Teach for America or perhaps "Temps for Nashville on Poverty Safari"

In the middle of a Twitter bull session a couple of weeks ago on charter schools Shani Dowell, Director of the Nashville branch of Teach for America, chimed in to challenge the perception that charters are free to expel underperformers and cream overachievers. She made the claim that "the data" prove those perceptions "false" (by the way, data usually does not prove, but indicates; that is a discussion for another time):

Since she included me in her point about "the data", I asked Ms. Dowell for links to "the data" to which she was referring. I assume that "SCA" refers to Smithson-Craighead Middle School (a charter) and not St. Cecilia Academy (a private), since the discussion was about charters. Although, on second thought, "assuming makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me'", so she could be referring to the private school. On that score, her point would be absurd to a degree that it requires no reply.

However, risking the role of the ass, I'll go ahead and assume that she was referring to Smithson-Craighead, which is now suing Metro Nashville for intending to close its campus due to its abysmal performance. Consider what the lawsuit alleges: that SCMS students will be “forced to endure an educational experience of lesser quality” without the faith-based charter school.

That charge is an implicit acknowledgement that the charter "creams" (that is, it takes the best students from public schools "of lesser quality"). One of the reasons that public schools might be "of lesser quality" is that unlike charter schools they have an obligation to educate all students, good and bad, right and wrong, passionate and indifferent. The argument is also a tacit endorsement of the idea that in being free to take students of their choosing, SCMS can also rid themselves of and ignore students of their choosing.

While I would like to see the data, I do not need the data to understand the common sense, indeed the self-evidence, of that logic.

But getting back to my point, I waited and waited for a response so that I could see "the data" for myself, but Ms. Dowell never got back to me. I gather that either there is no objective data or the data can be interpreted in ways that do not prove my perceptions false. I've searched for the data online myself and not been able to find anything regarding Smithson-Craighead.

So, maybe Ms. Dowell is too busy to get back with me on "the data". She has got a local TFA branch to run. That TFA branch is currently absorbed in a "One Day Warrior" fundraising campaign to get a $10,000 grant from the national office, which the local branch claims is "the equivalent of bringing two new TFA teachers to Nashville".

Are they hoping to score the dough as they claim so that "all children in Nashville will have access to an excellent education"? Or are they doing so to indulge two privileged, but unseasoned leaders in what one observer calls "a poverty safari"?

The purpose of TFA is not to necessarily improve the lives of the kids their teachers teach; rather, it is to give bright, young leaders direct experience of the problem. The TFA recruits get to see right in front of them with a human face where we are failing our poor kids. And since these recruits are bright, young leaders, when they go on to do bright, young leader things, they will have this in their mind and fight for change. So on this view, TFA has a long-game strategy that will materialize down the line when these TFA teachers — most of whom quit of course — get into positions of political (or other sorts of) power and have the ability to make things better.

On its face, this strategy is wildly offensive. Basically it says that we are sending TFA recruits on 2-year poverty safaris. The point is not to accomplish anything while on the safari: it is just to watch and observe. See what it is like and become acquainted and maybe emotionally attached to the issue in some way so that later down the line you can do something more meaningful about it.

In addition to being fairly cringe-inducing, the theory is off-the-wall ridiculous. The basic problem is that even if these folks find themselves empowered to remake education, two years of failing in a classroom will give them no earthly idea as to what the problem is. These are not social science researchers and collecting impressionistic experiences during a couple of years of teaching some poors is not a good method for figuring out the drivers of a big, widespread problem like this. What’s more, since they are primarily just in the classroom, their “solutions” will almost certainly focus on schools. This would be fine if there was some consensus that this was the best place to focus, but the big counter-theory is that this is a totally misguided focus from the beginning. The poverty safari method for analyzing and coming to understand the contours of this problem is a total joke.

