Peter Greene reviews Eli Broad’s plan to privatize at least half of the public schools in Los Angeles. The Beoad Foundation, the Walton Family Foindation have decided to provide privately-managed charter schools for half the district’s schools.
Peter writes:
“My hat is once again off to folks who have the chutzpah to unilaterally declare themselves the head of a previously-democratic sector of society. Did somebody elect the Broad Foundation to the school board of the LA USD? No? Well, why let that stop them from going ahead and setting policy. I think I may go ahead and declare myself the chief of police here in my town, stop down to City Hall, and let them know what the new polici are going to be.”
They have to keep some public schools open to enroll the children who didn’t get accepted by charters or were pushed out or told they were not “the right fit.”
Large numbers of children will be collateral damage, left behind and neglected by the games billionaires play.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Eli Broad Foundation had done its dirty-work in Atlanta for years under the leadership of Dr. Beverly Hall (voted Super of US) while taking $$, harassing teachers & admins to create the highest achievement gains known to children in deep poverty, while several educators are waiting to serve jail sentences, while half of the APS BoE is TFA, foundation $M are rolling in and APS is becoming a Charter System.
Next!!
Onward and upward…Eli!?
More shysters to buy, pay off and children to exploit!
Money is no object, only to unethical & crooked legislators?
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Eli Broad is of the generation of hustlers like Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken who felt regulations and the law do not apply to them.
Broad, as head of Kaufman and Broad home developers, and his later insurance and elder living businesses, has always had the cash and clout to reportedly circumvent the ‘regs’ that the rest of the world abides by…and now this megalo-maniacal billionaire has appointed himself not only King of the World, but King of Education nationwide.
So it is no surprise that he is determined to take down LAUSD ‘by hook or by crook,’ even by bankrupting the district. All the literature by him and about him is focused on his self aggrandized view of the world. (Be sure to google his involvement with purchasing the Beaudry buliding, his involvement with reportedly the worst education decision in history the Belmont HS scandal, the Ambassador hotel arts HS disaster, the Billion dollar iPad fiasco of his assigned Supt. Deasy, and endless of his finagling through his many LAUSD purchased puppets.)
Eli chooses to mentor very questionable people like Michelle Rhee, John Deasy, Ben Austin, Thelma Melendez, and too many others he has trained in his Broad Academy factory, churning out his own business model CEOs whom he then gets placed in school districts all over the country. There are now many thousands of Eli’s Army functioning as Rheeform clones, using the Broad vocabulary of “bring down public schools RAPIDLY and replace them with charters PAID for by the TAXPAYERS. What a amazing scam, what a raping of the American taxpayer!
He cackles in his mansion in West Los Angeles at his success in the greatest of American Robber Baron triumphs.
Does Eli emulate the whacko Donald Trump…or did Trump learn from Broad, to say what you want and what you believe, and then BUY your way to that end????
Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, and other major school districts have felt the imposed power of this self assigned dictator…Eli Broad.
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Ellen~ well said!
Too bad Dr. Beverly Hall did not ‘fall on the sword’ before she died of cancer & while her educators in ATL were sentenced to serve time in jail. Dr. Hall could have spoken up about the Eli Broad $M pumped into the system and given to her in exchange for Über High, Über Unrealist test scores mandated by teachers and by the poorest of the poor children in ATL.
She kept silent while others were sentenced to years in prison. Her information could have opened an avenue to investigate and possibly sue Eli Broad for buying and undermining all-things ethical in education.
Nope, she did not fall on the sword. I knew her and I did not think that she ever would. This could have been her first and only noble thing. Consistent to the end! Too bad!
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Broad and his billionaire privatizers spent tens of millions trying and failing to subvert LAUSD’s democratic process, and effectively buy control of the LAUSD school system. Alas, for all that payout over the years in supporting their various school board puppet candidates, they only managed to grab 2 out of the 7 LAUSD Board seats.
On top of that, two of their most fervent opponents sit at the head of LAUSD School Board: LAUSD Board President Steve Zimmer, and LAUSD Board Vice-President George McKenna.
But that doesn’t seem to phase them in the least.
Now, according to the L.A. TIMES piece, Broad and those same billionaires are pretty much telling us…
“You know what, everybody? We really don’t care that we lost at the polls, and you 15 million voting citizens of LAUSD rejected our plan to privatize Los Angeles schools.
“We’re just going to go ahead and do it to you anyway, and we’ve still got more than enough money, and bought more than enough clout and connections—TFA, CCSA, & politicians at every level—to put our plans into effect.
“And we don’t even need any Katrina disaster to make that happen, either. Just face it, folks. When it comes to schools, we know better than all of you citizens and parents and teachers what’s best for schools, so why don’t you just make this whole process easier on all of us?
“Why don’t all of you just accept the new privatization of schools that we’re bringing, stop complaining, and get the-hell out of our way?”
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And if the teachers, parents and children won’t get out of Broad’s way or any of the oligarchs, then there is always the creation of an American Gulag with programs to rid the country of any resistance through fear. I wonder where Broad and his cronies would built the gulags in America—Arizona where that sheriff already has a prison in the desert where the prisoners have to live in tents even in the blistering hot summers?
