Portland Public Schools Contracts with TNTP, Turning against Teachers

In an atmosphere of intensifying hostility towards its workers, Portland Public Schools (PPS) has hired a notoriously anti-union, anti-educator, pro-privatization organization, TNTP--formerly known as The New Teacher Project--to design its new Instructional Framework. This move must be understood in the context of classic disaster capitalism, a term writer and activist, Naomi Klein, coined to describe the process which occurs when private interests descend on a particular region or sector in the wake of a major destabilizing event. Klein, quoted in Teen Vogue, explains: “It's really an extension of the military industrial complex, but it isn't just warfare; it's responses to disasters. It's the reconstruction afterwards." Klein goes on to describe the rolling back of labor laws and the privatization of the entire New Orleans public school system post hurricane Katrina, a warning about what may be unfolding more gradually here in Portland against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic.

Disaster capitalism is on display nationwide as school employees, battered by the unpredictability and stress of working during the COVID pandemic, have also been weathering a storm of aggressive measures by school boards and senior administrative leadership teams. In PPS, these measures include fear-instilling and resistance-neutralizing moves such as the infamous accusatory letter to educators from Human Resources Chief, Sharon Reese, and the district hiring a Pentagon man to run its communications department, a decision interpreted by many as an act of war on PPS frontline staff.  Furthermore, PPS has been escalating its pattern of targeting teachers who are critical of district leadership. They do this while announcing and moving forward with, yet simultaneously gaslighting about large-scale staffing cuts, which seem to be the result of manufactured, not actual, scarcity of funding. All of this is happening as the district finalizes its budget with several unions representing PPS workers currently in, or gearing up for, contract negotiations. 

In this context of top-down decisions adversely affecting its workforce, enter the new contract with TNTP for the creation of the new Instructional Framework. Only four years ago, the district rolled out its Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum initiative promising to give students "access to a comprehensive, equitable, rigorous, and standards-based education," despite objections from teachers. In the district's typical fashion, the initiative has been abandoned and is now being replaced with a new, even more concerning plan approved by the Portland Public School Board on February 9, 2022. 

Cheryl Proctor, recently promoted Deputy Superintendent of Instruction & School Communities, requested $148,941, for a contract with TNTP, which the Board unanimously approved. The contract term is 2/9/22 through 1/10/23, with the option to renew for up to two additional one-year terms through 1/10/25 for a total of $435,000. The funds are for TNTP to "develop a culturally responsive integrated instructional framework and PK-12 developmental continuum." Because the initial amount requested was less than $150,000, a formal selection procedure was not required under the district's public contracting rules. This is significant because just four years ago, TNTP services were the focus of a legal dispute over a lucrative contract for principal coaching in the School District of Philadelphia. A bidder accused the District of disregarding its procurement procedures as well as state and local bidding requirements when awarding the Request For Proposal contract to TNTP. At the time of the bid and lawsuit, Cheryl Proctor served as the Executive Director of School Improvement Planning & Evidence-based Supports and former PPS Chief of Schools, Shawn Bird, held the post of Chief Schools Officer in the District of Philadelphia.

Only a month after the PPS Board voted to authorize this expenditure, TNTP staff were already touring schools and dropping into classrooms to observe practically unannounced, having bypassed any discussions with the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT). A close look at the Common Core-Aligned Observation rubric TNTP uses to evaluate teachers reveals a set of utterly subjective characteristics "skillful" educators are to possess. These include (emphasis added): "issuing logical and appropriate consequences as needed without hesitation," "allocating instructional time to address the most important content for the grade or course," "using an appropriate tone (warm, kind, direct) when responding to student answers," and the downright problematic, culturally insensitive, if not oppressive  "requiring that students use complete sentences, correct grammar and academic language." The purpose of the rubric is to help observers discern "excellent instruction aligned to the Common Core," and conversely identify instruction not alined to standards and thus at odds with TNTP's framework. 

The trouble with TNTP is that it is part of a school privatization network and it is ferociously anti-union and anti-teacher. TNTP was founded in 1997 by Wendy Kopp as a spin-off of Teach For America (TFA) which she launched in 1989. Kopp chose Michelle Rhee, a TFA alumna and corporate educational reform advocate, to run TNTP. Of Rhee, historian of education and educational policy analyst, Diane Ravitch, has written the following: 

• "She has allied herself with the most right-wing governors in the nation. . . Any governor who wants to cut teachers’ rights and benefits can call on her to stand with him. Wherever there is a governor eager to dismantle and privatize public education, she is there at his side."

• "I am troubled that Rhee thinks that teachers are the biggest problem facing American education. Attacking teachers seems to be her hallmark."

• "During her brief tenure as Chancellor of D.C., she fired scores of teachers and added to her ruthless reputation by firing a principal on national television. For doing so, she was the Queen of 'education reform' in the eyes of the national media until USA Today broke a major cheating scandal in the D.C. schools."

Like TFA, TNTP has focused on teacher training and evaluation, and more recently on training principals. As education researcher, Thomas Ultican, writes in his blog post entitled, TNTP is a Part of the Destroy Public Education Infrastructure, "This organization designed to train teachers was founded by a person that has never taught and was led by an untrained teacher that had two years experience as a TFA temp teacher. Even though a reasonable school administrator would never contract with an obviously incompetent group such as TNTP, it has flourished due to a continuous influx of billionaire dollars and powerful political connections."

A deeper examination of the history of TNTP confirms Ultican's assessment that the organization has "one purpose and it is NOT improving education." It exists to "(instill) a privatization mindset into the education community," and "to advance the privatize everything agenda most wealthy elites support."

