It’s not like the warning signs aren’t there for everyone to see, it’s just that no one is getting the information, especially if they’re only listening to conservative talk radio and watching cable news.
The phony “empowering parents” argument is anything but. These newly trained CEO style superintendents offer top down decision making management. Privatization merely tosses parents off into a corporate style system where they are cut off from the decision making process, at which time, it’s really too late to change direction. Check out this early warning sign that only a few will be made aware of:
EdWeek: Billionaire businessman Eli Broad, one of the country’s most active philanthropists, founded the Broad Superintendents Academy in 2002 … The nation’s three biggest districts have Broad-trained executives in top leadership positions. Broad-trained superintendents use corporate-management techniques to consolidate power, weaken teachers’ job protections, cut parents out of decision making, and introduce unproven reform measures.
One of those critics is Sharon Higgins (started) The Broad Report in 2009 after her school district in Oakland, Calif., had three Broad-trained superintendents in quick succession, each appointed by the state. She grew alarmed when she started seeing principals and teachers whom she called “high-quality, dedicated people” forced out. She contends that Broad superintendents are trained to aim for “maximum disruption” when they come to a district, without regard for parent and teacher concerns. “It’s like saying, let me come to your house and completely rearrange your furniture, because I think your house is a mess,” Ms. Higgins said, adding that other parents around the country have reached out to her to complain about their own Broad-trained school leaders.
Likewise, James Horn, an associate professor of education policy at Cambridge College in Massachusetts, (blog Schools Matter) referred to the academy as “Eli Broad’s corporate training school ... for future superintendents who are trained how to use their power to hand over their systems to the Business Roundtable.” In an interview, Mr. Horn said that school officials trained by the program graduate with a hostility to teachers.
Detractors see as a sign of a takeover. “What I see happening is that they colonize districts,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian who criticized education venture philanthropy in her 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System. “Once there’s a Broad superintendent, he surrounds himself with Broad fellows, and they have a preference towards privatization. It happens so often, it makes me wonder what they’re teaching them,” said Ms. Ravitch, who co-writes a blog on Education Week’s website.
Broad superintendents have indeed had rocky tenures. In the 32,000-student Rochester district, the teachers’ union held a vote … 84 percent of teachers participated, and 95 percent of them gave Mr. Brizard a symbolic no-confidence vote. Teachers complained that Mr. Brizard was ignoring their voices as he made major changes in the district.
Maria Goodloe-Johnson, a 2003 graduate of the training program who became the superintendent of the 45,800-student Seattle schools, was fired by the school board in March amid a financial scandal that roiled the district.
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