As we have read, Eli Broad is underwriting education coverage in the Los Angeles Times. His support came about the same time that the billionaire announced his plan to provide 260 new charters for half the students in LAUSD at a cost of near $500 million, which he and friends would assemble. Public education in the district would suffer a loss of students and resources and would be collateral damage.
To those those concerned about Broad’s plan for mass privatization, the LA Times has advice: “Stop whining.”
Good investment, Eli.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I wonder how happy this man is, with just money and ass-kissers at his disposal. His sons? Any relationship there? I believe I read one of them doesn’t work, and Eli didn’t like the chosen work of the other, and Eli admits he was a “bad” father. Money can’t buy him joy, but it can buy him lots of “yes” men and women, a place at the table, and, the whole table. One day, he will realize his life has been abominable, and his legacy was that of destruction.
Brief recap of LAUSD elections:
In 2011, 30-year teacher Bennett Kayser won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2013, 17-year teacher Steve Zimmer won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2013, 13-year teacher Monica Ratliff won, despite being outspent 42-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2014, teacher & principal George McKenna won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
In 2015, teacher & principal Scott Schmerelson won, despite being outspent 5-to-1 by the corporate privatizers.
Eli and the billionaires lose again and again at the polls
The voters-citizens-taxpayers have spoken loud and clear that they do not want their schools privatized, and that they want the the corporate privatizers’ backed by money-motivated, predatory billionaires to get the-hell out of, and stay the-hell out of LAUSD.
Undaunted at all his candidates losing, Billionaire Eli Broad others announced that he was pumping $1 billion dollars into charter expansion in Los Angeles… even though the voters have vehemently rejected this:
The arrogant attitude of Broad, Gates, the Waltons, etc. is…
“Elections schm-elections… school boards, schm-ool boards…
“At the end of the day, we really don’t give a sh#% what the citizens, the parents, and the taxpayers want. If we can’t buy control of the the board via the election process, we’re still gonna shove money-motivated privatization and charterization down the public’s throats whether they want it or not.
“So those unwashed masses should just shut up and accept it!”
Remember the camel and the eye of the needle. Mr. Broad, your grave awaits you.
Just sent this to LA Times. “I am unwilling to accent anything the LA Times reports about education as anything more than propaganda to please Eli Broad.
There is ample national evidence that the Charter School Industry is not just about cherry picking students, but also about real estate deals, and self-dealing in services, breaking unions, hiring naive Teach For America graduates with 5-weeks of training, paying up fees to TFA for the privilege of placing these unqualified teachers in schools with the kids who should be getting the most adept and experienced teachers.
In the case of LA it is also about the power of one person to buy anything he wants because he can and the gutless “Yes-Sir” “What-ever-you-want Eli” journalists and business leaders and citizens who are hell-bent on allowing public subsidies to go to private schools.
You should disclose exactly what the charters are permitted to do that the public schools are not and why the citizens of LA should outsource public education to Eli Broad and his friends.
One last note. Your headline to “stop whining” is intended to demean teachers.
How about I call you out as “shills for Eli?”
Stop the direct insults to the the teachers who work in the best interests of students in spite of the propaganda that seeks to diminish the importance of that work.
I will look forward to seeing them publish your letter. Except I’m ready to cancel my thirty year subscription.
No expectation they will publish it. Just needed to vent.
We still haven’t been able to get an answer from the Broad Foundation as to what their plans are for the hundreds of thousands of children left in schools whose resources have been severely impacted due to the increase in charters. It’s already happening, but the devastation of an event of this magnitude will most certainly leave the district in total shambles.
Perhaps this threat by Broad will actually have a positive side. Maybe the CA state board of education will finally realize that changes in charter law are long overdue. Broad and the CA Charter School Assoc. will not want that to happen as they have no reason to want to stop the devouring of our schools by charters all across the state.
I’m not waiting to hear Broad’s plan for anything except which real estate project he’s getting public subsidies for this time. His voice in education matters is like the obnoxious guy in the back of any school meeting who pipes up about things he knows nothing about.
That’s sad, really. The only real oversight on Ohio charters came from newspapers. It started with one and spread from there. It took a really long time, more than a decade, but now they genuinely ask questions, demand documents, etc. instead of opining on generalities “our failing public schools” or “competition makes everything better”.
