Modeling "the best" at Stand for Children?

Stand for Children is widely acknowledged as an organization that consistently takes stands at odds with the the public school teachers who serve our children. They are a major player in the school reform movement, and the Tennessee branch sat silently by last September when the state education commissioner Kevin Huffman punitively defunded Metro Schools. But they have never missed a beat hammering away at teacher performance as the cause of poor student outcomes while ignoring the socio-economic conditions at home that crush opportunities for children.

Stand for Children Tennessee blogged a post today hailing Commissioner Huffman's plan to lash licensure to perceived performance. For the time being I'll set aside the questions of judging teacher performance without reference to causal factors outside the classroom and of forcing educational missions into business-oriented frameworks for which reformers like Huffman have a knack.

What caught my eye in the SFC policy analyst's blog post were several grammatical errors that did not themselves embody excellence.

[sic]

I try not to pick on people about grammar. Goodness knows, I make my own mistakes on that score. But when education reformers with reputations for attacking teachers in general and teachers unions in particular mar their own writing with grammatical mistakes (even as they presume to prompt teachers on how to be "shining examples" and "the best and brightest"), I am bound to point out the hypocrisy. If you demand modeling "the best" for our kids, then you better set an example yourself in your written demand.

There were other problems beyond an errant misspelling in the blog post. How about a glaring sentence fragment in the original?

The Department has recommended that several changes be made to the teacher licensure structure to not only streamline the system, but raise the standards in the teaching profession. These changes hope to ensure that obtaining a teacher license

[sic] Currently, the system for licensing teachers has a few flaws.

Again, I do not usually play the grammar monitor. I tend to prefer to be charitable about such errors because I understand blogging is sometimes a difficult activity. And frankly, debating ideas is more interesting to me that grousing over grammar.

My criticism is ultimately not about correct grammar, it is about the holes in Stand for Children's agenda: I cannot let slip the poor paradoxes of purist organizations that claim to demand excellence from people, many of whom are dedicated to serving our children even under impossible conditions.

Memphis raises taxes to subsidize privatized schools

Shelby County is raising taxes on the backs of its most vulnerable so that charter school operators are subsidized to ply their trade in Memphis:

The County solution: raise the sales tax another penny, which will push this most regressive tax (which includes taxing food) to over 10% (TN is #1 in the nation for highest sales tax).  Oh yes, and in the meantime, reduce property taxes so that the immeasurably unfair tax on the poor will be even more so.

Projected take?  About $54 million, which would cover the annual amount estimated by the State to cover the loss of revenue to fund the new charters.  Meanwhile, the charters under the new State Recovery School District (RSD) (think NOLA) will get to take over the school buildings that are being closed to create charters.

The corporations that run these charters, then, will have huge advantages over non-RSD schools, so the State, in effect will be the ultimate decider on which of these "market-based solutions" get to thrive as the 21st Century solution to the "white man's burden" in Memphis.

Bill Gates and Tennessee Stand for Children also had a hand in Shelby County's raising of taxes for resegregating schools as orchestrated by red-state Tennessee. Things are getting ugly in Memphis.

"Stand in Silence" instead of "Stand for Children"?

In the wake of state Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman's withdrawal of millions from Metro Schools after the school board's decision to deny the Great Hearts' charter school application, an Enclave reader emailed a query:

 [Why hasn't Stand for Children] made any public comment on decision to pull $3.4M from children in MNPS[?]

You may remember that Stand for Children bills itself locally as the "advocacy" partner of Metro Nashville Public Schools and facilitates the interest group "Friends of Metro Schools," which lobbyied to have Mayor Karl Dean's latest school budget passed.

They even produced a slick video during the budget debates to school the rest of us on the importance of "fully funding" Metro Schools:




"Our public schools will only be as strong as our community cares to make them." Mm-hmm. I would also add, "Our public schools will only be as strong as the State of Tennessee cares to make them". If the state pulls money out of public schools, Tennessee cares less about public schools.

I would also wonder along with the reader why SFC once cared so much about keeping schools "fully" funded when it meant a strategic win in Metro Council for Mayor Dean (and his future aspirations for higher public office), but now they don't seem to care enough to even peep about it.

Stand for Children seems to be sitting this one out.

But in deference to whom?