This wouldn’t be new. The U.S. built prison camps during World War II for Japanese American citizens and they were located in remote, desolate areas. This resulted in the relocation of approximately 120,000 people, many of whom were American citizens, to one of 10 internment camps located across the country. The Supreme Court even upheld the legality of the relocation order. I’m sure it would be easy for the five justices who voted for Citizens United to support a law that would lock any resistance to the RheeForm movement away from everyone and disconnected us from the internet.
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Meanwhile, at least in UTLA, our teachers union does NOTHING to oppose any of this. They jettisoned the staunchest critic of charters, Bennett Kayser, right after his primary re-election effort – because they didn’t think they could win that election. UTLA spent $500,000 before the primary, and only $50,000 after the primary. If our union would stop treating dues money as a slush fund, and start embracing transparency, we might actually have a fighting chance! https://www.facebook.com/groups/utlaaccountability/
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Dear Julie…hate to differ with you but now we have Garcia and Rodriguez lauding and voting for charterizing, and also we have Zimmer and Vladovic who generally voted with the Deasy brigade in the past.
Zimmer and Vladovic have not shown themselves to be anti charter.
Rodriguez is a multi millionaire charter operator who we have seen is not above lying and cheating and using bribery to get his way, and his henchwoman Garcia has been a manipulative political hack for all of her career…we only know that Ratliff and hopefully Schmerelson will stand up for public schools.
McKenna, very sadly, chose to be in the old boys club of Vladovic and Zimmer, and they manipulated to pass over Ratliff to be the new BoE VP. It was clear and sheer disgusting misogeny that Zimmer chose McKenna, a brand new Board member, as his VP instead if Ratliff who has done all the heavy lifting in her full term at LAUSD. She broke the iPad case open with her questioning of Jaime Aquino.
I do not look to Zimmer to be a hero for teachers (despite his planned utube videos made after the fact.) He has been a waffler
for all his time on the Board, and so we must look as his self serving behavior, and the many times he voted in support of Deasy, as did Vlad, as evidence of how Zimmer will run the Board.
Steve…please surprise me…and I will be happy to make you a public apology.
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Hi, Ellen.
I would never say that I was ever totally confident in Steve Zimmer—I blasted him here on these boards for his 2013 vote to retain Deasy–but he has improved in the last two years. His comments and actions are increasingly more
My point was that, of the 7 seats, the forces of privatization darkness have only managed to take 2. The other 5 are held by by hardcore opponents, or middle-of-the-roaders that have lately voted against the corporate reformers.
Yes, Ms. Ratliff would have been a better v.p. choice than McKenna, but not by much, and regardless, she’ll get her day. If she wins re-election in two years—which I believe she will, as she’s quite popular—my prediction is that she’ll take Zimmer’s place as Board President in four years after he’s termed out in 2019.
My other suspicion is that middle-of-the-roader Vladovic hates those corporate reformers, based on the smear campaign that they—via their agents John Deasy, Monica Garcia, and Tamar Galatzan—inflicted on him during the summer and fall of 2013. In fall 2014, Vladovic’s (leaked) indication that he would vote to can Deasy was in large part a response to that earlier slime job. This was a key factor to Deasy’s departure.
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This is what you get when billionaires can insert themselves into some “pet project” that we conveniently call a partnership. Only to the thousands of students whose lives and education will be disrupted by such tinkering, this is their future at stake, and their parents may want to have something to say about it. Isn’t this is how a democracy should function?
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How about renaming California and calling it Broadland? Then Eli Broad moves into the President’s mansion in Sacramento (unless he moves his capital to Los Angeles) the same moment he splits from the union and declares himself president for life. Every country will get its own Broad Academy graduate as its governor.
Bill Gates will do the same thing in Washington State. In California, Broad will change the name of Homeland Security to Broad Security. In Gates Country, Bill will build the Great Tech Wall of Gates and seal his fiefdom off from the rest, but there will be Windows in his wall.
Since Rhee lives in California, Broad will appoint her as his fiefdom’s official witch. Since she already has the broomstick Time Magazine gave her, she will start patrolling Broadland immediately looking for any resistance to sweep into the gutters and crush.
David Coleman has already given his allegiance to Gates when he offered his soul to him, so he will move to Washington State and hold a similar position of power to the one Rhee will have in California as long as Broad Rules and the Waltons don’t take over Broadland and rename it to Walmart Country. Walmart will become the official country store and every other business will be forced to close. At least under President for life Broad, we’ll have a choice of fast food restaurants.
There are far too many Waltons so they would be grabbing a lot of states for their fiefdoms. Rob Walton and Jim C. Walton lives in Arizona. From what I’ve read in the news about Arizona, they already took over but haven’t made it official that they’ve from the union yet.
Alice L. Walton lives in Texas. She will call her fiefdom Alice Land.
