Knox County Board of Education has not and is not considering turning A-E over to a state-run Achievement School District. Last year the State Department of Education moved to take A-E over, but we successfully made the case that our improvement efforts are beginning to gel and to disrupt that would do more harm than good.

A-E made AYP this year and is making big gains in graduation rates too.

You won't be surprised to know that, at least in Knox County, I think school boards are better equipped to govern the school system than a mayor.

Indya Kincannon
Knox County Board of Education

Stick's picture

Good to hear, and I stand

Submitted by Stick on Sat, 2011/03/26 - 1:47pm.

Good to hear, and I stand corrected. I had not heard about the outcome, and I am pleased to hear that you've been able to block that move.

However, if I were you, I wouldn't take anything for granted these days. The move to marginalize school boards is very much a real phenomenon. If you take a trip through Gates foundation literature and other related think tank publications, you will see that it is a prominent feature, and it is being pushed heavily by Arne Duncan and the Department of Ed. It's becoming increasingly common in large urban districts, such as Chicago, NYC and Detroit to name a few, and that trend will continue.

Tamara Shepherd's picture

Mayoral control of schools

Submitted by Tamara Shepherd on Sat, 2011/03/26 - 9:21pm.

Over the last few years, these are just some of the country's larger school systems to have ceded to mayoral control:

Baltimore, MD
Boston, MA
Chicago, IL
Cleveland, OH
Hartford, CT
Los Angeles, CA
New Haven, CT
New York City, NY
Philadelphia, PA
Providence, RI
Washington, DC

Discussions are now (or were recently) underway on establishing mayoral control in these larger school systems:

Atlanta, GA (this month)
Detroit, MI
Houston, TX
Milwaukee, WI
Newark, NJ
Peoria, IL
Rochester, NY

In most of the cities in which the mayor already has control, he appoints both a superintendent and a school board (so it isn't particularly clear what authority those school boards actually have--but it's scarce little).

Tamara Shepherd's picture

War in Seattle

Submitted by Tamara Shepherd on Sat, 2011/03/26 - 9:45pm.

And Seattle is now fighting back (particularly against the Broad Foundation).

The Seattle school board recently canned its superintendent, another grad from the Broad Foundation's Superintendent Academy.

SamIAm's picture

This whole mess in

Submitted by SamIAm on Sun, 2011/03/27 - 1:33pm.

This whole mess in Wiscon...err, Tennessee, is driving me nuts. Tenure changes are about to be passed, and I actually think some of those changes are a good thing. However, the ongoing blantant attacks on the education association is nothing more than political vengance at its finest. Of course, the GOP won't admit that...they say, "it's about he children." -- if it was about the children, then our schools would give students the tools they need, but instead, teachers have to bargin for that stuff, too.

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