Cheap or Excellent??

So I'm on twitter, "discussing" this piece by Eric Hanushek. (I air-quote "discussion" not because of any qualities of the people involved, but because nobody can wax eloquent with depth and nuance at 140 characters a shot).

The piece belongs to the genre I think of as Befuddled Mysteries of Failure, in which reformsters scratch their heads at how reformy ideas have not worked. Hanushek's meditation on the intractability of the "achievement gap" (I air-quote "achievement gap" because it's a euphemism for "standardized test score gap") ends in typical bemusement.

Vastly more jarring is that the central goal of the report—the development of an education system that provides equal educational opportunity for all groups, and especially for racial minorities—has not been attained. Achievement gaps remain nearly as large as they were when Coleman and his team put pen to paper, even when better research has suggested ways to close them and even when policies have been promulgated that supposedly are explicitly designed to eliminate them.

"When Coleman and his team put pen to paper" is fifty years ago. But I tweeted that the mystery of why we hadn't yet closed the gap -- well, here, read for yourself the exchange that followed

Perhaps. One of those policies was to increase per-pupil spending by 4x since 1954. @palan57 @boardseyeview

— Dmitri Mehlhorn (@DmitriMehlhorn) January 18, 2016

And a whole bunch of people just loved that response. Liked it, retweeted it. And I realized, watching the retweets pile up, how tired I am of this particular argument.

Because it always starts with talking about the achievement gap and the non-wealthy, non-white students who are being denied as good an education as the burbians get, but then it ends up with insistence that we fix this problem on the cheap.

How could it possibly be cheap? Seriously-- we're talking, particularly if we go back to pre-Civil Rights segregated Jim Crow America, about a system that has systematically and deliberately provided low socio-economic students with underfunded, understaffed, under-resourced schools. How could it possibly NOT involve lots of money to fix that?? I don't honestly know if the 4X figure is correct or not, but if it is, there's another explanation for why we've failed to close any gaps-- because 4X 1954 education spending strikes me as not nearly enough of an increase.

You have two children sitting at a table. Pat is regularly eating full healthful meals packed with nutrients and all the food groups. Chris is eating bread and water and an occasional cup of cereal. Somebody comes in and says, "Well, this is clearly wrong. Chris is starving, while Pat is doing well. Chris should get to eat just as well as Pat does."

The dining room chief comes in and says, "Yes, you're right. But we should only spend as much to feed both of them as we are spending just to feed Pat." How does that even make sense.

This has been the reformster mantra for decades-- we should have better schools for everyone, but it shouldn't cost any more than what we're paying now. Possibly even less. After all, we've already been spending more money every year and it hasn't fixed everything yet. We've quadrupled spending since 1954!! How could we possibly spend more??

Many of the reformsters know better-- particularly the charter boosters. "Send your child to our charter school. It's located in a crumbling shell of a building, and we have no books or computers or other facilities because we understand that schools don't need any of that," said no charter operator ever. No-- charters know several secrets of success and one of those secrets is money. You spend money for a nice building and you spend money for nice resources and you spend so much money that you use both the public tax dollars that "follow" the students plus venture fund investment money plus contributions from well-heeled supporters.

But somehow, the reformster call is still for combating the effects of poverty on the cheap. "We'ver increased spending and that's been a huge waste," is the refrain, based on any one of several theorries, some crazier than others.

Crazy theory number one is that all the money has been stolen by teachers and their unions. People become teachers for the cushy job and the big bucks and to become teachers, they enter into a dark conspiracy with the union, in which the union and teachers agree to make each other rich and powerful while bilking the taxpayers with a bunch of smoke and mirrors and quite possibly refusing to unleash the Secret Methods they know for making students learn. The problem with schools is teachers (just as the problem with health care is doctors and the problem with marriage is husbands and wives). And there are people who fully believe this and I would just as soon argue metallurgy with a 9/11 truther as try to convince them otherwise.

But what about the non-crazy proponents of this theory? What's their theory?

