Top Ann Arbor Schools Musings Posts of 2013

Starting with the most popular post from 2013, and working my way down the list...

1. Who is the Broad Foundation and Why Do We in Ann Arbor Care? (May 6, 2013)

In which I explain the association between then-superintendent Pat Green and the Broad Foundation.

2. The (financial) costs of (NWEA) testing in Ann Arbor (Sept. 22, 2013)

In which I discuss the hard costs, and soft costs, of NWEA testing--to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Plus there are a lot of great links to other information about the NWEA test.

3. Principal Principles, Perspectives, and Publicity (Nov. 24, 2013)

Sulura Jackson at Skyline High School graduation.
Photo from a2schools.org.

Why did Cindy Leaman leave Pioneer High School for the new Ann Arbor Virtual Academy? Did Sulura Jackson, former principal of Skyline High School, plagiarize?

4. Superintendent Background Research: Richard Faidley (July 9, 2013)

I think this was the first profile I did for superintendent background research during the recent hiring of the AAPS Superintendent. Richard Faidley didn't make it to the next round.

5. State Board of Ed Roadshow Gives (A Lot of) Food for Thought (March 12, 2013)

Julie Roth wrote an excellent guest column for me using the perspective of a "non-teacher, non-educator, non-union Parent Stakeholder."

6. Ypsilanti Community Schools: Meditations on Employment (June 10, 2013)

Willow Run Flyers logo (old)

Ypsilanti High School Phoenix logo (old)

In 2013, we said goodbye to Ypsilanti and Willow Run school districts, and hello to the consolidated Ypsilanti Community Schools. The Ypsilanti and Willow Run consolidation of schools led to the loss of some staff positions, the loss of some staff compensation, and the loss of both the Ypsilanti and Willow Run teachers' unions. Plus I tell a fun family story.


7. AAPS Superintendent Pat Green Resigns. What Do You Think Of That? (April 11, 2013)

When AAPS Superintendent Pat Green resigned, I did a survey. The links to the results are in this post.

8. Finalist for Superintendent Background Research: Brian Osborne (July 9, 2013)

Brian Osborne was offered the AAPS Superintendent position. He didn't take it, and we got runner-up Jeanice Swift. So far, she appears to have embraced the position.

9. Funny Common Core Video Raises Serious Questions (June 8, 2013)

I like this video so much (and I need some pictures in this post) that I'm putting it right in here!



10. Are You Following the NWEA MAP Controversy In Seattle? (Feb. 6, 2013)

In Seattle, teachers refused to administer the NWEA MAP test. Read more recent updates at the Scrap the Map web site.




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Ann Arbor Public Schools Superintendent Candidates: Let the Research Begin!

The Ann Arbor Public Schools Board has announced the semifinalist candidates for the next Superintendent. There are six candidates. Three have local ties (Benjamin Edmonson, Current AAPS Principal; Sandra Harris, who retired from Oak Park schools but used to be director of personnel for AAPS; and Henry Hastings, who is a lecturer at EMU). The three others come from Colorado Springs, Colorado (Jeanice Kerr Swift); New York/New Jersey (Brian Osborne) and Hershey, Pennsylvania (Richard Faidley).

I very much like that three of the candidates are local and are sure to understand Michigan politics these days. I was unhappy to see a clear connection between Brian Osborne and the Broad Foundation/SUPES Academy (more on the SUPES Academy in the coming days.)

I am working with a group of parents to do our own background research on the candidates. If you have information about the candidates (did you work with one of the local candidates? Have a friend in Colorado Springs who is active in the schools?) please send me information directly at rlk234@gmail.com. As I have mentioned before, I think I made a mistake last time in not getting as involved as I can in the search. We are not going to keep this information--good, bad, or indifferent--to ourselves. We will share our findings, probably in this space and through as many other venues as possible.

And that starts with reading the candidates' biographies and resumes. Everybody should read them.

Ann Arbor Chronicle article, with resumes and timeline for hiring.

