AJ Crabill Framework: Unproven, Unaccountable, Undemocratic
In 2022, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) made significant changes to school Board procedures and committed to specific test score improvements. These efforts were led by a consultant named Airick Journey (AJ) Crabill, in his role as Director of Governance for the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS). Crabill’s framework is known as “Student Outcomes Focused Governance” (SOFG).
The framework and Crabill himself are problematic for a number of reasons. They are:
Uncanny. The language of the framework’s training materials, repeated in school board meetings and policy statements, is a little strange. Familiarity with the language can help to recognize the influence of the framework.
Unproven. There is no readily available peer reviewed evidence that this framework has brought about the improvements it promises. Many school districts across the country have adopted the framework only in the past few years.
Unqualified. AJ Crabill does not appear to hold a college degree of any kind. His experience could be described as that of an entrepreneur/management guru with a talent for gaining the trust of powerful individuals in the education sector.
Undercover. The stated goals of the framework are very similar to past federal education programs that prioritized high stakes testing. But as a training program offered by an established, but not well known, education nonprofit the framework flies under the radar. CGCS is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which has pushed for charter schools in the past.
Unrealistic. As a result of Crabill’s guidance and training the SF Board of Education and Superintendent agreed to aspirational test score goals that are not likely to be met. This is self-sabotage.
Unaccountable. It’s not likely that Crabill or CGCS will be held accountable when the aspirational test score goals aren’t met. It is entirely possible that test scores will be used to justify closing “low performing schools” and firing “low performing teachers”.
Undemocratic. The governance model sharply limits input from the public and hands over significant aspects of elected school board members’ authority on budgets and policy to the superintendent.
The text below will address each of the items above in more detail. Unanswered questions remain:
How did SFUSD’s engagement with Crabill come about and who was involved?
How much is SFUSD paying Crabill for his training and advisory role?
Are the payments going to the Council of Great City Schools or to the Effective School Boards Initiative or to Crabill himself?
Uncanny
“School systems don’t exist for adult outcomes; they exist to improve student outcomes” What does this mean?
It helps to keep in mind that student outcomes = improved test scores. Adult outcomes are anything and everything else.
While retention of effective teachers may lead to higher literacy and numeracy, teacher retention is an adult outcome, not a student outcome.
Much of the language used in the framework repeatedly references distinctions between adults and children. At times scolding adults (parents, school board members, administrators) for selfishly and heartlessly focusing on their own priorities (anything that is not test scores) as opposed to those of children (improved test scores). In other cases the roles are reversed, with parents and school board members becoming children whose behavior needs to be controlled and modified: “student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change.”
These primary sources are linked from SFUSD presentations and press releases that restate and rephrase their contents: Student Outcomes Focused Governance (note the copyright statement at the bottom of each page) and what seems to be a chapter from Crabill’s book, published in 2023.
Unproven
With all of its focus on student outcomes one would think the Crabill/CGCS framework could point to tangible, specific results of using this approach in other school districts.
A “short explainer” document attached to the June 28, 2022 Board meeting agenda and a June 30, 2022 press release tells of some other districts:
The Council [of Great City Schools] has worked with districts in other large cities such as Long Beach, Seattle, Houston, and Atlanta to implement this approach.
An online search for these cities or school districts and keywords like “guardrails”, “governance”, “crabill” doesn’t turn up much. But the few links seem to show these districts have adopted the framework only very recently: an Atlanta Public Schools Board retreat in May 2021 and a Buffalo School Board retreat in March 2023.
There is a link to a Houston Independent School District document called “Vision, Beliefs, Goals and Constraints” from around 2020. Maybe an earlier iteration of “Vision, Values, Goals and Guardrails”, or a way to avoid copyright issues. The document states the goals are adopted in “accordance with the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) Lone Star Governance continuous improvement model”.
This Houston Chronicle article from May 17, 2023 says the state of Texas is taking over the district. This does not seem like a good outcome. Crabill is deeply involved:
In addition to the TEA presentation, trustees will meet per usual in closed session to deliberate personnel and legal matters. One such item is a proposal by AJ Crabill, former deputy commissioner of governance at TEA, to "act as transition manager for Texas Education Agency appointment of Board of Managers," according to the agenda.
In late 2019, as the state first moved to take over the Houstaon district, Crabill was working as a special advisor to TEA Commissioner Mike Morath. As a top representative for the agency, Crabill attended and spoke to concerned community members that fall in Houston at crowded meetings that mirrored those held in March.
In 2020, the TEA appointed Crabill to work as a conservator at DeSoto ISD near Dallas, according to that district. He also currently serves as a Lone Star Governance coach for the TEA.
Other links related to these cities show local parents and school activists expressing alarm and confusion: Atlanta public schools stakeholders are concerned guardrails may be barriers for equity. From Seattle: Who is AJ Crabill and why should you care?
Unqualified
AJ Crabill does not have a college degree. This fact seems to be unchallenged. With so many experts who have earned Masters and Doctorate degrees in the field of education, it seems odd that school districts across the country are adopting Crabill’s framework.
Born Airick Leonard West in 1979, he changed his legal name to Airick Journey Crabill in 2016. West/Crabill is Black and was raised in foster care. Crabill is the last name of his foster parents.
One of his first appearances in the news is an August 21, 2006 article in the Kansas City Star by Mara Rose Williams. The article describes a project to have education students at the University of Missouri Kansas City live in a low income neighborhood called Ivanhoe.
UMKC students are being embedded in this center-city neighborhood with the hope they will redirect the social and academic paths of some children. …
Airick West, a 27-year-old liberal arts student at UMKC who lives in Ivanhoe, conceived the project.
West then ran for a seat on the Kansas City, MO school board in 2008 and won.
Kansas City was only provisionally accredited after several years of poor test scores, and West was a key supporter of then-Superintendent John Covington's divisive decisions to close more than half the district's campuses, cut one-third of the workforce and push for more charters in what The New York Times called "one of the most aggressive turnaround efforts in the nation." …
Then in August 2011, Covington resigned abruptly to the shock of several community leaders, who quickly urged West to resign, convinced he "had broken Covington's patience," …
Covington later denied West was a factor in his resignation but KC public schools lost accreditation in 2012 in part due to his departure. West resigned as well, then came back and was re-elected to the Board in 2012.
KC schools regained provisional accreditation in 2014. This is one success that West/Crabill could point to, but it appears some of the data used to regain accreditation was falsified:
Kansas City Public Schools, under previous leadership, falsified student attendance records for three years, resulting in undeserved higher state performance scores. Now, officials say, that misrepresentation could cost the district some money.
Superintendent Mark Bedell told The Star on Tuesday that the records were manipulated from 2013 to 2016, before he was hired. …
A former KCPS employee had reported to the state that district employees, in an effort to achieve full accreditation scores, manipulated student attendance records.
An August 12, 2013 press release from KCPS published in Targeted News Service is one of the first mentions of West’s involvement with CGCS:
Airick Leonard West, chair of Board of Directors of the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS), has been elected to Council of the Great City Schools national executive committee.
The new executive committee role is perfectly suited to West's talents according to Michael Casserly, executive director of the council.
Michael Casserly served as Executive Director of CGCS from 1992 to 2021. He wrote the foreword for Crabill’s book “Great on their Behalf” published in 2023.
Crabill’s LinkedIn profile lists his role in the CGCS as Governance Advisor from 2014 to 2020 and Director of Governance from 2020 to the present.
Airick West is listed as Treasurer of the Missouri Democratic Party in 2011-12 and 2013-14. This info doesn’t seem to show up in articles or profiles about him.
In 2014, West was fined $400 (of a $3,100 judgment) by the Missouri Ethics Commission for improperly reporting donations to his own Airick Leonard West PAC and improperly labeling the funding source on postcards as part of a campaign to elect other members of the KC school board.
In 2016 West announced he was not running for reelection on the Kansas City school board. Shortly thereafter, he was appointed as Deputy Director of Governance of the Texas Education Agency, a newly created position.
Three months after his swearing in, Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced his picks Thursday for several new deputy commissioner positions he created as part of a sweeping reorganization of the Texas Education Agency.
Three of the five hires have extensive charter school experience and only two appear to have solid Texas ties — something teacher groups and traditional public schools were quick to point out.
Mike Morath, like West an entrepreneur and former school board member, was appointed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in late 2015.
Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday appointed Dallas Independent School District Trustee Mike Morath as the state's next education commissioner, describing him as "a proven education reformer."
Morath, chairman of Morath Investments, has served on the Dallas school board since 2011. A vocal school-choice proponent, he pushed for a controversial — and, for now, scrapped — “home rule” policy that would have allowed the Dallas school district to escape state control.
2016 is the year Airick Leonard West changed his name to Airick Journey Crabill.
Undercover
In her book “Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools” author Diane Ravitch writes about “high stakes testing” regimes: standardized testing programs used to evaluate schools and teachers. Results of these tests are then used to close “low performing schools” and fire “low performing teachers”.
Charter schools then replace the closed public schools. This is all done in the name of helping disadvantaged students, but the “carrot and stick” testing regimes have not resulted in significantly improved test scores for target populations, school districts or states as a whole.
Ravitch details how grassroots resistance from parents, teachers and experts has pushed back against high stakes testing programs’ destructive effects. Starting with George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind”, subsequent Presidents’ programs - Obama’s “Race to the Top” and “Every Student Succeeds Act” implemented under the Trump administration - reintroduced similar testing approaches with different names.
The CGCS/Crabill framework appears to be another high stakes testing program. But because it’s not a federal government initiative, it can fly under the radar and catch public education activists by surprise. CGCS is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, an organization that has lobbied for federal testing programs and charter school expansion.
Gates Foundation moves to implement new strategy to support 'networks for school improvement'
Speaking to educators at the annual conference of the Council of Great City Schools in Cleveland last fall, Gates said that 60 percent of an estimated $1.7 billion his foundation plans to spend on K-12 education over the next five years will go to support these networks, along with investing in curricula and professional development.
The CGCS, founded in 1956, and formally incorporated in 1961 as the Research Council of the Great Cities Program for School Improvement, does not appear to have a Wikipedia entry.
Unrealistic
Some elements of the framework are called “Vision, Values, Goals and Guardrails” (VVGGs). This is where test score improvement goals are specified. “...goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, results-focused, and time-bound (SMART)”
The San Francisco Board of Education agreed to some ambitious 5 year Goals in October 2022
Superintendent Matt Wayne then determined some ambitious 1 year “interim” goals.
The specific improvement goals were included in the 2023-24 Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) document that SFUSD provides each year to the state of CA:
While the Board approves the Vision, Values, Goals, and Guardrails (VVGG), the superintendent determines interim goals and guardrails to measure progress toward the goals and guardrails. The Board does not approve the interim goals and guardrails. [2023-24 LCAP 1st reading, page 12]
If these were 1 year goals at a business, management would want to have a lot of confidence in being able to achieve them before agreeing to them in writing.
Unaccountable
Who will be held accountable when SFUSD does not meet these goals?
It’s not likely to be AJ Crabill or CGCS, even though their framework seems to be what encouraged the Superintendent and Board to adopt very specific test score improvements and focus on them almost exclusively.
Will it be the Superintendent? Or will the Superintendent hold “low performing” school sites and teachers accountable?
Will it be the billionaire-funded SF Parents group whose Director took to the pages of a local publication and multiple public comments to scold the Board for not “spending 50% of meeting time on student outcomes”, a framework directive?
Will it be the Board Commissioners who were responsible for introducing and adopting the Crabill/CGCS framework?
To answer the accountability question it might be useful to look at how we (SFUSD) got here:
On Feb 15, 2022 an unprecedented School Board Recall election ousted three progressive POC School Board Commissioners: Alison Collins, Gabriela Lopez and Faauga Moliga. The recall campaign spent over $2 million, including $400,000 from pro-charter billionaire Arthur Rock. The “no recall” campaign raised about $80,000 total.
