Education Week - January 15, 2014 - 10

Teacher For America Spinoff Helps Alumni Gain Influence
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alumni: The group also puts campaign
muscle behind members who
decide to seek elected office.
TFA founder Wendy Kopp "was
prescient to say that if you're going
to change education, you've got to
change the politics of education and
change people in leadership," said
Patrick McGuinn, an assistant professor
of public policy and education
at Drew University, in Madison, N.J.,
who has studied new types of advocacy
in K-12 education.
How successful LEE'S bid to that
end will be remains to be seen,
especially given what critics and
supporters alike say is a relatively
vague mission. Persistent suspicions
of a pro-charter school, anti-union
bias that have dogged its parent organization
have also spilled over to
LEE'S own work.
"There is skepticism about why
they are so private," said Arnold F.
Fege, a former director of public
engagement and advocacy for the
Public Education Network, which
represented a coalition of community
education funds before shutting
down in 2012. "What are they
advocating for?"
Offering Pathways
Spun off from Teach For America
in 2007, LEE was designed to be more
purposeful about developing TFA
alumni's leadership goals beyond the
classroom or the principal's office.
"The more time I spent talking with
Wendy Kopp, I became convinced that
[TFA's] leadership [development] wasn't
as fully oriented towards advocacy and
community organizing," said Michael
Buman, a former partner at the global
consulting firm McKinsey & Co. who
became the executive director of LEE
in 2011. "I saw lots of amazing leaders
who were passionate about change, but
were civically disengaged."
Baltimore LEE member Jennifer
Aguirre is a case in point. The Spanish
teacher's quiet demeanor belies a
core of hard determination that helped
her become the first in her family to attend
college, and once led her to raise
$20,000 to pay for her students to visit
Spain. (Leadership for Educational Equity
essentially accepts as a member
any current or former TFA participant,
and it does not charge dues.)
Though deeply troubled by inequities
in the Baltimore school system, Ms.
Aguirre struggled to articulate her role
in addressing them. She didn't want
AT A GLANCE:
Leadership for Educational Equity
YEAR ESTABLISHED 2007
STRUCTURE As a "social welfare" organization under section
501(c)4 of the tax code, Leadership for Educational Equity can
engage in both educational and political activity.
MISSION To propel Teach For America alumni who "share a
commitment to ending the injustice of educational inequity" into
leadership roles.
MEMBERSHIP Open to any Teach For America corps member or
alumnus who requests it, and does not cost anything. In 2012, the
organization had 19,000 members.
10 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 15, 2014 | www.edweek.org
PERSONNEL 57 employees as of 2012. The staff includes a former
U.S. Department of Education acting assistant secretary and a
former aide to U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., an ally of the
Obama administration on K-12 policy.
PROGRAMMING Most training is arranged by eight regional
directors and responds to members' local needs. National
workshops-which cover the basics of community organizing; policy
and advocacy; and running for elected office-are more selective,
typically reserved for members with a history of participation. The
group also runs several fellowship programs, giving members the
chance to intern with school boards, policy shops, communityorganizing
groups, and campaigns.
BUDGET By 2012, its budget had grown to $3.9 million.
ELECTIONS In 2011, the organization spent $5,000 on small
donations to five candidates' races. It supported about 60
candidates in 2012, spending a total of $40,000, and estimated
spending $20,000 on 20 candidates in 2013.
FUNDING SOURCES Since its inception, about 70 percent of the
organization's budget has come from Teach For America. In 2012, TFA
funding made up 53 percent of revenue. That spending is restricted
to educational activities, such as membership outreach and training.
Other revenue comes from foundation grants and individual donations.
SOURCE: Leadership for Educational Equity
Students Taynor
Jackson, left, and
Malik Woodley laugh
with Jennifer Aguirre
while she teaches
Spanish class at
Bluford Drew Jemison
STEM Academy
in Baltimore.
Ms. Aguirre has
participated in
a communityorganizing
internship
through Leadership
for Educational
Equity. She said she
hopes eventually
to run for political
office, perhaps as a
state senator or city
council member.
to go into school administration. She
considered applying for a job with TFA
providing professional development-a
common steppingstone for corps members-but
felt the program's teaching
focus was too narrow.
