This excerpt has been cross posted from the Raging Chicken Press and it reveals who is the next head of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The PASSHE Board of Governor's chose a Jeb Bush acolyte and founding member of the ELC, who crafted the concept school vouchers in the 1990's. This is just another example of Tom Corbett's attacks on public education. More below the fold.
Since the article is a couple of thousand words, long, this link will bring you to our website with the provided hyperlinks.
Last week the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASSHE) Board of Governors chose Frank Brogan to become the next Chancellor of the 14 public university system. Brogan is currently the Chancellor of the State University System of Florida. Brogan becomes the third consecutive PASSHE Chancellor to make the 14 plus hour drive from Florida to Pennsylvania. Judy Hample, the former Chancellor of the Florida’s State University System, served as PASSHE Chancellor from 2001 to 2008. From 2008 until this past February, former President of West Florida University, John C. Cavanaugh, became the Chancellor that would preside over the longest faculty contract fight in PASSHE history. This “Florida Connection” has helped usher in an approach to public higher education that favors austerity, privatization, and anti-unionism. Unlike every previous Chancellor search, this time around the Board of Governors decided to pass a new policy that required members of the chancellor search committee to sign confidentiality agreements. According to the new policy, passed unanimously on January 11, 2013,
Preserving confidentiality in the search for a Chancellor is essential to recruiting and retaining the most qualified candidates. All applications and deliberations about individual applications shall remain wholly confidential until the appointment of a new Chancellor is publicly announced. Each member of the search committee must agree to maintain this confidentiality. The Chancellor Search Committee Chair may at his or her sole discretion remove from the committee who violates confidentiality.
PASSHE’s new policy, ensured that the public, faculty, students, parents, and citizens of the Commonwealth would be denied access to deliberations and a thorough vetting of prospective candidates. After the white smoke rose from the Dixon Center on Wednesday, August 7, PASSHE issued a statement on its webpage introducing Frank Brogan as the next chancellor and explaining the Board’s decision.
“The chancellor search focused on recruiting an “experienced leader who, from day one, can guide the System through the rapidly changing higher education landscape,” Mr. Pichini said. “We were looking for a strong administrator and a transformational leader who will collaborate with traditional and non-traditional stakeholders representing divergent views on what is best for our students and their families.
“Frank Brogan will be that leader.” Mr. Pichini continued. “He has had an impressive record of success throughout his career. He understands the many complexities and challenges facing public higher education and the vital role public universities play both in preparing students for a lifetime of their own success and in ensuring the economic vitality of the state. We are excited about him becoming our next chancellor.”
PASSHE’s official statement, however, serves more as a public relations press release than an in-depth look at who Frank Brogan is and what kind of policy approaches he will bring to Pennsylvania. The more you reread Pichini’s words, the more hollow they ring. How did the Board understand what this “rapidly changing higher education landscape,” is? What exactly constitutes a “strong administrator” and a “transformational leader?” Who are these “traditonal” and “non-traditional” stakeholders? And when Pichini says Brogan has “an impressive record of success throughout his career,” we should pause and ask “success at what?” One can “succeed” in ensuring all students have access to affordable, public education; but, one can also “succeed” in wresting control of education away from educators and handing it over to corporate profiteers, right? The fact is that students, faculty, staff, parents, and Pennsylvanians deserve better than a closed door, Papal conclave-esque process of decision-making. And yet, here we are. Given that all the “traditional and non-traditional stakeholders” have been prevented from vetting any of the Board’s hand-selected candidates, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. If you read any of the media coverage last week, you probably know these basics:
Frank Brogan is currently the Chancellor of the State University System of Florida
Before that he was the President of Florida Atlantic University
Before that he was Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s Lieutenant Governor
Before that he was Florida’s Commissioner of Education
Before that he was a school teacher, principal, and administrator
You might have also enjoyed the “Brogan Love” making it into the reporting: “Frank T. Brogan was the first member of his family to go to college. He didn’t blow the opportunity,” reported the Morning Call. “Brogan was a consensus builder who rallied support for the universities and persuaded lawmakers to restore $300 million in reserve funds and increase state support by 6 percent for 2013-14 after years of cuts,” Tom Auxter, President of the United Faculty of Florida, told Pittsburgh’s TribLive. ” [correction 8/15/2013 1:50pm: Pittsburgh TribLive incorrectly identified Tom Auxter as the President of UFF. Auxter is the President of the University of Florida chapter of UFF. I apologize for repeating the error]. ”Experienced leader. Visionary. Knowledgeable in dealing with government types. A passion for education. Financially creative. Unquestionable integrity…The board decided … that Frank Brogan … filled that bill,” led the Patriot-News. Most of the reporting, however, fairly accurately reflected PASSHE’s press release. The fact remains that Frank Brogan is a relative unknown for Pennsylvanians. And that should be at the very least concerning given the assault on public, higher education carried out by Gov. Tom Corbett since 2011. So, who is this guy? And, more importantly, what do we know about the kind of “transformation” he’s got packed in those bags of his?
