TN: School Takeover Amnesia

Now that reformsters have been at it for over a decade, there has been plenty of time for amnesia to set in about previous attempts to Fix Schools with Very Clever Ideas. We can talk another day about the curious delusion leading many reformsters to insist that we should go back to NCLB test-and-punish because that was awesomely successful (spoiler alert: it was not). Today, let's go to Tennessee, a state that really ought to Know Better when it comes to this One Weird Reformy Trick and yet, apparently, does not.

Long ago, Tennessee installed Kevin Huffman, as the Tennessee Grand High Commissioner of Education, representing a reformster milestone of his own. Huffman's career path took him to Swarthmore, which led to a TFA posting, which led to law school, which led to practicing education law in DC, which led back to TFA, first as general counsel and later as various VP executive titly things. Then, a few years later, Governor Bill Haslam tapped him for Tennessee Educational Poobahdom. Which made him the first TFA temp to get to run an entire state's education system.

One of the ideas that bubbled up during Huffman's time was the Achievement School District. The idea was that the state would take over a bunch of failing Memphis schools. State educrats were confident they could totally turn the schools around, promising that these schools in the bottom 5% would be moved directly to the top 25% of schools in the state. 

Chris Barbic, a charter guy, was brought in to run the ASD, wielding all the hubris and arrogance confidence and optimism that Teach for America products tended to muster, secure in the knowledge that they could do the education so much better than traditional teachers and career educators. This is the basic premise of every state takeover of schools-- We Smart People know so much better than educators how to make schools work. And takeover artists give themselves an edge with the premise that "success" is narrowly defined as "get those test scores up." 

And yet, in 2015, after three years of ASDing his heart out, Barbic was heading for the door. They had redefined the goals for ASD, given themselves new deadlines, and yet even with the goalposts on wheels, Barbic was moving on, and while some of his analysis of his failure was not very insightful, he mostly got the important parts: 

Let’s just be real: achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment. I have seen this firsthand at YES Prep and now as the superintendent of the ASD. As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder.

Barbic was replaced by a Broadie, who also failed to do anything other than move some goal posts (no more of that "top 25%" stuff). Huffman couldn't close the deal on selling the model to other states. And the ASD just kept failing. Subsequent education chiefs tried a variety of ASD heads and an array of ever-vaguening goal statements, and yet by 2024, they were still nowhere. 

Under four different state education commissioners, helmed by five different leaders, and aimed at shifting sets of goals and strategies, the Achievement School District never accomplished the kind of dramatic school turnarounds that its supporters aspired to.

State takeovers mostly fail. They use the wrong metric for failure, the wrong diagnosis, the wrong pool of "expertise," the wrong motivation, and the wrong timetable, and Tennessee's ASD, with its dogged over-a-decade unsuccessful flailing, provides one of the most thorough debunking of takeovers.

And yet.

The Tennessee legislature has decided to take over the Memphis school district. 

Test scores have been low-- but the district has the highest possible growth score. There will be a new board that will be in charge of everything from teacher evaluation to superintendent contract to curriculum to finances. The board includes local folks from business and politics and, of course, nobody with an actual background in education. Plus David Mansouri, head of the reformy Tennessee SCORE, with plenty of reformster credentials. 

To some folks, this sure looks like a bunch of white Republicans usurping a mostly Black board in order to take over a largely Black district. Coming on top of the gerrymandering that will dilute the Black population of Memphis and likely end any Black representation in the legislature--well, it's not a great look. But Tennessee GOP has a super-majority, and I'm not sure they give a rat's ass how any of this looks.

Melissa Brown has been covering this for Chalkbeat, though I haven't seen her yet address what ought to be the big question: the state tried taking over Memphis schools for over a decade, and it failed. It failed a lot, and it failed hard. So what do these folks imagine they know this time that will make a difference? 

Maybe they don't care. Maybe they just want to dismantle the district and privatize the parts. We'll see what happens, but I feel confident predicting that Memphis schools will not be catapulted into the top 25% of the state.