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Monday, March 12, 2012

The Fix for Jacksonville’s next Superintendent may be in

Betty Burney and the board will be getting from officials with the nonprofit Center for Reform of Schools System, a Houston-based education-consulting group that is finaced by the Broad Foundation

By Joanne Barkan, writing in Dissent magazine, http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

The Broad Foundation, gets its largest return on education investments from its two training projects. The mission of both is to move professionals from their current careers in business, the military, law, government, and so on into jobs as superintendents and upper-level managers of urban public school districts. In their new jobs, they can implement the foundation’s agenda. One project, the Broad Superintendents Academy, pays all tuition and travel costs for top executives in their fields to go through a course of six extended weekend sessions, assignments, and site visits. Broad then helps to place them in superintendent jobs. The academy is thriving. According to the Web site, “graduates of the program currently work as superintendents or school district executives in fifty-three cities across twenty-eight states. In 2009, 43 percent of all large urban superintendent openings were filled by Broad Academy graduates.”

Is the school board just going through the motions? Is the transformational leader they are seeking somebody who wants to run schools like a business?

The Broad foundation is one of the kings of the corporate reform movement. They or the organizations they finance have been known to support vouchers, charter schools, high stakes testing, performance pay for teacher and recently the parent trigger movement. Parent Revolution like the Center for Reform of Schools Systems receives funding from the broad foundation.

In short the broad foundation isn’t interested in improving education they are interested in profiting off of education

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