A familiar ring in this politics of non-profits

I have been reflecting on an interesting parallel, which I assume is purely coincidental, between the question of whether Moving Nashville Forward is a non-profit or a political action committee and confusion expressed here in 2011 over Stand for Children's (a non-profit) endorsing Karl Dean for Mayor.

According to MNF leader Erik Cole, his group is pursuing non-profit status that would permit them to keep the $26,000 that "Dean for Mayor" donated to their efforts to market Karl Dean's budget proposal in the run-up to the Metro Council vote earlier this summer. Cole told reporter Joey Garrison yesterday that his organization is listed as a 501(c)(4). Garrison could not find confirming evidence of MNF's non-profit certification. A source told me that according to the Tennessee Secretary of State's records, Moving Nashville Forward is not certified here as a 501(c)(4).

501(c)(4) is exactly the non-profit status that permitted Stand for Children to endorse Karl Dean for Mayor in the last election. Last year readers were wondering how a non-profit can endorse political candidate and keep its tax exempt status. SFC does it by maintaining two organizations under one roof: their 501(c)(3) cannot campaign; their 501(c)(4) can.

Incidentally, Moving Nashville Forward's co-principal, Francie Hunt, is the former Nashville Director at Stand for Children.


UPDATE: I cannot find Moving Nashville Forward listed in the Internal Revenue Service's Exempt Organizations Master File for Tennessee. That list includes 501(c)(4) organizations reporting to the IRS.

Stand for Children - Tennessee brings in big gun from bygone Bredesen days to lobby its "education reform" cause

You may remember Mack Cooper as the former Bredesenista in so much hot water that he was demoted without recourse to public knowledge of the exact nature of his alleged harassment:

In swiftly demoting his chief lobbyist, Gov. Phil Bredesen proved that his administration will not tolerate workplace harassment ....

Bredesen provided no detail last week as to what persuaded him to demote Robert "Mack" Cooper. The governor's statement concerning the matter said little more than he "will not tolerate any form of harassment."

The only notes taken during the course of the investigation were shredded by chief investigator Kae Carpenter, who acknowledged that the notes could have become public under the open records law.

One of the booster groups of education reform and privatization, Stand for Children - Tennessee, apparently did not think so slightly of Mack Cooper to curb themselves before hiring him as one of their lobbyists [source: Tennessee Ethics Commission]:

Stand for Children - Tennessee has not tipped their hand yet with regard to Nashville schools, focusing instead on Memphis schools. However, they are still listed as the "advocacy" division of "One Nashville" an arm of the education-reform obsessed Nashville Chamber of Commerce that enjoys VIP status at Metro Nashville Public Schools, particularly with Director Jesse Register. Moreover, in other parts of the country they seem hell-bent on backing legislation that scapegoats teachers, promotes school vouchers, and redistributes public money to shadow-government private boards.

So, even in the uncertainty of the moment, a public school dad like me is very concerned about how hard SFC is willing to push these hot-button privatizing issues in league with a hired gun who has a morally ambiguous, inscrutably cloudy background to the degree that even Phil Bredesen--a governor who made "pragmatism" paramount to the slightest bleat of a call of duty--demoted him.

Where will Stand for Children - Tennessee stand in 2012?

Earlier this month, Stand for Children - Tennessee had a strategic planning session for 2012, and then about a week ago they held a fundraiser/holiday party. I don't know exactly what they have up their sleeves for next year or how much money they raised to help them implement their plans.

But before you buy into this organization's stated commitment to children, take a look at how they operate in other states:





It seems to me that children's issues have been used as a Trojan Horse to sneak in other economic and education policy agendas that have little to do with children's issues. Stand for Children - Tennessee is a partner under the Metro Schools umbrella with the local business lobby group, Nashville Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has been influential in the growth of local charter schools, in increasing investment opportunities for for-profit initiatives, and shifting the discussion away from debilitating poverty and to teacher performance.

We need to pay attention to SFC - TN in 2012 and monitor whether they go the troubling direction of other Stand organizations and bow to local special business interests instead of to the grassroots.

Education reformers attempt to soft-pedal embarrassments by revising history

On its Facebook page, Stand for Children - Tennessee promoted its organization's assimilation of the Education Equality Project (popularly associated with celebrity John Legend) and in the process exercised a revision of its own history:

Unlike some reform groups that frequently challenge teachers unions, Stand For Children, founded in 1996 in Oregon, has prided itself on generating local support and collaborating with unions as it promotes legislative change. That reputation was challenged this summer after the group was revealed to have lobbied aggressively against Illinois teacher unions to get a reform bill passed.

