Karen Wolfe is a public school parent in Los Angeles. a friend of hers received what sounds like a “push poll.” A push poll is a telephone call that begins by asking innocent questions but then turns into advocacy for an issue or a candidate. You assume it is a poll, but it is actually an effort to shape your opinion.
Wolfe writes:
“Are pollsters calling Los Angeles residents to shape opinion about Eli Broad’s Privatization Plan?
“It sounds that way. One teacher, I’ll call her Ms. R, asked yesterday in a facebook group, “Did anyone else in the LA County area get that ‘research gathering’ call about charter schools?”
“Ms. R gave me permission to share the details of the call.
“She was asked which of 12 issues was most pressing to her.
Ms. R answered ‘infrastructure’ because, she said “I live downtown and the roads need a lot of work. Then BOOM, a question about my opinion of Eli Broad.”
Then about the union.
She then listened to several misleading statements like, “Charter schools with donors like Eli Broad will be able to raise money for charter schools so students have more access to arts programs which are being cut from public schools,” and was asked, “After listening to these opinions about charter schools, are you more likely or less likely to support the increase of charter schools in LA County?”
“I actually told the lady these questions offended me. But it was designed to get me to say I would be more likely to support the charter school increase. ‘I think they are info gathering in order to justify the push.’”
“At least 5 statements, I was so pissed I said something about it out loud to the woman. There was one point where she typed why I was against charters word for word. She read it back to me and kept messing up where I had to correct her a few times to make it make sense.”
Ms R finished,“AND I was told the session may be recorded for quality purposes.”
Whose quality?”
This is why answering machines were invented.
Suggest everyone read the LA Times front page article today on Clinton and teachers. You can find it online.
Peter Greene is quoted by the reporter, as is his blog site.
Hillary Rodham Clinton talks about education a lot, but she does so cautiously. (Charlie Neibergall / Associated Press)
National Politics3:00 AM
Some teachers resisting union endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton for president
byEvan Halper
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a dear friend of a fiery teachers union leader, she speaks out against the bombardment of standardized testing that dismays educators, and she never misses a chance to say how enamored she is with those who teach. Many teachers are less enamored with her, however. One…
Who did this poll? A very similar “poll” was done a couple years ago by the Chicago Tribune (sister paper to the LA Times) in conjunction with the Joyce Foundation. Diane posted a transcript of the call done by a [parent or educator, can’t remember which] who received such “polling” call. The questions sound very similar.
The Joyce Foundation?
Do you mean the same Joyce Foundation that Barack Obama was very closely involved with when he was. State Senator in Illinois?
The same Joyce a Foundation that has pushed privatization of the Chicago schools for the better part of a generation?
Shocking…
Oooo! Please call me please call me!
I would love to add to their “data”.
“Charter schools with donors like Eli Broad will be able to raise money for charter schools so students have more access to arts programs which are being cut from public schools,”
That’s bizarre. So they’re actually creating demand by tearing down public schools?
Also- can we admit ed reform runs political campaigns now, or are we all still pretending they don’t? Just because they believe in privatizing schools and that is “bipartisan” doesn’t mean it isn’t “political”- of course it is.
Chiara: “bizarre”?
Hmmmm… not when you’re dealing with insiders of the education status quo. Let’s see, someone conducting a pro-Eli Broad/rheephorm push poll mentions the arts being cut from public schools and how charters in comparison just look so darn cool in comparison…
Could this have anything to do with a Broadie like John Deasy having been LAUSD Supt. until recently and setting up the public schools under his authority for failure so that charters and privatization look good?
😱
I was reading Blume (the reporter) in an interview and he said the public schools really took a hit with the IPad debacle.
Of course, the IPad debacle was heavily promoted by the ed reform “movement”, all the way up to “movement leader” Arne Duncan so I’m not clear why the public schools should be punished for poor leadership.
Might be time to stop going along to get along. Ed reform initiatives never seems to end well for existing public schools.
Kind of like General Motors, Firestone, Standard Oil and other automobile based corporations uniting to put the Los Angeles electric street cars out of business.
Of course it was. The psychopathic oligarch education reformers will manipulate and lie to the public through their teeth and out of their other end even after they are gone from this earth.
Looks like the Obama Administration and the Kasich Administration are doing another big push to open more charter schools in Ohio:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/10/ohio_wins_71_million_charter_school_expansion_grant_drawing_pride_and_distrust.html
This time they hope the “good” charters will push out the “bad” charters by the magic of markets. As usual, there’s no mention at all of existing public schools, or the effects of any of these high-level federal/state plans on the 93% of children in this state who DON’T attend charter or private schools.