There's the theory of huge waste, that schools are spending money on the educational equivalent of the Pentagon's thousand-dollar hammers. There's the theory of widespread incompetence, and that so much money is just being pissed away by so-called experts who don't know any better. There's the theory that by turning teaching into low-wage piecework, millions of dollars can be liberated (even if that results in a crappy educational "product"). There's the theory, popular among many who work in education, that government regulations have increased the number of non-classroom employees that a district needs (e.g. even a smallish district has probably added in the last fifty years at least one employee whose job is basically to take care of government paperwork). And there is certainly a theory that many things have gotten more expensive since 1954, or even 1984, which dovetails nicely with the theory that schools are asked to provide far more services that they were decades ago. Plenty of us would also agree with the theory that a ton of money never actually makes it to the classroom at all, increasing the per student cost but not actually affecting the students. Plus, as always, the theory that there are many other complicated factors involved, too.

And you know what? I'm a taxpayer in my own district, and I have no desire to see my property taxes ramped up just so we can hand my district a giant pile of money and say, "There you go. We trust you'll do something swell with it." There has to be oversight and accountability.

But it's still not rocket science. If I'm feeding a hundred kids, and I spend $75 on fifty of them and $25 on the other fifty, and I want everyone to be fed the way I'm feeding the high-side fifty, I can't do it with that same hundred dollars. I can't do it by trying to use a slice of the money to fund several other separate charter cafeterias while still running my original one-- there is no economic efficiency in running multiple duplicate services.

Can you look at the pictures coming out of Detroit schools, look at those, scratch your head and say, "Gee, I don't know what these crumbling decaying broken down unrepaired buildings could possibly need. Certainly not any more money. They already got some money."

In 1954, there were all sorts of cost-cutting measures baked into the system. Black kids? We don't really need to educate Those People, so we can do that cheap. Forty kids in a classroom? Sure, why not. It's cheaper than hiring another teachers. Students with any kind of special needs? We don't need to educate Those People, either. Just let them flounder in a regular classroom, or warehouse them in a back room somewhere.  In 1954, the graduation rate was 60%-- any students who had problems could just stop being students. That was also a major savings. And teachers, because we are by and large dedicated and clever people (and not part of a dark money-sucking conspiracy) have done great things with small resources, thereby contributing to the illusion that money shouldn't matter.

But how can you possibly hope to bring equity to a system whose major problem has always been a systemic underfunding and underserving or some groups without fixing the financial inequities stuck in the heart of the system. I am tempted to say the true cost of guaranteeing each child an excellent school in his or her neighborhood is impossibly daunting, but then I remember that we somehow "found"  a few trillion dollars (I air-quoted "found" because we actually use a combination of time-travel and theft) for war-waging purposes. But that was irresponsible, and I'm not going to advocate for irresponsible spending for anything, even something as essential as education.

Do we want education cheap, or do we want it excellent?

No, you can't say "both." We can't have both. We aren't made of money, so we can't have the caviar-covered Lexus of education for the whole country, and we can certainly make better use of the money we have in some places, and there are certainly areas where we need to discuss aims and goals and systems and equity and proper full funding and all the rest. There are many things about finances and excellence that we need to discuss as a nation.

But we can't have that discussion if we're going to keep lapsing into fantasy mode and suggesting that we should be able to have a new caviar Lexus and used peanut butter Kia prices. We can't say we're going to buy winter coats for everyone, but we'll do it with the same money we used to use to buy winter coats for just a few. We can't keep insisting that setting up cost-inefficient mediocre charters that serve a small percentage of the population are anything like a solution to anything.

If we really want excellent education for everybody (and not just "access" to it-- everybody on the damn Titanic had "access" to a lifeboat), we have some hard choices and some real thinking to do, and right now we've got a bunch of magical thinkers, conspiracy theorists, and cynical profiteers hogging the "conversation" (and I airquote "conversation" because people who are actual lifelong experts are rarely listened to or even invited to speak).

Don't order the steak and then bitch that it costs more than a Big Mac. Don't buy a mega-mansion and complain that it's more expensive to keep than a shotgun shack. And don't insist that you want an equitable education system for all students, then complain that it can't be done for the same amount as the problematic 1954 version.

LA: Buying a School Board

Danielle Dreilinger of the Time-Picayune and NOLA.com published an incredible story last week, outlining how some businessmen worked to buy themselves some members of the Jefferson Parish School Board in the 2010 election.

The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com had to sue its way to the Louisiana Supreme Court, but the  eventual result was 285 pages of emails from the government account of Lucien Gunter, former executive director of the public Jefferson Economic Development Commission and the private Jefferson Business Council and Committee for a Better Jefferson. Those emails leave no doubt that some business interests set out to push the teachers union aside, put their own people on the board, and make sure that their elected people did as they were told.

