Looks like Barbic will be part of the Broad Foundation's Superintendent Academy, Class of 2011, too.

Fox in the hen house alarm!

Why do these five schools in the Achievement School District get $49 million in taxpayer monies, nearly $10 million each, when our almost 80 KCS in-system schools get about $385 million in taxpayer monies, less than $5 million each?

And schools in the ASD will also receive generous gifts from these philanthropists that KCS in-system schools won't get?

It makes me wonder why the philanthropists don't just route their donations directly to the troubled in-system schools.

Or else the philanthropists could just cease combating an increase to the top federal income tax bracket, inception of a state income tax (I'm thinking of Hyde), etcetera, in which case they wouldn't have to take any proactive measure at all for the troubled schools to make use of their money.

Unless maybe holding onto their influence is more important to the philanthropists than is holding onto their (vast sums of) money?

Concerning YES Prep, the charter school chain new ASD director Chris Barbic founded, Ericka Mellon (now with the Houston Chronicle, formerly with the Knoxville News-Sentinel) reported thusly on Monday:

The YES and KIPP models both include a longer school day and year, and they draw many of their teachers from the Peace Corps-like program, Teach for America, which recruits recent college graduates into education.

Huffington Post:

Tennessee's State-Controlled School District Puts Reform to the Test

I voted in Huff Po's poll and found these results:

Quick Poll

Do you think the model of education reform by state intervention in low-performing schools will take off?

Yes.
29.63%

No way!
27.78%

Probably not.
24.07%

Maybe.
18.52%

Don't know who's voting but results sure are all over the board, eh?

...first, that I regret the way I answered it.

Because I don't want this reform model to be one that lasts, as in "over the long term," I answered "no way."

The question posed isn't whether the reader "wants this reform to last," though, it's whether the reader "expects this reform to take hold," presumably over the short term. Billionaire benefactor Eli Broad observed that "the stars are finally aligned" and I'm afraid he's correct. That being the case, I probably should have answered "yes."

If perchance the pollster is asking whether the reader expects this reform to "take hold" over the long term, though, I really don't expect that it will. Among several considerations, I don't think Teach for America's approach is scalable, at least over the long term, so I don't think the resulting reforms will succeed. If that is the question being asked, I should have answered "probably not."

Sooo...other readers' uncertainty over the question being posed may well explain why the poll reflects answers all over the board!

parent, school board, and educators influence in public education (otherwise known as democracy), a broad curriculum for all students, classroom size limits, equitable resource allotment, teaching as a profession, curricular innovation and classroom creativity.

Instead, prepare yourself for businessman/autocrats treating kids and teachers like commodities, disrupting communities with firing and hiring practices, dumbing down effective instruction with low paid 5 week trained TfA missionaries, ignoring parents, ignoring the community, excluding special ed or other undesirables from privatized schools, assuring investors a steady flow of profits, excessively high salaries for CEOs of the edu-industries, excessively high costs for "consultants", corruption, all with ZERO accountability.

The nasty, neoliberal model has been unleashed on TN public schools on the backs of the poorest communities.

The nasty, neoliberal model has been unleashed on TN public schools on the backs of the poorest communities.

...and...

It is very depressing to think of the results if the Republican agenda is realized. My hope is that their over-reaching will backfire and voters will wake up.

JC and Lonnie, be assured that individuals and groups are fighting back, particulary in the nation's largest urban areas where this corporate-style "education reform" is already entrenched.

As to how their "reforms" are affecting our poorest communities, note this letter from eight groups--including the NAACP, National Urban League, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and five others--blasting the Obama administration's education platform and outlining an alternative approach to the upcoming Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization.

And about the administration's planned process for that effort, which we know is to be headed by a Colorado-Tennessee coalition: I've been searching the web for indications of pushback in Colorado and found this article in the North Denver News.

As to Parents Across America (PAA), the parent group referenced in the article, Denver doesn't yet have a chapter or an affiliate as nearly as I can tell--and neither does Tennessee. PAA is an umbrella group of individuals and smaller groups especially active in fighting these "reforms."

In spite of Denver lacking a PAA chapter, though, that the article ran in Denver and that Denver's school superintendent, Teach for America alum Tom Boasberg, recently admitted that "pay for performance" doesn't work leaves me optimistic that Denver may organize soon.

Meanwhile, PAA does now have 21 chapters and affiliates active in nine states (including Chicago and NYC) and DC, and they're all over the web.

One PAA affiliate, NYC's Grassroots Education Movement, is undertaking weekly Fight Back Fridays and will also release a movie next week, "An Inconvenient Truth About Waiting for Superman."

Another group acting nationwide is Save Our Schools, which will conduct a march and "National Call to Action" in D.C. and across the country on July 28 through July 31, 2011.

Resistance to these "reforms" is underway and growing.