What's wrong with "school improvement?" Partial answer found in the career of PPS Deputy Superintendent, another star in the district's Education Reform Constellation

The stars seem to be aligned for Portland Public Schools' march toward backdoor privatization with key leadership positions filled with school reform enthusiasts. This blog has thus far examined the vagabond hustler career paths and education-related ties of PPS Chief of Schools and Chief Finance Officer. Both of these chiefs, like the others on the Superintendent's Leadership team, were likely hired to advance the goal of opening the district doors wider to private foundations and corporations plotting to profit off the outsourcing and gradual takeover of public education. This trend in the field of education, including here in Portland, can be traced back at least a couple of decades. 

Dorothy Strang, member of League of Women Voters of Chicago, provides a brief, comprehensive overview, discussing the movement's origins as "tangled roots" in the battle between the following forces: "free-market, progressive, radical, and racist." 

In May, PPS proposed a plan they called Acceleration Schools in a limited-term bargaining session with Portland Association of Teachers. The plan was immediately identified by some educators watching the bargaining as a possible effort to undermine Portland educators' union contract and collective bargaining rights, as well as to possibly push through an "improvement" plan that would lead to school takeovers by management organizations and charter chains in the name of better serving "underachieving" students. After encountering resistance to accepting the scheme hook, line, and sinker, PPS announced it is withdrawing its Acceleration Schools proposal on June 12. However, this is only a temporary move, and we must be ready to resist this plan when it is presented again in fall bargaining.

In her article, "Privatizing Public Education: It's Bigger Than You Think," Strang writes:

 

"When we think about assaults on public education, we cite charter schools. We all know they siphon funds from public schools. Many of us know that charters can choose their clientele. Some of us know that charter schools’ independent boards are not answerable to their local school districts. . . But charters are only one symptom of a much broader attack on public education that includes vouchers and tuition tax credits as well as corporate reformers, so-called education experts who say they will turn your school around for a hefty fee, perhaps in response to a parent-trigger law. 

 

Reform initiatives funded with private money come from philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates (on one side of the political spectrum) and the Koch brothers (on the other). In state legislatures, groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in 1973 to advance free-market principles through state law, write model legislation that paves the way for individuals to make money from educating children. The major education policy of the Obama administration, Race to the Top, scorched the landscape of public education no less than No Child Left Behind, the second Bush Administration’s 2001 recipe to address what was considered to be widespread public school 'failure.' 

 

The privatization of public schools is not an 'issue,' or even a series of issues. It is a societal movement of long standing, with tangled progressive and conservative roots reaching back to the 1950s. It straddles both political parties. It uses respectable language like 'reform' and 'choice,' admirable terms like 'efficiency' and 'accountability.' It is a movement promulgated by national organizations, some new, some not so new, most of them well-funded, many of them politically connected, all of them tech- and social media-savvy. . .

 

Privatization of education is a pitched battle because privatization is about money: Do we view tax dollars as public funds, to be used for public endeavors like schooling? Or. . . do we see education as a free market, open for individuals and corporations to turn a profit?"

In her informative survey of the movement to privatize public education, "What and who are fueling the movement to privatize public education — and why you should care," published in the Washington Post, Joanne Barkan writes: 

"When champions of market-based reform in the United States look at public education, they see two separate activities — government funding education and government running schools. The first is okay with them; the second is not. Reformers want to replace their bête noire — what they call the 'monopoly of government-run schools' — with freedom of choice in a competitive market dominated by privately run schools that get government subsidies."

Many indicators seem to point to the fact that Portland Public Schools leadership is eager, in fact, was put into place in the current constellation of chiefs to assist in further opening up our institution to profiteering. 

Superintendent Guadalupe Guerrero's Strategic Plan Priorities statement from May 2020 signals the direction PPS is headed under his helm:

"Adopting a sense of urgency, Superintendent Guerrero prioritized assembling a senior leadership team that immediately began to collaboratively develop and establish the foundation for the work ahead. In the first year, Superintendent Guerrero and his leadership team began the important work of planning and implementing the essential building blocks of district improvement."

This time around, let us take a look at yet another vagabond leader from Guerrero's team, Kregg A. Cuellar, PPS Deputy Superintendent of Instruction and School Communities since July 2019. 

