“The March Through Institutions” - A Personal Case Study

I learned a great deal about the ways of the world when I performed some real investigative journalism that exposed a “bully” superintendent and the radical education agenda she sold like snake oil.

Dr. Suzanne Freeman was probably not used to a reporter standing up to her or challenging the alleged benefits of “The Pike Road Way.”

For a while now, I’ve wanted to share details and lessons from the most comprehensive and intense “investigative journalism” I’ve ever performed.

Eight years ago, as a freelance journalist, I spent months investigating and then reporting on very disturbing (to me) allegations involving a new school system in Pike Road, Alabama (where our family lived at the time).

Published by the monthly conservative newspaper The Alabama Gazette, my series of articles focussed on the school system’s superintendent, Dr. Suzanne Freeman, who was also the school’s first principal. The articles itemized allegations that Freeman (and her top assistants) bullied staffers and spearheaded efforts to introduce a radical or “ultra-woke” education program.

In my view, my reporting and experiences identified myriad toxic trends that define today’s America. 

For example, from this case study, I see clear evidence of the end result of a “march through the institutions” (in this case, education).

I see the authoritarian and intimidating tactics employed by leaders who are passionate “true believers” and how certain programs, once implemented, can polarize an entire community and leave dissenters miserable, afraid to speak out and often fired.

In short, take-aways from my expose’ on “Pike Road Schools” mirrored the same global trends I’ve written about for two years on Substack.

Other observations that still resonate:

• Charismatic leaders proselytizing for radical reforms often find a receptive audience and use vague but appealing propaganda to expand their base of followers, who often take on characteristics of a cult.

• These leaders, who are threatened by dissidents/non-believers, routinely employ bullying and unethical tactics to eliminate threats to their continued control.

• Programs and agendas promulgated by these officials would not be possible absent the support of powerful or influential political leaders and are often funded by corporate interests.

• Also, harmful reforms championed by these “leaders” would probably be impossible to achieve absent an AWOL “watchdog press,” which excels in promoting initiatives which re-make society. 

CliffsNotes' version of my series of articles:

As noted, the newly-formed school system (which started with one K-8 school) was led by a superintendent/principal named Suzanne Freeman. Freeman, as I alone reported in Montgomery County, had been terminated from her previous superintendent’s position, for polarizing members of her previous town and school system and terrorizing, bullying and firing too many faculty members and principals. 

When the Trussville School System announced Freeman’s termination, the school board did so at a special board meeting held at the high school gymnasium attended by at least 500 interested parents. When the board president announced the decision, the entire gym broke out into a loud ovation.

Note: Freeman, who led a school system of only 4,200 students, was making a salary of $202,000 when she was terminated and received a $600,000 (!) buyout of her contract.

This was the education leader the Town of Pike Road, a rapidly-growing suburb of Montgomery, hired to be the consultant to start their new school system and later hired as its first superintendent.

The fact Freeman had been terminated from her previous position - a decision that was extremely popular in Trussville and was never reported by the press in Montgomery and Pike Road - still boggles my mind. 

(Apparently, no citizen or Pike Road official in Montgomery County read the al.com article linked above. Or, if they did, they must have thought the reasons for Freeman’s termination represented a trivial chapter in any “vetting process” of superintendent candidates.)

Freeman was (once) a rock star in the K-12 education establishment

Dr. Freeman, I should note, was once viewed as an exemplary standout of the K-12 education establishment as, a few years before she was fired, she’d been named Alabama’s “Superintendent of the Year” and was a finalist for national Superintendent of the Year.

I quickly deduced that Freeman’s career benefitted from the support of powerful education and political leaders.  

For example, she got her start in K-12 education as a teacher in Opelika and Auburn, Alabama and became an assistant superintendent under Dr. Ed Richardson. Richardson later become superintendent of Education for the State of Alabama and president of Auburn University. 

The Mayor of Pike Road who hired Freeman (probably at the recommendation of Dr. Richardson) is a lobbyist and director of Alabama’s Higher Education Partnership.

In the last several years, I’ve noted the disproportionate percentage of global leaders who were previously identified and trained (or groomed) by organizations like the World Economic Forum and myriad think tanks.

The same-type networks and organizations exist in education. For example, Freeman was a long-time participant of a group of state education leaders and superintendents funded by Bell South Telephone (later acquired by AT&T). In my opinion, radical reformers use such organizations to insert their members and alumni into positions of power and then gradually - or abruptly - implement their “reforms.”

Another key to implementing change is implementing reforms in “governance.” As I learned in my research, In K-12 education, reformers seek to have local school board members - who end up being sycophants who rubber-stamp policies - appointed by enlightened or crusading superintendents  

Follow the mentors (or cult leaders) …

Freeman was - and probably still is - the State’s leading champion of education reforms pushed by a deceased but highly influential education reformer named Phil Schlechty.

The “Schlechty Method” espoused and - and fully implemented by Freeman in Pike Road - championed “transformational” … “project based education,” a litany of reforms that jettisoned practically every component of traditional K-12 education. 

(Many readers are no doubt  familiar with the “Common Core” education reforms that began to be pushed in the 1980s. I view the Schlechty model as, perhaps, the most extreme variation of these new “transformational” education ideas). 

For many years, Freeman used tax-payer money to attend numerous seminars of the Schlecthy organization (funded, in part by Bell South) and also worked as a “trainer” for this organization.

Education “re-imagined” by Schlechty and Freeman created a whole new vocabulary to describe the field of education. 

For example, students were now “learners;” teachers were “lead learners,” “project designers” or “interest facilitators.” Students were divided not by grade levels but by “communities.” 

Tests, grades, GPAs and homework were abolished. 