Broad may have competition in taking over California, because Gregory Penner, who lives in California and is married to Rob Walton’s daughter, who is actively working hard to increase their fiefdom by giving money to promote political causes in states she doesn’t live in. In addition, Christy R. Walton lives in California too. Broad may have his competition cut out for him to keep his hold on California so the Golden State may be embroiled in a Civil War that will tear it apart between Broad and the Waltons that live there.
Jeb Bush will never rule over Florida as it will be under water due to global warming that officially isn’t happening as the ocean levels rise and swallow Bush Country. To survive, the Bush Dynasty will be forced to invade Georgia and Alabama.
David Koch had his residence in New York so when he takes that state over with Cuomo in charge of the Gulag once it is built, New York will be known as Koch Country.
Charles Koch lives in Kansas. Not wanting to use the same name as his brother David in New York, he will rename Kansas Libertarian Land, and it will become the reborn Wild-Wild West with no laws, no police, and no courts. Justice will be handed out by mobs called vigilantes and they will wear white hooded cloaks to protect their identities. The only rule of law will by the rule of the strongest and all of the winners will be the CEO Barons of the largest corporations in Charley’s Land who will pay Emperor Charles annual dues after they swear fealty to keep their positions. Immediately after leaving the Union, Charles Land will declare war on Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Colorado. Warren Buffet lives in Nebraska so that state might be a challenge to defeat.
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Yes, Lloyd, instead of
the LABoard of Education,
the EliBroad of Education
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well said, Lloyd
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Why doesn’t Broad just invest in paper and create billions and billions of ditto sheets to be passed out amongst the poor students? They could be schooled at the Walmart charters where he can partner with the Waltons. Walmart $8/hour clerks can hand out and collect the dittos, and Pearson’s Craig’s list graders can grade them – or the worksheets can all be fill in the bullet point with #2 pencils, and Bill Gate’s computers can grade them. No need for teachers, or books. At graduation, all can go to work for Walmart. The kids from wealthy families can get their education at private academies that only the rich can afford, but of course, there will be a tax break for the wealthy via vouchers of some sort. Eventually, community colleges will be teaching, lawn mowing, fruit picking, hamburger making, Walmart greeter. This is what we’re coming to.
The “investment” in charters is a tax deduction, and a future return on investment. Win-win. The world needs more Walmarts, and more Walmart workers. We need to be controlled by the wealthy, for we don’t know what is good for ourselves. Where is Oprah now? Why isn’t she seeing the injustice of it all? You’d think, if she really believed this was all good, she’d be televising specials all the time, no?
Will they ever admit the harm they have done and will continue to do or are they just blinded by ego, greed and power?
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That’s the problem. The “tax deduction” encourages their participation, and it isn’t helpful if their goals is to set up so called public schools without a public voice. David Rubenstein, a billionaire, has donated millions to repairing monuments, but he didn’t choose to change the shape of them. That is what is happening with billionaires that are tinkering with education. They should get to dictate policy?
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Two articles just came out in the aftermath of
the Broad announcement that he was making
LAUSD a 50% charter school district.
First, corporate reform’s bought-and-paid-for
Monica Garcia welcomes charter expansion,
and dismisses the damage it will do to existing
system of public schools, because regarding that
system… she “hope(s) that system ends.”
She contrasts the charters, as a “one system emerging is a
learning organization that meets the needs of kids” with
the traditional public schools as a “the system that didn’t serve
(students) as well. I, too, hope it ends.”
http://laschoolreport.com/garcia-welcomes-foundations-promoting-charter-school-expansion/
L.A. SCHOOL REPORT:
(Garcia) also doesn’t believe more charter schools will spell the end of LAUSD.
“A successful LA Unified cannot be over, we will only get stronger (with charters comprising 50% or more of LAUSD),” García said. “We’ve had people talk about one system dying and one system emerging. That one system emerging is a learning organization that meets the needs of kids. The (old) system that didn’t serve (kids) as well. I, too, hope it ends.”
…
“I would go to any philanthropic arm and say ‘Please invest in our kids,’” García said. “We have many, many good strategies that need support.”
Her sentiments come in sharp contrast to other board members who view the proposed expansion with skepticism or even as a threat for the possibility that it would drain public dollars from the district’s traditional schools.
Board president Steve Zimmer told the LA Times last week that an aggressive expansion of charters could undermine the district’s own improvement efforts, saying, “The most critical concern would be the collateral damage to the children left behind.”
————————————————–
————————————————-
Meanwhile, Zimmer gave an interview
with JEWISH JOURNAL. He pulls no punches,
saying that Eli Broad’s massive expansion
of privately-run charter schools not about
just adding charters schools; it is actually
an attack on public schools that will have
“collateral damage for kids.” It’s it’s also about
“changing the idea of what public education is”
for the worse.
Unfortunately, he doesn’t use the words “privatize”
or “privatization”
He also says this charter expansion is also an attack
on unions as well. The people and organizations
funding it are the same people and organizations
who have a goal of wiping out unions.
Broad’s charter expansion, Zimmer says, “is not about children.”
Here’s the linlk:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/education/article/lausd_board_president_steve_zimmer_talks_about_getting_back_to_basics
Some highlights:
————————
STEVE ZIMMER: “I think there is a difference between support for existing charter schools that parents have chosen [and support more for new charter schools]. I respect and support those choices as long as the charter is doing very well, and I mean very well.”
JEWISH JOURNAL: “Why a different bar for charter schools?”
STEVE ZIMMER: “Because that’s why charters are supposed to exist: either to provide something better, or unique and innovative. Otherwise there’s no compelling reason to authorize them.”
JEWISH JOURNAL: “Do you think there’s any chance to roll back the charter trend?”
STEVE ZIMMER: “We have the most charters of any school district in the nation. We have incredibly high levels of saturation. If choice is so important, the California Charter Schools Association’s agenda and the Walton Family Foundation and other foundations’ agendas to situate more and more charter schools within the LAUSD boundary is not about children. It’s not about choice. It’s not about innovation.
“It’s about a very different agenda of bringing down the school district, an agenda to dramatically change what is public education.
“It’s about altering the influence of public sector unions. I just happen to disagree with that agenda. But (pro-charter) folks should be explicit about what their agenda is.”
JEWISH JOURNAL: “It seems like a lot of the dialogue relating to LAUSD pits teacher against student. If something is good for students, it’s bad for teachers and vice versa.”
STEVE ZIMMER: “How it’s said in my world is whether you have a kid agenda or an adult agenda. That is an incredibly deceptive political construct. Anybody who has spent their career in public school knows that’s a lie. When you’re supporting teachers, you’re supporting kids. When you create a better environment for learning, you’re supporting kids and everyone who works with them.
“That lie — kids versus adults — that lie is a subterfuge about what part of the reform movement is about, which is eviscerating or lessening the influence of public sector unions. A lot of that is focused on teacher unions. Teacher unions are teachers. I’ve been very critical of my own union and the union I consider to be an ally. [But] there’s a difference between being critical of different policies of a labor union, and believing that union should not exist.
“And a lot of money that fuels the charter and reform movement is by people who believe teacher unions should not exist.”
(then later)
STEVE ZIMMER: “I’m actually very proud we have some of the highest-performing charters in the country. It takes a lot for me to not renew or to close down an existing charter. But at the point we’re at, a new charter has to be compelling. It has to offer something we don’t have right now, and that is a high bar. I am unapologetic about it.
“I believe in choice, but I am very, very wary. I am very cognizant of the damage that competition (from charter expansion) has done to our schools. And we became obsessed with data instead of being data-informed. When a system becomes so obsessed with competition that they view children through their potential to score versus their overall humanity, the dehumanization of that public school system is not something that is attractive to parents, is not something that is warm and inviting. And our public schools, to my great regret, have become test score-obsessed. A lot of charter schools have, too.”
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In reading the first set of quotes from LAUSD Board Member Monica Garcia, what strikes me is that Garcia doesn’t even grasp how contradictory and downright idiotic that her own rhetoric is. (The two words I put in CAPITALS are contradictory)
“I would go to any PHILANTHROPIC arm and say ‘Please INVEST in our kids,’ ” García said.”
“Philanthropic” actions are the exact opposite of “investing.” Philanthropy—literally meaning “the love of humanity”—is charity, OR voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act.
Philanthropy is most certainly not the capitalist concept of “investing”—which is basically the “love of money”—as the philanthropist, unlike the “investor,” neither desires nor expects a monetary return on the money he donates, nor does he demand control over any organization to which he donates money.
Broad, Walton, and the rest have been called “vulture philanthropists.”
To bridge this contradiction, Broad and others have sometimes resorted to calling themselves “philanthropreneurs”—what they believe is a benign descriptor of their predatory activities.
I mean… really! “philanthropreneurs” ??? Seriously?
That word is an oxymoronic mash-up of “philanthropist” and “entreprenuer”. That’s like describing a geometric figure as is a “square circle.” You’re either one or the other. You can’t be both.
You’re either…
— a “philanthropist” whose motives are selfless and lack any desire for person gain or control,
or you’re…
— an “entrepreneur” who’s motives are selfish and out for personal gain or control.
You can’t be both.
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Good distinction, Julie. If you or anyone associated with you benefits from your donation, you are not a “philanthropist.”
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Julie,
Thanks for pointing out that true understanding is dependent on proper/correct word usage.
Too many times those of us who support public education for all students use the imprecise and obfuscating language of the edudeformers-much to our disadvantage.
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Julie, that is an outdated view of philanthropy. The last couple of years have seen a complete paradigm shift. Here is just one of thousands of articles about it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2013/07/30/why-impact-investing-is-an-emerging-paradigm-shift-in-philanthropy/
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I read the article and I stand by what I said. They’re bastardizing the terms and concepts of “philanthropy”, “philanthropic,” “philanthropist,” etc. This “Impact investing” is nothing but ruthless capitalism covered the thinnest veneer of social responsibility and “charity”.
FROM THE ARTICLE: (Note the capitalization)
“Attached to all this fervor is a fair amount of confusion about what impact investing actually represents. Is it investment, philanthropy or both? Simply put, impact investing is THE DEPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL WITH AN EXPECTATION OF FINANCIAL RETURN, where the success of the investment is also contingent upon achieving a stated social or environmental goal. For example, at JPMorgan Chase we are committing capital—more than $50 million to date—to private equity funds THAT WILL DELIVER US AN APPROPRIATE FINANCIAL RETURN while simultaneously improving livelihoods for underserved populations around the world.”
