The Pahara Institute Proliferation of Corporate Ed Reformers
Pahara Institute is a nonprofit, market-based-education-reform mill designed to proliferate corporate reformers. It was formed in 2012 and is located in Walnut, California.
The corporate reform message of Pahara Institute is the stale sale of *public schools failing and leaders with new, innovative solutions needed*– except the solutions are neither new nor innovative.
Still, Pahara Institute seeks to spread school choice and test-score based reforms.
Lest there be any doubt about Pahara Institute as a corporate reform proliferation nest, consider the bio of its founder and CEO, Kim Smith:
Kim Smith is the founder and chief executive officer of the Pahara Institute. … Immediately prior to the Pahara Institute, Kim was co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit organization working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students. Earlier in her career she served as a founding team member at Teach For America, created and led an AmeriCorps program for community-based leaders in education, managed a business start-up and completed a brief stint in early online learning at Silicon Graphics. After completing her MBA at Stanford University, she co-founded and led NewSchools Venture Fund, a philanthropy focused on transforming public education through social entrepreneurship, where she helped to catalyze a new, bipartisan, cross-sector community of entrepreneurial change agents for public education. Kim has helped to incubate numerous education and social change organizations and has served on a range of boards, which currently include those of Bellwether, NewSchools, and Rocketship Education, and she has authored or co-authored a number of publications about innovation and social entrepreneurial change in education. [Emphasis added.]
Corporate ed reform entrenched.
Note the all-too-familiar corporate reformer lingo in the Pahara Institute Mission and The Pahara Institute Proliferation of Corporate Ed Reformers | deutsch29: