The Walton Family Foundation released its list of grantees in the education world, and once again, the foundation put its huge resources into privatizing American public education.
The billions that hard-working families spend at Walmart are used to support privately managed charters and vouchers and to undermine democratic local control and traditional public schools.
Some of the biggest recipients of the Walton family’s largesse are Teach for America (nearly $20 million), which staffs non-union charters; KIPP charter schools ($8.8 million); the Charter Fund, Inc. ($14.5 million); The Children’s Scholarship Fund (which gives our school vouchers) $8.56 million; and the California Charter School Association, $5 million. Parent Revolution got almost $2 million, the Black Alliance for Educational Options got $1.3 million.
Read the list and see who favors the privatization of public schools. Aside from a few dollars tossed to the Bentonville, Arkansas, public schools, it is a rogues’ gallery of privatization and teacher-bashing.
The Walton Family Foundation helped to underwrite the attack ads against New York City’s progressive mayor, Bill de Blasio, because he dared to turn down three charter school proposals. Two of the three schools did not exist, so no child was evicted. The third rejection was meant to stop the expansion of Eva Moskowitz’s charter school inside PS 149 in Harlem, which required the eviction of severely disabled students to make room for her desired new middle school. Apparently the theory of the billionaires is that students with high test scores deserve public space more than profoundly disabled students, who have lesser rights.
As a result of pressure by the billionaires, the legislature passed a budget that gutted mayoral control by saying that the mayor was not allowed to reject any charter approved by Bloomberg’s school board; that the mayor was not allowed to charge rent to charters, even though they had just won a lawsuit declaring that they could not be audited by the State Comptroller because they are not “a unit of the state”; giving charters the right to expand in any public school where they are now co-located, without regard to the needs of the children already enrolled in that school; and requiring that the city pay the rent of any charter that rents private space. So, with the help of the Walton Family Foundation, the charter schools, which are not public schools and are not subject to public audit, get free space and may kick public school students out of their buildings.
This was a shameful law, purchased by people of vast wealth. They are intent on busting unions, crushing the teaching profession, and harming one of our democratic institutions. Their maleficent influence is unchecked. The money they spend each year is meant to transfer public funds to private hands. They use their power to hurt the very people who have made them wealthy, destroying their communities at the same time.
The age of the robber barons is back.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually, I don’t like this one bit. Closed market corporate monopoly of everything under the sun, especially governments, is increasingly driving the dream of democracy further and deeper into an early grave. And now we have exactly what Abraham Lincoln said was not democracy: a nine person Supreme Court controlling our country and pushing equity to the ownership class while negating the lives of the rest. No, I don’t like this. As Chris Hedges keeps saying: Rise Up, or Die. Revolution for social change is truly the only way citizens of America can push away such monopoly as owned by the Waltons and how it vandalizes and destroys public education.
well said!
Agree,,,
“The billions that hard-working families spend at Walmart are used to support privately managed charters and vouchers and to undermine democratic local control and traditional public schools.”
Essential point you made right there. The decades long now outsourcing and “globalization” of our economy has led to are closed, executive only access “free market” where we are forced into dependency on cheap goods. Community owned/controlled shops, stores and schools lose in this paradigm. We pay them to barely give us what we should really get, and sometimes to do things to us they really shouldn’t.
If they paid their employees a livable wage and their suppliers a fair price, they wouldn’t have so much money to give away.
In addition to underpaying their employees and teaching them how to apply for food stamps and other government programs for people living in poverty, the Walton Family Foundation also has financed parent trigger laws such as Parent Revolution, implanting TFA kids to replace trained teachers, and they proposed Stand Your Ground gun laws for all Americans.
Scum, you say?
Yes, and the Waltons were the main funders of the propaganda campaign against the estate tax.
Not only is the destruction of the public schools and democratic governance being partially underwritten by Walmart customers, but also by the predatory labor practices of the company, which aggressively fights paying a living wage, in its stores and throughout its immense supply chain.
