Key Murdoch Minion Tapped for Top Newark Public Schools Job

Newark, New Jersey has a long history of "troubled" public schools. All the king's men and all the king's horses have not been able to put the Garden State's largest K-12 system together into something approaching satisfactory performance. It got to the point where the state took over the school system. Local voices were pushed away, while Newark's public education efforts attracted the attention of political opportunists and wealthy "we-know-what's-best-for-you" ideologues.

Cami Anderson
(Image: state.nj.us)

Ironically, bellicose GOP governor Chris Christie and liberal media darling Cory Booker found common ground regarding Newark's schools. During Booker's tenure as Newark's mayor, Christie installed Cami Anderson as Newark's superintendent of schools. This was done with Booker's blessing. Ms. Anderson was no stranger in the night in the movement to "reform" K-12 education. She had served in executive capacities with Teach for America, an organization which used marginally trained, well-intended college grads as instructors in some of the nation's most desperate urban schools. (The teachers work like dogs, last about a year or two, and then in the vast majority of cases find another career.) This 21st Century version of a children's crusade also provided administrators with leverage against teachers' unions. Later, Anderson worked in New York for Wireless Generation, which later became Amplify, a Rupert Murdoch-owned enterprise whose ostensible purpose is K-12 "reform" via data-driven imperatives (supplied and managed by Amplify). Murdoch's education biz, through former NYC Education Commissioner Joel Klein, established a lucrative beach head in Gotham. Among Klein's key associates was Chris Cerf.

Chris Cerf
(Image: nj.com)

Cerf supervised Anderson's work with the NYC Department of Education. He later crossed the Hudson and worked as Governor Christie's Acting Commissioner of Education. His key hire was...ta da...you guessed it, Cami Anderson, as Newark's K-12 boss.

In 2014, according to The Star-Ledger reporter Bob Braun, Amplify Education (one of Amplify's corporate entities) received three contracts totaling about $2.3 million contract from the Newark public school system. At the time, Cerf was in the midst of a transition between his role as the state's top education dog, and jumping onto Amplify's payroll.

Recently, Ms. Anderson decided to call it quits in Newark, about eight months before her contract would have expired. A new mayor, a pissed off community whose wishes were consistently ignored by Booker and Christie, and a governor who would be king were three strong reasons for her departure. The new superintendent? Chris Cerf. He'll get a three-year deal to run the system his way. Cerf, to no one's surprise, advocates more charter schools, defanging the teacher's union, installing data-driven "solutions," and lots and lots of electronically-based testing. He'll also feel at home with "concerned" billionaires who have their own education "solutions." As it happens, Newark is an ideal petri dish for these social experiments.

Chris Christie, Oprah Winfrey, Corey Booker, Mark Zuckerberg
at the announcement of the Facebook boss' $100 million stock "donation"
to improve Newark's public schools.

We'll see if Cerf engages the parents of Newark children, something Anderson did not manage to accomplish to anyone's satisfaction. It will also be interesting to follow the money. Power brokers, notably Booker and Christie, have stonewalled any attempt at transparency regarding the Newark school system's finances and program decisions. Will Cerf be different? His political and corporate connections suggest that will not be the case.

Former Obama Press Secretary Leading PR Drive Against K-12 Teacher Tenure

Robert Gibbs
(Image: politico.com)

One of the Obama presidency's curiosities is its hostility to K-12 teachers unions. Key administration figures, including Education Secretary (and 44's basketball bud) Arne Duncan, have expressed their opposition to teacher tenure. The anti-tenure mob asserts that tenure encourages ineffective teachers to remain on the job, while implicitly denying better instructors an opportunity to practice their trade. Powerful forces from all political spectra have embraced part or all of this perspective.

A recent addition to this unseemly alliance is an enterprise created by former Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs and former BO campaign spokesperson Ben Labolt. According to a Politico story, the pair's Insight Agency "will lead a national public relations drive to support a series of lawsuits aimed at challenging tenure, seniority and other job protections that teachers unions have protected ferociously. LaBold and another former Obama aide, Jon Jones -- the first digital strategist of the 2008 campaign -- will take the lead in the public relations initiative."

While the movement to dismantle the existing K-12 instructional force gathers momentum, one wonders what bright future these champions of meritocracy envision. Looming large in many of these brave new worlds is data accumulation and analysis. The nearly religious belief in data's "truth" masks data's considerable flaws as an educational tool. Meanwhile, what of the teachers themselves?  Media stories, think-tank white papers, and political speeches rarely bother to present the thoughts and feelings of tenured teachers. There's little that's fair and balanced from the right or from the left on the tenure issue. Minds have been made up in the anti-tenure kangaroo court. Human sacrifice, in the form of the dismissal of an entire professional class, appears to be demanded.

Replacing a generation of experienced instructors will be cannon fodder from organizations such as Teach for America, whose sixteen-hour work days virtually guarantee its well-intended adherents will promptly drop out of the teaching biz. That phenomenon, coincidentally, pushes salaries down and effectively keeps curricular direction and performance appraisal in the hands of "management" rather than trained, seasoned professional instructors.