Cuellar's bio on the PPS website states: 

"Dr. Cuellar came to PPS in June 2018 from Baltimore Public Schools (the 25th largest school district in the U.S.), where he was community superintendent. He has served as a paraprofessional, teacher, administrator and college professor. Dr. Cuellar is deeply experienced and respected for his school and school system transformation work.

Dr. Cuellar started in PPS as Chief of Schools, and in July 2019 was promoted to Deputy Superintendent. In that role, he oversees curriculum and instruction, student support services, and school performance. He earned a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts from the University of Houston-Victoria, and a Doctorate of Education from the University of Houston."

Like Bird, Cuellar is an opportunity hopper who can't seem to stay in one location long enough to see districts through to the results of the changes he implements. The Daily Times Editorial Board made such an observation during Cuellar's stint as Accomack County Superintendent and called him a vagabond leader, lamenting his frequent transfers to other districts, his lack of connection to the communities he is supposed to be serving, and his propensity to negatively affect staff morale by imposing top-down cookie cutter changes and quickly moving on: 

"Candidates like (Cuellar) have big resumes, which they are apparently always building. But it can be insulting when vagabond leaders use them as career stepping stones.

That’s not the only problem. Vagabond leaders tend to think what works in one place will work in another. They like to think most places — communities, schools, office environments — are similar.

Neither assumption is true.

Those who hire vagabond leaders must be careful. They’ll kill morale by bringing in an out-of-towner for the highest-paying job. They’ll kill morale by hiring a leader who changes the system and quickly leaves it."

Cuellar's curriculum vitae boasts a host of quantified accomplishments emphasizing his role in student and school "improvement," in restructuring district operations and decision-making structures, and in saving districts funds--all typical neoliberal reform hallmarks.

Some examples of Cuellar's achievements are: 

• led the realignment efforts of the district evaluation model to be centered on professional growth tightly coupled with academic outcomes for Central Office personnel, building-level administrators, and teachers;

• restructured the roles and responsibilities for key Central Office personnel, which included recalibrating the role of the Instructional Coordinators to include supervisory and coaching responsibility for their building leaders,

• recouped $2.5 million dollars over the course of five years by working with our Board of Supervisors to revisit and revise the retirement incentive for personnel

• established a fiscal accountability plan

In addition to a track record of what appears to be a propensity for fiscal conservatism, he also boasts that under his leadership in Accomack County, Virginia, he "developed protocols for tandem walkthroughs and accountability for area supervisors and department leads," and within the Des Moines Public Schools, he ensured "instructional walkthroughs by leaders increased 80% across all schools."

Increased scrutiny of standardized test scores, teacher performance, even recurring evaluations of school climate, are emblematic of school improvement schemes. These measurements are, however, rigged. In reality, they are not meant to enhance student learning, but set up teachers and schools to fail in order to justify a managerial takeover by an entity outside the public district's hierarchical structure. The hyperfocus on narrowly measured achievement creates a testing culture which leads to job dissatisfaction, increased stress, excessive burnout, and high turnover of teachers. According to William C. Smith and Jessica Holloway, school testing culture also creates a divide and conquer atmosphere in which teachers blame those in earlier grades "for inadequately preparing students," and to "concerns that teachers will be stigmatized for not buying into the school’s focus on student test scores." 

Standardized tests used to evaluate student learning and teacher performance have been shown in academic studies to be biased and not an accurate measure of student achievement. As educator and activist Jesse Hagopian highlights in his essay, "The Fight Against Standardized Testing" in the book, Teacher Unions and Social Justice, research has revealed that standardized testing "much more accurately measures wealth and proximity to a dominant white culture than it does aptitude or skills."

The overemphasis on high stakes testing often creates a culture with so much pressure on educators and administrators, that cheating has been known to happen in order to prevent a school from being labeled as failing or educators from being penalized, even terminated, for low student scores. In some cases, districts have incentivized high test scores by offering educators a bonus when their students score high, in others test scores have been tied to teacher evaluations, contracts, and future employment. Test cheating scandals have occurred all throughout the country, including in districts where several PPS leaders have held administrative positions, such as during Cuellar's post as Principal, Dean of Students and Assistant Principal in the Houston Independent School District. During his time as administrator in HISD, testing irregularities throughout the district triggered both a district-led and an independent investigation. That resulted in the firing of teachers from two schools, who in turn sued the Superintendent claiming they were retaliated against for speaking the truth about unethical conduct by their principal. It was during this time that Cuellar boasted that under his leadership, "all students across all subject areas meeting the standard on the Texas assessment increased 12%." For this, his school received a high performance recognition as a Texas Education Agency 'Recognized' campus."