It’s salt on the wound that the unpaid wages and benefits of Walmart workers should be redirected by this malignant family toward undermining one of the nation’s fundamental institutions.
The truth is, though, public schools could withstand this if we had lawmakers who supported public schools.
That’s where the real lasting damage is being done, the fact that it’s corporate + state.
Public schools simply won’t survive big corporate-backed attack campaigns PLUS lawmakers abandoning them. Public entities rely on lawmakers for their continued existence. It’s the joint effort that’s killing them.
Corporate + State = Fascism. Call it what it is. The description being used in the media is plutocracy. In Russia it is oligarchs. The end is the same, a return to the feudal system of overlords that know best for the serfs.
Exactly. As I have mentioned before, our Congressman Henry Waxman, in a Dem Club meeting recently, responded to my question about charter schools and his views, said “I like charter schools.”
This is one of the most liberal, long term, Congressmen. With this view, what is Bobby Jindal doing?
It is a conundrum when the Tea Party legislators hate CC but love Charters. And the liberal legislators love both.
I live in upstate NY where the economy tanked and has not come back. There is a Walmart very well placed in the environs. That is where one can get all the things one needs…truly one stop shopping…because there are very few other stores. I am always disgusted parting with my money at the cash register. Some of their employees are kids from poor local public schools. We may have a vicious circle going, but I cannot yet throw in the towel. I do sense that more and more of us in the trenches are increasingly cognizant of this rigged system. The other day, I left with 24 bottles of Poland Spring water that we all forgot to “report”, and I got to my car and cheered silently. And no, I would not dream of going back in to pay for them.
I would drive three times as far and settle for much less in order not to have to hand a penny to these predators.
South Park did an episode about it. When walmart moved in, the whole town had to start working there and shopping there because everything else went out of business.
Personally, I don’t know what you need from walmart that you can’t get elsewhere. I buy all my clothes and shoes online, download all my music, and go to a regular grocery store or stores like Trader Joe’s and farmers markets for food. CVS sells water bottles. I wouldn’t dream of going to any big-box store. If you really analyze what you’re buying, you can avoid them.
It is sad and shameful. A civil rights attorney needs to step forward and represent the public school children. It is time to challenge the courts–charters accept public funds and are exempt from the mandates—- Why is this acceptable? This is clearly taxation without representation. It is time for the courts to address this unfair use of public funds.
Where is the ACLU and other Civil Rights groups that are supposed to protect children? There really aren’t any groups protecting children. Everything is left up to the parents.
Maybe we should try PETA? They do more to protect animals from cruelty than any agency that is supposed to protect children.
The gov agencies in each state that are established to protect children are so dysfunctional they usually cause more trauma to the children, especially in Texas!
It is only rioting parents who can stop all the privatizers. And teachers are in support of parents who are opting out of testing, who are screaming about charter takeover. But parents must get vocal and demanding, nationwide, as they are doing in NY and in Chicago and few other cities. In Los Angeles, parents generally are not focused and are not involved. Middle class parents are happy to have their children in top notch charter schools, and avoid their glance from the lowest level of charters which proliferate here.
In Texas, you have at least 43 Gulen schools, the Harmony Schools, run by the radical Turkish Imam, Gulen, who is seeking to overthrow Erdogan and make Turkey an Islamist nation ruled by Sharia law (seemingly with the ok of our State Department}.. All on the funds of American taxpayers. You have Governor Perry who is a Tea Party legislator who wants creationism taught in schools. You need the most aggressive parent revolt.
Sadly the ACLU seems to be only focused on gay marriage and abortion protection, two important issues, but they are averting their eyes from the most important issue of all to everyone, the saving of our American public education system.
Yes, PETA saves wild horses, and keeps animals from being slaughtered. Can we learn from them how to stimulate more action for save our schools?
A good example of American democracy in action: the best that money can buy!
