Joanne Barkan has written several important articles for Dissent magazine on the role of big foundations in shaping education policy. She spoke at the Network for Public Education conference in Austin on March 1-2 about how to criticize the role of big philanthropies in reforming our schools. She prepared this draft of her remarks:
How to Criticize “Big Philanthropy” Effectively
by Joanne Barkan
Criticizing philanthropy of any kind is tricky. To most people, a negative appraisal sounds off-base or churlish—just another instance of “No good deed goes unpunished.” Criticizing the immense private foundations that finance and shape the market-model “reform” of public education in the United States produces the same reaction. “You’re going after Bill Gates?” I’ve been asked incredulously. “Leave him alone. He’s doing great work in Africa.”
Actually, the Gates Foundation’s work in Africa has serious critics, but suppose, for the sake of argument, that the foundation does much good there. Or suppose that Bloomberg Philanthropies announces tomorrow that it will spend $1 billion over the next five years to promote gun control in the United States. Would those of us who oppose market-model ed-reform but support mosquito nets for Africa and gun control here still criticize the mega-foundations? Would we criticize them in the same way?
There are at least three approaches to criticizing the role of big philanthropy in ed-reform. Understanding how they differ makes for a more effective analysis and stronger arguments.
The first approach focuses on the failure of specific policies pushed by the foundations and the harm they do to teaching and learning. For example, an exposé of using value added modeling to measure the effectiveness of individual teachers would deal with the inherent unreliability of the calculations, the nonsensical use of faulty formulas to measure growth in learning, and the negative consequences of rating teachers with such a flawed tool.
The second approach examines how big philanthropy’s ed-reform activity undermines the democratic control of public education, an institution that is central to a functioning democracy. The questions to ask are these: Has the public’s voice in the governance of public education been strengthened or weakened? Are politicians more or less responsive? Is the press more or less free to inform them?
This approach pinpoints certain types of foundation activity: paying the salaries of high-level personnel to do ed reform work within government departments; making grants to education departments dependent on specific politicians remaining in office; promoting mayoral control and state control of school districts instead of control by elected school boards; financing scores of ed reform nonprofits to implement and advocate for the foundations’ pet policies—activity that has undermined the autonomy and creativity of the nonprofit sector in education; funding (thus influencing) the national professional associations of government officials, including the National Conference of State Legislatures, the United states Conference of Mayors, and the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices; and funding media coverage of education.
The third approach examines large private foundations as peculiar and problematic institutions in a democracy. This approach considers big philanthropy in general and uses ed reform as one example of how mega-foundations undermine democratic governance and civil society. The objections to wealthy private corporations dedicated to doing good (as they see it) have remained the same since the early twentieth-century when the first mega-foundations were created: they intervene in public life but aren’t accountable to the public; they are privately governed but publicly subsidized by being tax exempt; and in a country where money translates into political power, they reinforce the problem of plutocracy—the exercise of power derived from wealth.
Of course, all three approaches to criticizing big philanthropy can be part of the same discussion, but the distinctions help to create a more coherent point of view. They make answering the inevitable challenges easier. Here are some of those challenges and possible responses. Not everyone will agree with the responses. Consider them feasible options.
Challenge: You seem to believe that ed-reform philanthropy is some sort of nefarious conspiracy. Here we go again with conspiracy theories.
Response: By definition conspiracies are secret and illegal. The ed-reform movement isn’t a conspiracy. When people or organizations work together politically in a democracy, it’s a coalition or movement. This is true even when—as is the case with the ed-reform movement—huge amounts of money are being spent by mega-foundations and private meetings take place.
Challenge: You wrongly depict the ed-reform movement and the foundations involved as homogeneous with everyone marching in lockstep. The movement is actually very heterogeneous and rife with disagreements.
Response: Coalitions and movements are rarely, if ever, completely homogeneous. Yet their members agree generally on basic principles and goals. That’s how they make progress. The ed-reform movement is no different. The most significant policy difference among ed-reform foundations is on vouchers—the per-pupil funding that parents can move from a district public school to a private school, often including religious schools. Some foundations, for example, Walton, support vouchers; others, for example, Gates and Broad, do not.