LEE offered another leadership path-
way. Through one of its fellowship programs,
Ms. Aguirre won an internship
at a Baltimore community-organizing
group, The Intersection, itself run by a
TFA alumnus. There, she says, she got
a better understanding of what community
members wanted to see from
schools, such as stronger links to afterschool
jobs and programs for students.
That feedback has formed the
basis of her subsequent ideas for a
career path.
"It's a different set of skills [LEE]
gives you-more policy-oriented," Ms.
Aguirre said.
"You have people who know some-
thing's wrong," she said, "but they
need to be given the resources needed
and encouragement to step out of
their comfort zone and try to tackle a
huge problem."
At a national organizing workshop
in Chicago hosted by LEE this past
summer, Ms. Aguirre and several colleagues
took part in a role-playing
exercise designed to highlight some of
the obstacles to effective community
organizing.
They had been variously assigned
to be organizers who were pushing
for the expansion of a pre-K program
or to portray a board president, a superintendent,
and a union leader who
opposed it.
The exercise was surprisingly authentic,
resulting in pale faces and
sweaty palms. The district officials' excuses
about costs, lack of research, and
competing priorities came quickly and
glibly. The community organizers, with
little time to prepare, failed to mount
an effective rebuttal.
"I think we share a commitment to
helping kids. We should revisit this discussion,"
said the teacher playing the
board president, smiling wanly. It was
a polite dismissal that deflated almost
every argument the organizers tried to
advance.
"I was so mad," Ms. Aguirre confessed
after the activity ended. "I
wanted to throw a chair."
And that's the point, explained LEE's
vice president of organizing and advocacy,
Joy Silvern. Organizing, she said,
is about more than having a good idea.
It's about knowing how to pull the levers
of power: by having strength in
numbers at a board meeting, by having
a clear, consistent "ask," and by
being prepared to respond to any and
all objections.
Political Wing
Trainings such as the Chicago
workshop are largely paid for by
Teacher For America, whose donations
make up a majority of
LEE's budget. The rest comes from
private foundations and individual
donors LEE doesn't disclose,
and help to supports another
prong of the organization's work:
political activity.
Electoral work amounts to less
than a third of LEE's budget, its
officials say, but it has nevertheless
fueled popular accounts of the
organization, mostly critical. Such
accounts accuse the group of supporting
candidates who espouse a
particular "corporate" brand of education
policy focused on expanding
charter schools and test-based
accountability.
Critics point to prominent TFA
alumni and LEE members, such
as Bill Ferguson, a state senator
in Maryland, who sponsored legislation
that included an iteration
of the "parent trigger." That policy
permits parents to turn over the
management of schools to outside
operators.
LEE officials contest such depic-
tions.
"We do not exist to propagate
policy," said Mr. Buman.
The group's election-related
support generally takes the form
of in-kind contributions, such as
candidate coaching or help in reviewing
campaign materials.
Allison Serafin, one of two LEE-
backed candidates who won a seat
in Nevada's 2012 state school board
race, said the organization's director of
elected leadership, Mallory Hutchison,
helped her avoid jargon in framing
her campaign priorities. Among them:
having all high school seniors to take
a college-entrance exam so they have
a credential with some currency after
graduation.
"I tend to get really wonky," Ms.
Serafin said. "Mallory was helpful
in saying: 'What is the headline?
What is going to matter to parents?
Use language that someone can talk
about at the dinner table; do not
drop acronyms.'"
Electing Candidates
Ms. Serafin received assistance
from LEE valued at $10,646, according
to campaign-finance records. (The
other LEE-supported candidate in the
race, Alexis Gonzales-Black, received
assistance valued at $9,114.)
But at no time did the organization
try to steer Ms. Serafin in certain
policy directions, she said.
To an extent, her candidacy remains
something of an outlier. A majority
of LEE-backed candidates have
run for local, rather than state, offices
and have received far smaller levels
of support. They have won seats on
neighborhood councils in Los Angeles
and the District of Columbia, schoolbased
councils in Chicago, and school
board positions in several cities.
Jason Esteves, an Atlanta lawyer
Matt Roth for Education Week
Education Week - January 15, 2014

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