Learners “mastered content” (or took “ownership” of their learning) at their own pace and were assigned color codes (green, yellow and red) when the “lead learner” deemed that the learners had mastered the subject material.

“Lead learners” and “learners” did not use text books (the school had no library with books), but learned material from projects created by adult learners (in “collaboration” with the learners and lead learners).

As I learned, “collaboration” is a powerful buzzword of these reformers, who stressed that great companies now produced amazing results via teams of employees collaborating with one another.

A conspicuous selling point for the program was the belief students have to learn the way the “real world” now functions.

“Engagement” is another education buzzword as parents and “stake-holders” are told that learners won’t learn unless the material engages them.

‘Project-based learning’

(For example, instead of teaching history, math or science in a traditional manner, the lead learners might have learned that several “learners” in their “community” had a great interest in, say, collecting baseball cards. Projects would be created that incorporated math and history lessons into an interest in baseball or baseball cards.)

Learners basically teach themselves in groups of four while producing their project(s).

While project-based learning has probably always existed (and might be a good change of pace from the normal education routine), the Schlechty method took this concept to an entirely different level. To show mastery, the group of four students (learners) had to come up with their own project (maybe a skit, a poster board presentation or a computer game) to show mastery of content. 

For skeptics like myself, a class in human nature would have revealed that one bright and engaged student was probably going to perform 90 percent of the work on the project … while the other learners, not as fully engaged, played video games on their school-supplied laptops.

The challenge for the teachers (lead learners) was coming up with scores of projects throughout the year that would actually engage every student, which proved to be impossible in execution.

Pike Road’s first K-8 school had no honor societies, A-B honor rolls or any assessment that might differentiate students through merit and hard work.

Every learner was given a laptop computer, which I was later told by whistleblowers were routinely used by students to play video games, watch social media or even access pornography during school.

Criticisms of superintendent’s management skills …

While Dr. Freeman excelled at implementing the Schletzchy Method, which she dubbed “The Pike Road Way,” she was inept as a manager, logistical planner and steward of taxpayer dollars, according to many sources I uncovered.

For example, as a consultant before being hired as superintendent, she had great input into the architectural designs of the new school.

From Day 1, the school was far too small for the number of students who enrolled, which resulted in dozens of portable trailers having to be purchased as classrooms the second semester.

Before the portable classrooms were installed, students (learners) routinely had classroom sessions in hallways, the cafeteria and under stairwells.

As documented in my expose, discipline problems were rampant and unruly students often wandered throughout the school at their own leisure.

Classrooms, which weren’t called classrooms, were furnished like few other schools in America. Instead of rows of desks and tables, the students sat on stools, collaborated on circular tables and chilled out in the hall on bean bag chairs.

While perhaps half of the text in my articles dealt with the Schletzchy Method of “Learning” (“The Pike Road Way”), the other half of my article itemized allegations of bullying used by Freeman and her top administrators to squash dissent and run-off non-believers.

This “full-disclosure” fact complicated my journalism efforts …

Here, I should note one oddity of this story - namely, my wife and mother-in-law, both educators, were hired by Freeman to teach in the first year of this avant guard school system.

To jump to the denouement of this surreal story, both my wife and mother-in-law were fired after the first year of “The Pike Road Way” … and after I had written a scathing series of articles attempting to expose what was really happening at Pike Road Schools.

My wife, who taught in the 8th grade “community,” was widely viewed as the chief whistleblower and main malcontent responsible for the explosive series of articles that her husband wrote.

However, this perception is not true. It is true, almost every day, my wife would come home from school, near tears, and share maddening examples of the chaos and bullying she, other teachers and many students were enduring.

But my wife - who was very popular with her students - actually didn’t want me, a freelance journalist, to expose any of this as this would make her working life even more uncomfortable.

Alas, I decided some non-coward journalist needed to tell this story. 

I can pinpoint the moment I said, “Damn the torpedoes, I’m going to perform some real journalism.” One day my wife, like a teacher suffering battle fatigue from a war zone, returned from the font lines and showed me a heart-breaking, 4-page letter one of Carrie’s students had given to her.

The letter documented how this student - and many others - hated the way they were being taught at Pike Road School. The Alabama Gazette, to its credit, later published this letter. One excerpt: “The only thing this school has given us is chaos.”

The student simply wanted one adult to do something … and for the public outside of the school to be aware of how many students actually viewed the “Pike Road Way” and the school’s superintendent/principal.

A literal moment of truth for your’s truly …

In retrospect, this letter was a character litmus test for myself, a journalist who was supposed to tell true stories and someone who works in a profession where practitioners are not supposed to be afraid to challenge powerful authority figures.

Consequences be damned, I decided to go ahead and tell the story … and my wife, with large gulps of trepidation, granted me her permission to do just this (a decision which took far more courage given her job and who I would be trying to expose - her boss).

School, it’s been said, is where we learn invaluable life lessons. Well, my wife and I definitely learned many hard lessons about Pike Road School - and “the real world” - in the weeks that were to follow.

Part 2 to come …

***

Note: If this link works on your computer, this pdf document shows the first several pages of my Pike Road Schools expose in The Alabama Gazette. For some reason, the stories are no longer archived at The Alabama Gazette website. I was told the Internet traffic the stories produced was more than 10-times larger than any story the paper had ever published. If the link doesn’t work, readers can Google “Pike Road Way Dr. Suzanne Freeman Wetumpka Gazette 2016” and the story might show up.

(FWIW, I received no payment for the months I worked on this series of stories. In fact, I lost money as I had to pay more than $200 from my own pocket when I filed "Freedom of Information Requests” to get documents the School System didn’t want to give me. I didn’t get everything I requested.)

Writer gratuities via Ko-Fi.