Challenge: You constantly impugn the motives of the mega-foundations. Do you really think Melinda Gates or Eli Broad wants to hurt children?
Response: Of course, the philanthropists aim to do good, but they define “good.” It makes no sense to question their motives. The directors of the Walton Foundation believe that school vouchers will improve education. By supporting vouchers, they believe they are doing good. But when philanthropists enter the public policy fray, they—like everyone else—legitimately become fair game for criticism of their positions and activity. Tax-exemptions shouldn’t create sacred cows.
Challenge: Private foundations spend perhaps $1.5 or $2 billion annually on K-12 education in the United States. That’s minuscule compared to the more than $525 billion http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_205.asp that government spends every year. You exaggerate the influence that private foundations exert with their drop-in-the-bucket donations.
Response: Government spending on public education goes to basic and fixed expenses. Most states and urban school districts can’t cover their costs—they run deficits and/or cut outlays. Sociologists have shown that discretionary spending—spending beyond what covers ordinary running costs—is where policy is shaped and changed. The mega-foundations use their grants as leverage: they give money to grantees who agree to adopt the foundations’ pet policies. Resource-starved states and school districts feel compelled to say yes to millions of dollars even when many strings are attached or they consider the policies unwise.
Challenge: Private foundations don’t weaken democracy. They add another voice to the democratic debate. This increases pluralism and actually strengthens democracy.
Response: Money translates too easily into political power in the United States, and the country is becoming increasingly plutocratic. Mega-foundations exacerbate this tendency. In the realm of public education policy, they have too much influence, and this undermines democracy.
Joanne Barkan’s writing on philanthropy, private foundations, and public education reform has appeared in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Nonprofit Quarterly, the Washington Post, Dissent magazine, and other publications. Many of her articles can be found at http://www.dissentmagazine.org/author/joannebarkan.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very helpful discussion. I love the challenges and responses. This will help those of us who see the issues so clearly, articulate our positions much better. Thank you for helping us all sound like rational informed citizens rather than crazed conspiracy theorists!
Reblogged this on Pace N.Ireland Education Weblog.
Excellent piece. It should be required reading for all who engage in discourse about educational reform.
I have no doubt that Gates thinks that he is improving U.S. education. His particular improvement model just happens, as well, to be one based upon products that are the source of his vast wealth.
Long ago, Gates articulated a vision for the future of education: people would learn via computer-adaptive learning software. This software would be “personalized” in the sense that it would test learners to find out what they know and what they don’t and feed them lessons accordingly. It would save enormous amounts of money because class size would no longer matter. Instead of having one teacher and 22 students, you could have 300 students in a room, using learning software, and a single aide wandering about, helping with any problems that students encounter (“My screen is frozen.”)
This model he considers scientific because it generates data. It tells you, at any moment, precisely where the student is in the predetermined learning progression.
Gates has long believed that adopting this model would mean a revolution in education. It would change how we deliver education UTTERLY.
However, for this model to work, he believed, we had to have a single bullet list of objectives or standards–call them what you will–to tag the software to–the list of items that the software is keeping track of. Little Yolanda has demonstrated proficiency on items A, C, F, G, and H; little Kwame on items A, B, E, G, and I.
So, Gates paid to have a single set of national standards developed.
That’s how and why we got the Common [sic] Core [sic].
Many people do not understand this. The Common [sic] Core [sic] was a set of tags for computer-adaptive learning software to be sold nationally.
About a year and a half ago, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation put out a Request for Proposals for edupreneurs interested in developing such software. It has entered into a partnership with Pearson to produce such software.
I’m sure that Gates believes that such software is the key to the future of education. It will also, incidentally, make him a LOT MORE MONEY.
That’s where the whole “philanthropic” thing becomes exceedingly questionable.
It would have been one thing if this vision for the future had been fully, openly articulated and subjected to public discussion and debate. But it wasn’t. The Common [sic] Core [sic] was cooked up in a back room. It was a fait accompli before the public ever heard about it.
And the whole learning model that it was created to support is dubious. It’s a predetermined, invariant, regimented, centralized, standardized model based upon extrinsic punishment and reward. Far from personalizing education, it depersonalizes it. It reduces learning to mastery of a set of predetermined bullet items. It steals autonomy away from students, teachers, administrators, and curriculum designers. It draws a tiny boundary in the vast design space of possible curricula and pedagogy and says, “What is within this boundary is allowable, and what is not is not.”