Jonah Edelman, Stand For Children’s founder and CEO, said today that the new partnership with EEP would help the groups extend their influence in more states, particularly southern states where the influence of reform groups has been less strong.

“Together, we’re positioned to shape the national debate on public education while building powerful statewide organizations across the country that will make a profound impact for students, from the state capitol to the classroom,” Edelman said in a statement.

That is an interesting gloss on what happened in Illinois and a complete omission of what happened in Oregon. Mr. Edelman is obviously using the occasion as another form of damage control to the embarrassing mess he and SFC left of their track record.

Observers acknowledge the common values that bind Stand for Children to the more conservative and dominant elements of Democratic Party culture, which share affinities with Republican politics:

The most engaged in this neoliberal education campaign are organizations focused on school choice: Democrats for Education Reform (and their 501(c)(4), Education Reform Now Advocacy), Education Sector, and the Progressive Policy Institute; as well as service-oriented groups like New Leaders for New Schools, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and Green Dot charter networks, Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, Stand for Children, the New Schools Venture Fund, and even the leadership of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

These groups, it should be stressed, are very careful to avoid being characterized as politically on the Right or affiliated with Republican political efforts. Their collaborators, however, do not show any such reluctance. Right-wing, free-market think tanks have joined with neoliberal education groups in pushing for choice and privatization policies. These right-wing think tanks and similar organizations are active in every state, and many more are pursuing a national agenda. Together, these groups have launched a potent attack on the progressive foundations of American schooling, and they are framing this attack as a “civil rights struggle.”

After years of hammering home the theme of “failing public schools,” the campaign is now increasingly focused on teachers’ unions and the existing system of teacher education, preparation, and certification.

Stand for Children - Tennessee plays up school choice without leaping in with both feet to the constellation of other conservative values, but they do not forswear any challenge to teachers. They have fallen silent on recently publicized ambivalence toward teacher evaluations. Whether SFC cares to concede it or not, they have built strong ties to anti-union groups, and they leave open the option of going after teachers as they have elsewhere.

In Los Angeles, as the teachers' union joined Occupy Wall Street, Stand for Children joined the opposite side, a coalition of otherwise disparate non-profits (like the United Way and the Urban League) committed to education reform. The reformers, backed by corporate donations in contrast to the grassroots empowerment of occupiers, encouraged an ad campaign addressed to the union a couple of weeks ago: "Don't Hold Us Back".

The campaign drew the appropriate retort from a local teacher:

Of all the factors that have contributed to the struggles of our students, we the teachers, THE TEACHERS, are the ones “holding students back?” Not the economy. Not the crime. Not the violence. Not the hunger. Not the fragmentation of the nuclear family. Not the lack of medical care and fresh food in the South Central community in which I work, but me, the teacher.

They really spent thousands of dollars to buy this ad, buy a webpage? Couldn’t the money used for this ad have helped the students that are hungry and homeless stay in their apartment for one more month, get that tooth taken care of?

Who are the experts in what is best for students? Educators or billionaires? Teachers or journalists? Unions or astrotorf orgs? I may be a parent, but when the doctor tells me how to take care of my daughter, I yield to the expert. When her 5th grade teacher shared his expertise on how to approach her math work, I listened and implemented. Parents play a huge role in the success of their children but we each have our own job to do; and it differs.

SFC LA is not an isolated case. Seattle's SFC has endorsed school board candidates who are financed by union-busting venture philanthropists in the Great Northwest.

In all of these cases, Stand for Children may not appear to be in full-blown assault of teachers unions, but they are aiding and abetting forces aligned against public school teachers. I also worry that one day they may find it more convenient to mobilize against Tennessee teachers than stay noncommittal toward them.

Stand for Children - Tennessee's teacher survey has very short reach

At our public school's last PTO meeting I asked the principal where teacher morale was given the state's link of their evaluations to student test performance.

On nearly a daily basis I read reports statewide that teacher morale is sinking due to evaluation links to factors that they do not control. Teachers don't determine which children have learning disadvantages due to poverty. Teacher aren't in each of their students' homes in the evenings making sure homework gets done and motivating parents to motivate their kids to learn.

