“The Broad Effect”

This is "The Broad Effect": Part One
Read "The Broad Effect": Part Two here.

“The Broad Effect” is behind the recent events in Rhode Island (the Central Falls firings ), and in Detroit, where the Detroit Public School Board has just unanimously voted to file a second lawsuit against Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, saying the extra $145,000 in private foundation support he receives is an unlawful conflict of interest. Bobb's base salary is $280,000. The Detroit News reports:

“Bobb's supplemental income from private foundations increased from $84,000 last year to $145,000 this year, under a one-year contract extension signed by the governor and state superintendent this month. The only philanthropic donor publicly identified is the Broad Foundation, whose support of charter schools has stirred controversy among some members of the DPS community.”

Naturally, Robert Bobb (or Bob Bobb, as he was known in Oakland when served as the City Manager under former Mayor Jerry Brown) is a member of the Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2005.

When the Broad Foundation plants one of its elements in a school district, it is highly likely that another element will be planted along with it, in order to maximize the Effect.

For instance, an element might be:

• The presence of a Broad-trained superintendent
• The placement of Broad Residents into important central office positions
• An "invitation" to participate in a program spawned by the Foundation (such as CRSS's Reform Governance in Action program)
• Offering to provide the district with a free "Performance Management Diagnostic and Planning" experience

The Broad Foundation likes to infiltrate its targets on multiple levels so it can manipulate a wider field and cause the greatest amount of disruption. Venture edu-philanthropists like Gates and Broad proudly call this invasive and destabilizing strategy "investing in a disruptive force."To these billionaires and their henchmen, causing massive disruption for families with school aged children in (disadvantaged) communities (primarily of color) across the nation is no big deal.

“The Broad Effect” has been playing out in Rhode Island, where State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, a 2008 Broad Superintendents Academy graduate, worked in tandem with Frances Gallo, the district’s superintendent, to fire 93 teachers and staff members at Central Falls High School. Learn much more about the whole story here.

The April 2009 press release announcing Gist’s appointment as the new R.I. Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education stated:

“We are thrilled that Rhode Island is the first state to attract a Broad Fellow as not only the superintendent of its largest schools system, with Tom Brady in Providence, but also a Broad Fellow as a State Commissioner who can partner in addressing the challenges of transforming the state's educational systems to a position of international leadership."

As we learn from a March 2005 press release:

“The Mayor [Cicilline of Providence] today met with the School Board Monday night to discuss a plan that installs Fran Gallo as Transition Superintendent and calls for the formation of a search committee by next week. The plan is informed by counsel from the Broad Foundation (pronounced “brode”), a nationally-recognized consultant for superintendent searches.”

And as Providence Public School District eventually acquired Thomas M. Brady (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2004), he was joined by Sharon Contreras (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2010) as his Chief Academic Officer. Gallo took a position at Central Falls, an impoverished community 5.7 miles north of Providence. Read more about the Broad-in-Rhode-Island synergy here.

So now do you understand how it all works?

MORE EVIDENCE OF “THE BROAD EFFECT”

ANTIOCH, CALIFORNIA: Deborah Sims (BSA 2005) was asked to resign. The previous year, their school board had started in the Reform Governance in Action program via the Center for Reform of School Systems (CRSS) which is very heavily funded by Broad. After Sims' exit, the CRSS terminated its ties with the district. It was , "...a blessing in disguise," as one board member stated.

BUFFALO, NEW YORK: This city was targeted early on, now they are land-o-the-charters.

CAPISTRANO, CALIFORNIA: In March 2009, this school district terminated its superintendent, Arnold Woodrow "Woody" Carter (BSA 2002), for material breach.

FRANKLIN COUNTY, OHIO: It seems that Bart G. Anderson (BSA 2006), Superintendent of the Franklin County Board of Education was calling himself “Dr. Bart Anderson” years before he earned a legitimate doctorate degree in 2006. He also got mixed up with a diploma mill called St. Regis University, which issued him a bogus doctorate in 2002.

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: Joseph Wise (BSA 2003) was given a four-year contract as the superintendent of Duval County Public Schools in the fall of 2005. Twenty-three months later, his spending habits were being questioned. He and the school board parted ways in October 2007, but not before he implemented a controversial reorganization plan. Read local community opinions here. In February 2008, he became the new Chief Education Officer for EdisonLearning. Legal problems persisted even after he left DCPS. Trouble had followed Wise from Delaware, where he had been the superintendent of Christina School District, the largest in Delaware. This is what he's doing now.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: As you would suspect, all sorts of intertwining connections are here. Read this report about Broad taking Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to dinner.

