THE PERIMETER PRIMATE: A Recent History of OUSD

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A Recent History of OUSD

Ever since the citizens of Oakland lost control over their own public schools in June 2003, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell has assigned management of the Oakland Unified School District to a set of individuals selected and trained by Eli Broad, a billionaire from Southern California who was also a contributor to the State Superintendent’s 2002 campaign.

The first OUSD State Administrator assigned by O’Connell was Randolph Ward, a graduate of Broad’s Superintendents Academy. He held the position for three years. Since he left, the two successive State Administrators, Kimberly Statham and Vincent Matthews, have been Broad Superintendents Academy graduates as well.

All three of the State Administrators have filled a number of their top management positions with individuals trained by Broad’s Residency in Urban Education. In fact, of the total of 49 trainees who have participated in the Broad Residency program, 9 have held top management positions in OUSD since the state has been in control.*

Both the Broad Superintendents Academy and the Broad Residency in Urban Education are programs offered by the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. This center provides Broad with an opportunity to play a major role in training a selected set of “…executives to run the business of urban education.” The program’s web site states that participation in the program guarantees placement into top level positions in urban school districts across the country. The first “graduating” class was in 2002, conveniently coinciding with OUSD’s downfall.

Although poor fiscal practices on the part of OUSD led to the takeover, the new Broad team did not limit themselves to adjusting only those practices. Rather, it has changed the entire school district (the “Expect Success” project) with the community having been permitted very little say. The central office has been redesigned, as well as a number of schools. Of the 98 traditional schools that existed in 2002, 42 have been closed, reconstituted, incubated into new small schools, or turned into charter schools.

The “Expect Success” project has been funded by the Broad and Gates Foundations with extensive local and other support including the Rogers Family Foundation and others. Incidentally, Brian Rogers, son of T. Gary Rogers (the former CEO of Dreyer’s Ice Cream) and the executive director of the Rogers Family Foundation (established after Dreyer’s was sold for $2.8 billion in June 2003), announced this month that he will be running for a school board seat in the city’s upcoming June election. He introduced himself to the community as an “Oakland educational philanthropist that has been working with the district and the Board of Education for the past three years.”

Perhaps other players in the current state-run administration will be looking to establish themselves in new and upcoming positions of power now that a return to local control of OUSD might be on the horizon. Of course no one knows for sure when that will actually happen. Just last summer, a bill which outlined a transparent process for returning control (AB45) was supported and approved by the California State Legislature. However, Mr. O’Connell opposed the bill and recommended for Governor Schwarzenegger to veto it. So like the governor that he is, he did.

OUSD has now had over 4½ years of state leadership. With the rapid implementation of so many changes and with the accompanying massive turnover in staff – while also struggling to meet the demands of No Child Left Behind – many local observers believe that the district is in disarray. The district has made progress in its API (Academic Performance Index, the state measurement of accountability) but has failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress (the federal measurement of accountability) for the past five years. It is now in Program Improvement-Year 3.

I'm not sure where the other 15,000 U.S. school districts find their superintendents, but there must be other places than just one convenient source. Perhaps I'm an Oakland bumpkin, but I can smell that something's not right, of course.

References:

►Eli's Experiment: Meet Eli Broad, a SoCal billionaire who uses his cash and connections to groom Oakland school administrators and keep the district under state control, by Robert Gammon, October 10, 2007 (http://www.eastbayexpress.com/2007-10-10/news/eli-s-experiment/)

►Broad’s Education Foundation - http://www.broadfoundation.org/home.html

►The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems - http://www.broadcenter.org/

►The Broad Superintendents Academy - http://broadacademy.org/join/

►The Broad Residency in Urban Education - http://www.broadresidency.org/

►Expect Success page of OUSD’s web site. By the way, if you look at this site, try to sort out the fluff from the truth - http://public.ousd.k12.ca.us/WebItem.aspx?WebItemID=137

*As of November 2007

1 comment:

The Perimeter Primate said...: An op-ed piece in the Oakland Tribune on 12/05 describes what's happening

http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2005/12/corporate-scammers-come-to-oakland.html; January 15, 2009 at 9:30 AM

Inform yourself about the Gulen movement!