Cultural Revolution
(Image: bbc.co.uk)

Many years ago, I taught English to adult Chinese immigrants. I listened to stories about the Cultural Revolution, whose incidents included forcing teachers to parade through their town while wearing humiliating signs. The tagging of an entire generation of American K-12 teachers as deadbeats, deserving of the punishment of tenure elimination, is not far away from the mass insanity China experienced a half-century ago.

Be careful what you wish for.

Alleged DC Charter School Scam: Who Says There's No Money in Education?

The mantra about how "there's no money in education" keeps encountering inconvenient details which question the chant's veracity. Elements of the for-profit world, which has eyed the taxpayer funded education funding as so many chickens to be plucked, has entered the K-12 school arena. Its alliances with politicians, "committed" millionaires, and dim media reporting (The Today Show, come on down) offer formidable clout, especially against a fragmented collection of interested parties, such as local interest groups like the characteristic school district PTO.

According to a report in The Washington Post, attorneys for the District of Columbia Office of the Attorney General have filed new allegations against a local charter school enterprise. The filing claims corporate officers of Options Charter Public School (OCPS) "diverted more than $3 million from the Northeast Washington school for at-risk teens to companies they founded." The brief noted a parade of self-dealing including a school bus "ridership bonus" of $100,000.

J.C. Hayward
(Image: wusa9.com)

The accused apparently owned a firm called Exceptional Education Services (EES), which effectively served as a shell company designed as a collection device for skimmed funds. One key player in the OCPS/EES scheme was J.C. Hayward, a very visible DC television personality who happened to be board chair and part-owner of EES. The TV talking head's attorney has claimed his client had no knowledge of any illegal activity. That's a curious claim for someone deeply connected to DC's power structure and is presumably worldly wise.

LAUSD students using iPads
(Image: ktla.com)

The larger issue in this story goes beyond a cautionary tale of local corruption. The K-12 education "reformers" have made a case that strong CEO-style business management and teacher "accountability" would lead to improved K-12 education. All of this would be accomplished through increased online content, data-driven teaching and supervision, and relentless testing. The goal of redirecting the flow of public funds to private gain goes unstated. Meanwhile, the imperative to make technology and its products a key educational tool has gone forward without any serious vetting.The stampede into gadget purchases has led to some troubling situations, such as the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) purchasing hundreds of thousands of iPads at consumer market rates. At the same time, LAUSD did not buy keyboards for the devices. Oops...that would be "an extra expense," which the school district had to add on after the fact. Software? Well, various programs were sold as a three-year lease, after which LAUSD would have nothing to show for its rental costs.


Where was the strong CEO management in the LA and DC episodes? How did these initiatives advance the cause of K-12 education "reform"? Where was the senior management accountability? Where was the "community input" reformers are so keen to advance as one of their positive developments?

Image: mainepressherald.com

Bottom line: who says there is no money in K-12 education? The record suggests there's plenty of gold in the K-12 hills, and it's being mined now. The fact that the gold is taxpayer money, largely committed without genuine transparency or community participation is kept largely quiet. (Cory Booker and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg's money to the Newark, New Jersey schools comes to mind as Exhibit A. It took a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain any useful information about this situation.) The understanding of the profit motive in the K-12 world could illuminate inconvenient details, the knowledge of which would interfere with profitable revenue streams that could continue for a generation. Now, who would want that situation brought to light?

Matt Damon's Speech Backing Teachers, Blasting Standardized Testing

Matt Damon spoke at yesterday's "Save Our Schools March" in Washington, part of a four-day event in which working teachers protested the current tilt in education policy toward increased standardized testing, business management perspectives, and other "reforms."

The concise, articulate speech notes the actor's public education background, his gratitude to his instructors, and his belief that American public schools aren't the intellectual and developmental desert "reformers" relentlessly assert they are. Damon's address is brief and worth reading. "The Answer Sheet," a blog by the Washington Post reporter Valerie Strauss, has the transcript of Damon's remarks. It takes about two minutes to read, and will leave one thinking about the issues he raises for far longer than that.

The photo, by Tracy A. Woodward, originally appeared in the Washington Post.

Illinois Drops Last K-12 Writing Test

The state of Illinois has dropped its last required K-12 writing exam. According to a story in the LA Times that was originally filed by a Chicago Tribune reporter, Illinois public school students no longer have to write anything on a final exam. Insufficient money to conduct and grade the exams was cited as motivating the Illinois decision.

The Land of Lincoln is not the only state to cut back on inconvenient, "expensive" testing. The Times article cites recent decisions in Oregon and Missouri in which written tests were either scaled back or completely eliminated. Remarkably, an effective, essential means of evaluating a student's articulative ability has been cast aside. Testing is now completely in the throes of test manufacturers, compliant education administrators, and others who assert data analysis provides a sufficient window into an individual's "performance." That self-interest may impact this current educational dogma just doesn't enter the dialogue.

Incredibly, the development of clear written expression is disappearing from American public schools. Replacing skillful writing is constant, data-driven assessment, in which children are treated as if they are in K-12 education's equivalent of an intensive care ward. While young students will be "test ready" from a too-early age, they will be barely prepared to articulate any ideas they might have. That this phenomenon is happening in a state with a proud intellectual heritage, a land that spawned John Dewey, Jane Addams, Richard Wright, and Abraham Lincoln himself, is a very dispiriting sign of the times.