That query to the principal, who answered but deftly turned the conversation over to teachers present, resulted in a long discussion between all present that pushed our meeting past its designated end point. I was surprised that it went so long, but it was an indication to me that this is an unsettling and unsettled issue for teachers, parents, and administrators. The teachers in attendance echoed the frustrations I have been reading about.

In an unrelated event, Stand for Children-Tennessee (the corporately-backed nonprofit partnering with Metro Nashville Public Schools and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce in an advocacy position on public policy) put up a survey on their Facebook page for teachers to give feedback on the state's evaluation process the next day. Given the animated discussion of the night before, I was curious as how many teachers the survey might reach.

Stand for Children has often made a point in the past that their advocacy work in government is backed by community input and grassroots support, which can only be true if they have individual one-on-ones with a broad range of community leaders and if they are engaged with varied neighborhood-based and local-school-oriented associations.

In the case of teachers, the survey would only hold merit as a tool for collective action and informed advocacy if it was offered to the largest number of teachers likely to respond. So, I posed my question about the survey's reach on Facebook. The response I got back from SFC, was that the survey was only going out to the teachers who had "friended" the Facebook page, but that they were hoping that it would go "viral" and be forwarded to other teachers.

My hope is that SFC does not substitute "going viral" with collecting representative samples of surveys to reflect the true sentiments of teachers outside of their Facebook audience. The most constant commenters on the SFC Facebook page seemed to be conservatively bent toward driving down teacher pay and mandating testing. In the time I've been following the comments there, I have not seen very much opposition to the conservative mindset.

And frankly we should not forget that in other states SFC has actually lobbied government against teachers unions on behalf of the wealthy venture philanthropists who fund education reform. I continue to have concerns that the Tennessee chapter will drift that direction. Monday a big, less-than-flattering story on Tennessee teacher evaluations came out in the New York Times. SFC did not link it on their Facebook page. However, the next day they linked a Commercial-Appeal story with a headline screaming that teacher accountability is the key to closing the student achievement gap. Such selective attention makes me wonder about genuineness behind the survey.

So, when Stand for Children-Tennessee publicizes their teacher survey results in the future, we should take them with a grain of salt as we should their claims to be real (instead of "Facebook friend") advocates for teachers, parents, and children. In the present, if you are concerned like me that teachers are being scapegoated and targeted in place of the bigger drags on student performance, go fill out their survey now.

A stretch to ignore all the factors that keep kids in poverty while emphasizing "access to great schools"

In this interview with the Stand for Children Executive Director on a New England morning show, both the journalist and the director seem to dance around the causes of rising childhood poverty to get to the SFC mantra of "access to great schools". Both overreach in their attempt to reconcile rising poverty with another poll of public school parents who express satisfaction for their local schools.





Public schools are prone to be used as a scapegoat for poverty in this country when in reality it is caused by broad systemic and market-based inequalities of opportunity in this country.

A representative with the foundation that conducted the poverty studies insisted on the PBS Newshour last night that childhood poverty can be fought with more a robust unemployment insurance system, child tax credits, vigorous pre-natal and childhood health care, and a commitment to education in a broader sense than "access to great schools". I would add to those remedies a more equitable wage system, perhaps a "living wage" for families with children. We should not underestimate the impact of our market system on the shrinking middle and working class as the wealthy continue to sock profits away for themselves rather than paying fairly for labor.

To a certain extent Stand for Children seems to thrive off dissatisfaction with public education and propensities, both conservative and liberal, to blame the institution for a host of ills in American culture. So, I'm not surprised that both the director and the sympathetic journalist were turning cognitive cartwheels trying to deal with the fact that parents are generally satisfied with their local schools.

The organization requires a state of crisis in need of superheroes in order to attract more resources, but the crisis of poverty isn't easily attributable to villainous public schools. We already have a better, more comprehensive explanation for the causes of increased poverty that is also more consistent with findings on attitudes toward schools.

Planting seeds of doubt? Keep an eye on Stand For Children Tennessee's next moves

Stand for Children Tennessee is an official partner with Metro Nashville Public Schools, which is reason enough to keep an eye on what they are up to, but the smaller moves they make via social media in what could be attempts to manage expectations and influence opinions should be watched as well.