Dr. Tequilla Brownie is TNTP’s Chief Executive Officer and oversees TNTP’s executive team. Prior to joining TNTP, Dr. Brownie worked for nine years in Memphis City Schools, where--according to her LinkedIn account--she "oversaw the district-wide, nationally-recognized, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded effort to improve student outcomes by increasing teacher effectiveness." The $90 million project was a national case study in overhauling how districts hire, place, evaluate and pay teachers, with The New Teacher Project in charge of hiring the district's teachers. A RAND corporation study found, as Chalkbeat's Greg Windle reported, that "the Gates Foundation’s partnerships for teacher coaching had no effect on students’ academic outcomes over six years, compared to districts that used more traditional approaches." TNTP is funded, in part, by the Gates Foundation.

In addition to her close ties to the Gates Foundation, Dr. Brownie serves on the national board of Stand for Children, which according to Ravitch is notorious for "leading campaigns against teachers, their unions, and public schools." Dr. Brownie also sits on the board of KIPP Delta schools, part of the national charter chain founded by two TFA graduates and infamous for its “No Excuses” educational program, which is described by former educator and labor activist, Leo Casey in Dissent Magazine as "a combination of strict codes of student conduct and punitive discipline, a traditional curriculum, and didactic 'teacher proof' pedagogy that uncannily mirrors the techniques of Taylorist factory management."

KIPP schools appear strikingly similar to the description of Acceleration Schools, a model which PPS tried to push forward in the last round of contract negotiations, but was forced to table. A key ingredient of KIPP schools, according to Casey, is greater learning time. Casey writes:

"KIPP schools have significantly longer school days, weeks, and years. What they lack in high-quality instruction by accomplished teachers, KIPP schools look to offset with the sheer quantity of classroom time. As a result, the 'No Excuses' program puts extraordinary time and energy burdens on teachers, leading to high rates of burnout and turnover. . .

The 'No Excuses' schools began to reach critical mass during the 'No Child Left Behind' era, when standardized exams were the currency of the realm for education accountability. Their instructional program focused on those tests, and proved adept at delivering solid student scores. Success on standardized exams was critical in obtaining massive philanthropic support for the expansion of their schools: a 2011 study found that KIPP schools had 50 percent more funding than neighboring public schools, with the great bulk of the advantage attributable to philanthropy."

Dr. Brownie's (TNTP's new Chief Executive Officer) 2017 dissertation entitled, "Demographic Characteristics and Measures of Teacher Performance in Urban Schools," asserts that "although the classroom teacher is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement, districts and schools across the nation have struggled to ensure every child has access to effective teachers." Dr. Brownie argues that even teachers who receive the highest observation ratings are in fact ineffective as evidenced by students "failing to meet minimum expectations on state assessments." According to Brownie, school leaders are "essentially devoid of any power to remove ineffective teachers from classrooms." 

The assumption is that failing teachers is the reason students score low on standardized tests. This fallacy has been promoted by corporate education reformers and school privatizers, but over the past several decades has been debunked by scholars, educators and activists who have shown that standardized tests are biased and reproduce the white supremacist hierarchy by design. Brownie's dissertation relies on the false premise that standardized tests are objective measures of academic achievement and concludes that high-stakes test scores as well as student perceptions (which she deems "more accurate measures of teacher performance" than classroom observations) should be used in teacher evaluations and to inform employment decisions. The objective of a teacher evaluation redesign touted by Brownie and TNTP is to identify irreplaceable and replaceable educators.

As a 2018 Chicago Union Teacher article details, "TNTP is known for attacking tenure for teachers and promoting the myth that 'bad teachers' are a major reason for poor student performance." Daniel Weisberg,  First Deputy Chancellor of NYC Public School since January of this year, is TNTP's former CEO who is staunchly anti-union and anti-teacher. He is "on E4E’s executive board," the Chicago Union Teacher article continues. "E4E is also heavily supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation—the 'big three' donors to organizations pushing anti-union agendas.”

This spring, TNTP received its biggest single donation: $20 million from author, philanthropist & co-founder of Amazon, MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’ ex wife, who still has a stake in Amazon. This donation is specifically for acceleration efforts.

 
In March, the PPS Instructional Framework Design Team attended the UnboundEd Standards Institute from which they will draw when designing the Framework with TNTP at the helm. The non-profit UnboundEd creates and provides training on standards-aligned resources with funding from such charter and school privatization movement financiers as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Schusterman Family Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative among others. 

Many troubling characteristics of the Framework project can be seen in the document on TNTP letterhead containing the notes from the April 21 RESJ Partner Discussion about PPS' Instructional Framework. Some of the questions from the discussion are revealing: 

•  “(What will be) a process of taking inventory of the educators on staff and their skills, determining if they fit within the vision of what the future of instructional framework looks like?" 
• "How do we get buy in from teachers?”
•  “(How are we) building time for teachers to understand the new district look fors that all should have in place?”

Clearly for TNTP to involve teachers is an afterthought. TNTP is not designed to build up educators or strengthen public schools. Their assumption in working with PPS is that there will be no teacher buy-in for its program and that there are educators who will not fit into its vision. This implies that something drastic must be done with such educators.

TNTP's collaboration with PPS is already in full swing, but knowing more about TNTP is essential as PAT enters contract negotiations with the district this spring. TNTP is already attempting to subvert PPS educators' labor protections and academic freedom. Perhaps there is still a way to stop PPS’ TNTP-style redesign dead in its tracks?