So if you read the actual minutes of the January 10th McMinn County school board meeting, you see that the actual issue is the fact that the county started using a new publisher for their english language arts materials starting in 2020 that wasn't properly vetted because of covid, and that, since its adoption into the school system's curricula, has had repeated issues related to the normalization of sexuality and grooming reported by the teachers in the school system.
Board member Mike Cochran states, "You go all the way back to first grade, second grade and they are reading books that have a picture of a naked man riding a bull. It’s not vulgar, it’s something you would see in an art gallery, but it’s unnecessary. So, teachers have gone back and put tape over the guys butts so the kids aren’t exposed to it. So, my problem is, it looks like the entire curriculum is developed to normalize sexuality, normalize nudity and normalize vulgar language. If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it."
It is stated in the minutes and in the Foundational Literary Skills Plan for McMinn County that the company behind McMinn County's ELA curriculum is called "LearnZillion".
The CEO and president of LearnZillion is an Eric Westendorf, and the board of directors is comprised of Pete Moran, Mark Jacobsen, Maura Marino, and Alix Guerrier. Most if not all of these people live in Washington DC currently, and a few appear to have spent some time living in Indonesia.
Pete currently focuses on Digital Health (Augmedix, Athos, RayVio, and Stride Health) and Tech-Enabled Education (LearnZillion). Over the past 18 years, he led DCM Ventures into new sectors including interactive Gaming (Trion Worlds), altering Consumer Experience (FreedomPop), and a diverse array of Enabling Technology including novel energy storage solutions (Enovix), companies focused on improving energy efficiency via LED lighting (Bridgelux, acquired by China Electric Corp (CEC)), and next-gen semiconductors (Analogix, acquired by Shanhai Capital). Pete previously led many of DCM Venture’s investments including NxEdge (acquired by Trive Capital), SMIC (NYSE: SMI), SigmaTel (Nasdaq: SGTL) and Slice (acquired by Rakuten). He also serves on the Boards of El Camino Hospital and the Stanford School of Engineering.
"Mark was a co-founder of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures in 2005. Mark is currently a board member of AMEE, Betabrand, CollabNet, Planet Labs, Fast.ly, LocalDirt, LearnZillion, OpenSignal, O’Reilly Media, Path Intelligence and SeeClickFix."
Maura Marino is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Education Forward DC. Prior to launching Education Forward DC in July 2016, Maura served as the Managing Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund and Lead Teacher at East Palo Alto High School. In addition to The Equity Lab, Maura sits on the board of directors for DC Prep and Ingenuity Prep Public Charter Schools.
The teachers that you use in your instructional videos: How do you find them?
It’s not crowd-sourced; it’s from what we call our “education dream team.” We went out and recruited very good teachers from around the country. We had about 1,000 applicants, and we accepted about 10% of them. These are teachers who teach math and English. They applied last spring and at the beginning of the summer. We brought them all to Atlanta, with the help of the Gates Foundation, where we gave them some technology and sent them off so that over the course of the summer they could create video lessons. We paid them $100 a lesson. Many of them created 20 lessons, so they got $2,000.
They even have their own gofundme-like non-profit grant-soliciting platform.
About DonorsChoose
DonorsChoose is the leading way to give to public schools. Since 2000, more than 5 million people and partners have contributed $1.2 billion to support 2.1 million teacher requests for classroom resources and experiences. As the most trusted crowdfunding platform for teachers, donors, and district administrators alike, DonorsChoose vets each request, ships the funded resources directly to the classroom, and provides thank yous and reporting to donors and school leaders
So what you have here is a board of directors comprised entirely of people who are also in charge of NGOs that dole out education grants (to themselves), promote critical race theory (equity), and receive massive donations from venture capitalists, left wing donors, and themselves.
The Tennessee state textbook review board initially gave LearnZillion a failing grade, but this was revised to include them as an approved curricula provider on January 30th, 2020, as can be seen on the documents tiitled "Summary of Publishers on ELA Adoption List" and "Section E Adoption List".
So if you read the actual minutes of the January 10th McMinn County school board meeting, you see that the actual issue is the fact that the county started using a new publisher for their english language arts materials starting in 2020 that wasn't properly vetted because of covid, and that, since its adoption into the school system's curricula, has had repeated issues related to the normalization of sexuality and grooming reported by the teachers in the school system.
Board member Mike Cochran states, "You go all the way back to first grade, second grade and they are reading books that have a picture of a naked man riding a bull. It’s not vulgar, it’s something you would see in an art gallery, but it’s unnecessary. So, teachers have gone back and put tape over the guys butts so the kids aren’t exposed to it. So, my problem is, it looks like the entire curriculum is developed to normalize sexuality, normalize nudity and normalize vulgar language. If I was trying to indoctrinate somebody’s kids, this is how I would do it."
Board meeting's minutes: https://5il.co/14r3a
It is stated in the minutes and in the Foundational Literary Skills Plan for McMinn County that the company behind McMinn County's ELA curriculum is called "LearnZillion".
https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/students/found_lit/McMinn%20County%20Approved%20FLSP.pdf
https://www.bizapedia.com/ct/learnzillion-inc.html
This company is a part of a massive grift.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130415006023/en/LearnZillion-Secures-7-Million-Series-Funding-Led
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-09-16-learnzillion-closes-13-million-round
The CEO and president of LearnZillion is an Eric Westendorf, and the board of directors is comprised of Pete Moran, Mark Jacobsen, Maura Marino, and Alix Guerrier. Most if not all of these people live in Washington DC currently, and a few appear to have spent some time living in Indonesia.
https://www.theequitylab.org/seeding-disruption-cohort-v/eric-westendorf
https://agln.aspeninstitute.org/profile/2722
https://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/profile/pete-moran/
https://www.crunchbase.com/person/mark-jacobsen
https://littlesis.org/person/113305-Mark_P_Jacobsen?relationships=donation_recipients
https://www.theequitylab.org/maura-marino
https://edforwarddc.org/mauramarino/
https://www.ingenuityprep.org/about/board/maura-marino/
https://www.raisedc.org/maura-marino
https://www.cof.org/person/alix-guerrier
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/alix-guerrier-were-not-teaching-tool-were-teacher-tool The classroom videos that they offer were paid for by the Gates Foundation...
https://www.globalgiving.org/learn/author/alix-guerrier/
https://www.wfmz.com/news/pr_newswire/pr_newswire_business/donorschoose-welcomes-alix-guerrier-as-chief-executive-officer/article_2bd999ee-8475-5b1a-bb3c-8094fa6ea8d7.html
They even have their own gofundme-like non-profit grant-soliciting platform.
So what you have here is a board of directors comprised entirely of people who are also in charge of NGOs that dole out education grants (to themselves), promote critical race theory (equity), and receive massive donations from venture capitalists, left wing donors, and themselves.
The Tennessee state textbook review board initially gave LearnZillion a failing grade, but this was revised to include them as an approved curricula provider on January 30th, 2020, as can be seen on the documents tiitled "Summary of Publishers on ELA Adoption List" and "Section E Adoption List".
https://www.tn.gov/education/textbook-services/textbook-reviews.html
So why was this sketchy vendor approved just one month after being given a failing grade by the textbook review board?