Millot: Read Toch's CMO Report Here

Education Sector’s November 24 report, Growing Pains: Scaling Up the Nation’s Best Charter Schools examines the problems CMOs face trying to replicate their various philosophies of teaching and learning in new public schools. Considering the source, the content and conclusion are predictable and deserve little attention: While each CMO faces operational problems, the concept’s success is more a matter of removing charter advocates’ longstanding list of government barriers – inadequate per pupil payments, a lack of access to facilities or financing, etc, etc.

Yet, the report demands close review - because it’s real author, content and conclusions have gone missing. Until now.

Apparently, no one wrote Growing. In fact, it is a much-edited version of EdSector co-founder Thomas Toch’s Sweating the Big Stuff: A Progress Report on the Movement to Scale Up the Nation’s Best Charter Schools. Based on interviews with CMO insiders, publicly available data, and his own analysis, Toch presents a compelling indictment of the “new philanthropy’s” primary investment strategy for education reform. His arguments should be available to all and addressed on the merits. Instead, someone at EdSector hacked away at Toch’s evidence until it fit the rhetoric of CMO advocates.

Toch left EdSector in June. Sweating is “work made for hire” owned by EdSector, so Toch is prohibited from publishing his draft. But for two facts, Toch probably would not have disowned Growing to TWIE the day it was released, the report would have passed unnoticed, and the public would have missed out on an important “teaching moment.”

First, EdSector lost control of Sweating when it was distributed as a “Draft for Comment” on June 3. Second, on October 23 Education Week published a commentary by Toch sufficiently at odds with Growing to draw the attention of education policy analysts when EdSector released its report. Those interested in the discrepancy can review Sweating and draw their own conclusions.

Sweating: Download Sweating060309.doc

Growing: Download Growing_Pains

Toch's Commentary: Download TochCommentary

Previous Post:  Who Lost Tom Toch?

Next week: How could this happen?

Comments

[Dick]

The "growing pain" was the emasculation of the original progress report. Can hardly wait to read, "How could this happen?"

[Douglas]

Bravo. I think the world just might be a better place if Ed Sector would somehow go the way of the subprime loan sector.

[Marktropolis]

Welcome back Marc. I for one missed you and your "connecting the dots."

That said, I hope that Toch holds strong and finds a way to get the message out about what he learned. Aside from your attempt to disseminate a draft report.

Can't we FOIA Ed Sector or something? I'd love to see the correspondence that resulted in the wholesale re-writing of the report. Wasn't it Andy Rotherman who was complaining about NOT having conflicts of interest a while back - something about not having to reveal his funders when he's shilling for them? Oh, that's right, it was Marc's blog http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/edbizbuzz/2008/02/get_into_the_crossblog_debate.html that sent me to this: http://www.eduwonk.com/2008/02/stop-the-presses-these-people-know-each-other-and-sometimes-they-even-gasp-work-together.html

Again Marc, good to have you back!

[alexander]

claus von zastrow notes that we haven't heard a peep from andy on his blog about the report or the controversy, and that the MSM has thus far been much slower to jump on the story than it was over the hoxby charter effectiveness study, for example.

good stuff and some interesting comments here:
http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/reporters-interesting-story

/ alexander