The time lag is due in part to a suit by one of Gunter's correspondents to keep the emails from being released, a suit that resulted in emails that were released, but with many private citizen names redacted. Dreilinger does not mention it, but I'm willing to bet that the lawsuits have also resulted in some government in-service training on How Not To Use Your Government Email Illegally For Your Own Private Baloney.

Journalists have done a lot of digging through those pages, and I recommend that you read the full article for the whole ugly picture. But here are some of the uglier parts.

The coalition, which called itself the "Enough Is Enough" coalition was led and coordinated by Jim Garvey, an elected member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. In fact, in a "white paper" written by the business interests, he was called "the leader of their 'Strike Force'" Think about that for a second-- an elected member of the state education board conspiring with local businessmen to make off with a local school board election.

The Committee for a Better Jefferson was resurrected specifically to run the campaign, which kicked off by seeking out and recruiting the candidates they wanted.

Now, you may think, politicians and businessmen look for  and support like-minded candidates all the time. It's part of how a democracy works, kind of.

But the CBJ required each recruited candidate to sign a "detailed pledge" that was basically their marching orders, including boosting charters and Teach for America, and then each candidate wa assigned a handler who coached them on talking points. This is not the support of like-minded candidates. This is setting up some sock puppets to hold elected public office while being stricty answerable to private inerests.

The emails express a sense of ownership. One person wrote, "We need to be aware of and in control of our candidates meetings with incumbents." When one candidate made a public comment about wondering who might help him raise money, Gunter jumped in: "These candidates have been briefed on more than one occasion and that kind of comment is unacceptable," he wrote, and spoke darkly of penalizing the "guilty" party.

The details are numerous and depressing. One email writer notes that he hasn't yet given his check to "the guy who is running in my home district (and can't even remember his name) Please send me his name."

The emails cover the collecting and funneling of campaign money for the sock puppets. Garvey wants to avoid any obvious buying of candidates and suggests making the checks in smaller amounts. Another member of the committee spins ideas about keeping school buses busy on election day so that they can't be used to take people to the polls.

They were also careful to make sure that the campaign seemed to come from a collection of concerned individuals and not a coalition of business groups.

Ultimately the sock puppets won, and Garvey et al were ready with transitional plans for them. At that point the email supply ends.

The good news is that the sequel to the 2010 election was the 2014 election in which pro-union candidates pushed the sock puppet majority out. But the bigger lesson is that if teachers, students and school leaders in some parts of the country have the feeling that business leaders and state-level elected officials are actively, but semi-secretly, working against them, they are correct.

Read the full article here, then add it to your file of "No, the privatizers really are pulling every dirty trick in the book to get their hands on public tax dollars" stories.

A Musical Thought for the Day

Gentleness in the Classroom

There are three articles tabbed side-by-side on my browser this morning, and both deal in their own way with classroom management.

The first is by Michael Linsin, a classroom management guru out of San Diego. He has apparently taught for twenty-five years at just about every level. His piece, which has been traveling around the interwebs this weekend, is entitled "Why Gentleness Is A Strong Classroom Management Strategy"

In it, Linsin responds to the classic notion that to manage a classroom, you must throw your shoulders back, use a booming voice, and swagger like a first-rate Alpha Dog. But he notes "while classroom presence is important, it isn’t born of overconfidence, forcefulness, or aggression." It comes from gentleness. The piece is short and clear and worth your time to read, but here's his list of arguments in favor of gentleness in the classroom.

Gentleness is respected. Gentleness lowers stress. Gentleness curtails pushback. Gentleness builds rapport. Gentleness feels good. And most importantly--

Gentleness isn't weakness.

Weakness is when you lose emotional control. 

It’s when you lecture, berate, and admonish students instead of following your classroom management plan.

It’s when you take misbehavior personally.

Gentleness, on the other hand, is strong. It’s capable and confident. It says that you’re in control and that your students can relax and focus on their responsibilities.

And boy-- that all sounds just about right to someone who spent many years early in my career getting all that to really settle into my head. I have watched a few teachers over the year absolutely lose control of their classroom and the respect and cooperation of their students by insisting on what I call Cartman Rules, rules that have no purpose except to make it clear to students that they had damned well better Respect My Authority.