There is much that ed tech can do for us. Since the day when the Ptolemies established the Library of Alexandria, visionaries have dreamed of universal access to the universal library. The internet makes that possible. Instead of having access to the 4,000 volumes in the school library, a kid can have access, through a tablet, to millions of volumes. Ed tech can provide access that small schools and districts could not otherwise afford to highly specialized materials. A student interested in permaculture could take a whole class on that online and be the only student in the district doing so. That’s REAL personalization. Ed tech can make possible 24/7 homework help, collaborative online learning communities, and spaces for publication of student work. It can put into teachers’ hands demonstration tools that teachers of the past could not even have dreamed of.
Or, ed tech can take the form of software based on predetermined matrices of predetermined skills from a national bullet list that treats kids like rats in a maze and uses data to place the kid at some point in that maze, and that can be called “personalization.”
And a certain “philanthropist” can make a lot more money selling software and data systems and operating systems and tablets.
On laboratory for this experiment is the University of Arizona. The Executive Vice Provost there said in an interview recently that within three years, 80 percent of classes there would be taught using this model–not a distance learning model, mind you, but one in which a large number of students gather in a room and work at computers while someone wanders about assisting. Gates has done a lot of talking lately about how college is too expensive. This is how to reduce the cost.
The big expense is teacher salaries.
And it’s the same model for K-12. More software. Fewer teachers.
And to make it work, a single set of “standards” to tag the software to in order to produce that Big Data.
So, we have the very strange phenomenon of the presidents of both the teachers’ unions in the United States supporting the implementation of “standards” that were created for the purpose of putting most of their members out of work.
Go figure.
And why did Gates invest in inBloom?
It would be the national repository for all that data generated by all that educational software. And it would be a natural monopoly. Ed software providers would have to have access to that data, and so the owner of the database would be the gatekeeper for the entire educational content delivery system, the one who decided who played in that game and at what cost.
In other words, the database would be the equivalent, in the educational materials business of the future, of the personal computer operating system–the one piece that everyone would have to use and would have to pay for using. Educational materials developers would have to pay to access the database. Schools would have to pay $5.00 per student to have their data warehoused.
A few bucks from EVERYONE.
That model has worked for Gates quite well in the past, hasn’t it?
The model sort of works for subjects that can easily be atomized into discrete skills–Algebra I, elementary predicate logic. But the vision is for ALL of education to be done in this way. The particular atomization that is the CC$$ in ELA is a joke. It’s backward, hackneyed, prescientific, amateurish. And, at any rate, beyond the most elementary level, there are many, many different ways to become a good writer, reader, speaker, researcher, and thinker.
All of this saddens me greatly for I have long believed in the power of educational technology to effect a revolution in education that would make for real collaboration and personalization, that would enable kids to discover their unique passions and pursue them–a way for us to get away from the factory model in which every kid is on page 258 on November 26.
But what is developing, in the Brave New World of Big Data in education, is just the substitution of one regimentation for another.
And the creation of a Common Core Curriculum Commissariat to oversee all that. A Big Brother. A thought police.
So, no. I do not think that Gates is “the bad guy.” I think that he believes that his vision is a win-win. It will improve education. It will make it cheaper. It will make it more scientific. It will also make him a lot more money.
My problem is with the vision itself. I think it the wrong direction for ed tech to take. I think that it leads to an Orwellian nightmare that completely subverts the humane and democratizing purposes of education and that it leads to a kind of regimentation that is precisely what we don’t need in order to create the variously skilled, intrinsically motivated graduates that we need in a complex, diverse, pluralistic society at a time of rapid technological change.
In short, this attempted Powerpointing of U.S. education is technocratic Philistinism that leads to mediocrity via standardization.
“…that leads to mediocrity via standardization…” and Soylent Green.
The new evaluation system in my state is an attempt to standardize and numerically classify teachers as per some stringent and often not applicable indicators as if all educators should have the exact same goals (and exhibit the same skills to teach to them) in every lesson.
