Brandon Brown, CEO of The Mind Trust, a group of business-minded reformsters who have attached themselves, leechlike, to Indianapolis schools. Brown has spent 17 years "in education," which translates to a two whole years in Teach for America followed by various reformster groups.
In The74, Brown can be found delivering a bunch of corporate argle bargle about HEA 1423.
Brown opens by citing the example of post-Katrina New Orleans, which became the first major city to "restructure its school system." Kind of like the way rockets sometimes employ "rapid unplanned disassembly." "In the two decades since, however," writes Brown, "no city has attempted such an ambitious structural reform." It's true, just as few rocket makers have deliberately pursued rapid unplanned disassembly.
But Brown is happy to announce that the Indiana General Assembly is on its way to replicating the effects of a natural disaster with the bill's "dramatic restructuring of public education."
Brown's description of the vast benefits of this rapid unplanned disassembly of the district is remarkably vague and free of plain language, but there are two major pieces that one can glimpse dimly through the fog of jargon.
The bill would establish the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, a nine-member board appointed by the mayor. The IPEC would be the super-boss-daddy of all Indianapolis schools, both public and charter. It looks a lot like the old portfolio model, which Mind Trust has been pushing and expanding in Indianapolis for years. The model is based on the idea of an investment portfolio, where you keep juggling investments in and out of the portfolio depending on how well they pay off. (Longer explanation here.)
Portfolio models are privatization writ large. In places like Indianapolis, the portfolio model has been pushed and overseen by a group of "civic-minded" private operators. The Mind Trust of Indianapolis flexed its political and financial muscle and elbowed its way into "partnership" with the public school system, pushing for the expansion of charters in a manner perhaps calculated to destabilize the public schools and create financial peril for low-scoring schools. There is a certain gutsy aggressiveness to how portfolio models are established. Step One: Bob sets up a snack vending stand in the lobby of a local restaurant. Step Two: When the owner complains about how Bob is draining business, Bob smiles and says, "Look, let's just become partners under one brand. And I just happen to know a guy who would be great to run it."
Now we're at the step where Bob says, "You know, there's no reason I shouldn't get paid the same amount for my popcorn balls that your restaurant charges for steak. Also, how about some help with this dinky stand I'm stuck in."
Because the IPEC has a couple of mandates under the bill. One is to "create a unified transportation plan." Another is "Developing a system-level facilities plan that would maintain, and potentially own, buildings for all schools that choose to opt in." IPEC should also levy property taxes "for both operating and capital costs so that all public schools within IPS boundaries benefit equally." And also creating a "unified performance framework" so that persistently low-performing schools would be shut down (see Portfolio Model).
Says Brown, "The changes will effectively put charters and traditional public schools on the same footing — both in terms of the money spent per student and the consequences for poor performance." Or as he says later in the piece, "IPS will now become another school operator alongside charter schools, and district schools will compete on the same playing field and be held to the same accountability standards."
So taxpayers will now get to fund charter schools directly, as well as provide transportation. The IPEC would get to close down public school buildings, or hand them over the charter operators. Between the lines, it appears that IPEC would have all operational and financial power, and school operators would just manage the teaching part (until, of course, someone with their hands on the purse strings decides they have some thoughts about the teaching part).
It's not just that this is a takeover of the public system (also, any charter schools that don't want to play in this game don't have to). This gives us once again one of the major features of privatization under the fiction of school choice--
Disenfranchising the taxpayers.
IPEC will be appointed, not elected, and it will in turn make sure that charter schools, run by boards that are not elected, will get a hefty share of the taxpayer money. What do the taxpayers get to say about how their money is spent? Not a damned thing, particularly if they don't have any school age children. Brown promises "greater efficiency and coordination," but not accountability, transparency, or a voice for the people who pay the bills.
Brown promises "a single point of accountability," but the reality is that a portfolio system, run by nine mayoral appointees, has no point of accountability to the taxpayers.
Brown says he hopes this model catches on and spreads to other cities. Just think-- you, too, can have your own corporately manufactured natural disaster.
