Sacramento in the Trump House

Sacramento outgoing   first lady Michelle Rhee and  outgoing Mayor Kevin Johnson met with President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday as Rhee is in contention for education secretary for the incoming Republican administration.

Associated Press photos show Rhee and Johnson departing from the meeting at a Trump-owned golf club in Bedminster, N.J., smiling and shaking hands with the President-elect. Crystal Strait, chief of staff to Johnson, could not confirm if the mayor was in the room during Trump’s discussion with Rhee. See Bee article and photos here. http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article115941728.html

Johnson was unavailable for comment, Strait said. According to the Bee, 

"Rhee gained prominence as an education reformer while she was chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C., from 2007-10. In 2010, she formed StudentsFirst, a states-based education reform organization that advocates for school-choice initiatives and has been active in elections." She has been an ardent opponent of teachers unions and a supporter of efforts such as the defeated Vergara   decision.  ( see prior posts on this blog). She was a significant advisor to the Broad Academy for school leadership which trains and places school superintendents including a former Sacramento Superintendent Jonathon Raymond. Graduates have  advanced a corporate view of school "reform"  in Sacramento, Los Angeles, and around the nation.

Sacramento Unified Superintendent Resigns. Why this direction of school reform did not work.

Sacramento City Unified Superintendent Jonathon Raymond has resigned.  He will leave the district in December. Raymond was one of a number of national superintendents trained by the Broad Superintendents Academy- a project of the Broad Foundation.   Michelle Rhee serves on the advisory committee for the “Academy”. This is a significant part of Broad and corporate guided  strategy for school “reform”.  See prior articles by Randy Shaw and Joanne  Barkan, among others,    on the limits of this reform movement.

The district hired Raymond, and received Broad Foundation support, in an attempt to raise the achievement scores of public schools.  However, Raymond served during the last 4 years of economic crisis while state imposed budget cuts prevented many improvements.

Particularly divisive has been the decision to close seven low income elementary campuses.  This strategy of closing schools in minority districts has been used by Broad Foundation alumni in cities around the nation, including Chicago, Philadelphia and others.  The Foundation has a guidebook for how to select and to close these schools.

No Superintendent, no leader, can be individually faulted for failure to significantly improve scores in low income schools in a period when the per pupil expenditures were reduced by over $1,000 per student.

Increasing student poverty, as documented by economist Joseph Stiglitz, and Robert Reich, among others, explains a significant part of why U.S. in falling further behind other countries school achievement.   “When you break down the various test scores, you find that high income kids are high achievers and they are holding their own and more.” According to Micheal Rebell  the executive director of the campaign for Educational Equity at Columbia University.

Sacramento District Insists on closing public schools

The  Sacramento City school district is  closing  seven elementary schools, disproportionately hurting students in low-income and predominantly minority neighborhoods.

In response, twelve students and their parents filed a civil rights lawsuit, asking a federal court to block the closures. The suit claims that the Sacramento City Unified District’s decision “was motivated by an intent to discriminate against the minority populations” and will result in “a disastrous discriminatory effect on the poor, disadvantaged population which is served by these neighborhood schools slated for closure."

A lawsuit filed by parents with the help of Sacramento attorney Mark Merin on the bases of the racial and class discrimination in the decisions as to which schools to close  was dismissed by the federal judge Kim Mueller.

 Jonathan Tran of Hmong Innovating Politics, the group that organized the rally, told the June 12 rally , “The district applied an arbitrary and illegitimate standard to target schools that are predominantly high in low-income and minority populations … At the end of the day, that is unacceptable.”

Broad Foundation Wants to Step on the Gas

Broad Foundation Wants to Step on the Gas:

The Broad Foundation wants to step on the gas….A recent memo from The Broad Center (TBC) proposes a series of strategic shifts in the foundation’s education programs designed to “accelerate” the pace of “disruptive” and “transformational” change in big city school districts, and create a “go to group” of “the most promising [Broad] Academy graduates, and other education leaders, who are poised to advance the highest-leverage education reform policies on the national landscape.”

Ed.note.  The Superintendent of Sacramento Unified Jonathon Raymond is a Broad Graduate. The Broad Center Board includes Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, Margaret Spellings, Larry Summers, and Andy Stern, among others. 

Broad Foundation’s plan to expand influence in school reform

by Ken Libby & Stan Karp

Re-posted from The Washington Post Answer Sheet
The Broad Foundation wants to step on the gas.
The California-based foundation, built on the housing and insurance empire of billionaire Eli Broad, has made “transforming K-12 urban public education” a major priority. Its training and placement of top administrators in urban districts across the country and support for charter schools, school turnarounds, merit pay and other market-based reforms have put it at the center of a polarized national debate about education policy.
A recent memo from The Broad Center (TBC) proposes a series of strategic shifts in the foundation’s education programs designed to “accelerate” the pace of “disruptive” and “transformational” change in big city school districts, and create a “go to group” of “the most promising [Broad] Academy graduates, and other education leaders, who are poised to advance the highest-leverage education reform policies on the national landscape.”