I just read online that Eli Broad, the Los Angeles billionaire, might buy the Los Angeles Times. Broad’s book was published this week. My first thought, speaking just as an author, was: “Some people will do anything to get a good review in their hometown paper.” http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/02/local/la-me-broad-20120503
My second thought, after a slight period of reflection (five minutes), was that it would be unfortunate if this comes to pass. Eli Broad is not shy about using his billions to advance his political agenda. I don’t know where he stands on most issues, but in education, he has been a force for distorted priorities that are harming American education. He has used his fortune to train a generation of school leaders devoted to imposing the business model onto education. Business values belong in the business office of the schools, but they don’t belong on the instructional side. Broad once told me quite frankly that he knows nothing about education, but he knows the importance of good management. I am not so sure that the graduates of his Superintendents Academy are good managers. Many have been run out of town after alienating the public. Of course, he prefers mayoral control, where the public can be ignored.
His acolytes are known for the closing and demolition of public schools in district after district. He has had a large hand in Detroit, which is now on the verge of total collapse and/or privatization. In Louisiana, a Broad-trained superintendent is leading the charge for privatization via a vast expansion of vouchers and charters. It seems that wherever a Broad graduate goes, the district or state starts closing public schools and expanding opportunities for privatization and for-profit operators. Along with their emphasis on privatization comes a devotion to high-stakes testing. The combination is not only toxic to public education but results in an approach that betrays a naive faith in the value of standardized testing. These policies are ultimately anti-intellectual, anti-education, and anti-child.
I hope he decides not to buy the Los Angeles Times. It is one of the few remaining independent dailies. I hope it stays that way.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Teachers are good managers when they DON’T attempt to pull profits out of the work their students do, but pour it back into their progress.
These corporate elites don’t get it. I’ve heard of school principals in some cases change their title to a “CEO”. Public schools can’t have CEO’s – they’re “public” property for heaven sakes – funded by the public for the public. This is why teacher tenure is so important. Teachers have vested interests in public schools as they help fund them and send their own kids there. They are the closest thing we have on the “inside” and the best whistleblowers. The public has seems to vilify teachers and teacher tenure, but they should welcome it because with tenure teachers are more likely to blow the whistle and inform the public of wasteful uses of resources.
It is easy to look at the bottom line of a corporation and judge it’s success and viability because its simply based on money (and greed). Success indicators for schools are much more difficult to measure. The multiple regression and thousands of linear algebra equations involved in the Value-Added Methods are a sham. They have notably produced wild fluctuations – the literature from serious staticians and mathematicians have exposed this. With a little bit of research, it is easy to see VAM doesn’t work.
Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more to do with school reform than most people realize. Arne Duncan is simply their slave boy – more so with Gates.
My question is always, why do we need reform? When controlling for poverty, I would pit a U.S. student against a student from anywhere in the world and bet they’d be just as smart as their counterpart. We have the best educational system in the world but the worst child poverty rate in the world.
Why doesn’t Gates and Broad (and Duncan) give their money to build new schools for the poverty-struck kids, give them technology and support for the technology, and then get the hell out of their and let the educators to the educating?
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.