The Waltons Promote the (Failing) Tennessee ASD
On October 26, 2015, the Walton Foundation sent this email to subscribers of its Walton Family Foundation (WFF) list, wffnews@wffmail.com. Here is an excerpt:
Dear [Name],Bobby White graduated from Frayser High School in Memphis in 1990. Last fall, he came back — not just as an alumnus but as the school’s leader.In the time since White’s graduation, the school had become “chaotic,” and the students’ achievement was suffering. The school was in the bottom 5% of schools in the state of Tennessee, and so were many of the other schools in the local community.“There needed to be a lightning bolt to kind of shock the school into a new state of thinking,” White told us.Because of its low performance, the school (now renamed MLK Prep) had been designated as part of the Achievement School District (ASD) — a special district created in Tennessee to dramatically improve the bottom 5% of the state’s schools.
The email comes from the Walton Foundation’s “K12 Education Program Director,” Marc Sternberg, who was once senior deputy chancellor at the New York City Department of Education, and whose career in education began in the mid-1990s as a Teach for America (TFA) temp teacher. Sternberg is promoting the Walton priority of opening charters in select cities.
Sternberg’s email promotes Tennessee’s Achievement School District (ASD) by focusing on a Memphis school that has been in ASD for only one year, MLK Prep (formerly Frayser High School).
What caught my attention immediately is that this Walton charter school promotional showcases a school that is relatively new to ASD, which the Walton sell defines as “a special district created in Tennessee to dramatically improve the bottom 5% of the state’s schools.”
So, if ASD dramatically improves schools, why feature a school that has been in ASD for only a single year? Why not feature schools that have been in ASD for years The Waltons Promote the (Failing) Tennessee ASD | deutsch29:
