Most people know about Teach for America (TFA), but who are New Leaders (NL)?
New Leaders is to principals what Teach for America is to teachers.
Jonathan (Jon) Schnur is the main creator of NL. Like TFA’s Wendy Kopp, Schnur has no education degree. He never was a teacher or a principal.
A 2004 braggadocio TIME piece about him states that he mentored kindergartners when he was in third grade.
Below I tell you about the other co-founders of New Leaders. I think you will find it interesting.
Schnur originally worked as President Clinton’s Whitehouse associate director for educational policy. He developed policy concerning teacher and principal quality by working on issues like after-school programs, school district reform, charter schools, and preschools.
How did someone with no education degree or experience working in public schools, or with children (minus the third grade stuff), get such a prominent job? It’s a mystery to me.
Schnur also worked as a campaign advisor to President Barack Obama and played a critical role in writing the President’s school stimulus plan—Race to the Top. Some thought he might be education secretary.
How do teachers and principals feel when someone with no educational background or experience writes the policies that will affect their schools?
Schnur has given lectures at Harvard and other uppity places. At Harvard he is lauded for dropping out and becoming a social entrepreneur—like Bill Gates! HERE it is!
He stepped down from NL and now has a group called America Achieves, although I think many would say America Achieves less with pseudo-principals running America’s schools.
Let’s be honest.
Every school needs an outstanding principal—an individual who supports and listens to parents and teachers, who will provide constructive criticism, act as a mediator when necessary, and who sincerely enjoys the children or teens in their care.
Ask any teacher what is an important factor about teaching and they will tell you—it’s the principal. A good principal can make the difference in how a teacher is able to function.
A good principal cares about the welfare of the students and understands that children are more than test scores. Professional preparation makes all the difference.
New Leaders started out as New Leaders for New Schools but they shortened their name. I think a lot of people still don’t know who they are.
Often, TFA recruits move on to New Leaders and become principals. Or, NL encourages those from outside careers to come over to education and try out school leadership.
In 2004, on Boston NPR, Schnur likened turning around a failed school to leading an Army unit into Iraq. He was encouraging military colonels to become principals.
School districts get millions of dollars to bring in New Leader candidates instead of looking to universities for well-prepared educators.
The NL principal residents receive salaries and are considered a part of the school administration as assistant principals, or even principals. So tax dollars go to NL too.
They are about pushing school reform—testing and data. They push out from principal positions real teachers and well-prepared professionals who study administration.
The implication with NL is that alternatively trained individuals will be principals in a way no degreed, administratively prepared and experienced principal could ever do.
There is absolutely no peer-reviewed authentic research to show this is true.
Here is what happened to other New Leaders co-founders.
Ben Fenton. Ben is now working for Pearson after a stint with the school reform group McKinsey and Company.
Monique Burns-Thompson. Monique went to helping create NL from an important job at the Quaker Oats Company. She has a business background but is now the President of TEACH PLUS.
Allison Gaines Pell. Allison got her degree from Brown and an education degree from Harvard. You could say she has the best pedigree, but she jumped too quickly to a principal position through New York’s New Leader-like, Leadership Academy and is now principal of a charter school founded by Blue Man Group (you can’t make this stuff up). They are expanding too!
Correction. I have been informed that the school known as Blue School is actually a private school. The link above claims the middle school is a charter school but that must be incorrect. The Blue School has a Board of Directors including Sir Ken Robinson. Here is their website. While the school had controversy in the past, it sounds like Allison Gaines Pell helped to put the school back on track.
Mike Johnston. Mike came from Teach for America. Mike is now a state legislator in the Colorado Senate. He passes major legislation on education reform, economic development, immigration reform, and criminal justice reform.
Before entering the Senate, he was a high school principal for six years. He wrote a dramatic book about his experience in Teach for America called In the Deep Heart’s Core (his degree is in philosophy).
Apparently, his heart isn’t really with the teachers of Colorado because he has been on board for judging teachers based on high-stakes testing. Considering where he comes from that is pretty outrageous. Diane Ravitch has written a lot about him. HERE. HERE and HERE.
Mike also served as a senior education advisor to President Obama—because 5 weeks of TFA training, I guess to them, is comparable to Jon Schnur’s third-grade mentoring experience.
Reference
Cole, Wendy. “A Guy Who Loves Going to the Principal’s Office. TIME. December 17, 2004.
You’re right. You can’t make this stuff up.
However it can make you sick.
Carol, I see blue kids.
This is just part of the faux Ed reform movement, which is dominated by frauds like Peter Cunningham at Education Post, who was Arne Duncan’s right hand man in the federal Department of Education.
None of these persons ever taught, or have degrees in education–and no, I don’t count Teach for America as teaching experience any more than I consider being a terrorist as military experience.
There are so many well-qualified individuals, Mitchell. It is ironic they want everyone going to college but in education it doesn’t seem to matter. Thank you.
It is not what you know it is who you know – these individuals must be well connected within the business ( and other) led reform movement. Love your website by the way Very insightful. Always informative.
Thanks you for it. Who is funding NL?
Thanks, Robert. http://www.newleaders.org/support/philanthropic-partners/
Thank you for another excellent post, Nancy. This 2014 article from the Journal of Education Policy also formally links the TFA founders and funders to New Leaders: “Mapping the Terrain: Teach For America, Charter School Reform, and Corporate Sponsorship” http://sco.lt/8wpNc9
What we’re witnessing is a well-orchestrated coup of our education system by corporate interests. The hypocrisy in all this is that these folks push “no excuses” schools, insist that there are no shortcuts and laud being “data driven”. Meanwhile, they hold high-ranking positions via shortcut hiring, make unending excuses for enacting ineffective policies, and ignore decades of data/research on child development, learning, and human motivation.
I think one of the main reasons the takeover is moving along so swiftly is that the corporatists are masters at marketing, pitching bogus solutions that sound as juicy as a big mac. Without background on what children need for healthy growth/development, that big mac looks mighty fine. The whole process reminds me of the way the fast food industry works. It’s a bit of a tangential connection, but there are some uncanny parallels here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWOcP-bXuO8&feature=youtu.be
Great parallel! I think that they are very heavy when it comes to flashy marketing. Public schools used to try to market themselves too. It is hard when funding is a problem, but public schools still try to advertise themselves. It is all a part of making schools follow a business format–you are right. Thanks, Roxana!
Besides the marketing techniques, I think another reason the reform takeover is moving so quickly is because of the corporatists greasing the hands and filling the coffers of the politicians.
This may be simplistic, but I think what qualifies a person to be a principal (other than education and experience, of course) is a genuine enjoyment of the age group of the students in the school. When I started school, we all walked, and the principal’s house was on the way. We would jostle each other to hold his hand, and he would have two kids on each arm. We loved him. When my daughter started school, her principal greeted the kids at the door every day. When she rode her bike to school, he graciously carried it into the basement for her. She would bring home papers with his signature and an encouraging comment. If a person isn’t willing or able to do this for children, s/he shouldn’t be a principal.
Well said Sheila! We all know principals like this I think. Thank you!
You’re making my heart hurt with the Blue Man comment! I absolutely love what you write and believe your advocacy is very important. I am probably always among the first to read your blog posts. But, as a teaching artist myself, the eye rolling about artists in education is always difficult for me to deal with. I wish you knew us better.
The Blue School is amazing. I’ve been there and. I know the philosophy. I’d love to be able to send my child there. But make no mistake, it is NOT a charter school. It is a very progressive New York City private school with a selective admissions process, tuition of around $40,000 a year, and an $8.00 a day lunch menu!
The founders of the Blue School started with a playgroup for their children. They are terrifically committed to education and have always intended to add middle school grades. Even in the early grades they’ve built continuously over time.
Some of the things artists bring to the educational process include a very strong understanding of the connection of risk and failure to creativity and a deep respect and understanding of kids that learn differently, They also have a very strong understanding of process, stronger than traditional public schools (and many parents) have the stomach for. A lot of professional educational thought, study, self evaluation and–dare I say–rigor has gone into the building of that program.
While I know there are people that watch the Blue School, I don’t see it as scalable. It is what it is and has the money and access it needs to support its goals.
I’m right there with you on the importance of principals and the need for principals to have taught. There are a lot of people who should not have their hands in education that do–and they’re messing things up. The Blue School? There are better examples to focus on. Trust me, those kids are going to turn out just fine. I’ve also heard great things about that Head of School from kids who went to her school in Fort Greene, which was a charter school.
I do think it is possible to be from an alternative background and be outstanding. It doesn’t mean everyone is. It doesn’t mean those alternate pathways are good ways to staff schools, but when you hold people who are known to be successful up to ridicule and roll your eyes at artists–who often spend most of their lives as a different kind of educator (but no less serious), you throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I still thank you for what you do, though.
Hi Laura,
I am sorry. I did not mean to offend you. It sounds like you are right about the Blue Group being a private school. The link I found called the middle school a charter, so that was confusing.
Also, I write a lot about the importance of art. I would not roll my eyes at teaching artists—I believe they have a role to play, but I also know of credentialed art teachers who are unemployed.
My concern centers around artists who are used as fill-ins or as teachers with lower salaries without teaching credentials.
As far as the Blue School–since it is private that puts a different spin on it. The school was also surrounded by a lot of controversy in the past. But it sounds like they have made improvements.