I mean, come on… “deliver us an appropriate financial return”… this is not “philanthropy” by any current or past definition.
In Eli Broad’s and the billionaires’ approach hostile takeover of education, it allows them to make the specious argument:
“Sure, we’re making millions off this ‘education reform’, ‘reforms’ that allow us to seize control of hundreds of millions of the public’s tax dollars, and control over massive school districts / schools with absolutely no oversight, transparency or accountability from the public who are kicking on those tax dollars…
” … but we’re also helping improve the education of poor black and brown children at the same time… so that means EVERYBODY WINS, and that means our profiteering really is ‘philanthropy’ and that makes it okay!”
Those millions should go to the classroom, not into the pockets of hedge fund managers, or the bank accounts of money-motivated charter honchos like Eva Moskowitz ($ 600,000 / year). Once all of this is exposed to the public, they’ll feel and think the same way, and resist such “reform.”
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Eli Broad is an unreasonable man. He wrote a book called the “Art of Being Unreasonable”. You can pay an unreasonable price to read his unreasonable justifications for being unreasonably stubborn and hardheaded. He listens to no one. He inspires fear in everyone. Here’s a 2010 article about his “venture philanthropy” taking over Los Angeles.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/06/the-art-of-the-billionaire
He is buying our city, and not just the schools. Unreasonable.
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Thanks, Left Coaster, for the link to the New Yorker article on the “unreasonable” Eli Broad, King of the World. Although it was written in 2010, it shows how overbearing, tenacious, and dangerous Eli is, and will always be. People say he is old and will die soon, but I do not believe it. He is to many, Mephistopheles, and has shown that he intends to live on forever. He is beyond unreasonable. He is a dictator who brooks no interference and he is a cutthroat entrepreneur who is determined to win at all costs. Do not believe he will ever sit back and let the dice turn against him. He will manufacture dice that are so loaded, they always drop to his benefit.
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This is the focus – Broad.Gates,Walton ELITE are pushing for HUMAN CAPITAL.
It no longer starts with Kindergarten. Their infiltration of the University with things like this:
PLEASE watch this! Cradle to Career in already in 63 cities! This is a national data collection initiative targeting low income youth via their access to Human Services. This is frightening! If you live in a city where this is taking place – STOP IT! You will begin hearing how local government intends to create a database on youth and families from pregnancy and onward. They will involve law enforcement to target future incarceration, they will target mental health and they will have full profiles on everyone!
Start rolling at 2 minutes and 47 seconds.
http://santamonica.granicus.com/mediaplayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=3432
Cradle to Career is pushing out “Youth Well Being” studies. They started collecting data on all public school kindergarteners via EDI study (teachers get paid $500 to complete and submit to UCLA’s Center for Healthier Children, Families, and Communities.
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Our country is for sale—our schools are not, but http://www.changethelausd.com/our_country_is_for_sale_our_schools_are_not_but
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Sorry to say, Stuart, our country is for sale and paid for by the billionaires, but our schools too are bought.
As long as there is Citizens United and McCutcheon to guarantee that hidden wealth can buy legislators, and Vergara lawsuits to do away with teachers unions (and other unions), and parent trigger charades to scam the uniformed and charterize schools, and a bought and paid for SCOTUS, we are lost.
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typo…uninformed….
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Local city governments are infiltrated to support the collection of health, mental health, and “law” incidents of all students, beginning with low income receiving Social Services. Eugenics NEO Ed in play
Systems (TECCS) « UCLA Center for Healthier Children,…
healthychild.ucla.edu
http://www.healthychild.ucla.edu/ourwork/teccs/
Cradle to Career Network | StriveTogether
strivetogether.org
http://www.strivetogether.org/cradle-career-network
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
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I’m just waiting for all the top bloggers to start thinking about how the attacks on Rafe Esquith and the devastating lawsuit that has been filed on his and hundreds of other teachers’ behalf would work to Broad’s advantage. LAUSD is already lawyering up for this fight, and who pays for all this? It’s the kids. I fear that Broad is positioning himself to pick the pieces when the district goes into bankruptcy. He certainly is intending to finish the work that his protege Deasy tried to impose but didn’t quite finish.
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I agree. They have us in the deadly, too big to fail catch-22. The Gordon Gekko sends the Bud Fox in to take over the company and the union at the same time, and then breaks it all up from the inside.
I think that when individuals in a company or institution cross legal and ethical bounds, in this case using their power as employers to violate people’s rights, they need to be prosecuted as individuals
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But who will prosecute them? Teachers and their supporters do not have the millions of dollars required to hire the best lawyers in the nation. Some person with minor legal training cannot fight against the greatest corporate lawyers in the world such as O’Melveny and Myers which is the main outside firm that LAUSD uses to fight against teachers, students, parents, and taxpayers…We, the People…using our own tax money to pay them to use the courts to kill us off.