Tonight on their Facebook page SFC posted a link to an article by Richard Whitmire, who seems to triangulate the conservative emphasis on teacher evaluations and the union opposition to subsidizied charter schools:

[Obama Education Secretary Arne] Duncan was a mere middle-of-the-roader compared to Joel Klein in New York or Michelle Rhee in Washington. Rhee rushed through reforms so fast, the unions hardly knew how to fight back: real teacher evaluations that used student test scores and a performance pay system that attempted to reward the better teachers. Most controversial was her willingness to fire teachers she deemed to be ineffective.

War was declared.

Meanwhile, billionaire reformers -- Bill Gates, Eli Broad and Michael Bloomberg -- were seen as aggressively applying business principles, such as accountability, to schools. Conspiracy theories abounded. It was all about privatization!

There's no going back. From the perspective of most teachers, poverty explains education problems. A valid point. Reformers insist that school quality, especially effective teaching, can make a sizable dent in the learning inequities we see across the lines of race and income. Also a valid point.

Mostly, however, the two sides no longer engage about their differences. They just glare and shout.

I cannot speak for the unions, but from my perspective Whitmire lapses into the centrist fallacy that ignores the practical act of staking out a position to keep certain principles in play in public debate or that confuses that act with inciting chaos. Many people I know who are fighting to save public education are pragmatists who give voice to the cause even as they are aware that they cannot possibly win much of what they fight for.

But back to SFC TN's use of Whitmire.

It is one thing to post a link to a pro-education reform article criticizing others opposed to education reform; it is quite another to post the article given that SFC in other states has expressed the same anti-union reform preferences. I worry that SFC TN is maneuvering subtly to make the same moves for education reform that we have seen other state branches make before.

These are Stand for Children's tactics in Oregon according to one former volunteer:

I quickly became a fan [of Stand for Children] ....

Stand’s primary agenda was focused on school funding, as was mine. Then a year or so after I was introduced to them, something quickly changed .... When I was looking at how to work on funding, they were talking about teacher contracts. Recently in Portland, Stand organized what they described as an Education Forum ....

No teacher representing the union’s position was on the panel ....

After watching the video of Stand’s national leader proudly attacking teachers and working to silence their voice in Illinois, I realized that was the same thing they were trying to do here in Oregon (Portland).

Stand for Children members in Oregon should be very disappointed. I encourage Stand for Children members and current coalition partners to look deeper into the organization’s true agenda and to pay close attention to its funders.

I wish I could naively take Stand for Children Tennessee at their word without reference to the organization's past. But the present in Tennessee looks like it is setting up like to be like Oregon: attack the teachers without reference to a system that generates a cheap, undereducated labor class.

Ostensibly, SFC TN could be honestly seeking feedback. However, SFC TN leaders have made no attempt that I am aware of to distance themselves from Jonah Edelman's recent embarrassments in Illinois or from the firestorm the Oregon branch came under in 2011 for starting out grassroots and ending up anti-union at voting time. I have blogged on these unpleasant events previously. Local SFC leader Francie Hunt even replied in the comments section of this blog in defense of the Tennessee organization without distancing it from Oregon's or Illinois's.

So, it is fair and reasonable to ask whether Stand for Children Tennessee is trying to plant the seeds of doubt among its volunteers by linking to the Whitmire article without linking to other articles that either agree with teachers or that are critical of education reform.

Buyer beware. We will see whether this is an initial small step toward dividing teachers from the "movement". Stand for Children already tipped their hand in Illinois and Oregon. It is not unreasonable or wild to worry that they may misbehaving soon in Tennessee, too.

Tennessee teachers' caucus "very contentious" on Obama endorsement

The Labor Notes blog mentioned the state's labor union contingent at a recent meeting of the National Education Association. Tennessee Education Association was reportedly more factious than they indicated on their website:

major controversies at the gathering in Chicago last month received national visibility. First was the early endorsement of President Obama’s re-election bid, advocated by the national leadership despite some resistance from several state affiliates, including the California Teachers Association.

Most of the debate occurred within the state caucuses, which was very contentious in some states, such as Tennessee ....

The context for the union’s debates is all too evident. Public education is the major battlefield not only over adequate funding for public services but also over the very ideology of government: How do we value government-run services and the workers and unions who provide them?

Teacher unions are portrayed as rigid and intransigent, attempting to protect members (often the most senior) who are “incompetent.” We are labeled as obstacles to “real reforms” that would help students and parents, many of them facing blatant economic and racial discrimination.