Which brings us to tab #2. Today's New York Post has an interview/promo piece with Ed Bolland. After twenty years of lucrative work for a non-profit, he had an "epiphany" about becoming a teacher, about lifting a classroom full of poor, downtrodden students up. He lasted a year, but he did land a book deal to write about that year, a "memoir of his brief, harrowing tenure" in the classroom -- what he describes a year of terror and abuse.

But even this very friendly interview gives some hints about what some of Bolland's problems may have been.

A teenage girl named Chantay sits on top of her desk, thong peeking out of her pants, leading a ringside gossip session. Work sheets have been distributed and ignored.

“Chantay, sit in your seat and get to work — now!” Boland says...

Chantay is the one that aggravates Boland the most. If he can get control of her, he thinks, he can get control of the class.

“Chantay,” he says, louder, “sit down immediately, or there will be serious consequences.” (Emphasis mine)

Look, I don't want to sit here in my comparatively comfortable small-town teaching career and in any way minimize the challenges of working in a tough, poor, urban school. But if your theory of classroom management is that you must get control of your students, forcing them to comply with the rules, and only once you have beaten them down, overpowered them, and gotten them to respect your authority-- only then can you start teaching.... well, you are doomed to failure no matter where you teach. The only real question is just how spectacular that failure is going to be. As a commenter on facebook put it, "If you think it's a war, you've already lost."

But Bolland is pissed. He talks repeatedly about the kids he hates. Never expressed, but there behind his words, is that liberal savior anger that he has brought these poor, downtrodden kids the hgift of himself, and they are rejecting it. Doing this was supposed to feel great, but instead it makes him feel terrible.

Make no mistake. The students are at times brutal to Bolland, making him the object of behavior that nobody deserves. But it is clear that nobody ever taught him how to manage a classroom (a critical piece of training for any business executive type transitioning to a classroom because, guess what, these students are not your employees and they are not paid to treat you with deference), and it is clear that he has no idea of how to be truly gentle or truly strong. He takes it personally. He demands compliance. And he ultimately decides that his failure is the result of a terribly broken system and unsalvageable kids. Of course, he's got a book deal and I'm writing this blog for free, so who knows.

At the end, he asks his sister many questions, including why he can't "break through" to these kids, and I'm thinking his very choice of "break" shows how very ungentle and counterproductive his image of teaching is. She tells him there are no simple answers, and that's true, but her answer threw me back to the first piece I read this morning-- the third tab.

That was an opinion piece in the New York Times by physician Bob Wachter about how the cult of measurement has failed both the medical and education fields. The piece is worth reading, but what stuck with me was the story Wachter closed with:

Avedis Donabedian, a professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, was a towering figure in the field of quality measurement. He developed what is known as Donabedian’s triad, which states that quality can be measured by looking at outcomes (how the subjects fared), processes (what was done) and structures (how the work was organized). In 2000, shortly before he died, he was asked about his view of quality. What this hard-nosed scientist answered is shocking at first, then somehow seems obvious.

“The secret of quality is love,” he said.

I'm not fuzzy-headed enough to think that Bolland had walked into the classroom filled with love and gentleness that all the challenges of teaching in a tough poor urban school would have suddenly melted away. I would never advise a beginning teacher, "If you walk into a classroom loving your students and armed with gentle strength, you'll be able to reach and teach them all." But I can't think of any way to teach truly effectively that doesn't have such an approach as its foundation.

AL: RAISE teachers? Raze teachers.

Would you be willing to bet your entire teaching career that you will never have students who score low on the Big Standardized Test? Would you take the bet for a little bit more money?

Alabama is hoping there are people who will take that bet, as their legislature rolls out the Rewarding Advancement in Instruction and Student Excellence Act-- RAISE!! The actual intent of this bill is telegraphed by the fact that it has often been touted as a "tenure reform bill." To read up on it, I suggest this piece, as well as the blog of Larry Lee, who has covered the act pretty thoroughly and includes many comments from affected parties.

The bill is intended to tie teacher pay and teacher employment to student test results. There will be whole new state action to make up a list of possible evaluation tools for all teachers of untested subjects. There will be requirements for student growth. There will be an opportunity for some students and parents to evaluate teachers.

The BS Test that will be used is the ACT Aspire, a pre-ACT manufactured by the ACT folks. Is it aligned in any way with Alabama's standards? If it is, nobody seems to be saying so. But those test results will be the basis of pretty much everything?