And to her credit it sounds like Allison Gaines Pell helped with the improvements.
As far as my criticism of New Leaders…I don’t doubt that sometimes there are principals or even those from Teach for America who are committed to doing a good job. I have friends who have children who are in Teach for America!
Jon Schnur obviously believes in NL and probably means well. Those involved in corporate reform have an different ideology of course.
But I think you and I do share the concern of a deregulated teaching and principal profession and the privatization of public schooling.
Thank you for your very kindly put criticism and for reading my blog. I corrected my statement concerning the Blue Group.
Right there, in a NUT shell, why public schools are failing and why the education system is failing our kids. Bureaucratic, inexperienced, top-down initiated, self-proclaimed experts directing education policy and reform. Centralization of utter failure by people who believe they have the right and the power to force failure and destruction on others.
BTW –
There is something uniquely disturbing when you walk into the chaotic, out-of-control classroom of a progressive, public school teacher and see her countless plaques and accommodations denoting her teacher-leader skills awarded by the various Freemason Associations across the country.
Just saying.
VB, I don’t understand what you mean by your second comment.
I can’t understand what you’re saying here at all. Teachers who are excellent public school educators do not have their own private walls to hang plaques on. The walls of the public school classrooms are shared with students, staff and other teachers. I’ve never seen any teacher hang any plaques in any classroom. What are you talking about?
I am not surprised. At all.
We live in the Age of the New Know-It-Alls … special people with unspecial talents who tell the talented people what not to do with their talent. Got that?
They’re all over the place. They tell doctors how to doctor, police how to police, and teachers how to teach. They’ve fouled up everything they’ve touched from healthcare to the military to universities to school lunches.
They all share a crazy commonality of telling people what to do … while never following their own advice. They are dangerous lane changers … never content to do what the know best … only what they imagine best.
Some are wealthy … and have this sudden need to drive over to the next lane … and think that what they have learned about microchips or copying machines or oil rigs is now suitable qualifications to screw around with schools … and the small humans who live there.
Now we have New Leaders … a sub-group of the New Know-It-Alls and cousins to education’s greatest frauds, Teach for America. They have determined that they know more about schools and faculties and learning and leadership than most seasoned educators who were grown into those positions. They epiphanies … and others did not.
Their philosophy presupposes that actual educational experience really isn’t necessary. It’s always amazing that these ozone-heads would never make similar suppositions about running an oil company or managing a baseball team or operating a farm or flying a plane. But education? Why not! What’s so special … there are thousands of them all across the country. How difficult can it be?
So, they set out to blaze new trails and actually set fire to a whole of good stuff. And they think nothing of the fallout that is strewn in their rearview mirror … because there is almost always another clown on the backstretch waiting for his turn at this educational wheel of misfortune.
I’ve lived a long life and I am not aware of another time during the last decades when we had more self-anointed geniuses on display.
We have Arne Duncan … a national dunce who ticked off a reform resistance with his asinine comments about mothers. His actual teaching experience could be penciled on a post-it note … same with his successor … another educational reformer who almost single-handedly sparked this national opt-out movement. These two faux educators have done more damage to the institution … in a shorter time … than any other force in American history. And they’re proud of it!
Then there’s Jonathan Gruber of the healthcare mess. He is more loathed than Shepherd’s Pie because he admitted that he knew more than every other dunce … and could lie better. And he became rich doing just that.
How about John Kerry? … who thinks the way to run terrorists out of France is to have a sing-a-long with James Taylor … who doesn;t even sing in French … or Arabic. And we now have a president hell-bent on a policy of “cool” when terrorists strike … as though he’s on some Chicago street corner intimidating some bozo from around the corner. And people defend him. And terrorists laugh at him.
So, New Leaders? Not surprised. A hardly needed educational twist headed by a clown whose claim to fame was tutoring 5 year olds when he was eight. That’s a guy who’s never packed his resume, eh? But here he is … with White House access in his past … and mayhem in his future.
And people actually listen to his speechy stuff because he’s got jargon-itis and he can blend buzz-words and sound-bite word-drops that seem so hard to understand that they’re deemed genius. But they’re gibberish … not genius.
That’s where we are folks … deep into the Age of the Know-It-Alls … and everyone of them is determined to do their very best for mankind … including ruining it all in spectacular fashion. I don’t quite know if we’re worthy, but I suspect we’re in for it.
Denis Ian
Thank you, Denis. I certainly agree that many school reformers who promote New Leaders act like Know-It-Alls–along with a few of those who are New Leaders. Some in Teach for America and New Leaders do believe they are doing what is right and I also think some of the school reformers believe that as well. It is a harmful ideology. I appreciate your point of view. Thank you for taking the time to comment.