TALES OF THE SERIAL GRIFTERS
“If I had followed my better judgment always, my life would have been a very dull one.”―
“It takes just as much energy to be an asshole as it does to be kind.”
―
―
The education world ain’t nothing if it ain’t a big old hamster wheel. People exit stage right only to re-enter stage left in a new costume. In the early part of this decade, the disruption movement was on the rise in Tennessee. But after a few initial success stories, the losses were beginning to mount. By the close of 2016 most of the controversial forces trying to disrupt public education scattered to the seven winds.
The end of 2014 brought signaled the beginning of the disinegration. First was the resignation of Kevin Huffman as Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education. Elliot Smally from the ASD left in 2015 for South Carolina and took former charter school administrator Taylor Fulcher with him. Ravi Gupta of RePublic Charter Schools headed back to NYC, 2 years later RePublic would settle a 2.2 million dollar lawsuit over “spam text messages” sent out during his tenure. Oprah’s favorite charter school guru Chris Barbic left in 2015 after failing in his promise to take the lowest-performing 5% of schools to the top 25% in 5 years. Yea, these weren’t the halcyon days predicted when the decade CONTINUE READING: TALES OF THE SERIAL GRIFTERS – Dad Gone Wild