Another observer, a university professor who used to support TFA recruitment of his students but now no longer even allows them in his class, resents the unequal allotment of benefits that accrues during safari:

TFA alumni have used this access to move rapidly into positions as heads of local school systems, executives in charter school companies, and educational analysts in management consulting firms. The organization’s facile circumvention of the grinding, difficult, but profoundly empowering work of teaching and administering schools has created the illusion that there are quick fixes, not only for failing schools but for deeply entrenched patterns of poverty and inequality....

Not only has there been little progress in the last 15 years in narrowing the test score gap by race and class, but income inequality has become greater than at any other time in modern American history. TFA’s main accomplishment has been to marginally increase the number of talented people entering the teaching profession, but only a small fraction of those remain in the schools where they were originally sent.

But the most objectionable aspect of Teach For America — other than its contempt for lifetime educators — is its willingness to create another pathway to wealth and power for those already privileged in the rapidly expanding educational-industrial complex, which already offers numerous careers for the ambitious and well-connected.

From that point of view, I do not feel so interruptive asking Ms. Dowell to back up her argument with the actual data that I can see. What good will the TFA's "quick-fix" fundraisers do for Nashville kids anyway? I've read a TFA alum who argues that it is time for TFA to fold because the money he got did not make him a better teacher. I've listened to a TFA alum who insists that TFA training is like a glorified pep rally more than it is a realistic prep session for teaching troubled populations of impoverished children. And then there is this observation about what TFA actually does, as prompted by complaints from a TFA alum who never got paid for her summer work:

The simple truth is this: Teach for America does not employ a single teacher straight out of college. Zero. Zip. Teach for America does not employ teachers nor does it pay teachers. Teach for America is a recruiting firm. The organization provides minimally trained temps to work in place of professionals, while falsely promoting itself as a top employer of college grads/teachers.

It does seem that Teach for America is coloring reality by promoting itself as an employer instead of a recruiting firm. It is misleading, to say the least. Some might even say it’s dishonest. Certainly it is confusing to recruits who think they are employed by TFA and expect a paycheck.

And there are those not-so-insignificant reports from elsewhere that TFA branches are soliciting philanthropy and charging public coffers to add to their stockpile of wealth whether they actually help the kids or not.

.... and beyond!

If all TFA donors knew that the money raised is going more to help privileged young adults--on career tracks to politics and other professions--instead of serving underprivileged students through the long arc of their schooling, then could TFA raise the money to bring the former to Nashville? I admit, that is a more significant question than the one currently preying on my mind. My more selfish cogitation is: if TFA Nashville is a temp agency designed like elsewhere to extract veteran teacher salaries from the equation rather than grinding out excellent educators, and Ms. Dowell has the spare time to counter me on the issue of charter schools, then maybe she has a skosh of latitude to share data links that render my view of charter schools indeed as "false" as she claims. I promise not to divert her from the safari too long.

Ingram uses charity as a weapon, and the casualties are likely to be children

The Nashville Chamber of Commerce is now threatening the Metro Nashville Public Schools for denying a charter school. While in my opinion charter schools are usually about class warfare (or at least about class "police action"), the latest Chamber behavior seems to me to ratchet the clash to a visceral level of "shock and awe". Why? Because the gilded blueblood who penned a letter to MNPS on behalf of the Chamber threw down his own personal philanthropic weight:

Ingram elite

The chamber, a key partner with Metro schools that had previously stayed out of the feud, characterized the board’s “mishandling” of its fiduciary responsibility as “especially galling” for those in the business community who have advocated for tax increases to “fully fund” the district's budget.

“...ultimately the accountability for the school system resides with the Metropolitan Board of Education,” reads the letter, penned by businessman Orrin Ingram, who chairs the chamber’s Education 2020 program.

“Accordingly, the school board is responsible for the restoration of the $3.4 million to MNPS from the state in a way that does not waste further effort and taxpayer money.”