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How did Gordon Gekko go down? Bud Fox. Is it possible to end teacher jail — I cringe writing that term — without ending LAUSD? And without a quadrillion dollars? There must be a way.
I teach middle schoolers from the part of LA known as Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Some of them bring to class serious baggage, and not their backpacks. I cannot think of more descriptive words than: I’ve seen some bad things. When I was a newbie teacher I sometimes thought they were tragic or even incorrigible.
Now I see them as challenging. I accept that I cannot solve every problem, but I keep at it anyway. I just keep pondering, night after night, day after day. There is a way.
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Laft Coast…Gordon Gekko was a figment of a Hollywood writer’s imagination. We cannot look to fantasy for answers to the Broad onslaught.
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Well, I guess you’re right. Maybe it’s foolish to think someone high up might have an epiphany and could want to publicly reveal the back room dealings I think we all believe have been going on. I support the lawsuit. And now that I think about it, a large payout to deserving victims would do more good than harm. Please understand why I am constantly alert to the possibility of deception by Eli Broad, though. I work in SoCal.
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Reading these descriptions makes us sound like we finally got the tory dream – an aristocracy of wealth that lives by its own laws and tries to control the lives of the serfs and burghers. Each w/fiefdoms and a private army and a controlled legislature that serves to legitimate their desires. As David Tyack once wrote, Americans have always confused wealth as implying intelligence.
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Go back to our Founding FAthers, they started that notion.
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The “Founding Fathers” were a group of privileged white men who were property and slave owners, and who made rules to benefit their own class. Slaves were regarded as 3/5 human, women and non property owner males were not even considered as citizens and voters. As you indicate Paula, this all started as a very protected class system…and it only grew into a democratic republic with much fighting to establish the Amendments. And now we find ourselves being ruled by this same early elitist playbook, by those calling themselves “absolute-ists”.
Go tell it to Scalia and his cronies.
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Here’s who told Broad he could take over our public schools, the LAUSD BOE. With every dollR they took, with every Broad academy idiot they hired, with every campaign of charter supporters they financed. The tax paying public, the parents, the teachers, even the students had no say. Of course this deformed would assume, I run it. LAUSD has been taken over by the moneyed class and so far no one wants to stop it.
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You’re absolutely right. You know what has not been reported? How many LAUSD high level executives are on Broad’s payroll. That should be public information considering LAUSD is a public entity (in fact, activists in every school district should find out this important piece of information). For example, is Thelma Melendez on Broad’s payroll? Rumors are flying that she–a graduate of the same class of the unaccredited Broad Academy as John Deasy–is under consideration as the next Superintendent. She is even claiming not to be a Broadie; she knows in this climate, that would be a nonstarter. Some of us were deeply concerned when she was being considered for a position as an advisor to our hands-off Mayor. http://www.citywatchla.com/archive/5536-mayor-s-rumored-education-appointment-making-parents-nervous
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Melendez was actually Garcetti’s chosen education advisor for about a year….but she managed to stay on the LAUSD payroll all that time according to reports, in order to enlarge her eventual retirement benefits. This is an unusual and questionable role.
She thereafter came back to LAUSD and was appointed as the Cortines back up, second in command, leading to her and Cortines’ and Broads reported strategy to get her appointed to be the next Supt.
Broad was able to implant Deasy without a search and was probably instrumental in bringing in retired, 83 year old Cortines (over the choices of others in the system) to be interim Supt. The community needs to be aware that this same overreach is possible with yet another Broad Academy grad, Thelma Melendez.
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“I think I may go ahead and declare myself the chief of police here in my town, stop down to City Hall, and let them know what the new policies are going to be.”
I sure would love to take over a few public resources too! Our town in Connecticut has a 19th century mansion that is being used as a museum. I think I’d like to live there. We also have a nice beach. Can I just say it’s mine? One of our libraries is a Carnegie-built gem. Perfect for extra office space. If I pick up a few of our parks, I’m sure I could find a way to use them. Um…does it matter that I’m a (newly) retired middle school teacher and not a billionaire? How can it be fair to only let billionaires appropriate public institutions and facilities?
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Unfortunately, UTLA doesn’t have a plan to help in this fight – – other than giving speeches, holding secret meetings, and treating dues money as a slush fund. UTLA won’t even buy legal insurance for teachers accused of misconduct, so LAUSD continues to send everyone to teacher jail. UTLA also abandoned Mr. Bennett Kayser in the middle of a school board election, jettisoning support for him after the March 5 primary. I wish our union would focus on fighting for teachers instead of traveling the world at union expense to give speeches about “unity” and ‘attacks on unions.’ https://www.facebook.com/groups/utlaaccountability/
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This whole battle was described by Peter Greene in his eloquent 4th of July article earlier this year, where he contrasts
“The Easy Way” of government espoused by Broad and others such as Reed Hastings AND
“The Hard Way” of government via a system where every citizen has a bote:
“The Hard Way” VS. “The Easy Way”
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-hard-way.html
PETER GREENE:
America stands for doing things the hard way.