The big bet that I opened with-- that's the choice that RAISE presents teachers with. You can have a traditional tenure track or a performance track. The performance track is supposed to bring you the big bucks, with huge money on the table. The starting salary on this schedule must be $2,500 more than the lowest traditional starting schedule, so maybe not so huge in some districts. All you have to do is get your students to produce big time test scores-- in fact, once your students aren't producing those scores, your career is done. In other words, on this track, your job is literally only to prepare students for the test. 

On the traditional track (called the "grandfathered salary schedule"), you will still be judged by test scores. You'll wait five years for tenure, and your tenure will be not protect you from low test scores-- two bad years and your tenure is revoked, with another five year stretch before it can be re-instated. Also, your extra education will no longer make any difference in your pay. What did you think-- that the state was going to hire you to stay smart about your field?  No smarty pants extra degrees necessary in Alabama.

Teachers hired before May of 2017 get a choice of  which salary schedule to choose-- but once they choose the performance schedule, they may not switch back. And if tenured teachers choose the performance track, they must give up tenure.

Also, as just a fun side note, RAISE also boosts the Alabama Longitudinal Data System, a giant data mining and storage program which will make Big Brother proud.

There are many reasons to hate this proposal, including but not limited to the way in which it reduces Alabama schools to nothing but test prep facilities. For teachers who aren't directly prepping for the ACT, it will be a crap shoot as far as what test they'll be prepping their students for. But all these tests will be tests that are given strictly to determine the pay and job standing of the teacher in the classroom.

Clearly, Alabama has entered the Drive Teachers Out of the Classroom derby. After all, who would want to take a teaching job where you made some good-ish money for a couple of years but had no hope of maintaining an actual lifetime teaching career. I mean, who would want to get into a classroom, make some bucks, just teach to a test, and then get out before they were even thirty years old? Oh, wait.

Yes, Teach for America has been in Alabama for about five years, and they've done pretty well for themselves at selling the standard narrative. When they moved into Hunstville, the local tv station coverage started with this lead: "Huntsville City Schools tout themselves as a data-driven district, which is why they turned to Teach For America. They want to turn around the numbers at under-performing schools." And the head of Alabama TFA managed to also land the job of executive director of the Birmingham Education Foundation, another one of those foundations that lets community leaders take charge of schools without going to the trouble of being elected to do so. So the TFA story is selling well in Alabama.

TFA's placement presence in Alabama is small so far, but if RAISE isn't tailored for exactly their kind of high-turnover, test-prep pedagogical approach, I will eat my hat (and you should see my hat).

Are there problems with the bill (I mean, you know, other than gutting the teaching profession and replacing actual education with test prep). Well, there seems to be some question about where all the extra money to pay all those performance-based raises will come from. And Audrey Amrein-Beardsley has looked at the bill and thinks it is right on track to draw the same kind of lawsuits that New Mexico is currently wrestling with (and paying for). 

And on the national scale, this is an early example of how states will be able to use ESSA as an opportunity to drive their states into full scale aggressive reverse. RAISE could just as easily be called NCLB II: The Worst Parts.

You can read the draft version of the bill here, and you can say a little prayer for education in Alabama. You can prepare to add Alabama to the list of states in which actual teachers aren't really welcome (no reason for North Carolina to be lonely). And I suppose if you like the idea of betting your career against a thousand dollars or so, you can pack your bags and be Alabammy bound.

ICYMI: A Mountain of Must-Read

This is a week in which I have actually written less because I have read more. Every one of these is a must-read.

Schooling the Secretary of Education

John King has gotten one thing right so far-- he held a sit-down with an assortment of teachers (most with high social media profiles) who had not been carefully pre-vetted for their agreement with his policies. This account of the meeting is oddly encouraging, even as it is unsurprising.

About Cost Cutting Measu-es

You know I love a good illustrative metaphorical example. Here's a great demonstration of how brutal a 3% cut can be.

The Myth of Pedagogy

Interesting take on how classroom instruction may still be in the pre-science stage. I don't know how much I really agree with all of this, but it's thought-provoking.

The 13 Best Onion Higher Ed Stories 

The Chronicle of Higher Education collected their thirteen favorite higher-ed pieces from the Onion. Winners one and all.

Does Georgia Have a Teacher Evaluation System Only a Sadist Could Love

Well, the short answer is "yes," but this is a good, clear example of just how messed up it is from a Georgia teacher who's lived it.