All of this is an effort to undermine what makes humans, well, human: the varied practices of divergent and creative thinkers. Sorry, my teaching doesn’t fit neatly into someone else’s box, nor does my students’ thinking.
Maybe this is becasue Bill Gates thinks in 0s and 1s, in digital code, and he doesn’t think like the average human.
Perhaps, but does any human think like the “average” human? My HS physics teacher used to say that there is no such thing as “common sense.” Maybe it was because of the variety of different thinkers that exists, or maybe it was that he believed there is little “sense” in common thinking.
One of my favorites, a statement often attributed to Einstein: “Common sense is that layer of prejudices laid down before the age of eighteen.” He might not have said this in exactly those words, but it was a sentiment he wholly agreed with.
Your physics teacher was wise. Here’s what I say about common sense in the masthead of my own blog:
All read learning is unlearning. We have to step through the wardrobe or fall down the rabbit hole into a place beyond our interpellations, beyond the collective fantasies that go by the name of common sense. Real learning requires a period of estrangement from the familiar. We return to find the ordinary transmuted and wondrous. We see it anew, as on the first day of creation, as though for the first time.
Helpful piece! On an historical note: you might want to point people to Andrew Carnegie’s famous “Gospel of Wealth” from 1889, in which he lays out the reality that unless the fabulously wealthy of his day got into philanthropy, the State would tax them at such levels that they would lose their self-appointed status as the “trustees” of democracy. He went so far as to argue that the State would be right to do so, since the selfish acquisition of wealth was not socially desirable. The key point, however, was always that the wealthy are naturally the “trustees” of society’s resources; all they need to do is act as such. Democracy is just fine, as long as the wealthy run it!!
Yes, philanthropy is often a way to tax dodge and get richer. Now it is used to destroy democracy.
Thanks for this. Very helpful, and I will be sharing it!
It should be noted that Gates has also funded FREE educational materials from the Khan Academy. So, he is not entirely mercenary about all this. I know that Khan has taken a lot of heat on this blog, but I am moved by the fact that this material is available to any kid in some poor country on the other side of the globe if he or she has access to a computer or smart phone and an internet connection.
I think that he believes, correctly, that the ed tech revolution in education will happen as a simple matter of economics. Paper is very expensive. Pixels are cheaper, especially if one doesn’t factor in the negative externalities of the cost of mining the stuff that goes into the manufacture of computers.
The question for me is, what form will that revolution take. Will it enable centralization and regimentation and call that, in bizarro Doublespeak, personalization and innovation? Or will it enable REAL personalization and innovation?
The Common [sic] Core [sic] was the necessary first step toward implementing the former.
Just because the megawealthy sometimes put their money to good use does not mean that the money is being put to the best or even the near best use. As long as the wealthy control discourse about the purposes of capital investment, we will have a very narrow conception of the possible beneficial uses of wealth. This is the problem for democracy, not whether rich people sometimes act charitably.
“Paper is very expensive. Pixels are cheaper, especially if one doesn’t factor in the negative externalities of the cost of mining the stuff that goes into the manufacture of computers.”
Robert,
Have you read this article by chance? Your thoughts, if any.
The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens” found at: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/
Also, those externalities generally are quite a bit larger than most people can even imagine, if the those externalities can even be ameliorated. I’m thinking the Hudson River cleanup of GE toxic wastes dumping over the years.
No question about this, Duane. No e-book technology yet invented is as useable as a book. It’s long been known that when people proofread hardcopy, as opposed to proofreading online, they catch a lot more errors. And, when people read hardcopy, they retain a lot more. People are simply less attentive to online text.
The article mentions the book as physical landscape and our hardwiring to retain and navigate such landscapes. That’s a good description of my own experience. I find searching in actual books a breeze and searching in e-texts really annoying, despite the automated search features of the latter. I wonder if others have the same experience. And I like to take notes as I read and find the notetaking features of ebooks really clunky and awkward and time-consuming to use.
Also nonfiction e-books don’t sell as well as fiction: Fiction, Literature and Genre Fiction = 74% of e-book sales while Nonfiction is only 22%. (2013 sales)
Imagine having a textbook on a tablet instead of a tree book.
Kids will figure out how to hack the system and the boys will be looking at pornography. I have no idea what the girls will be looking at.
