King Midas in Reverse

Everything the Broadies touch turns to trash.

Not a single one has turned out worth a shit, including the one who bought himself a national superintendent award.

Some public school activists who go up against Broad superintendents come away thinking these superintendents actually welcome disruption because their real goal is to destroy urban school systems, turning public education into a competitive marketplace.

"They like to close schools and create churn," says Seattle parent activist and Broad expert Sue Peters. "Sometimes the upshot is to make parents more vulnerable to the charter people. Parents say, "Enough already, we don't want all this churn. Give us anything but this.'"

Whether or not privatization is the whole point, it's certainly a central feature of the Broad program for big city schools. And privatization is hard to reverse. Even if a Broad superintendent is finally chased out of town, closed neighborhood schools stay closed and new charter schools generally stay open.

The Broad Academy is TFA for school superintendents, and never mind state statutes.

The Broad to Cerfdom

Like a cancer, the Broad Academy is infesting school districts from all over the country, and people are slow to wake up to the infestation. It's almost too late: the billionaire's sham organization, sort of like a TFA for school district superintendents, has gotten a foothold in district after district wrecking school district after school district with its harebrained schemes to run school districts like businesses and having "fellows" run them who are often little more than crooks. Not that there aren't crooks in public education administration already, but these Broadies are even more brazen.

At least Oregon hasn't been too much infected--not yet anyway, although such "reforms" as open enrollment are taking hold.

New Jersey is just about done for.

Chris Cerf, by the way, was president of Edison Schools, which should disqualify him from anything having to do with education. He has bounced around from the corporate world to public ed and so forth. As far as I know, he isn't directly related to the late publisher and What's My Line? panelist Bennett Cerf, though Bennett did have a son named Chris. This Chris may be a distant relative.

News

It appears people who want to hang director Roman Polanski over an ancient case will never get their wish, as Swiss authorities have refused to extradite him to the United States and he is now free from house arrest.

Despite the view of some self-righteous people out there, when it was clear there was judicial misconduct in this case and even the victim of Polanski's actions wanted the matter dropped, the thing was dead in the water.

The tabloids will have to settle on Al Gore or somebody else instead.
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The excellent Broad Report has a list of people who are enrolled in this year's Broad Superintendent Academy, and many if not all on the list haven't a fucking clue about education, regardless of whether they work in public schools.

One person on the list is from my (soon-to-be former) area of Reno, Nevada.

Miscellaneous News

I don't know if any of these finalists for Washoe County School District superintendent are worth a shit, but at least Trent Blankenship wasn't a finalist. Blankenship is regarded as one of the worst superintendents in the entire country.

The finalists are:

Two of the candidates are from Texas and two from California, including Vincent Matthews, the current superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District.

The Texans include Kimberly D. Olson, a former colonel in the U.S. Air Force who is chief human development officer for the Dallas Independent School District.

...

— Matthew H. Malone, the superintendent of Swampscott Public Schools in Massachusetts who previously was a special assistant to the superintendent of San Diego City Schools, Calif.

— Lawrence W. Fryer, Jr., the chief operating officer of the Prince George’s County Public Schools in Maryland who previously as a senior managing consultant for IBM Global Business Services.

— Edmond T. Heatley, the superintendent of the Chino Valley Unified School District, Chino, Calif.

— Hector Montenegro, an education consultant in Arlington, Texas where he formerly served as superintendent.

It sounds like some of these people are privatizer types.

Not that I care after all of the crap I went through, but I thought I'd pass this along.

Anybody from the "Broad Superintendent Academy" doesn't exactly inspire confidence:

Kimberly D. Olson

Vincent Matthews

Edmond Heatley

Anybody associated with the likes of Eli Broad should be viewed with skepticism; others on the list with corporate ties should also be viewed with similar skepticism.



At least they aren't cronies of people of the district.