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: More suckers in Memphis (or are the school district officials just sucking up?). As usual, parents are pissed off but have little idea about what has hit them. As usual, New Leaders for New Schools is right in the midst of things.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA: In January 2008, twenty-one allegations of improper behavior were made against John Q. Porter (BSA 2006), who had been serving as the superintendent of OKCPS for only six months (more here). He was suspended and then resigned in March amid accusations of financial mismanagement and poor job performance. Porter's spending habits were questioned during his previous work for Montgomery County Public Schools. I've looked for him online, but he seems to have disappeared. His Wikipedia page was deleted in 2008.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: In the summer of 2003, Jack O'Connell, the State Superintendent of Instruction (the recipient of a large campaign contribution from Eli Broad), assigned Randolph Ward (BSA 2003) as State Administrator of OUSD. Ward appointed Arnold Woodrow "Woody" Carter (BSA 2002) to be his Chief of Staff (see Capistrano above). Ward's slash-and-burn actions produced so much anger from the community, he hired a full-time body guard. Barak Ben-Gal (Broad Resident 2004-2006) implemented a controversial system called Results Based Budgeting in OUSD, then went into the private sector in Silicon Valley. Kimberly Statham (BSA 2003) hopped from job to job for years and is now at the NewSchools Venture Fund. Statham departed after only one year, and arrangements were made for Vincent Matthews (BSA 2006), who used to work for SF's (now failed) Edison school, to fill the State Administrator position. These three Broad Superintendents within five years left the district in a bigger mess, and in considerably more debt, than in which they had found it. The district regained full control in 2009, but since the district is still in debt to the state, Matthews was assigned as State Trustee.

NEW YORK CITY: Broad Foundation press release states that Broad "played a key role in former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein's appointment as New York schools chancellor." And here's Broad schmoozing with another N.Y. billionaire.

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND: This troubled school district thought it was finally going to get a long-term superintendent when they hired John Deasy (BSA 2006) in May 2006, but by September 2008 he was being investigated for having improperly received his doctorate. He resigned in short order and went to work for the Gates Foundation. Deasy's replacement was William R. Hite Jr. (BSA 2006) who appointed Bonita Coleman-Potter (BSA 2008) as his deputy superintendent.

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: Jean-Claude Brizard (BSA 2007) is alienating people there. People are catching on.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: This group isn't too pleased with Maria Goodloe-Johnson (BSA 2003).

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: Arne Duncan invited Broad Residents into his department so they can be in control at the the top.

WASHINGTON D.C.: Reporting that Michelle Rhee meets with Broad on a regular basis, including making multiple visits to his Fifth Ave. apartment in NYC.

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: A 2006 article stated that Broad "plans to virtually take over the Delaware school system in 2007, pending approval from that state's legislature." He backed the winning slate of candidates for the local board of education in 1999 and helped hire the new superintendent. His energy was focused on the Christina School District. Their first Broad superintendent was installed in July 2003 ( see Joseph Wise under Jacksonville above). This is what he's doing now. In April 2006, Wise was succeeded by Lillian Lowery (BSA 2004) who served until May 2009. Lowery walked into her position and shortly discovered a huge district deficit. This is what she's doing now. Her replacement was Marcia Lyles (BSA 2006). This district is home to the incident with six-year old Zachary. His sentence was later reversed.

Note: Not all Broad Superintendents Academy graduates (called Fellows) are included on the Academy's Web site as "Featured Alumni."

This map will show you where the Effect has spread, and will link you to its players. More information is available at The Broad Report. Doing a perfect job of keeping track of “The Broad Effect” would be a full-time job!

I now share with you an excerpt from the Billionaire Boys' Club chapter of Diane Ravitch's book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education":

But the offer of a multimillion-dollar grant by a foundation is enough to cause most superintendents and school boards to drop everything and reorder their priorities.

And so it happened that the Gates, Walton, and Broad foundations came to exercise vast influence over American education because of ther strategic investments in school reform. As their policy goals converged in the first decade of the twenty-first century, these foundations set the policy agenda not only for school districts, but also for states and even the U.S. Department of Education.

Before considering the specific goals and activities of these foundations, it is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing education policy to be directed or, one might say, captured by private foundations. There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's weathiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions. These foundations, no matter how worthy and high-minded, are after all, not public agencies. They are not subject to public oversight or review, as a public agency would be . They have taken it upon themselves to reform public education, perhaps in ways that would never survive the scrutiny of voters in any district or state. If voters don't like the foundations' reform agenda, they can't vote them out of office. The foundation demands that public schools and teacher be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountable power.