But this happened back in the 1990s in the library computer lab of the high school where I taught. The librarian caught the boys who hacked into a porno site and she went ballistic. We heard her all over the library when she let loose and blew the ears off those boys. Three or four teachers were in the library with our kids who were supposed to be working on research papers. Evidently, some weren’t.
It’s very important, however, that kids have access, via their computers, to the broad Internet, for it is, truly, the universal library, the fulfillment of an ancient dream.
It’s very important that this PULL technology not become a locked-down technology for PUSHING canned curricula.
Agreed
So, we have these situations in which philanthropic work also benefits the philanthropist directly, and that’s interesting, to say the least.
Thank-you for many ideas and lots of useful information. But I do disagree, at least in part, with your response as to the motivations of various foundations. If it is true that at the 2009 National Conference of State Legislators Gates said, “When the tests are aligned to the common standards, the curriculum will line up as well and that will unleash powerful market forces in the service of better teaching”, it appears that he is using his non-profit Foundations to generate profit for his Corporation. It also exposes the disingenuousness of those who claim this movement does not include curriculum, merely standards.
Oh, national standards will unleash powerful market forces. Indeed. These create economies of scale that monopolists can most successfully exploit.
If you love the idea of the further Microsofting, the Walmartization of U.S. educational materials, then you are going to LOVE the Common [sic] Core [sic].
Common: base, vulgar, ordinary, pedestrian
Core: of the pit, the indigestible part of the fruit
State: of the Leviathan
Standards: rules for enforcing uniformity in a product (e.g., United Thread Standards for bolts and screws)
The biggest of the many outright lies told about the Common Core is that it does not dictate curriculum.
Again, this learning progression and set of outcomes to be measured draws a boundary in the vast design space of possible curricula and pedagogy and says, “Only what is within this boundary is acceptable. Your thinking must be confined here. New thinking will be done about these matters when the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat reconvenes, in the future, to produce its next five-year plan for what is allowable to be thought and taught.”
Bob Shepherd: with all due respect, I would amend the last part of your first sentence to read “does not dictate curriculum AND ITS ASSOCIATED HIGH-STAKES STANDARDIZED TESTING.”
IMHO, this has to do with the rheephorm obsession with a worst business practice: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”
As an unimpeachable witness to the indissoluble link between Commoners Core and such testing and what is taught and how:
[start quote]
In truth, the idea that the Common Core might be a “game-changer” has little to do with the Common Core standards themselves, and everything to do with stuff attached to them, especially the adoption of common tests that make it possible to readily compare schools, programs, districts, and states (of course, the announcement that one state after another is opting out of the two testing consortia is hollowing out this promise).
But the Common Core will only make a dramatic difference if those test results are used to evaluate schools or hire, pay, or fire teachers; or if the effort serves to alter teacher preparation, revamp instructional materials, or compel teachers to change what students read and do. And, of course, advocates have made clear that this is exactly what they have in mind. When they refer to the “Common Core,” they don’t just mean the words on paper–what they really have in mind is this whole complex of changes.
[end quote]
Link: http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/12/28/the-american-enterprise-institute-common-core-and-good-cop/
And just who is attesting to the Rheephormish view of this? None other than a genuine insider of the the self-styled “education reform” movement, Dr. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute.
Thanking Dr. Mercedes Schneider for the money quote, I rest my case.
😎
Of course the so-called reformers are not rubbing their hands together, salivating at the thought of hurting children and teachers. They actually believe they are doing the “right” things.
Well, at least most of them are not doing that.
However, when their conception of the “right” things has a 1:1 relationship with their personal and class interests, and when the adoption of those policies is predicated on undermining democratic procedures, then their motives are intrinsically questionable.
Bill Gates’ subjective views of why he is buying education policy in the US is all but irrelevant to the fact that 1) he is in reality doing so, and 2) it so clearly serves his personal, corporate and ideological interests.
amen
May I offer a 3rd fact that suggests serving ones own interests?
Many very knowledgeable and experienced people have repeatedly sought to disabuse him (and his foundation) of the notion they are helping education improve.
No interest in changing course.
It may be impolite to ask a sheep to undress, but it becomes obvious who really isn’t a sheep when the outfit doesn’t fit properly.