From the Chronicle:

Interview questions are being developed and will be discussed by board members at a study session on Tuesday, July 2 at 5:30 p.m. at the Balas administration building, 2555 S. State St.

Translation: Send the questions you would like to have asked to the Board of Education at boe@aaps.k12.mi.us before July 2nd at 5:30 p.m. [Ideas: Process skills? Budgeting? Approach to Testing? Communication? Working with parents? Working with teachers? Sense of humor?  Feelings about best ways to evaluate teachers? Approaches to special education?] 

Also:

Semi-finalist interviews will be held at the Courtyard Marriott, 3205 Boardwalk, on Monday, July 8 from 10 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. and on Tuesday, July 9 from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Interview times on those dates are tentative, according to AAPS.)

 I wish I could go to these, but I will be at work. If you are interested in being "ears" for the rest of us, please let me know.

Annarbor.com article, with resumes.

Christine Stead blog post.

Who is the Broad Foundation and Why Do We in Ann Arbor Care?

The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation (rhymes with road) is a foundation that makes grants and is devoted to education, contemporary art, medical research and civic projects in Los Angeles.

By Dj1997 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

If the name sounds familiar, it might be because the new Michigan State University Art Museum is named after the Broads, who were major donors.  Eli Broad is an MSU alum and the Broads made a $28 million dollar gift to the museum (which I am hoping to visit this year). The museum was designed by architect Zaha Hadid, and it looks spectacular. That's the nicest thing that I will say about the Broad Foundation in this post.


Until recently, I had no idea who or what the Broad Foundation was. I had seen on Pat Green's resume that she had been through Broad superintendent training. It's not something she hides; in fact she is quite proud of the fact that she was part of the first class of Broad Fellows and features that on her web site--but I didn't think at the time that the training meant anything in particular.

Now I know better.

The Broad Foundation is part of a group of foundations (include the Walton Foundation and the Gates Foundation) that are part of the so-called "education reform" movement--a thinly veiled movement to destroy public education. The Broad Foundation describes its mission as "“transforming urban K-12 public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition,” and that sounds good, but in practice it is not.

In education, the Broad Foundation is most notably known for the Broad Superintendents Academy--an alternative certification route to becoming a school superintendent. You don't need to start with a background in education to enter it.

To understand their reach, you have to read these statistics, courtesy of the Broad Center:

• Forty-one academy graduates serve as school district superintendents, four as state superintendents, four as chief executive officers of charter management organizations and 12 as school district cabinet executives.

• Ten urban school districts have hired more than one superintendent that has graduated from The Broad Superintendents Academy.

• Ten percent of states have selected Broad Academy graduates to lead their state departments of education.

• Across more than 50 urban school systems, 107 superintendent-level positions and 104 cabinet level positions have been filled by graduates of The Broad Academy since the program began in 2002.

• More than 300 current and former Broad Residents are working in more than 50 urban school districts, charter management organizations and departments of education nationwide.

In our own state, John Covington, the head of the Education Achievement Authority--that unproven program which the state legislature is trying to ram through an expansion--is a Broad Center graduate. So too are the about-to-retire emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools. Oh, and so is Michelle Rhee. And so is Shael Polakow-Suransky, who was raised in Ann Arbor and has been a lightning rod for criticism in the New York City schools.

[From the Perimeter Primate in the comments: "One correction. Michelle Rhee was never a Broad Superintendents Academy "fellow." But she did have regular contact with the Broad Foundation and even visited Eli Broad at his Fifth Ave. apartment in NYC in 2008. He clearly adores her.
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/36893/fund-and-games."]

So I wasn't too surprised to find that the Broad Foundation has recently bailed out Michigan's Education Achievement Authority to the tune of $10 million dollars. So we should not be surprised that they wrote an op-ed piece on April 28th in the Detroit Free Press about how great the EAA is. The truth is--and this is a pattern with the Broad Foundation--that they say they want data, but they only want convenient data. We actually won't have good data to evaluate the EAA until many years have passed. [I digress, but the initial data implies that the program can't run without additional money; that teacher turnover is extremely high; and that so is student turnover.]