Rarely do we hear about how curriculum has been bastardized to conform to numbing standardized tests or about how charter schools are massively subsidized, taking public money while showing little accountability to the public and fighting teachers’ attempts to unionize.

Instead, the ills of public education are supposed to be solved by instituting divisive merit pay to reward “good teachers,” undermining seniority, and ousting “bad teachers.”

All this, while more and more working-class young people are pushed out of the education system and have their opportunities severely curtailed. At the center of these policies is the Obama administration and its Department of Education, using its “Race to the Top” funding mechanism to further this agenda.

Some of these themes that so concern labor are air-brushed into a Gates Foundation-funded marketing video, which includes comments from the TEA president, a gaggle of Tennessee Republicans and a few red-state Dems, and Francine Hunt, a leader with Stand for Children, which was one of the sponsors of this video.

Truth For A Change from TN Truth on Vimeo.

That is quite a production. We will see if the glossy, feel-good expectations materialize or whether "education reform" saps resources, maintains a firmly stratified caste system that allows only a few without wealth scant chance to succeed and eventually lowers the boom on the teachers it includes in it marketing campaign now. And campaign is the right word. This is a political campaign and the teachers unions should be concerned if not just a little unhinged.

How things start in grassroots goodness with Stand for Children and then turn bad after the buy-in

Former Stands for Children organizer Susan Barrett joined the Oregon organization as a concerned activist parent who like many parents in Tennessee dabbling in SFC are invested with their children in public school. She asserts that SFC in Oregon started off quite differently than the organization recently exposed in Illinois (and Tennessee Stands for Children looks like it is building like Oregon's did).

She warns us not to assume SFC is astroturf, because it does build from the grassroots. The problem shes sees is that somehow the grassroots is warped and managed into a model of "corporate reform," and then suddenly volunteers are being coached to act in ways they would not otherwise:

Founder of organization that "partners" with Metro Schools says Stand for Children pays for political influence

Stand for Children has endorsed Karl Dean for Mayor, and it benefits from a partnership with the Mayor's Office, the Metro Nashville Public School District, and the Nashville Chamber of Commerce under the boundary-obfuscating umbrella, "One Nashville." Questions have been raised here about SFC's role in local politics, and SFC has defended itself against those questions.

I'm not sure that the local office can as easily deflect news that their national CEO admitted to an audience a few days ago that SFC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a handful of Illinois state races and backed down labor unions (the latter statement he has apologized for). The video that includes Stand for Children CEO Jonathan Edelman selling a Colorado audience on how his organization was boss in Illinois:





So, the logical questions at this point for Nashvillians include: will Stand for Children Tennessee and the Nashville branch itself be using "the best insider and minority lobbyists" to "jam their proposals down our throats"? Will SFC use the networks of students and parents it has been organizing under the pretense of fully funding schools and improving public education to check teacher unions and push agendas that benefit the Nashville Chamber of Commerce or Karl Dean?

Nashville's "single portal" for public schools promotes SFC

Will Stand for Children attempt to "go to war" here rather than work collaboratively on education legislation that promotes the common good? Will they be threatening to go out and find candidates to bankroll who support their legislative steamrolls?

Asking these questions is not accusing the Nashville chapter of guilt by association. Edelman is the CEO of Stand for Children. He is the guy who prompts their mission, develops their strategy and gives them their marching orders. Stand for Children endorsed Karl Dean, who is running practically unopposed, and in so doing they endorsed his commitments to building a school system in service to big business and his commitments to privatizing public education. Would they go as far as Edelman did to realize the Dean vision for public schools?

As a public school PTO member, I intend to keep an eye on how Stand for Children reps engage our organization. I intend to pay attention to what they prompt us to do and to whether they listen to feedback. I have concerns that their partnership with the Mayor's Office and the Chamber may dictate and filter community feedback they are open to. I also have concerns that they may pay to play school board and council members. I do not trust the notion of education policy developed through a single portal constructed by the Courthouse elite. And I intend to protest loud and long at the slightest whiff of what SFC's CEO pulled in Illinois.

