How corporate reformers have become embedded in the Office of District Planning
Recently Stacie Johnson, a sharp-eyed NYC parent, pointed out to me in an email how the DOE Office of District Planning (originally the Office of Portfolio Planning) is populated by many administrators who were formerly associated with charter schools. She wrote:
I was planning to reach out to someone about enrollment at my daughter's school and came across the name of a few people in DOE's strategic planning department and noticed a trend. It seems like the people who are in charge of planning, at least in my area, are all coming from a Teach for America and/or Charter School background. I've read about how the TFA and their affiliate Leaders for Educational Equity (LEE) are working to infiltrate their members into elected and policy positions, but I didn't realize this was so pervasive in Brooklyn. Is this news to you?
I hadn’t noticed this but decided to look into it.
District Planning was originally called the Office of Portfolio Planning under Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein, and was headed at various times by officials who, after a short stint of teaching, jumped onto the fast track towards power and influence. Two former heads of Portfolio Planning were John White (now State Superintendent of Louisiana) and Marc Sternberg (now head of Education for the Walton Family Foundation.) Their main qualifications for this job seemed to be able to portray no emotion during contentious and emotional public hearings, when teachers, students and parents begged them not to close their schools or force them into smaller spaces because of co-locations.
The office was created to pursue the portfolio model of school improvement, first developed by Paul Hill of the Gates-funded Center for Reinventing Public Education. It is based on the notion that parents should be given a wide “choice” of different types of schools, including charters and district public schools. The district will then decide which schools should be closed depending on their test scores, parent demand, or enrollment, with other schools created to take their place, many of them privately-run charter schools, in a process of continual change and disruption, like the buying and selling stocks in an investment portfolio.
There is much controversy as to this strategy’s effectiveness and rationale, as can be seen in a recent debate between Linda Darling-Hammond of the Learning Policy Institute and Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris of the Network for Public Education.
After Bill de Blasio was elected Mayor, and Carmen Farina appointed Chancellor, they changed the name of the office to District Planning, presumably because de Blasio had CONTINUE READING: NYC Public School Parents: How corporate reformers have become embedded in the Office of District Planning
Network For Public Education - The goal of NPE is to connect all those who are passionate about our schools – students, parents, teachers and citizens. We share information and research on vital issues that concern the future of public education at a time when it is under attack. : Network For Public Education - https://networkforpubliceducation.org/