Ms. Barkin deftly dismantles Ben Austin’s favorite challenge—conspiracy, and Alexander Russo’s favorite—homogeneity.
Fake Philanthropy is the other side of the same coin shared with fake Reformers. The fakes wear the clothing of respected organizations and use terms that have earned respect over the decades. They are rabid Tasmanian Devils masquerading as cute Koala bears
I appreciate this discussion, but it assumes we are living in a world where rational arguments marked by nuance will prevail, and will be sufficiently persuasive to change beliefs.
I wish that were the case.
But it isn’t.
Many of us are responding to a coordinated and multi-faceted campaign designed to silence the voices of teachers, educators, parents, and students.
We do not have the benefit of millions or billions to influence public policy.
The claim that dollars from philanthropic sources are small compared to “public” investments in education seems to equate “influence over policy” with dollars spent.
Wrong.
In fact, that attempt to be “reasonable” is close to nonsense to anyone (many on this blog) who have tracked the sources of current policies and practices that are, by design, intended to demean and destroy public education.
Let us not become so eager to please philanthropists and their agendas with nuanced distinctions. The campaign to dismantle public education is marked by a long trail of fancy talk and deception.
A recent article in the Nation, “The Shadow Lobbying Complex,” by Lee Fang (March 10-17, 2014, pp. 12-22) indicates there is a huge return on investments in securing a favored public policy when “government relations” experts are deployed to generate media attention, produce propaganda including “push” surveys and slick reports from surrogate think tanks, set up non-profit “institutes” that advertise themselves as non-partisan, and so on.
In the case of corporations seeking a “tax holiday,” the return on investment in official and unofficial lobbying was estimated (in a study from the University of Kansas) to be 22,000%.
Point: Foundation influence, especially foundations built on corporate wealth, are not typical players in the democratic process.
There is ample evidence ( and more is coming) that foundation-groomed policy makers and cronies who do not have expertise in education have had taken control of policy-making at USDE, as well as many states and districts, and more often to the benefit of corporate interests, not public education.
Laura suggests, “Let us not become so eager to please philanthropists and their agendas with nuanced distinctions.”
Amen.
One of the great pleasures of my NPE experience in Austin was getting to talk to Joanne Barkan at length.
In Los Angeles, we have felt the full brunt of “philanthropy”. It has been used as the cudgel to infiltrate the entire operating status of LAUSD by dictating the terms of the pedagogy our kids receive and the orders we teachers are expected to follow. The fact that Gates and Broad have placed not only “their man” John Deasy in the top position, but they have funded other positions in District Headquarters.
Worse, we have no idea how much money they give to Deasy personally nor others in Deasy because they are “private” donations.
It is easy to call yourself a “philanthropist” but often times, philanthropy is politically motivated. I guess this can be good or bad depending on whose side of the “giving” you are on and if this sort of barter is good for your cause.
In an article in THE LA TIMES by Howard Blume on September 15, 2011
(http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/15/local/la-me-schools-fund-20110915), we read about how the drive to “philanthropize” LAUSD became public:
“Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy and Hollywood philanthropist Megan Chernin have launched an effort to raise $200 million over five years to benefit local public schools.
“The collaboration, in the works for several months, was announced in a letter signed by Deasy, Chernin and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
“The letter strikingly lists failures of the Los Angeles Unified School District but also asserts that “for the first time in the District’s history, the conditions for bold change are present…. The time is now to harness this potential and it is our responsibility to do so.
“Besides Chernin, the nascent board of the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education includes education philanthropist Casey Wasserman — who has given directly to L.A. Unified in the past — as well as former educator and artist Nancy Marks and Jamie Alter Lynton, a former journalist who is married to the chief executive of Sony Pictures Entertainment.
“‘Donations could support districtwide initiatives, such as a new training program for principals, among other things. They could also bring to the district effective approaches used at charter schools,’ said spokeswoman Amanda Crumley.
And here is the unquestioned-Philanthropic-philosophy-in-a-nutshell kicker of the LA TIMES article:
“One selling point for participants is that the elected L A. Board of Education would have no direct control over the money.