Thankfully someone is stepping forward to give poor kids an opportunity to learn. How are ED (Economically Disadvantaged) or poor kids passing their EOG or End Of Grade tests in your state?. In North Carolina the latest EOG grades for ED kids are 17% passing their tests. Yes, only 17%.
Who is that “someone” who is “stepping forward”?
The Walton Family Foundation is the one that seems to be stepping forward.
LOL, thauck, now that’s funny right thar.
Just why is it, do you think, that so few poor kids pass those tests? What percentage of rich kids in NC pass those tests? Why the gap, do you think?
You should see what the charters are like in Michigan. They stink. Surely you are not so delusional to believe that charters in NC will do anything but steal your money. Other states have had charters for years. They are failures soaking the public.
Prove that voucher schools will be able to turn things around for these children. Do you think the top private schools are going to take a significant # of voucher students? In my area of NC, decent private schools are in the $8,000 – $12,000 range – vouchers are only $4200.
RE the cost of private schools in North Carolina–
There are expensive private schools but 60% of the roughly 700 schools in North Carolina charge $4000 or less. Some of the more expensive schools also give scholarships.
In 2013 the median private school tuition was just $4,600.
Median tuition for my area is over $6,000. Furthermore, the quality private schools are much more than $4000. Do you honestly think these high rated schools are going (or can afford) to give a significant number of scholarships? These schol already give financial aid to the number of students they feel will help “diversify” there school. How many more students do you think they (and the parents who pay full tuition) will accept?
How will a voucher parent pay for lunch (and in many cases, public schools in NC offer breakfast) at these voucher schools? Will these schools offer before and after care at an affordable cost?
Also, what is the capacity at these 700 schools with tuition of $4000 or less? I think it is flawed to report median tuition without considering capacity.
Finally, are you in favor of mandatory administration of the state EOGs for all students receive vouchers? Otherwise, how will we know if the child received a “better” education?
In Los Angeles, the median tuition for private schools such as Harvard Westlake, Willows, Viewpoints, etc. is about $ 35,000.
How is the Walton Foundation “stepping forward to give poor kids an opportunity to learn”. Specifics, please.
Sadly, the Walton Corporation can do a lot more than force education privatization on America. Now with a recent Supreme Court ruling, they can truly buy a political party!! Funny how a Supreme Court decision SO HUGE could be SO CONVENIENTLY IGNORED by the corporate controlled media…
“A” political party? More likely, both political parties (and if ever there appears to be a remotely viable third party, they’ll try awfully hard to buy that one too).
They already have. We know Cuomo is a Walton puppet.
McCutcheon has vastly expanded Citizens United…all of our legislators from hereon, will be bought by Waltons, and the casino scum guy Adelson…plus the rest of the billionaires. Our school boards across America will be rubber stamps for their corporate benefactors.
With all legislators operating at the will of these oligarchs, do you think there will ever be a massive revolution, or will the American public remain tranquilized with Xanax and with The Housewives of Beverly Hills?
We have a SCOTUS that is worthless for democracy. Unless we can get another rational appointment before Obama’s term is over, we are done for. Their 5 – 4 vote, in league with their oligarch bosses, guarantees serfdom for the unseeable future. Read Thorsten Veblen.
Theory of the Leisure Class…and oldie but goodie.
The Road to Serfdom…and goodie. And read Joe Stiglitz who is still very much alive at Columbia, and his book on Inequality.
How are Wal-Mart shoppers going to come up with the difference between tuition and the voucher? Perhaps we should create a CC worksheet (complete with credit card interest rates) around this issue and “dig deeper”.
Wish I could match them dollar for dollar and spend it all on nationwide tv spots shaming the wealthy for abusing their power and attempting to buy away our democracy. Of course, I’m assuming they are still capable of shame.
And today, the Supreme Court gutted more of the rules intended to limit contributions to political campaigns. More of the obsenely wealthy people in this nation can determine the fate of every election–national, state, and local including school boards. A five to four decision. Teaching civicsin any public school just became a whole lot harder..