In an article from Parents Across America, "How to tell if your school is infected by the Broad virus," they suggest several signs--many of which have come true in Ann Arbor in the short time that Pat Green has been here. 

However, Pat Green is leaving, and I just want to note a few of these (although I recommend you read the whole article!): 

• Repeated use of the terms “excellence” and “best practices” and “data-driven decisions.” (Coupled with a noted absence of any of the above.)
• Power is centralized.
• Decision-making is top down.
• Excessive amounts of testing introduced and imposed on your kids.
• The superintendent receives the highest salary ever paid to a superintendent in your town’s history (plus benefits and car allowance) – possibly more than your mayor or governor — and the community is told “that is the national, competitive rate for a city of this size.”

Now, the good news is that Pat Green is leaving, and we in Ann Arbor have an opportunity to find a different kind of leader. And actually, you might think--well then we don't need to know about the Broad Foundation anymore. 

Unfortunately, no. We do need to know about the Broad Foundation. There are a lot of links in this piece from the Charlotte Observer (h/t to CC for finding this), but this comment by the Perimeter Primate is particularly concerning: 

PS: Ray & Associates is the superintendent search firm which recruited Gorman to CMS [Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools] in 2006.Carl Davis of Ray & Associates is also listed as one of the speakers for the Broad Superintendents Academy...
Two other firms, Jim Huge & Associates and Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates, appear on the Broad Foundation's list of BSA training session guest speakers. I presume they are paid to appear.What needs to be investigated is if these particular superintendent search firms give preferential treatment to the Broad-trained candidates, in terms of presenting them to school boards.For instance, in the case of the Springfield (MA) search in 2008 conducted by Jim Huge, three of the four finalists were Broad fellows. http://www.springfieldcityhall.com/COS/superintendent-search-narrowed.0.html. . . 

And then: This is an excerpt from an article about Durham’s superintendent search (started late 2009): “The board has search proposals from the North Carolina School Boards Association; Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates (Glenview, Ill.), Ray and Associates (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) and Jim Huge and Associates (San Francisco). ALL BUT THE FIRST WERE RECOMMENDED BY THE BROAD FOUNDATION OF LOS ANGELES. . . 

How many school boards and members of the public realize that superintendent search firms may have their own agendas? (Emphasis added.)

In fact, as far back as 2006, the Broad Center was featuring Gary Ray, "whose Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based search firm, Ray and Associates Inc., has placed several Broad graduates as superintendents."

So here is the situation. We hired a Broad Center superintendent, using a firm that has worked extensively with the Broad Center, two years ago. The same firm is essentially offering their services for free this time. That is the same firm that I believe helped the school board arrive at the high salary they offered Pat Green. That is the same firm that posted the last position on the Broad Center job posting list. 

Looking back at the mistakes we've made, and keeping us from making the same mistakes a second time, is critical. The board has just taken two excellent steps. First, they are offering the position at what I consider to be a more reasonable salary range (and just as importantly, it's a range, not a single number). Second, they discussed and decided not to post the position on the Broad Center job posting list. 

Now, there are two more things that didn't happen last time, that should happen this time.

For one thing, during the last superintendent search, inclement weather forced the cancellation of site visits to the applicants' home districts, and they were not rescheduled. I believe that for any non-internal candidates, district site visits are essential. I think they would have told us a lot about the candidates. [For instance, what if someone had come to Ann Arbor this year and found out about the glass wall Pat Green had put up; about the requirement that everything be FOIA'd; about the rumors that she didn't work on Fridays?]

Second, now that we know about the Broad Academy, I'd rather we didn't hire anybody with those credentials. At a minimum, anyone with those credentials needs to be extensively questioned about their experience and agenda. It's not just that I don't agree with the Broad Center's agenda; it's that I don't think that most Ann Arborites do either. Further, and even worse, I don't think that the Broad Foundation is honest about their agenda. I believe that their agenda is to privatize, and profit-ize, public schools.

And since we're using a search firm that has been associated with the Broad Center in the past, it behooves us to be rather careful.

