PPS Chief of Schools, another Opportunity Hopper whose Acceleration Schools scheme must be opposed

The first time Portland Public Schools unveiled its Acceleration Schools proposal was in a mini-bargaining session slide presentation by PPS Chief of Schools, Shawn Bird, aired live on youtube on May 12, 2021. Immediately red flags went up for many educators watching. The presentation tossed around buzzwords and catchphrases such as "place to incubate ideas," "closing opportunity gaps," "academic achievement," "quarterly review of data," and "exit criteria." Under this plan, the district would designate 1-8 schools in which to "experiment" and spread what these schools "incubate" around the district. Bird alluded to other districts where Acceleration Schools have been pioneered, namely Los Angeles, Philadelphia. 

Bird happened to have worked in both districts mentioned, as Instructional Director (Principal Supervisor) in Los Angeles Unified School District and as Chief Schools Officer in Philadelphia just prior to arriving in Portland.

Like many of his colleagues on Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero's leadership team, Bird is a frequent flyer who does not stay in one position or district long. Bird's career thus far has consisted of, on average, two year-long stints of chiefdom. 

Prior to landing the position of Chief of Schools in Portland Public in January 2020, Bird worked as Chief Schools Officer in the Philadelphia School District from June 2017 to January 2020. Before that, he served as Chief Academic Officer for the Pasadena Unified School District from February 2015 to June 2017. Bird's position as Pasadena district High School-level Instructional Director and Principal Supervisor lasted from June 2012 to February 2015. For a year he worked as Principal at Aspire Pacific Academy in Huntington Park, CA which was part of Aspire Public Schools, one of the nation’s first charter management organizations.  The organization was launched in 1998 by Don Shalvey, educator and, until last summer, Deputy Director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which EdWeek describes as "a leading funder of education initiatives in the United States and globally." Shalvey joined forces with Silicon Valley entrepreneur and Netflix founder Reed Hastings to found Aspire Public Schools which now has 38 community-based schools serving over 15,500 students in California. APS website features many of the familiar school reform buzzwords such as accountability, college readiness, Common Core, rigor, and acceleration. 

Before his role as Aspire Pacific's Principal from June 2011 to June 2012, Bird had the title of Chief Academic Officer in Pasadena, a position to which he returned in 2015. He also worked as Principal at Spring Forest Middle School in the Houston, Texas area, and taught in the department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of San Francisco from August 2006 to June 2007. No record of Shawn Bird having been a public or charter school teacher has been located by this blogger or other members of the research team.

We can only speculate as to whether the frequent changes of scenery have been due to greener pastures found elsewhere, the general vagabond culture of this echelon of school district leaders, a desire to evade scrutiny during highly publicized scandals (such as this administrator-led test cheating scandal in Pasadena or school building safety fiasco in Philadelphia, both during Bird's reign as Chief), or pressure resulting from increased resistance to policies implemented or continued under Bird's leadership.

One group that documented Bird's work in the realm of school reform in detail is the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools (APPS) whose members, long-time education activists, in their correspondence with this blogger have likened Bird to a hit-and-run driver who "stays long enough to do the damage, but not long enough to deal with the consequences."

As Chief Schools Officer in Philadelphia, Bird was involved in identifying “underperforming schools” and placing them either in the Acceleration Network (formerly the Turnaround Network), to purportedly improve student achievement.

To better understand the scheme Shawn Bird is trying to sell to PPS, look no further than Philadelphia's Acceleration Network which was a part of a District initiative called Our System of Great Schools. An APPS member provided this brief history of the Acceleration Network:

"Starting in 2017, the District picked a number of 'low-performing' schools each year to 'support.' The schools were labeled Priority or Focus schools. Initially, the District could decide to close the school or merge it with another school, turn it over to a charter organization, or support the school by either moving it into the Acceleration Network or helping the school to form its own Academic Improvement Plan. The district has since eliminated the charter, closing/merging options. The System of Great Schools webpage now states: 'Please note, closing/merging schools and schools becoming a charter school are no longer options in this process.'

Each Priority or Focus school now receives support for three years after which they needed to show improvement. Given supports always involved outsourcing professional development and planning to consultants as well as one or two extra positions. After the three years, the school receives no extra money to pay for the supports. Over the course of the years, we went to all of the public parent and community meetings. They were shams."

In their on-the-ground reporting, APPS captured the frustration of parents and community members being continually sidelined from meaningful input and participation in decision-making about their children's education. Karel Kilimnik, co-founder of APPS, describes the "extremely limited involvement of families," and writes: "For the past three years, APPS has witnessed this process of targeting struggling schools and providing little actual community control over their futures."

Additionally, APPS expounds on the failure of acceleration schools to serve the students it claims to support. Kilimnik writes:

"For the past three years, APPS has witnessed this process of targeting struggling schools and providing little actual community control over their futures. This band-aid approach of providing additional funds for a few years does nothing to ensure continued support for these schools. Three years of funding for extra staff does not fix the underlying issues our schools must contend with every day. When asked how schools will sustain whatever supports they gained, District staff routinely respond with statements like 'We are building capacity to sustain the added supports.' Building capacity in existing staff is not going to fix the problem of under-resourcing. A permanent funding solution is needed so that these schools receive the staffing, resources, and supplies that they need to succeed. If the (Superintendent · William R.) Hite Administration truly wants to support these schools, there would be a year-long process involving all stakeholders in discussion, followed by implementation of their recommendations. This piecemeal, top-down imposition serves no one except the vendors brought in to market their questionable solutions."

It would behoove us to listen to those with more than nine years of experience fighting a similar "improvement" scheme. The message for Portland from the activists in Philadelphia is to work to stop the implementation of the Acceleration Schools model at all costs because it is "dangerous and divisive," it "violates basic tenets of collective bargaining," and guts union rights. Moreover, the model targets schools with majority Black and brown children and pushes more testing, more data, more time spending analyzing the data, and leads to a test-driven school culture that stresses teachers, administrators and children alike. The model forces teachers to reapply for their jobs yearly with as many as half being unassigned, creating instability and high turnover. Ultimately, it is clear from the experience of those who have resisted test-based school reform in Philadelphia and beyond that Acceleration Schools and similar reforms undermine the community and pave the way for investors to swoop in and takeover targeted public schools.

Is this what we want for Portland? A resounding no should be the answer.