When it comes to running a country, the easiest way to do it is to put one guy in charge and let him tell everybody how to do everything. He can be picked by heredity or tradition or power or wealth; he can be installed by a committee of Important People, or by the roar of the crowd, or even a legitimate-ish election.
But the important part– the easy part– is that once you have him installed, you just let him run everything. No debates. no discussions, no big arguments about What To Do Next– just let your Grand High Potentatial Poohbah decide it all.
…
But instead, we dedicated our country to doing things the hard way. We wrote down a bunch of foundational premises for running a country, and then we set up a mechanism by which, over time, those principles could be interpreted and extended to their natural conclusions, even if the majority of founders didn’t agree with those conclusions. The constitution is the ultimate exercise in saying, “Look, I’m going to agree to these principles, and every time I try to weasel out of actually following them, I want you to bop me over the head and stop me.”
Furthermore, we set up a system based on the principle of not shutting people up, sorting them somehow into classes ranging from Those Who Must Always Be Listened to all the way down to Those Who Must Always Be Ignored.
The Framers had seen the many ways in which the easy way could go wrong, and somehow, they found the means of sitting down together with fellow citizens with whom they deeply and profoundly disagreed.
We have always been annoyed by our own system. We’re irritated by the way it fosters unending debate on every little thing– even things that we thought were already decided. And good Lord in heaven– can’t the people who are Dead Wrong just shut up and go away? We waste time, energy, and money on processes that are inefficient and inconsistent. There’s hardly anything in this country that we don’t do the hard way, loaded with argument and controversy and inefficiency and ambiguity.
…
On top of that, our peculiar brand of running a country ties all of our citizens together, so that people in one community have to worry about, be involved in, pay taxes to finance decisions in other communities. Gah! Can’t we just take care of our own and let those Others go hang? Having to be all tied together is just hard!
And so we are always bedeviled by folks who want to get America to do things the easy way. And with the unleashing of Citizens United, many of our wealthy citizens are doing their best to move us to an easier system, a system where the people who are Better just go ahead and settle issues for the rest of us.
Also, why shouldn’t I be able to just close the doors on my gated community, pay for my own police and fire company, and just not have to give a cent to those Other People?
This pressure to start doing things the easy way is felt all across our country, but we are getting hit by it head on in education.
When Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says we should just abolish school boards because letting voters get involved in school decisions is just inefficient and disruptive, he’s searching for the easy way.
When Bill Gates decides that all American students (well, all non-rich non-private school students) should meet the same standards, and those standards should be the ones laid out by this couple of guys he knows, he’s looking for the easy way.
When folks like the Waltons and Broads look for ways to break down the teaching profession so that we can have people in classrooms who just follow the instructions they’re given, it’s one more search for the easy way.
When people across the spectrum agitate for a standardized test that can measure the complex learning achievements of every student in America, that’s a search for the easy way.
When charteristas think that simply unleashing the invisible hand of the market place will somehow create excellence in education (and, perhaps, help sort the Betters from the Lessers, while making some Betters a big pile of profit)– that’s a search for the easy answer, too.
There are two problems with the easy way.
The first is a moral problem. The easy way requires us to silence everyone who is not on the Right Page. If you lost the vote, if you’re in the smaller group, if you’re on the less powerful side, then you just need to shut up. The easy way seeks to stop all disagreement and discussion so that we can unite behind one clean, clear, elegant solution, and there is only one way to do that– to silence everyone who doesn’t agree.
Worse, and more morally repugnant, the easy way calls on us to ignore Those People entirely. It encourages us to think of them as Lessers, which somehow makes it okay to give them less– less service, less support, less kindness, less consideration, because, hey, they’re Less Than, and so they deserve to get less. We can abandon them because that’s all they deserve. It is straight up immoral to treat other human beings as less valuable than our own tribe.
And yet, that immoral behavior is always required by the easy way.
Which brings us to the second problem, the practical problem– the easy way just doesn’t work. Look back through history– a nation or institution can sustain the easy way for a generation at most, but then things just fall apart. Turns out that silencing people thoroughly and forever is really, really hard. And it also turns out that engaging in immoral behavior over time comes with huge personal, institutional, and cultural costs.
Without the arguing and debating and voices that just won’t shut up, you can’t move forward. As a nation we have made many huge mistakes, but by and large we have been able to move forward and try to leave those mistakes behind, because the voices who could and would point out those mistakes were not silenced. The easy way lets you get stuck in a bad place.
By creating a government structure that doesn’t support tyranny easily, we have made a commitment to doing things the hard way, and every time we have tried to weasel out of that commitment, it has cost us as a culture and a country.
So the current struggle in education against the forces who would like to reduce education to an easy solution is not just about education, but another version of our national struggle.
There will always be people who want to silence others in the name of ease and efficiency, and they will always be wrong. To look at the rich, complex business that is the education of an entire nation’s varied population of young people– to look at that and think that there is an easy answer to How To Do It– is to be both unAmerican and simply foolish.