“‘As you know, the innovation Los Angeles’ students need cannot start within a rule-bound bureaucracy,'” the letter states.
“Key education donors have refused to give much, if anything, to L.A. Unified because they question how well the nation’s second-largest school system would use the money.
HOW WOULD THEY USE THE MONEY? At least the decisions would have been democratic and transparent.
HOW HAS DEASY USED THE MONEY? I’ll let history judge.
During the Great Recession, LA. Unified, like other urban districts, had been hard hit by state funding shortfalls, resulting in thousands of layoffs, larger class sizes and a shorter school year. It was the perfect opportunity for “philanthropists” to come in and work their magic under the pretext of providing schools with much needed assistance.
The unions were at their weakest point (and currently, in LA, the union is on life-support).
Deasy, who became superintendent in April, 2011, has made pursuing outside philanthropic financial support a high priority. But this financial support brought political support with all the quid pro quos that have made LAUSD more of a corporation than a democracy. The Big Money is steep inside LASUD and has definite favorites as to who gets to define what “good education” is. Just look at all the money that now gets poured into the School Board races and who “philanthropy” backs. Look at how philanthropists treat teacher unions and the quality-of-life issues they raise.
If this was the NRA who had this sort of inside influence to organizations, people would be outraged. These Philanthropists and our Superintendent uses kids as human shields. They say they will withdraw their money if their policies are not implemented. This sort of hostage taking is obscene and Deasy stays in power because of this implicit threat.
Philanthropy where these multi-billion dollar decisions truly affect the profits of the ones giving the “donations” taints the whole process. Gates and Broad put their money and their “charity” to the very areas that they profit from.
Education is political BECAUSE it is Big Business. To ignore that reality is to be willfully ignorant.
And the Philanthropists have tried very hard to turn Education into Big Business behind the scenes while maintaining their pretense of Switzerland-like neutrality in their public persona claiming to the public: “We just want to help education be better.”
Kind-hearted souls indeed as they write their pro-Reform Op-eds in The Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, on the micro-scale of my individual classroom, my kids have to hoe a vastly different path that the Reforms now prescribe their net worth. The billionaires say this is what you get.
Kids. Your education is NOT a Democracy.
If you don’t like it, your solution is very simple. You can always leave the public system to where Gates, Broad, Alter-Lynton, Duncan or Obama send their kids to school.
And finally you will get the education these philanthropists truly believe in.
Thanks again, Joanne for your insight and commentary and commitment to the cause. You continue to be inspiring.
Malanthropy (N): the use of taxpayer-subsidized foundations to further your financial and ideological interests, while pretending otherwise.
While I don’t deny that Joanne’s soft-handed criticism of Gates is effective for her own work, I hope all the bloggers reading this don’t take her advice to blunt their direct confrontation with Gates. Confrontation has to come, and sooner is better than later.
Consider the very real probability that he isn’t a misguided, arrogant do-gooder at all. Suppose his drive is exactly what it appears if we describe it objectively. A billionaire with a long history of prosecution for illegal, monopolistic business manipulations has successfully lobbied to change the tax codes, so his charitable foundation can count for-profit investments towards its 5% annual charity spend down. “We used foundation funds to set up a system to make market forces work in favor of the poor, guaranteeing purchases so drug companies could make a little bit of money …”
For the good of the poor, Gates’ actual gifts didn’t buy the vaccines. Gates gift was massive leveraging and “advocacy” to set up his GAVI alliance, to OVERCHARGE actual donors, and suck up the foreign exchange from Africa’s mineral wealth. Gates charitable agenda is to support the profits of big pharma corporations, in which he personally own stock. Monsanto and Cargill are his vehicles to address world hunger, Pearson and Microsoft are his gift to education. Under his humane guidance, the activities of his Foundation on behalf of these corporate giants have propelled his personal wealth ever upward, back to the top slot on the planet.
Gates’ sociopathic obsession is to build a permanent, profit-driven technodynasty by leveraging his “gifts” so they control hundreds of times their own resources. He declares in this Forbes manifesto that the profitability of his own investments is the most efficient way to serve greater human good On that argument, he sets out to subsume the human race’s investments in efforts to feed, educate and heal ourselves, and into a profit engine for himself and his foundation.