Ingram, an affluent philanthropist and CEO of Ingram Industries Inc., concludes with a pointed handwritten note to school board chair Cheryl Mayes: “Until this issue is resolved and the $3.4 million is reinstated, my time, money and support will stay on the sideline!”

The words “time,” “money,” and “support” are each underlined for emphasis.

We live in a climate where schools have been systematically stripped of public revenues (which increasingly go to subsidize business start-ups and relocations, as well as to underwrite lobby groups like the Nashville Chamber of Commerce) and wealthy philanthropists and private enterprises are asked to take up the slack with voluntary donations under the auspices of "public-private partnerships". The Chamber's volley across the public school bow shows the real risk of these partnerships: delivery of underfunded public education to Nashville's children is threatened by the withholding of private donations that those children have come to depend on.

Crossing the line: let the kids eat cake

Given that Nashville public schools are disproportionately working- and lower-class compared to the private schools that Mr. Ingram is now more comfortable supporting, it seems to me that the philanthropist is ramping up class war with his money and power. Whether he cares or not, the public school kids are going to be the casualties of the shots fired. This tirade also exposes the distinct possibility that his charity is a cynical tool for currying influence and leveraging the political ends that he deems beneficial to him and his class.

Such philanthropy belies commitment to Nashville's children; instead, it smacks of venture philanthropy, which is intended to configure the political landscape in one direction and consolidate power in the hands of a few. Ignoring the class dimensions of this threat is to approach it from a sense of denial. MNPS's conflict with the state has spiraled out of control and upset patricians are trying to rein in a popularly-elected, spit-the-bit board, even if kids fall.

Charter schools cinch permanent underclasses who receive something akin to vocational education. "Creaming" (or skimming the best performers off the top of traditional schools for charter schools) along with Nashville's Chamber-influenced founding of "Academies" provide the assist.

Then, the kicker: middle-class charter schools like Great Hearts calcify class stratification and provide one more barrier between the elite, concentrated power of Nashville's wealthy and the unwashed masses. That is essentially what aristocrats like Orrin Ingram defend by threatening to withdraw charity from Nashville public schools. Most pathetically, the gentry are willing to use public school children as pawns, essentially re-victimizing them to get what they want.

The state victimized the kids once by withdrawing $3.4 million. Nashville's elite follows by flexing its muscles, and it victimizes them again by withholding private donations until MNPS backs off its defiance of the state. It is merely the dark side of the public-private partnership: a sinister expression of the union we want to believe is benign, benevolent, and beneficial. We should rethink our assumptions.

Hizzoner casts his lot with the state: not exactly a profile in courage

Apparently, Mayor Karl Dean could not put aside his own personal fondness for the Great Hearts charter school company in order to lead a Metro agency out of a mess the State of Tennessee engendered. A Tennessean reporter tweeted Hizzoner's response to state action in September:

Mayor Dean said in interview that loss of state funds [due to declining one application for one charter school] is [Metro school's] problem. "They created it, and they need to figure it out."

Gadzooks. For the sake of argument, let's assume that the school board made a mistake. If you were the elected head of Metro government, the person who makes all of the budget decisions for all departments and agencies, is it the wisest course of action to cut loose an entire department or agency for a misstep? The alternative expression--"Regardless of what happens, we will find a way through this together. Let's pick up the pieces"--seems the proper course for those looking for a high road even when one has the opportunity to say, "I told you so."

Consider the fact that those adversely affected by the actions of the State of Tennessee are not powerful business interests who should be able to weather the lack of state funds, but the most vulnerable segment of the population: Nashville's public school children. Was it prudent for Hizzoner to take an adversarial posture with the state against a Metro agency when the latter had not violated anyone's civil rights and had not conducted themselves in an unethical manner? Was it wise to endorse the idea that the state should be spending less money on all Nashville children because a few middle class parents, who already have charter options, did not get the plum charter school they wanted close to their predominantly white neighborhoods?