Key Player in Bringing Vouchers and Charters to Public Education
Long before Brogan became involved with higher education administration, he was one of the strongest proponents of vouchers and privatizing public education – a fact, we should note, that does not appear on his Wikipedia page. In 1995, Brogan was one of the 12 founding members of the Education Leaders Council (ELC). The conservative leaning Washington Times reported at the time that the ELC had an explicit conservative, pro-privatization agenda:
A dozen top state education officials today will announce the formation of an organization oriented toward local control of schools, rigorous academic standards, and parents’ right to choose the schools their children attend. Six state school chiefs and six state school board members form the nucleus of the Education Leaders Council, a network of largely conservative school leaders who promise to abandon “the status quo and the Washington-always-knows-what’s-best philosophy of education reform.” Formation of the council, which will be based in Washington and at least temporarily affiliated with the Center for Education Reform, signals a crack in the liberal education lobby that education analysts say is “a delayed reaction” to the 1994 elections that gave Republicans control of Congress. Two of the state school chiefs spinning off into a new organization have withdrawn from the 87-year-old Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) because it spends their money to lobby against programs they favor. Others may follow suit.
The ELC’s roots as an outgrowth of the pro-privatization, anti-union Center for Education Reform marked a calculated strategy by pro-corporate conservatives to launch an offensive against the American system of public schools with elected officials in the spotlight of a new organization. The ELC seems to have been spawned at a July 29-30 meeting of conservative education administrators at the 1995 National Governors Conference (now the National Governors Association, who were responsible for authoring the “Common Core” for the nation’s public schools). A Center for Education Reform press release dated July 29, 1995, describes the meeting as follows:
Education officials from at least five states will hold a private meeting at this weekend’s National Governors’ Conference to discuss what options are available to them in achieving such education reform measures as standards and assessments, school finance, charter schools and to increase local control.
In that same press release, founder and president of the Center for Education Reform, Jeanne Allen, described the reason for the meeting as follows:
Some of the issues that are most important to these officials – and to parents in their states – are taboo among education special-interest lobbies…You can’t discuss choice, or charter schools, or even standards, without setting off alarms and inviting heavily funded, and, frankly, some heavy-handed attacks from education unions, lobbies, associations.
Allen contemptuously calls the collection of education unions, lobbies, and associations “the blob.” Frank Brogan was not merely a member of the ELC, he served for years as the ELC’s Chair. During his tenure as ELC Chair, Brogan was also serving as the Florida Commissioner of Education and would often advocate for vouchers and school privatization using both titles – without a hint of a possible conflict of interest. His testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce concerning H.R. 328, “The Dollars to the Classroom Act,” could have been lifted right out to today’s right-wing dominated language about “School Choice”:
We at the State and local level feel the crushing burden caused by too many Federal regulations, procedures, and mandates. Florida spends millions of dollars every year to administer inflexible, categorical Federal programs that divert precious dollars away from the classroom and fulfilling our most important purpose, improving student achievement … … In practice most Federal education programs typify the misguided, one size fits all command and control approach that we in the States are abandoning. Most have the requisite focus on inputs like more regulation, increasing budgets, and fixed options and processes … … This approach goes against the growing tide of freedom and innovation currently sweeping the education landscape in our States. We at the State and local level are stressing standards, choice, enterprise and accountability and pushing authority and control of decisions and budgets to the school level. Through innovations like charter schools we are giving public schools true autonomy with respect to budgeting, curriculum and personnel and meaningful choices to parents in exchange for accountability for results. Money alone will not solve the problems of education, We must be smarter about how we spend it … … States can learn from the success and mistakes of others, as we’ve done with the ELC, with the freedom to emulate such programs as models and/or discard those that are ineffective. Nothing typifies this better than the growing charter school movement. I’m proud to say that Florida is one of the fastest growing States in the Nation in terms of the number of public charter schools approved and in operation … … This innovative reform is succeeding because charter schools are able to focus on academic achievement. They are not burdened with unnecessary regula our public schools. They are accountable, autonomous, and provide healthy competition by providing choices to parents and teachers.