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/high-court-rules-against-cap-campaign-money/
Corporations are people. Money is speech.
The Supreme Court, citing the changed political landscape, has removed the unfair limits on the power of plutocrats to purchase judicial, legislative, and administrative wind-up toys and action figures. In what way has the landscape changed? Well, the United States has become an oligarchical banana republic, and just about everyone now knows that.
A chapter of history book in the year 2500 will read “The Fall of the American Empire.” It will have Microsoft logo and a Walmart smiley face on the same page.
We must learn to utilize local resources and businesses, even if they cost a fraction more than the corporate Death Star offerings. Shop local when possible! abandon amazon, Walmart, and their ilk. They clearly have abandoned us.
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2014/04/01/profit-charter-school-bill-clears-house-committee/7175575/
For-profit charters moving into Tennessee.
“For-profit companies moved closer to being able to operate charter schools in Tennessee after a much-debated bill eked out a key legislative victory Tuesday.
The House Education Committee voted 8-7 to advance to the House floor House Bill 1693, which would let nonprofit charter schools hire companies that bring in profits for management.
With its companion Senate bill clearing committee last month, both full chambers are now on track to consider the legislation.”
Ed reformers could use all that corporate money that’s flowing in to lobby against for-profit charters or for better regulation of charter schools, instead of bashing public schools. But they don’t.
Obviously they don’t care if charter schools are non-profit or for-profit.
Arne Duncan’s probably an “agnostic” on this too. He’ll “relinquish” the charter sector to for-profits, just as he relinquished public schools to charter schools.
Race to the bottom, baby. Pretty soon every charter will be a profit-producing entity.
Mission accomplished.
And paid for by the taxes of the former American Middle Class, now known as the working poor.
US House further expands charter schools with federal funding for national charter chains:
“States and districts would be encouraged to help grow high-quality charter schools—and ensure that they enroll and retain English-language learners and students in special education—under a rare, bipartisan bill introduced Tuesday by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., the chairman of the House education committee, and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel.”
It’s nonsense that the bill “ensures” charter schools enroll english language learners and children in special education.
It does nothing of the sort.
It’s more federal funding to open new charter schools with a completely meaningless “encouragement” that states then regulate those schools.
Whether charters are forced to take ELL will be entirely up to those states, and since both Miller and Kline know that states have absolutely no intention of regulating charters, they’re simply handing more unregulated public funds to private entities.
With the Democratic and Republican parties both in thrall to big money, we need a viable 3rd party option. I can’t help thinking there might be enough common sense–and rage–among ordinary Americans to vote for a third way as they consistently see their elected officials betray them to corporate interests. We need a progressive who’s savvy enough to harness public opinion and grassroots media, at least to the extent of making those already in office–who might still have a conscience buried somewhere–take notice. A Teddy Roosevelt for the 21st century? Or?
No prob. We’ll hold a bake sale at the school and match them, dime for dime!!!!
well, maybe not
Too bad they are not the same kind of people in “The Waltons.”
Ken…are you the same Ken Watanabe I worked with in Hawaii some decades ago?
From PolitiFact:
One Wisconsin Now wrote: “The Walton family, which owns Wal-Mart, controls a fortune equal to the wealth of the bottom 42 percent of Americans combined.”
For comparison purposes, the latest data available, for 2010, the figure is 41.5 percent.
We rate the statement True.
“The very idea of distributive justice, or of any proportionality between success and merit, or between success and exertion, is in the present state of society so manifestly chimerical as to be relegated to the regions of romance.”
–John Stuart Mill, Chapters on Socialism (published posthumously in 1879)
According to the LA School Report blog, the LAUSD is going to open bids for three West Valley (middle to upper-middle class area, largely white area) for three closed elementary schools. The schools need many repairs. What do you want to bet the district will restore the schools ignoring the very real repair and maintenance needs of currently open schools in poorer areas? According to the district spokesperson the schools will probably go charter organizations. Deasey is hellbent on dismantling the district for his corporate allies.