How many times has this Mayor attempted to be our local Oprah with efforts like encouraging us to lose weight or to join his book club? He can weigh in touchy-feely over our personal lives, but he cannot have some compassion over the real risk to kids of red-state action?

And let's not forget one more thing: Karl Dean's campaign claims to fight tirelessly for full funding of Nashville's schools is fundamentally compromised by his stubborn willingness to side with the state and punish Nashville's school kids over a charter school application.

But let's end the dumb assumptions and let's get one thing straight: the school board made no mistake. For once, they did something right with a charter school application. And how much worse does Hizzoner's callous indifference appear in that light?

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.

Nashville "non-profit" Entrepreneur Center receives millions in government subsidies, and then "counterprotests" Occupy Wall Street

Shorter Entrepreneur Center social media content strategy.

I blogged on the Occupy Wall Street occupations almost 2 weeks ago, about 10 days after they started in New York City. By then Occupy groups were spreading around the country, including cities in Tennessee. Today a poll came out showing that a majority of Americans know about #OWS and more view it favorably than negatively. This movement is looking increasingly like the protests for reform and revolutionary democracy that have encircled the globe since the "Arab Spring" earlier this year.

Another indication that #OWS is gaining momentum is the knee-jerk way they are attacked not just by right-wing political groups, but by other organizations not known for sniping in political debates. Take Nashville's Entrepreneur Center. For some unacknowledged, inexplicable reason the Entrepreneur Center decided to "counterprotest" Occupy Wall Street by trying to encourage its 2,000 Twitter followers to tweet against #OWS with a hashtag (#Iamthe53) originally promoted by an arch-conservative redstate.com blogger. The Entrepreneur Center's twitter stream issued a curiously polarizing battle cry:

What exactly does the Entrepreneur Center stand for again?

And the surprisingly unabashed partisanship and callousness toward dissenters, who have the right to assemble and demand industry reforms, was only the first problem for what should be a more neutral resource center for small businesses.

The counterprotest posturing is also problematic because the Entrepreneur Center, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, just received one of the largest grants from the federal government Economic Development Administration in Tennessee history ($2.5 MILLION). That money is designated by the federal government for flood recovery, but in effect it also alleviates the center of costs it might incur by continuing its private mission in Rolling Mill Hill development. This list of heavy-hitters in venture capitalism, the Nashville Chamber of Commerce, law, and health care suggests that the Entrepreneur Center is not hurting for money or influence.

This appears to be an influential special interest organization, subsidized by our tax dollars, taking a side against ordinary people who themselves are trying to leverage wider opportunities for other ordinary people at the grassroots because they themselves do not have the financial resources so readily available to wealthy EC leaders. EC counterprotesters are obviously willing to beg federal grant money that the rest of us help pay, that allows them to organize their increased resources to maintain political influence. However, rather than being satisfied with what they have they begrudge others--many of whom have been cut out of the system--for mobilizing the only shared resources they have: the masses who push for social change from the bottom.

When I pointed these problems out to the unidentified Entrepreneur Center social media manager tweeting on Friday and asked for an inventory of corporate welfare they were receiving from taxpayer dollars, all I received back was a reiteration of their company's stated goal:

So, again if their purpose is to aid entrepreneurs with their businesses, what business does the Entrepreneur Center have taking sides in social protest through social media while promoting conservative Republican attempts to torpedo Occupy Wall Street?

As I write this, #OccupyNashville is camped at Legislative Plaza near the state capitol in a departure from the focus of other Occupy groups, which are trying to occupy economic institutions (like the Wall Street financial district). Since so many protest groups hold their demonstrations at Legislative Plaza, Nashville's occupiers look merely like another in a long string of protesters, including the Tea Party. I am clueless and puzzled by why Legislative Plaza was chosen, when it seems to dilute the difference this movement intends to make.