Gates’ apologists might tell me that viewpoint is ineffective, but I don’t have to provide a link to the blog Cody courageously put up outlining it. The world is desperately trying to come together in self-defense, and people are hungry to talk about this. Google leveraged philanthropy, and that lone little blogpost will come up on top, followed by many others now. Gates’ “New Model for giving” manifesto in Forbes is a few entries down.
Google is a transitive verb, not the subject of that last sentence.
https://www.google.com/search?q=leveraged+philanthropy&oq=leveraged+philanthropy&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.7197j0j8&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8
Bob Shepherd, upthread, there is a long comment from you with 5 replies — all from you as well (you’re often the only one who finds your own comments interesting enough to reply, although 5 replies to the same comment is a bit much, don’t you think?)
WT, if I am boring you, don’t read me.
WT,
Did you consider that after writing and posting a comment that thinking continues and the original person may return to add more content. Since we can’t edit our comments, there is no other choice but to add additional comments to the same sub-thread.
Or maybe the poster has a lot to say and decides to say it over several posts, WT.
Thanks, Lloyd and LG. I often wonder who these unidentified persons are who pop on and make such comments but don’t identify themselves. Drive-by posting. LOL.
Usually these anonymous people who attack and offer little or no valid evidence for their claims are called “Trolls”.
If you do some Google research, you will discover that there’s quite a bit of evidence out there from studies that identify these Trolls who may be spending 16 hours or more a day trolling the Internet looking for someone to victimize and bully.
Social media gives us a forum to say whatever is in our heads with little repercussion, but regardless of whether or not a person can be identified by real name, frequent posters do build intellectual relationships with other posters in the forum. Perhaps the “drive-by” poster would not feel the need to spout off if he or she would just set down, read, and stay a while.
Lloyd, the girls will be looking up the three Bs: Barbie, Bieber, and Brittney. lol
LOL
Pure democracy allows factions to proliferate their ideas (likely using the corporately owned media) to incite individuals vote away others peoples rights. I much prefer a Republic where the individual has his rights protected by law. Of course, when the law is not enforced then we live in neither a democracy or a republic.
Philanthropy is a wonderful thing when the gift is given to a cause or purpose that the giver personally supports. When the money is given with the intent to buy influence it is not philanthropy it is corruption. Would the philanthropist supporting the arts censor the artist? Bill Gates money was not given to support public education it was given to usurp it.
Thought-provoking, practical talking points. Thanks, Joanne.
The only reason for the existence of these mega-charities is that the tax code allows the rich to put up to half of their yearly income into their own personal charity, and thereby avoid paying taxes on 1/2 of their income. Their money will remain in their own private charity account so long as they pay out 5%/year to “charitable” purposes. Assuming they earn 10, 15, 20%/year on their My Charity money, you can see how that money grows.
What is a “charitable” purpose? As noted, Bill Gates uses his My Charity money to invest in privatizing water, GMOs, privatizing education. Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Clinton, all these rich people can use their My Charity money to proclaim themselves philanthropists when in fact they pay less to charity than they would have paid in taxes. And they should have paid their taxes to this country so that our people can decide how they want to use the money for charitable, social safety net, or other purposes.
As far as privatizing education, there is no philanthropic interest involved. It’s all about the money. There is an enormous pool of money in this country created every year, from our taxes, to pay for private education. Corporations and Wall Street want to get their hands on that money. Their plan is to put the money in their pockets, shut down all public education, and tell kids to stay home and watch videos instead. It’s all about money. And, of course, propaganda, because any child educated in that manner will be taught to memorize that the rich are good, but never taught to think. They also will be denied the community and social aspects of education. The entire concept is a disaster.
Some rich people donate money to major museums, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Great museum, of course. But what about the needs of people in Kansas, or New Mexico, people who likely will never go to New York City, and who have no money, collapsing infrastructure, no jobs. Shouldn’t our people come first? The desire of the rich to enhance their small environment, from which Americans are economically excluded, should not be deemed a charitable action.
What should happen? Charitable deductions from taxes should be limited to $500 per person per year. Period. If these people feel like being charitable, they’ve certainly got the billions locked up with which to do so. But if you take away the tax scam, I imagine all these private charities would fold. It’s a con.