And it came to pass, Charlotte…indeed they will be given to charters as reported today in LA School Report.
Charlotte, will you be able to attend the meeting at CSUN on April 16? If so, let’s touch base on meeting there.
“If persons are helped in their worldly career by their virtues, so are they, and perhaps quite as often by their vices: by servility and sycophancy, by hard-hearted and close-fisted selfishness, by the permitted lies and tricks of trade, by gambling speculations, no seldom by down-right knavery.” –John Stuart Mill, Chapters on Socialism (1879)
On Tavis Smiley last night, there was a propaganda commercial for Walmart. (The show was about the upcoming 50 year anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and I immediately recoiled when I saw that they are his sponsor.) Walmart claimed that they are going to spend billions of dollars to create new jobs –as if it’s a good thing that we will have many more working poor who need Food Stamps to survive, especially after funding for that program has been cut. It also probably means that there will be a lot more areas where Walmart drives out Mom and Pop stores and kills Main Street.
I have refused to shop at Walmart for years. I wish others would boycott, too.
Walmart and Broad are major donors to public TV…and Rupert Murdoch is actually a corporate owner according to a NY Times article some months back.
The Koch brothers, too, and yet Bill Moyers produces his shows on PBS without their backing or becoming their lackey.
The monetary financial system’s intrusion into every sector of the population’s economy, walks the nation into the Greatest Depression, as if it were perfectly normal economy policy. In order to further the national degradation, the war conducted against the United States, the war on teachers and students is disguised as ‘reform’, actually taking over the education system, where the formation of the citizen begins. That means the Private Sector, already dependent on the Fed’s bailout system, in addition to its looting the tax base, commences the takeover of the education curriculum itself; the subject matter, philosophy, science, reasoning, et al, a clear and present danger to the national security, to the Republic. The citizenry sits with bewilderment, while the Private Sector, Wall St. and the Fed operate the 500 year old Central Banker war on humanity.
The Law and Courts system, that is completely corrupted through ideology and money, legitimizes fascism and worse, as if, in this crisis, the Greatest Depression upon us, we need more privatization. The most dangerous era in American history is upon us, every preparation is being made to turn this nation into a neo-feudal plantation. The US citizenry must confront this fascist power and conquer it or this great nation is doomed.
Everyday the Sequester Congress, enables the Fed’s unrelenting unemployment-unlimited bailout system to operate the accelerating collapse of the national economy is the national security crisis. This is the origin of the war conducted against the United States and the population.
I am afraid you are correct – yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling convinced me that our country has gone from being a democracy to a plutocracy. The attack on teachers rids them of a large part of the middle class and gives them control of young minds. Scary.
Gates spends a lot of time talking about how we have to get college costs under control. His answer to that? Well, look at the demonstration project that is Arizona State. A high-level administrator there says that in three years’ time, 80 percent of classes will be taught using software. A teacher will wander among hundreds of students and help those having problems–that is, if they can’t figure things out using the online help features.
Gates doesn’t dare say, outright, that that is the plan for K-12 education, too–that his “disruptive revolution” is to replace teachers with software and BIG DATA–to implement that 300-to-1 ratio of students to teachers enabled by a move to software as the delivery system. And he doesn’t dare say that the Common [sic] Core [sic] was created precisely to enable that move to the Big Data/computer-adaptive software model of instructional delivery.
If he did say that, then the teachers’ unions would rethink playing the role of propaganda ministries for the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat.
They would awaken to the plan being implemented, and they wouldn’t like it one bit.
The whole ed deform package is about changing the way in which “training” for the children of the proles is delivered, about cutting the costs dramatically by reducing the teacher force and, of course, making a lot of money for a few educational materials monopolists.
Clarc King…you are right on the mark. This is a long planned multi pronged attack by the ALEC members, and the war seems over. With the final Greatest Depression, which they can blame on Yellen, the first woman to run the Fed, they will have all the wealth of the nation completely to themselves. Grapes of Wrath will seem like child’s play.