High stakes test-based school reforms are summarized by Lisa Guisbond and Monty Neill in their article, "Fighting the Tests in the Land of Enchantment." They write that school reform initiatives such as No Child Left Behind operate within "what the national anti-testing organization FiarTest calls a 'testing arms race.' Influenced by a neoliberal agenda, the initiatives institute "sweeping mandates for standardized tests and impose brutal sanctions on schools that fail to make 'adequate yearly progress.'" Schools are then "turned into test prep factories and teachers (are) subject to warnings--and even firing--if their students (don't) produce 'adequate scores on tests.'" 

Of particular interest on Cuellar's curriculum vitae is his nomination for Broad Foundation Superintendent Academy Candidate in 2015-2016. If Cuellar was nominated for the Broad Foundation Academy, his views and leadership style must align with the Broad philosophy. Broad Foundation is a philanthropic entity founded by Eli Broad (who died this year), a real estate and insurance industry billionaire who funded and led the LA school privatization effort. The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch explains: "Broad is one of several mega-billionaires -- along with Bill Gates, the Koch brothers, and the Walton family -- who have spent hundreds of millions on education think tank research and charter schools, shaping current trends in what they call education reform. They insist not only that public schools are failing but that spending public money on privately managed charter or vouchers schools is the path to redemption."

PR Watch details the "Broad Agenda" which entails training reform-oriented school and district leaders to implement "turnaround systems." The training "emphasizes 'reform priorities' (40%), 'reform accelerators' (30%), and systems-level management (nearly 20%)," and includes "time with think tanks, businesses, and charter network administrators."

PR Watch editors cite member of the public school advocacy group Network for Public Education, educator Anthony Cody, making the point that Broad Foundation's anti-teacher agenda undermines goals like improving education regardless of race and poverty. Cody, they say, wrote in Living in Dialogue in 2016, "Even as the Billionaires Boys Club proclaims that their goal is a 21st century civil rights crusade, they impose a brutal policy where the highest-challenge students are crammed into the schools that were already the most segregated, under-resourced and low-performing. In other words, they sabotage the highest-challenge neighborhood schools in order to discredit educators in them who seek win-win school improvement policies."

Needless to say, Cuellar proudly lists his nomination for Broad Foundation Superintendent Academy Candidate on his curriculum vitae, making it clear where his alliances stand.

Among his list of accomplishments is Cuellar's involvement with the Wallace Foundation during which he led "the Wallace Foundation Grant work in securing a 3.5 million dollar grant solely focused on leadership development." This again is key to understanding his ethics and inclinations. 

From the Wallace Foundation's website: "Based in New York City, the Foundation traces its roots back more than half a century to the generosity of DeWitt and Lila Acheson Wallace, founders of The Reader’s Digest Association." The Foundation states that it "seeks to expand learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children and the vitality of the arts for everyone." However, it is another philanthropy whose aim is to profit off the backs of mostly poor kids and students of color by creating a “super-structure” which positions the private sector at the seat of local governance to benefit from programs that siphon off tax dollars for profit and push pro-privatization policy. (More on the Wallace Foundation, including its partnership with the Gates Foundation to launch the Social and Emotional Learning Initiative, will be posted on this blog soon.)

From examining Kregg A. Cuellar's career and "accomplishments," the evidence seems clear that he is more committed to the reform agenda and to private sector interests than getting to know communities and serving the most historically marginalized whose families along with educators, instead of foundation CEOs, and business executives, should be at the table participating in decision-making to ensure an equitable education for their children.

So far, all three members of the Superintendent's Leadership team, PPS Chief of Schools, Chief Finance Officer, and Deputy Superintendent, whose careers have been covered on this blog, are all associated with reform initiatives designed to open doors to third-party managerial powers and to increase the influence of private foundations and corporations in public education. The type of market-based reform PPS district leadership seems to favor must be opposed if we are to preserve the students' right to quality free public education, school staff right to organize and fight for favorable working and learning conditions, and, most fundamentally, to save public schooling as one of this country's last public institutions, elemental to a democratic society.