Changing the system cannot start with protesting government, because corporations own government. Legislative Plaza seems to be a diversion. Might I suggest that a good place to take the Occupy Nashville protest would actually be places like the Entrepreneur Center where movers and shakers are. The idea of flood recovery money going to a business special interest group that is now attempting to counter dissent is dramatic, and it underscores the caste system dragging our country to hell. The dissent needs to be registered at places like 105 Broadway, Suite 200, Entrepreneur Center central, because the non-profit entrepreneurs seem to be inviting a fight.


UPDATE: I just found out from City Paper reporter, Joey Garrison (who is doing a story on the Entrepreneur Center's "counterprotest"), that EC has scrubbed their #iamthe53 tweets from their Twitter stream (there was a second one blaming stock market uncertainty on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill and Barack Obama's health care initiative). Fortunately, I saved a screenshot of the EC tweets, because I've seen this happen too many times. You can view their tweets in the middle of the post above. I have never understood why people who delve into social media think that you can simply wipe a dubious history out of existence. Their counterprotest really happened, and I have the shot above to prove it.


UPDATE: When contacted by Garrison, the Entrepreneur Center's PR specialist did not acknowledge the partisan tweets or claim any error in their communications tactics. He did equivocate and walk back the non-profit's earlier stridency:

“Within the bigger context of economic development and job creation, there is frustration across the country about the status of the economy,” Clay Jackson, the entrepreneur center’s director of marketing and communications told The City Paper. “The Occupy Wall Street protests, as such to me, are very undefined as far as what their goals are.”

Jackson seemed to downplay taking sides in the ongoing protests.

“The [Entrepreneur Center] stands behind people who are trying to create jobs and build companies,” he said. “I don’t know if there’s a side for us to fall on within that debate. If you see us as weighing in, it’s weighing in on the side of people who are trying to create jobs, to build great companies.”

Blah, blah, as such to me, blah, blah. That obfuscation seemed to provide the perfect hazy background for a blog post at the Entrepreneur Center site (like the tweets, anonymously written) which transformed the non-profit's social media content from hard-right hippy hater to granola-crunching tree-hugger merely observing Occupy Wall Street:

The national dialogue about Occupy Wall Street, greed and profits creates an excellent opportunity to talk about social entrepreneurs ....

Many people aren’t aware of “social enterprises,” or “social entrepreneurs”, so I’d like to elaborate. Social enterprises run the gamut of donation and grant driven non-profits to corporations that adhere to the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit.

Social enterprises are “mission-based” organizations as opposed to pure profit-based organizations and as a result of progressive businesses like Ben and Jerry’s, Toms Shoe’s, and local example Magdalene, Inc, (Thistle Farms), social entrepreneurs are changing the world.

At the EC, one of our 4 key verticals is social entrepreneurship, because building good businesses also requires building businesses that do good. The status quo of the pure profit driven corporation has changed a lot over the past several decades, and some of the greatest innovation is created by social entrepreneurs who build businesses that do good.

Commence organization re-branding. A couple of us tried to hash out EC's about-face on Twitter with the blogger, who proceeded to invite us to support the non-profit's "green" initiatives while still failing to answer my questions about how much federal, state, and local welfare they receive for their "mission".

Excuse my cynicism, but does the Entrepreneur Center's flip-flop seem convenient to any one else, given the timing of the City Paper story?

The troubling prospect that charter schools may be a wormhole to resegregation

A consortium of progressive groups including People for the American Way, Advancement Project, Center for Social Inclusion, and African American Ministers in Action produced a short video just posted to YouTube on how venture capitalists are bringing down a diverse and functioning school district in North Carolina by privatization; further indication that charter schools are not the answer to our problems. Metro Nashville Schools has firmly committed itself to charter schools and has also been under criticism for a redistricting plan that purportedly resegregates Nashville schools. We should be levelheaded about the priorities of venture philanthropy in propping up charter schools in our community.

Please share this video with others, especially with other public school parents.