Read more about Eli Broad, the man behind the Broad Effect. Find out what makes him chuckle. Learn why he is described as a “billionaire philanthropist whose beneficence comes with not just strings but with ropes.” My previous postings with additional information are here.

IF YOU HAVE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT “THE BROAD EFFECT” IN YOUR COMMUNITY, AND CAN OFFER ANY LINKS TO THE READERS HERE, PLEASE SHARE THAT INFORMATION IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. THANK YOU.

(The Broad Foundation regularly monitors this blog, both directly and, more recently, via services provided by BurrellesLuce. When it occurs, I post the confirmation in my comments.)

And as eighth-grade students have learned at a public middle school here in Oakland, "Jefferson believed in the People. They can make good decisions when given enough information."

Grannan: Time for Obama to meet with the Central Falls 93, and gain some compassion – and a clue

Guest post by Caroline Grannan:

The word “backlash” is actually being used about a so-called school reform maneuver so shortsighted and coldblooded that almost no one is speaking up in support of it – almost no one but President Obama.

Last month, all 93 members of the faculty, administration and support staff of Central Falls High school in Central Falls, R.I., were told that they’re fired as of the end of this school year.

Then, on Monday, President Obama spoke up, according to the New York Times. “Mr. Obama said he supported the school board’s decision to dismiss the faculty and staff members. ‘Our kids get only one chance at an education and we need to get it right,’ he said.”

(Obama’s lightweight, resume-faking Secretary of Education praised the move too, but he’s not really worth devoting blogosphere bandwidth to.)

Despite the current climate in which blaming, bashing and demonizing teachers has become a comfortable and popular theme in all kinds of commentary, Obama’s remark actually seems to have provoked dismay and outrage. In the most current news article showing online as I write this, the Providence Journal uses the term “wildfire.”

“The wildfire of national debate over the mass firings at Central Falls High School spread further Tuesday, when the executive council of the AFL-CIO unanimously condemned the removal of all 93 teachers, support staff and administrators at the city’s only high school.

The executive council said its members were “appalled” that President Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan had endorsed the terminations in recent comments, and said the firings will not help the 800 students at the high school, which is one of the poorest and lowest-performing schools in Rhode Island.”

Well, I have a proposal. Those 93 teachers, support staff and administrators should get together, pull the necessary strings (which are in their reach right now while the story is hot), and request a meeting with the president – all 93 of them. If Obama could have a beer with Henry Louis Gates and that cop whose name I’ve now forgotten, surely he’s willing to spend a little time hearing the viewpoint of 93 people whom he has essentially attacked sight unseen. While it would be hospitable for him to invite them to the White House, it would be a lot classier for him to have a soothing spot of tea catered in at Central Falls High School. (And he desperately needs to show a little class right now; his supply is perilously low.) I’m sure the cafeteria has enough room to seat the Central Falls 93, Obama and his entourage.

Two years ago, it would have been impossible for me to imagine saying this, but I also propose that President Obama emulate something San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has been doing. I’m not normally Newsom’s biggest fan, with the exception of back in February 2004 when his then-revolutionary gay marriages were spreading joy through San Francisco. But lately, my city's mayor has been doing something admirable after being challenged by Patricia Gray, the longtime rock-star principal of San Francisco’s Balboa High School. Newsom has been spending Saturdays calling the homes of students who are chronically truant from their San Francisco public schools. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Matier and Ross political insider column wrote about this in a Jan. 31 column (not available online.)

“It has been a real eye-opener,” Newsom told the Chronicle. “In just about every case,” Matier and Ross wrote, “the family is in crisis.” In other words, truancy isn’t all the fault of inept teachers and uncaring schools after all, Newsom is learning.

At last week’s overflowing Town Hall meeting called by San Francisco parents to address the current budget crisis, Newsom brought up his calls (and visits) to the homes of truants, and reiterated that point quite emphatically. The truants are almost always living in households battered by the worst life can dump on them, and it’s unrealistic to expect educators to magically cure it all, and to blame them for not working miracles.

Well, if Newsom – who I never would have thought could hold a candle to Obama in depth and thoughtfulness – can accept Patricia Gray’s challenge and gain such new understanding, where’s the president?

I hope to read about that meeting in the Central Falls High School cafeteria soon.

For more on the Central Falls firings, here’s a snippet of commentary by veteran Washington Post education writer Valerie Strauss (now apparently writing as a freelancer, speaking of employment turmoil):

“…93 names were called for firing -- 74 classroom teachers, plus reading specialists, guidance counselors, physical education teachers, the school psychologist, the principal and three assistant principals, according to the Providence Journal. Not one was good enough to stay.