Chiara, See my analyses of the deep laws in Ohio’s grant application. It is one of the last comments on Diane’s initial mention of the 17 million grant. I looked at the USDE reviews of Ohio’s grant application. These show how Arne does not give a hoot for anything other than shoving more grant money at charters, even if the applications are shoddy…and Ohio’s was terrible on key points.. You Can’t Make This Stuff Up! Manipulator of Charter Data Wins Big Federal Grants for Ohio
I read it. The language is pure fantasy: “high quality authorizing”, “rigorous application process”- WHAT are they talking about? This is completely invented.
I have to laugh at the Ohio legislature. Apparently the key to “attracting” high quality charters is giving them more and more money. We now have to entice these chains to agree to set up in this state by dangling money.
These are the same people who just cut funding for half of Ohio public schools. “More funding = quality” only applies to the schools they prefer and promote. They know the public schools can’t “choose” to serve communities or not, so, you know, who cares what happens to our schools. We’re ordered to “do more with less” while they funnel more and funding to the charter sector.
Is a “push poll” different from a “piss bowl”?
Eli Broad didn’t get to be Eli Broad by playing nice.
The Charterization of LA is on his bucket list.
He is determined.
He is committed.
He is a man who is not going to leave this mortal coil with this desire unfulfilled.
When you’re 82 years old and you look at your bank account figure and see the people opposed to you are mostly mere teachers…
…you write more checks to more politicians and more institutions.
Eli Broad is used to getting everything he wants.
He sees the hour glass very clearly. And at this point in his life, he’s impatient and antsy.
My guess is we ain’t seen nothing yet from Mr. Broad’s mercenary forces.
Also, weren’t public schools promised “support” if we all went along with the giant Common Core program? Is that materializing anywhere or are we back to business as usual, where the “movement” focus is on replacing public schools now that the Common Core testing is safely in place? Wasn’t this supposed to be more than a new testing mandate? When do we get to the “support” part? Not seeing that.
Broad and Gates and others have used push polls to misrepresent the virtues of charters since at least 2011. Reports are on the Internet: key phrase “Broad push poll on charters,” or substitute the name with Gates. The phone interview is an antique path for PR, but if they are recording verbatim comments, then these can be analyzed for salience and “sympathies” and become one-liners in a more comprehensive campaign to “engineer consent” a phrase and philosophy promoted by the “father of PR, ”Edward Bernays. Broad has bought off the LA United Way to make has agenda look well intentioned. See this from earlier in 2015.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2015/03/eli-broad-funded-united-way-greater-los.html
How many blogs can we expect in a typical week?
Donald L. Laurie Oyster International Tel: 617 859 3065 Cell: 617 792 7399 don@oysterinternational.com
Broad’s boy Deasy was instrumental in cutting the arts in LAUSD.
Sometimes being to pushy with the hard sell backfires. Cases in point: most of the recent LAUSD elections.
Laura H.,
I agree and I’ll add my opinion of the United Way. “United to effect change at the direction of the Billionaires – our way is whatever they say it is.”
We got $1 Billion from Bloomberg for a “Well Being” Survey that was thought up, no doubt, by Edward Bernays. Here’s evidence of that.
“Specifically ELB recommends: (1) The education
of the public in the meanings and importance of
democracy; (2) one centralized government author
ity to give out facts, to correlate and coordinate the
activities of the many scattered information agencies
this body to be headed by a technician in mass
communications; (3) make democracy work better;
(4) a master plan for public relations in morale
building to be worked out “by technicians drawn
from the fields of the social sciences, sociology, psy
chology, ethnology, adult education, economics, the
army, the navy, public opinion, communications,
public relations.” ELB concludes: “To achieve a
continuously strong morale, we need physical and
emotional well-being, a common goal, common lead
ers we can trust, and a belief in one another.”
https://archive.org/stream/publicrelationse00bernrich/publicrelationse00bernrich_djvu.txt
Well Being study was engineered to get certain results but in some ways it failed. Respondents indicated an overwhelming majority do not trust their government.
What it did do was advance a “use” for an adjunct survey’s results – the Early Development Instrument (EDI) used by UCLA which gathers psychographic info on 6.5 million kinder kids in 32 states. This kicks out data for the city to use in a Youth WELL BEING Report Card. It’s the same twisted bit – questions loaded with flags for the tracking. It’s supported by Kellog and United Way. Additionally, a sector of the Dept is funded by a syndicated fund, Avivar Capital.
Click to access BIHHD_Investing-in-Healthy-Human-Development-2-pager-May-7obk.pdf
And the sad thing is, the woman calling was so happy to find a job! I wonder how much she is paid…