In Memphis, SFC is holding a workshop "to help people (ages 13-18) become leaders in their schools." The devil is in the details of what their brand of leadership entails. Let's hope that it is not an Edelman model of leadership. In Nashville, SFC lobbies us to vote them up in rankings for a quarter of a million dollars under the auspices of "children having their very own community organizer for better schools":





Getting more money may or may not provide our kids their own community organizer. But it will definitely give SFC even more influence than they have as a partner in One Nashville and as a strong player on the political scene.

Vanderbilt study defies Stand for Children assumptions?

Stand for Children endorsed Karl Dean recently from its appointed position as "advocate" for Metro Public Schools. But a Boston educator does not endorse Stand for Children's agenda, which is not even adopted for private school kids:

The re-emergence of Stand for Children would be great news for our children if studies supported its positions, including its inequitable and ineffective teacher evaluation plan. A study by Vanderbilt University in 2010 concluded such an approach is not effective.

The educational history of Stand for Children leader Jonah Edelman is instructive. He attended the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, where President Obama sends his children. Recently, a faculty member at Sidwell Friends was quoted as saying that the school does not consider student test scores helpful in determining a teacher’s effectiveness.

Every child has a right to the same thoughtful, creative education that Edelman received at the hands of teachers who weren’t shackled to incessant fill-in-the-bubble standardized testing. Kids deserve better from those who claim to stand for them.

Bill Schechter Brookline The writer is a retired public school teacher.

The more I consider their agenda, the more I wonder whether SFC is bent on maintaining an educational caste system.

Washington blogger describes Stand for Children as propped up by wealthy, union-busting elites

According to Bellevue, Washington blogger thushara wijeratna the local chapter of Stand for Children is lobbying his state's legislature to make it easier for administrators to fire senior teachers without any due process. It's the easy route: teachers with seniority cost more, so call them "inept" and then cut them loose.

The blogger also reports that they get public support with deceptively worded polls, but otherwise SFC is not grassroots as advertised. Nashville Stand for Children has a pivotal role as the "advocacy" arm of a powerful friends-of-public-schools organization, but wijeratna's analysis would suggest that SFC's top-down structure is astroturf:

Slop jar politics*: how an advocacy non-profit has a sweet role with Metro Schools and can endorse Karl Dean

Since blogging on the Stand for Children organization's endorsement of Karl Dean for Mayor after having enjoyed their political advocacy assignment with One Nashville, I received some questions from readers on whether nonprofits are allowed to endorse candidates. Nonprofits, of course, enjoy tax-exempt status, which gives them a financial advantage in the political arena if they are allowed to lobby and influence.

If there were just one legal category of non-profits this would all be a simple matter. But there are more than one. Stand for Children is actually two distinct nonprofit organizations (or I guess you may call it one organization with two distinct faces). It is structured as both a 501(c)(3) organization and a 501(c)(4). The 501(c)(3) goes by the name "Stand for Children Leadership Center." That organization (or sub-organization?) may not legally endorse Karl Dean:

The Dean Machine expands with nonprofit advocacy organization's endorsement

The Nashville Chapter of Stand for Children, which describes itself as a "grassroots advocacy" organization for public schools, announced its endorsement of Karl Dean for Mayor saying:

Mayor Dean has demonstrated amazing commitment to our public schools. During one of the most economically trying times in our history, Mayor Dean has fully funded the schools budget every year since he has been in office. He listens to community and parent input

Except that the statement is somewhat disingenuous as the Nashville City Paper recently pointed out regarding 300 teacher displacements and the loss of federal funds:

the positions of 334 teachers — covering Metro elementary, middle and high schools — have been eliminated prior to next school year, with district officials hoping to relocate affected teachers to other schools. But there’s no guarantee that will happen — it boils down to a still-unknown number of openings elsewhere ....

The reality of eliminated teaching positions has gone largely underreported in Nashville, perhaps in part because Mayor Karl Dean has announced intentions to fully fund Metro schools.

Dean’s budget proposal for the 2011-12 fiscal year, which awaits Metro Council approval, supports schools financially to the level requested by the Metro Nashville Board of Education. However, the mayor and school board’s plan does not cover more than $30 million in depleted federal stimulus monies and approximately $10 million in vanishing federal-jobs program dollars. Official have known this day was coming, and it’s resulting in more than 300 terminated positions.

So, stating it as "fully-funded" is overstating the case, but this is an election year and organizations are jockeying for positions of influence on Karl Dean's coattails.