Michigan Legislature Taking Action on Some Bad Education Legislation This Month

Christine Stead, AAPS school board member and avid watcher of the state educational policy scene, has a couple of stellar posts on some Michigan legislative action that is happening during the lame duck session. . . in a rush. . . and nearly under cover of darkness.

I thank Christine for highlighting these bills.

First up--let's discuss the Educational Achievement Authority, which has the authority to take over school districts. (And you thought we took care of that by overturning the Emergency Manager law. Sadly, no.)

Let's start with a Diane Ravitch post, because she explains the roll of the Educational Achievement Authority rather clearly.

Diane Ravitch writes:

Last week, voters in Michigan repealed the state’s draconian emergency manager law, which allowed a hand-picked appointee of the governor to abolish public education in financially stressed districts. In two of those districts, the emergency manager turned the children over to for-profit charter chains.
To compensate for the repeal, the Legislature in Michigan plans to expand the powers of the Achievement Authority Chancellor. The Achievement Authority is a non-contiguous district into which the state will cluster all low-performing schools. It is currently headed by John Covington, who was trained by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. Covington previously served as superintendent of Kansas City, where he proposed to close half the district’s public schools but resigned on short notice to take the higher-profile job in Michigan. Soon after his departure, Kansas City lost its state accreditation.
Under the new law, if it passes, Covington will have a free hand with the state’s lowest performing schools.

 Read the rest of Diane Ravitch's post here.

Now, on to Christine Stead (Christine's blog), who was actually at the most recent hearing and has a lot to say. She writes:

While there is still substantive GOP control of all houses of government, here’s my recent experience at the House Education Committee meeting yesterday [November 13, 2012].  By the way, please read HB 6004 here: http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2011-2012/billintroduced/House/pdf/2012-HIB-6004.pdf

This bill seeks to hurry up an codify the Educational Achievement Authority, which has been functioning since October 1st.  This bill will give the EAA sweeping authority to take over local schools, render all local government moot, among other things (my concerns are listed below in bullet points)...

Through the course of witnessing testimony, new concerns arose for me.  These include:

• The EAA can be much broader than the bottom 5% of schools.  In fact, since they exclude participation in state standardized tests AND only the chancellor determines when they have made progress, it is quite possible that they can expand to eventually encompass many schools in Michigan.

• The Chancellor could not articulate how they were governed – now or in the future (although this is part of the bill he was there to testify on behalf of).

• The Chancellor could not articulate how they were funded (I think they get the foundation allowance of the school they took over, plus some additional funding from the state of $35M and philanthropy from ‘other organizations’ that want to see this work).

• The Chancellor, nor anyone else in the audience – including Bill Restum – did not know what would happen to a school that failed to make progress after 3 years.

• The EAA can take over all assets of a school without the approval of the local school board.

  But wait, there's more. Read the rest of Christine's post here.  
  As if that were not enough, a few days ago Christine wrote about HB 5923. 

  Republicans are pushing through two more major changes to public education in lame duck sessions: the kinds of changes that a reasonable person might want to do a bit of thinking about and research on before slamming through more massive changes with very little concern and understanding of the consequences.  They both risk decimating public education...
  HB 5923 will allow any ‘thing’ (employer, municipality, etc.) to become a school.  There are no quality controls that they will be held accountable to.  Schools today will become focused on accounting: tracking where each child goes to school, accepting all credits, tracking GPAs from a myriad of programs, etc.
  Many issues need to be worked out – or even thought of – for this bill.  Clearly our legislators aren’t thinking about the impact on our students and our families.  If they were, they would be including academic goals, ensuring robust programs that also provide a framework for social and emotional learning and growth that is a foundation for so many other characteristics that seem to determine success more than grades: curiosity, tenacity, empathy, etc...
  Please review the language of the bill: http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2011-2012/billintroduced/House/pdf/2012-HIB-5923.pdf

    Read Christine's full post here.
  
  
  I am hoping Michigan Parents For Schools will have an action alert out soon.