Continued austerity, rather than stimulus, has guarenteed the outcome. The Ryan budget is their shining goal today…and as Hitler said, tomorrow the world.
The answer is very simple, lets just boycott the walmart stores across america and put their money up their you know what. Its a simple solution – get the word out to boycott the walmart stores. I mean really people the walmart stores sell nothing but junk anyway so stay away!!! If you are in a community with not much of anything else regarding shopping, order on line!!!!
Absolutely! Why more people have not been boycotting Walmart already is beyond my comprehension, especially when it’s so easy to find great bargains when shopping online.
And yes, folks, that does include food –fresh and with home delivery options as well, particularly if you live in large metropolitan areas. I’ve used Peapod for groceries for years, because I have problems carrying heavy things, but their prices are not always the lowest, so I would often pick up the light weight items from my local grocery store. But when my nearest grocer went belly-up recently, I looked online to see if there was another option and I discovered InstaCart. LOVE LOVE LOVE this new service! You get your choice of stores –which is ever expanding– plus a personal shopper and same day delivery!! Often, their prices are better than store prices, too. And you can benefit from using coupons and coupon codes with both InstaCart and Peapod.
I found that even restaurant food from delivery.com can be a great frugal option, too, because on the weekends, they often give $8.00 off on a $20 order. Even with a $2 tip, in my best experiences, I’ve spent just $20 total for decent restaurant food that feeds me for 5 – 7 days!
Shop around online. You can get good prices on staples on the Internet as well.
BOYCOTT WALMART!!!
And BTW, whenever shopping online, take advantage of all free trial membership opportunities that provide discounts and/or free shipping, including from Amazon –which sells way more than books– as you can always cancel before the trial period ends.
And be sure to check for coupon codes before checking out. Retailmenot.com usually has the best selection.
Public schools aren’t fashionable, Diane.
They’ve simply fallen out of favor with wealthy people, pundits and the politicians that wealthy people own.
I don’t know, maybe it will work out better. They’ll have to turn back to local communities for support.
Maybe public schools will end up the truly LOCAL schools, with charters becoming 4 large national chains.
If I were a public school superintendent I think I’d market my schools by saying “we’re publicly-run, publicly-owned and LOCAL”
That would be an appealing message here. Local is a huge draw for us, in our business.
The idea is the money stays in your community.
There’s precious little local about public schools that are forced to spend a third of the school year preparing for and taking federally mandated tests and the rest of the year using curricula and pedagogical techniques forced upon them by the mandated bullet lists of “standards” prepared by a distant, tyrannical authority.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gibbs-obamacare-employer-mandate
Democrats are getting ready to fold on the low wage employer mandate in the health care law:
Former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that he believed Obamacare’s employer mandate would eventually be repealed.
BenefitsPro.com flagged Gibbs’s comments, made during a speech at an employee benefits expo in Colorado Springs.
“I don’t think the employer mandate will go into effect,” he said. “It’s a small part of the law. I think it will be one of the first things to go.”
The Obama administration has already delayed the mandate for a year and softened it further last month. Other White House allies have told TPM that they would support repealing the mandate if it was paid for. RAND Corp, a non-profit think tank, estimated full repeal would cost $149 billion in federal revenue in the next 10 years.
RAND also estimated that a one-year delay of the mandate would result in 300,000 more uninsured Americans.”
It’s a huge taxpayer subsidy to employers like Wal Mart. Low wage employers won, and citizens lost. Not only will you be bankrolling their effort to destroy your local public school, you’ll be covering their employee health care costs.
What an absolute betrayal of millions of voters, by our bought and paid for government.
Disgusting.
Here’s a bit of info. The new head if the Walton Family Foundation, Marc Sternberg’s office is in New Jersey so the Foundation does not have to file documents as a charitable foundation in New York State. Perhaps Eric Schneiderman ought to look into the arrangement.
An education system designed to create minimum wage workers for Walmart.