Some of the teachers at the city's only high school cried, but the committee held firm.

It's no wonder that Education Secretary Arne Duncan applauded the move, saying the committee members were "showing courage and doing the right thing for kids."

Courage, indeed.

Now, all they have to do is find 93 excellent professionals to take their places. Recruiting the best educators should be easy, especially when you can offer them life in a very poor town and a job with no security."

- - - - - - - - - - -

The Perimeter Primate adds:

Sign this petition in support of the teachers and staff of Central Falls High School in Rhode Island.

Notice that when politicians and business leaders talk about education woes, you’ll rarely, if ever, hear them utter a word about the well-known, perpetual, and unbreakable connection between average academic achievement and social class – a connection which exists in every society on this earth, and always has, and always will. It is only when we start to convert our economy and government to a form which reduces our vast social class differences will we see a reduction in the achievement gap.

In the meantime, people who have attained higher status are simply not going to voluntarily switch their spot on the social ladder (or sacrifice their offspring's spot) with someone who is on a lower rung of that ladder. We happen to be primates who can't help but function according to a social hierarchy.

You will hear politicians and business leaders calling our public schools “failures” and “dropout factories” – only referring, of course, to the urban schools which happen to contain a lot of poor kids. It has become commonplace for our leaders to describe the teachers who work in those schools as “lazy” and “selfish." Declarations are made that the teachers are more interested in meeting their adult needs rather than those of the children. As I watched a public school teacher acquaintance grade his students' papers into the evening hours last night as he waited for his daughter to complete her after school lessons, I did not think of the adjectives "lazy" and "selfish."

If you pay attention, you’ll find that the people who spout this type of rhetoric haven’t ever personally experienced the types of schools they are denigrating. So, I ask, why do we listen to people who could not possibly understand what the urban school environment is like, nor have any idea about what the teachers who work in those schools do, or do not do – hour after hour, day after day, and year after year? It's as if the nasty feelings these outsiders express are some sort of psychological transference of the guardedness and overall contempt they have for the poor, co-mingled with a sense of patronization and superiority over those who are actually willing to have daily contact with poor kids.

Is not it obvious that at the heart of this broad, negative labeling of a whole group of people – such as the huge attack that President Obama lobbed at the Central Falls High School teachers – is simply propaganda using stereotyping and scapegoating to build up more negative public sentiment and mistrust?

And what you won’t hear is our top leaders and managers addressing any awareness of the fact that the U.S. has the highest childhood poverty rate of the industrialized countries. In the Central Falls school district, the poverty rate is 90 percent.

Consider the degree to which public opinion has been manipulated over time so that our public schools are now largely viewed as the singular entity to be held accountable for producing the cure for our nation’s poverty and extreme social class differences (by closing the achievement gap), not to mention to correct the side effects caused by the disintegration of our once-much-stronger social institutions, such as the family and neighborhood communities.

Diane Ravitch’s new book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education,” contains a chapter entitled “The “Billionaire Boys’ Club” which reveals the role of the CEO billionaire trio of Gates, Broad, and the Walton family who are funding the movement of school reform based on ruthless free market principals such as eliminating any labor force which is not perfectly compliant with what top management unilaterally dictates.

So, it is no accident that the incident in Rhode Island was generated by a 2008 Broad Superintendents Academy graduate, State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist. The April 2009 press release announcing her appointment as the new R.I. Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education stated, “We are thrilled that Rhode Island is the first state to attract a Broad Fellow as not only the superintendent of its largest schools system, with Tom Brady in Providence, but also a Broad Fellow as a State Commissioner who can partner in addressing the challenges of transforming the state's educational systems to a position of international leadership."

Yes, the first time a state has placed a Broad Superintendents Academy Fellow in such a position happens to be the first education department to take the lead to fire every person on the staff of an entire school. It is unprecedented, and reminiscent of when Reagan fired all the air traffic controllers.

What Commissioner Gist just engineered in Rhode Island, with the blessing of President Obama, is the type of measure expected and required of the CEO business model "educators" who follow billionaire public-school-manipulator Eli Broad’s vision of urban public school “transformation."

I guess we now know the type of change we were expected to believe in.

More background reading:

• Read why the elite crowd just doesn’t sufficiently understand the dynamics in urban public schools. It turns out they have a social disability.
• Learn how Obama decided to pick Arne Duncan
• Here’s someone in a position of authority who dared to speak the truth