How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers

In today's New York Times, Robert Wachter looks at how measurement mania is making life miserable for both doctors and teachers. Two great lines: "We're hitting the targets, but missing the point" and "The secret of quality is love."

Relay Graduate School of (Charter) Education

Kate Peterson has put together a look at the folks behind the Relay Graduate School of Education. If you're anywhere that these folks are sinking their claws into education, you'll want to read her full policy brief at the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools website. 

Relay GSE started out as Teacher U, a program begun by David Levin (co-founder of KIPP) and Norman Atkins (co-founder Uncommon Schools) in order to supply their charters with "high-quality" teachers. Or high quality "teachers." They brought in Dacia Toll (founder, Achievement First) to help create the program. Hedge fundie Larry Robbins kicked in $10 million, and the Robin Hood Foundation threw in another $20 mill. The very pro-charter Robin Hood Foundation is run by hedge fundie and venture philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones (you can read about him in this Forbes profile that asks if he can save American education).

Teacher U changed its name in 2011 and was chartered by the New York Regents and partnered with the NYC school system (fun nostalgia fact-- 2011 was the year that spectacularly under-qualified Cathie Black was in charge of NYC schools for three months). Relay soon spread to other cities, including New Orleans, Newark, Chicago, Houston, and Memphis. In other words, they have faithfully followed the Charter Industrial Complex players around the country.

Peterson breaks down the career arcs of the three current Relay honchos-- Atkins, Levin, and Toll-- and it is unsurprising.

Atkins holds degrees in history and educational administration. He worked as an independent journalist, then as a co-exec director at Robin Hood, then helped found and lead North Star Academy Charter of Newark in 1997, a school that has been very successful at carefully controlling who ends up in its student body. Then in 2005, apparently having figured out where the real money was, he started Uncommon Schools, a charter management company. He's also connected to Zearn, an online math program (that has also been funded by Robin Hood).

Levin started with TFA fresh out of Yale, then shortly after started KIPP. KIPP has gotten a ton of funding from the founders of Gap, Inc, and they also kick in for Relay. Levin also co-founded the Character Lab, and sits on the board of Zearn.

Toll is the head of Achievement First, a charter chain that also appears to owe its success to a carefully culled student body. Toll gathered an assortment of degrees in politics, economics and philosophy, and jumped into the charter school start-up biz after graduating from Yale (she did eventually acquire a teaching certification). She sits on the board of 50CAN, a national network of high-powered charter advocates.

In short, Relay is a teacher training school founded and operated by three people who have almost no teacher training, next to no classroom teaching experience, and who have spent their careers in the charter world.

It's a remarkable achievement. If some buddies and I got together and declared that we would open our own hospitals and train our own doctors, even though none of us have any medical training or experience, we could expect to be laughed out of the medical field. If I showed up at a law school and said, "I am ready to be a legal professor, training the lawyers of tomorrow, though I've done nothing my whole life but teach high school English," I don't think I'd be hired on the spot.

And yet Relay continues to spread like extra-stinky kudzu, in fairly astonishing ways. As Peterson notes, for example,

As outlined on Newark Public School’s website, according to its contract with Newark Teachers Union, district teachers can only receive raises for completing advanced degrees if they complete it through Relay. Although two other institutions submitted a proposal, Relay was deemed as the only institution that met the requirements established by a group of teachers, school and district administrators, and higher education representatives. The district will call for other proposals in the future, but for now, only teachers who choose to attend an organization that is unaffiliated with a college or university, that was created to supply charters with teachers trained to meet the needs of these specific charters, and that is based on the beliefs of teaching amateurs will receive raises

Peterson's piece is on a Philly-centric site because Philadelphia-Camden is the new Relay operation. Peterson digs down into the Relay "faculty," and just one "professor" will give you an idea of how this whole scam works. Zach Blattner is the "Assistant Professor of Practice." He has a BA in English Lit, spent some time temping with TFA, and he's a certified principal courtesy of Relay's Principal school. He worked as a principal at a charter school.

Reformsters have managed to build and fund an entire alternate education universe in which they make up their own credentials, their own schools, their own entire system built on a foundation of nothing but money, connections, and huge brass balls. There's never been anything like it since hucksters pitched medicinal snake oil off the back of a wagon, and it would be kind of awesomely amazing, like watching a python consume an entire elephant-- except that instead of an elephant, this parallel shadow system is gutting public education in the communities where it is most needed.