State Board of Education – Reject the application by Relay Graduate School of Education (By John Bestor)
To the Members of the Connecticut State Board of Education:
I am writing to share my concerns associated with impending CSBE approval of the Relay Graduate School of Education Alternate Route to Certification.
I would like to make you aware of some insightful commentary from Peter Greene, a New York teacher and education activist who writes the CURMUDGUCATION (“Trying to make sense of what’s happening in education”) blog. Last January, he wrote extensively about the founding and intentions of the Relay Graduate School of Education, concluding “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 have done nothing my whole life but teach high school English, I don’t think I’d be hired on the spot.'”
There is a body of evidence beyond Relay’s own aspirational website and marketing that tells a different story than the one you may have already or are likely to hear from SDE Chief Talent Officer Sarah Barzee, her SDE boss Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell, and Achievement First’s Co-CEO Dacia Toll. To be fair, I would ask you to conduct due diligence and read what Mercedes Schneider, a New Orleans teacher, education activist, and the author of three books on “education reform”, including her most recent: School Choice: The End of Public Education?, had to say about this “phony” graduate program which makes a “mockery” of graduate programs in education. Follow her deutsch29 blog (10/03/16) and read the many reasons why the Pennsylvania Department of Education refused to approve Relay’s request for state-sponsored recognition, especially as to the minimal qualifications necessary to become a Relay instructor. Dr. Schneider’s commitment to shedding light on these issues is highly informative, yet not likely to be found in mainstream media coverage or forwarded by SDE officials.
If you are so inclined, you may also want to read the recent Washington Post (10.24.16) article, entitled “The big problem with the Obama administration’s new teacher-education regulations”, in which the chair of Connecticut College’s Education Department co-wrote that the “academy provisions” which were incorporated into ESSA (after initially being State Board of Education – Reject the application by Relay Graduate School of Education (By John Bestor) - Wait What?:
