Corey has commented on the ambiguous nature of TNTP role and mission, and the ambiguity appear to be growing with this latest TNTP statement.

Are they a management consulting firm, or are they a policy advocacy organization? In either role they have right to make that statement, but I'd like to be clear which role its coming from.

If they're a consultant for the district they are essential being paid to help the district craft its bargaining position for negotiations with the UFT, and their role as part of the management negotiations effort should be clear.

If they're are an independent advocacy organization, its fine for them to advocate for a certain outcome for the negotiations, but they are not an independent advocacy organization if they do consulting work for the district.

But my sense is they are trying to have things both ways.

Rachel makes a great point - unfortunately the same question can (and should) be asked of most all prominent education policy organizations these days. They all like to have it both ways--"independent analysts" who produce results that conveniently mesh with the values their organization advocates, and the values of their funders.

TNTP as an organization clearly has an interest in NYC staffing issues. The Bloomberg administration has its own priorities for NYC staffing policy. These interests strongly overlap, thus we shouldn't be surprised TNTP was contracted to produce this report. Nor should we be surprised at its findings.

Irrespective of the right thing to do in this particular case, these sorts of conflicts of interest should cease to be tolerated by the education media and policymakers who should know better.

Doug

Rachel, Agreed - TNTP wants to play researcher, advocate, and arbitrator, and there are huge conflicts of interest there.

I'm thinking they're a cult, which is defined in some places as: "A group having a sacred ideology and a set of rites centering around their sacred symbols."

The ideology is clear: kill off public education and bust the unions.

The rites: Data collection and manipulation, followed by a massive PR campaign.

The sacred symbols: Anything at all that's put up in power point.

TNTP has a dog in the race. Check the list of people working for them just on the Teaching Fellows program in NYC (I put the list up on my blog.) They have been living off the concept that a (cheap) teacher can walk into a job while teachers with 20 years experience function as subs.