(While I would certainly never say that the Kansas City School District has been well managed over the years, now that it appears to making strides in the right direction, the State Board of Education not only has denied the district provisional accreditation, leaving it open to losing students and much-needed funding, but it has placed a Bill Gates-funded organization, with a long record of supporting the privatization of education, in charge of coming up with a solution for Missouri's failing school districts. Talk about stacking the deck. The State Board's news release is printed below.)
On Monday, the State Board of Education received an update from CEE-Trust (Cities for Education Entrepreneurship Trust) about their process of creating a comprehensive plan to address the needs of children in the unaccredited Kansas City school district.
CEE-Trust Executive Director Ethan Gray made the presentation to the board, along with Bryan Hassel, co-director of Public Impact, a consulting group that works with education leaders and policymakers.
“This project is a rare opportunity to study effective, concrete strategies that improve education for children in a district where dedicated educators have been stymied by systemic challenges,” said Commissioner of Education Chris Nicastro. “Our goal is to have a plan to make significant improvements for kids in this district and districts across the state that need support and intervention.”
Preparing Missouri students for college and career is a primary goal of the Top 10 By 20 plan, which aims to place Missouri among the top 10 performing states in education by 2020.
There are six factors involved in the CEE-Trust planning process:
- Identify conditions that foster great schools
- Examine interventions that have worked, those that haven’t and the reasons for each
- Draw on the best around the country and the world
- Solicit community input
- Develop a statewide system that provides both support and intervention as necessary
- Provide a transition plan
CEE-Trust is using research focused on Kansas City to develop recommendations on a long-range plan. Kansas City Public Schools lost accreditation in 2012.
Interviews and focus groups began in September and will be conducted through Dec. 2013. CEE-Trust anticipates presenting a plan to the Department and State Board in January 2014, with public engagement to follow.
The Department secured the services of CEE-Trust in Aug. 2013 through the bid process, and their work is supported through private donations.
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(The background on the CEE Trust was featured in the August 20 Turner Report, which is reprinted below.)
The fox is the hen house.
When the State Department of Education issued a press release earlier today announcing it had hired the CEE Trust to devise a plan to deal with the state's failing school districts, you did not see anything about Teach for America or Stand for Children, but they have been integral parts of the trust's operations the past few years.
In other words, the reform groups that have been at the heart of tearing down teachers and turning public schools into standardized test factories will be the ones in charge of coming up with a system to save our troubled schools.
The state of Missouri, thanks to the Board of Education, has fallen into bed with those who want to privatize education and allow business to come in and milk every cent out of the system.
The CEE Trust is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Need I say more? We already have one billionaire, Rex Sinquefield, in the state of Missouri who thinks that just because he is fortunate enough to have money that he should be able to reshape the state in his own warped image. And now we bring in someone with even more money. It is not a recipe for success.
From the CEE Trust website:
Convening: We gather the full CEE-Trust network annually and lead smaller working groups on topics like supporting the launch of excellent charter schools; developing innovative school models; and reforming school governance. Through our various gatherings, we share lessons learned, foster communication, document best practices, and help cities improve their efforts to drive the education reform agenda forward.
Collaborating: We help members explore new reform strategies, develop and execute collaborative projects, and partner with education innovators looking for opportunities to expand their programs.
Consulting: We provide consulting services to city-focused groups that are interested in developing education-reform strategies informed by lessons learned through CEE-Trust's work with our members.
Throughout this description, I see words and phrases that set the alarm bells off in my mind:
Best practices- Best practices in education are nearly always defined by people who left the classroom as soon as they had a couple of years of success (or what appeared to be success) and began making a mint giving seminars to gullible administrators and school boards who hear the words "best practices" and immediately do spot-on impressions of Pavlov's pets.
Drive the education reform agenda forward- Do I even need to explain this one? The reform agenda- everything from charter schools, virtual schools, merit pay, and the introduction of hordes of idealistic, inexperienced Teach for America graduates in place of experienced teachers.
Partner with education innovators looking for opportunities to expand their programs- Take a look at CEE's list of partners. You will find two with Missouri connections- the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City and Mayor Francis Slay of St. Louis. But you will also find New Schools of New Orleans (and we all know how that has worked out) and Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif. Johnson is perhaps better known as a former NBA player with the Phoenix Suns, but he is also the husband of the notorious opponent of public education and classroom teachers Michelle Rhee, founder of the misnamed StudentsFirst.
The State Board of Education could do much more for those who are stuck in failing schools if they abandoned this pursuit of best practices that have only worked in affluent neighborhoods and in schools that are allowed to select their clientele and started lobbying the state legislature to stop cutting funding for programs designed to attack poverty and demagoguing health programs that could make a difference in the quality of the students' lives.
Certainly, there are ways in which the education in Missouri's failing schools can improve, but any such plan that does not include improvements in the conditions faced by children when they are not on school property is destined to fail.
And now, instead of spending money on tackling the problems that most affect the children in Missouri's failing school districts, the state will be pouring thousands into yet another think tank designed to enrich its corporate partners and continue the process of dismantling public education.
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