On March 11, 2022 Mayor London Breed, who supported the recall and whose election campaign was funded by a number of local billionaires, appointed three new Commissioners to fill the open seats.
On March 22, 2022, the next scheduled School Board meeting, Commissioner Jenny Lam, appointed by Mayor Breed in 2019, became President of the Board. The Mayor-appointed Commissioners now held a majority of the 7 member board.
On April 5, 2022 the Board held a special meeting in a high school meeting room, not in the regular Board meeting room in the school administration building. The meeting was open to the public but virtual access was not available. The usual video recording of board meetings was not posted. Attendees besides the Board were not listed. This was the only item on the agenda:
The Board will meet and engage in a facilitated discussion regarding effective school board governance. Specifically, the Board will receive a presentation on and engage in discussion regarding a governance model focused on student outcomes.
On May 12, 2022 Board President Lam announced the selection of Dr. Matt Wayne as the new Superintendent.
On June 28, 2022 as part of the last Board meeting of the fiscal year, Lam introduced a resolution to suspend all standing committees of the Board. In a June 30 press release Lam also announced a new ad-hoc governance committee.
Board commissioners have committed to participate in training with the Council of the Great City Schools on effective governance. The governance team, consisting of the Board and incoming Superintendent Matt Wayne, began their training in May and is implementing a long-term plan to improve their practice.
An attached document spells out the path forward:
To ensure that we see these improvements through to fruition on behalf of our students, we will work closely with Superintendent Wayne and his senior staff to implement the practices above and will share a two-year implementation timeline. In addition, governance coaches from the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) will guide us for the next two years.
On September 6, 2022 the Board adopted sweeping changes to its own operating rules and procedures “designed to focus more of its time on student outcomes.” Including prohibiting Board members from contacting administrative staff directly to answer questions from the public and introducing their own resolutions (now reserved only for the Superintendent).
On October 25, 2022 the Board approved “Goals and Guardrails” including the specific test score improvements listed above for the next 5 years and 1 year.
On November 8, 2022 San Francisco voters elected two of the three Commissioners the Mayor appointed in February 2022 to full terms. The third appointed Commissioner, Ann Hsu, lost her race likely because of her comments stating Black and Latinx parents “don’t value education”. Candidate Alida Fisher edged out Hsu for her spot on the Board, bringing the balance of power (4 of 7) back to non-appointed, progressive Commissioners.
Summing up: after a recall removed three progressive members of the SF Board of Education, replacement Commissioners appointed by the Mayor moved quickly to adopt the Crabill/SOFG framework. In the span of 9 months, before the next election could change control of the Board, they committed the district to unrealistic test score goals and made sweeping changes to how the Board operates, undermining the power of elected Commissioners and handing it over to the Superintendent.
Undemocratic
“Student outcomes don’t change until adult behaviors change” is one of the Crabill/CGCS frameworks’ primary mantras. What does this mean? In practice this means placing the blame squarely on the Board of Education for low test scores by focusing on the conduct of School Board Members as if they were unruly children.
It’s a bullying tactic, infantilizing Board members who are fully grown adults that have careers and got their seats by winning hard fought election campaigns. This framing is used to justify written policy changes (“governance”) that sharply curtail Board members’ power and control even as they are held increasingly responsible for “outcomes”.
An interesting article in the Texas Observer details the experience and reactions of participants in a recent Crabill-led training session:
In what seemed like a 16-hour indoctrination session, TEA’s “Lone Star Governance” program trainers had the 230 applicants who attended repeat self-flagellating mantras about their lack of integrity and lack of concern for student success to get them ready for what they called the “Lone Star Governance mindset.” …
But in an apparent dissolution of local oversight, the “Lone Star Governance” creator and trainer A.J. Crabill told potential board members at the training, “The vast majority of the financial decisions, once the board adopts the budget, have already been made by the administration. … Once the board delegates, it’s done.”
It’s important to remember that Board of Education members are democratically elected. They have a responsibility to represent the public and to perform oversight over the expenditure of significant amounts of tax dollars. The Crabill framework seems designed to undermine the ability of school Boards to perform these duties.