Living in a pluralistic society is hard. Saying that human beings all have value and acting like you really mean it is hard. Dealing with people who don’t see things the same way you do is hard. Educating the children of an entire nation is hard. That’s all right. We’re Americans, and 236 years ago, we made a commitment to doing things the hard way, because, in the end, it’s the way that continues to lead us, slowly but surely, to a better version of ourselves as a culture. Don’t let anybody con you into anything else.
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Alternet’s Adam Johnson wrote about an Chicago Tribune editorial hoping that Chicago would have a Katrina-like disaster, one that would allow—as it did in New Orleans—a “handing over (of) the reins of their local governments to technocratic, largely white neoliberal systems.”
http://www.alternet.org/media/most-evil-op-ed-ever-writer-wishes-katrina-storm-hit-chicago
ADAM JOHNSON:
“But McQueary’s piece is far worse. Praising a devastating storm that killed 1,800 people as a net positive is already a terrible thing. Expressly wishing for a devastating storm to come along and wipe out the third largest city in America so one can expedite a Randian end times is positively psychotic. In an attempt to be polemical, McQueary exposes the dark heart at the core of what Naomi Klein calls ‘disaster capitalism.’
“For these people, it is not a thought experiment, it’s not rhetorical, it’s real. They truly believe that largely black, union-friendly cities would be better off in the long run handing over the reins of their local governments to technocratic, largely white neoliberal systems. To them, the tragedy of Katrina wasn’t the mass displacement and death of thousands, it was that it didn’t happen soon enough.”
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I just found this article at Harpers’ about the neoliberalism that has has infected colleges, and now higher education’s mission is now merely about churning out needed workers, and nothing else.
http://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/the-neoliberal-arts/
The author, William Deresiewicz, contrasts a certain university’s century old mission statement:
“The paramount obligation of a college is to develop in its students the ability to think clearly and independently, and the ability to live confidently, courageously, and hopefully.”
has been replaced by the vague neoliberal concepts of
“leadership
“service
“integrity
“creativity
“Let us take a moment to compare these texts.
“The first thing to observe about the older one is that it is a sentence. It expresses an idea by placing concepts in relation to one another within the kind of structure that we call a syntax. It is, moreover, highly wrought: a parallel structure underscored by repetition, five adverbs balanced two against three.
“A spatial structure, the sentence also suggests a temporal sequence. Thinking clearly, it wants us to recognize, leads to thinking independently. Thinking independently leads to living confidently. Living confidently leads to living courageously. Living courageously leads to living hopefully.
“And the entire chain begins with a college that recognizes it has an obligation to its students, an obligation to develop their abilities to think and live.
“Finally, the sentence is attributed to an individual. It expresses her convictions and ideals. It announces that she is prepared to hold herself accountable for certain responsibilities.
“The second text is not a sentence. It is four words floating in space, unconnected to one another or to any other concept. Four words — four slogans, really — whose meaning and function are left undefined, open to whatever interpretation the reader cares to project on them.
“Four words, three of which — ‘leadership,’ ‘service,’ and ‘creativity’ — are the loudest buzzwords in contemporary higher education. (‘Integrity’ is presumably intended as a synonym for the more familiar ‘character,’ which for colleges at this point means nothing more than not cheating.)
“The text is not the statement of an individual; it is the emanation of a bureaucracy. In this case, a literally anonymous bureaucracy: no one could tell me when this version of the institution’s mission statement was formulated, or by whom. No one could even tell me who had decided to hang those banners all over campus. The sentence from the founder has also long been mounted on the college walls. The other words had just appeared, as if enunciated by the zeitgeist.
“But the most important thing to note about the second text is what it doesn’t talk about: thinking or learning. In what it both does and doesn’t say, it therefore constitutes an apt reflection of the current state of higher education. College is seldom about thinking or learning anymore. Everyone is running around trying to figure out what it is about. So far, they have come up with buzzwords, mainly those three.”
William Deresiewicz talks about Scott Walker changing Wisconsin’s state university mission to “to provide the needed members of the workforce.”
He later asks a different university president the most important thing students should learn.
“Leadership.”
He eventually articulates why neoliberalism with this “leadership” emphasis troubles him.
http://harpers.org/archive/2015/09/the-neoliberal-arts/8/
William Deresiewicz:
“The worst thing about ‘leadership,’ the notion that society should be run by highly trained elites, is that it has usurped the place of ‘citizenship,’ the notion that society should be run by everyone together.
“Not coincidentally, citizenship — the creation of an informed populace for the sake of maintaining a free society, a self-governing society — was long the guiding principle of education in the United States. To escape from neoliberal education, we must escape from neoliberalism. If that sounds impossible, bear in mind that neoliberalism itself would have sounded impossible as recently as the 1970s. As late as 1976, the prospect of a Reagan presidency was played for laughs on network television.
“Instead of treating higher education as a commodity, we need to treat it as a right. Instead of seeing it in terms of market purposes, we need to see it once again in terms of intellectual and moral purposes. That means resurrecting one of the great achievements of postwar American society: high-quality, low- or no-cost mass public higher education. An end to the artificial scarcity of educational resources. An end to the idea that students must compete for the privilege of going to a decent college, and that they then must pay for it.”
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