1. WATCH the Gulen Movement 101: Session One webinar presentation (1/22/2014)
2. READ the "Expose the Gulen Movement" report.
3. LISTEN to my interview with At The Chalk Face , slide marker to 32:00 min. (5/19/2013)
4. WATCH the 60 Minutes segment "U.S. charter schools tied to powerful Turkish imam" broadcast. (5/13/2012)
5. READ my response to the 60 Minutes piece.
6. READ my guest article about Gulen charter schools published by The Washington Post. (3/27/2012)
7. WATCH my interview talking about Gulen charter schools, or my presentation at LaborFest (segment between 49:18 min. & 1:07:36 min.)
8. READ my postings labeled "Gulen movement" HERE.

As one observer tweeted, "U.S. media have focused too much on the Islamic nature of the Gulen movement. Real concern is its shady dealings and improprieties."

Please be aware that Gulenists have created a large number of anonymously-operated damage control websites. They started to appear a few months after publication of Greg Toppo's article in USA Today (August 2010).

WE CAN DO IT!

Jim Hightower on populism:

"... what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government."

Jim Hightower on plutocracy:

"Plutocracy and democracy don't mix."

More Jim Hightower HERE.
Read his Lowdown newsletter HERE.

Plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, or power provided by wealth. In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low.

On Bill Gates' ed reform

Joel Shatzky's comment on Huffington Post:

The inferior "test-prep" agenda which bases the pedagogically fraudulent "data" standardized test scores serves as a way of diverting the concerns of working parents who hope that better test scores will lead to better job opportunities for their children. If they realized that they were being given a con job, they might consider other, more "active" forms of political and social protest than simply lobbying for more money for charter and public schools.

New wealth gap report

Research and Policy Brief from the Institute on Assets and Social Policy, Brandeis University, May 2010:

"New evidence reveals that the wealth gap between white and African-American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation."

You absolutely must click on this link to view the graph.

Now compare that graph to the one you'll see here.

Now read this entry.

And if you are a person who blames the schools, or believes they are responsible for fixing these problems, you can stop that type of thinking right now.

A Keeper

Posted on the Oakland Public School Parents listserv by a member:*

As a public health nurse, I am working with a generation of young parents who were drug-exposed, who are now having children who are drug-exposed, and it's a whole new ballgame. Many who were premature and will carry some deficits for life.

There are also many other families who have several generations of all kinds of abuse, not enough to eat, violence in and out of their homes, as well as chronic exposure to pollution and nutritional deficits. And there are regular people in the same neighborhoods who are just trying to live, but are poor and can't get ahead.

And there is major grief, and continuous LOSS. So many folks have lost so many folks, people around them dying, of one thing or another, every month almost. Young people (cousins, brothers, friends) dying from violent means, the elders dying too young of chronic disease and disparities in health care, among other things.

What we know about learning and development is that stressed nervous systems CANNOT learn, and that's what we have. Children with many major stressors. Abandonment, attachment disorders, fear, post traumatic stress, sadness, inability to trust or sleep. Many children. Many.

Resulting in: Lack of impulse control, lack of executive function, difficulty in expressing and controlling emotions, difficulty in sleeping, holding still, and paying attention, not to mention following directions and prioritizing tasks.

Our teachers will (perhaps already do) need more training, support, and smaller class sizes. They need major support and help with mental health issues. We really need some kind of expanded vocational track for those who can't perform even at the community college level.

We can't expect teachers to undo years and years of living. The availability of universal preschool would help. Sometimes a classroom is the first kindly, safe, structured, stimulating environment a child encounters.

Wise insights such as these are never uttered by people like Eli Broad, Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, Joe Williams, or any others who are of this type of school reform ilk. And this is why I know for certain that they just don't "get it." Maybe they don’t want to, OR maybe they don’t care.

* Thank you, B.R.

What Children Need

From Playing to Learn by Susan Engel (New York Times, 2/1/2010):

"Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.

…Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on."

And to tag onto that, check out this video about the wood shop at one of Oakland's middle schools.

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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

A Recent History of OUSD

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