I read Gates has a stake in a Boston paper now. You wonder when people will start to show some concern about this. It seems obvious to me that it could become a real problem. It really doesn’t matter if the billionaire ed reformers are “good” or “bad” people. The question is do they have too much power. I don’t know why we have to play this guessing game on “motive” at all, really. Gates or Broad could have the best intentions in the world. They still shouldn’t be directing public education for tens of millions of kids. There’s something fundamentally wrong with that.
What a public service that would be.
Good point about power as the issue. Remembering that is a good way to “stay out of the weeds” when discussing this stuff with conservatives, which I often do.
“(The charter expansion plan is being spearheaded by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which has also given money to the California Community Foundation and the United Way of Greater Los Angeles to support Education Matters, a Times digital initiative.)”
I think that is an attempt to seem transparent.
“His support came about the same time that the billionaire announced his plan to provide 260 new charters for half the students in LAUSD at a cost of near $500 billion, which he and friends would assemble.”
About $2 Billion for each charter school. I would like to send my grandchildren to one of these schools.
Really, the entire country spends about $600 billion every year on K-12 education and that consists of about 99,000 schools. Now you state that the 260 new charters schools cost Broad and friends near $500 Billion. He and his friends are very generous indeed.
Once this is done there will be no more billionaires in this country. With this amount of money, he can buy LAUSD and probably all school districts in the entire state of California.
Note that the yearly budget for LAUSD is $8 Billion. I never knew that charter schools are so powerful.
You’re right there is a typo. Do you have a more correct figure for us?
Sorry for the typo. The exact figure is $490 million. Not bad for a guy who made his billions in the home building biz. He has the chutzpah to take over half the kids in LA without bothering with a vote. Voting is for the little people. Billionaires don’t bother.
I hope your grandchildren are able to attend. Good For You.
This is for Raj’s grandchildren. I say give them what he wants for them.
To Raj:
Here is the reality that you wish for your grand children to have:
1) TFA teachers with 5 week training without teaching experiences.
2) Superintendents from Broadie Academy school, with fake PhD degree.
3) Abusive discipline from Charter Owners
4) Charter school can close down without notice due to the downfall in profit.
5) Your grand children will go online to pick up whatever is available from GLOBAL jungle of fake degree mills.
The glory of Public School, where multicultural interaction, mutual respect, and gratitude for democracy will be replaced with segregation, aggressive intimidation, and dictatorship, will be gone and will take many years of bloodshed to be restored to what we enjoy today in the 20th and 21st century.
I am very sad for your immaturity in taking freedom in democracy for granted. Back2basic
I have to say, I love the fake-debates in ed reform. We start at “is this a good idea?” and 30 days later it’s all about how best to put in their “proposal” which was never a proposal at all but instead was a fully-formed plan.
They seem to skip blithely by any actual debate. It’s remarkable. They’re doing the same thing in Youngstown, Ohio. They took it over in 48 hours and they’re already complaining it’s “divisive” to even discuss the basic premise, which is “is it wise to privatize an entire school district?”
Okey-doke. Too divisive. So much for that public input. On to the next fake-debate!
I don’t mean to tell them their business, but the jounalists might look into what Eli Broad did in Detroit. He ran the EAA effort, which people only found out when a state legislator demanded correspondence between the government people and Broad’s outfit.
Maybe he could explain why he put in a cheap, garbage “online learning” program that was promoted by a ridiculous clown out of Utah. The EAA is a mess. Snyder is desperately trying to save it.
Broad’s supposed to be such a crackerjack businessman- how’d he get duped into paying tens of millions of dollars for the EAA “online learning program” and why are they frantically trying to rescue his Detroit “reforms”, which were announced with great fanfare in 2012 and endorsed by everyone from Michelle Rhee to Arne Duncan?
There’s a track record in Michigan they could look at, if they wanted to.
I’m breathlessly angry at Eli Broad and the Times editors. How about if each member of the editorial board discloses their financial investments and ties to charter chain companies. No, media hacks, you don’t feel comfortable doing that? Stop whining.
Check into the background of Paul Postarek, the new head of the Broad Foundation…he moves from job to job frequently, and is connected with all the Rheeform worst of the worst. Eli surrounds himself with borderline folks who have no compunctions at walking legal tightropes. Google him…too much to post here.
Broad was running the EAA for 5 months and he was claiming success and lobbying like mad to expand it state-wide in Michigan:
“In five months, 22% of students have made more than a year of academic growth in math and 27% have advanced a year in reading.
These successful results should not be limited to only Detroit schools. We support the smart expansion of the EAA when it has the capacity to add schools statewide that are failing the majority of their students.”
http://archive.freep.com/article/20130428/OPINION05/304280058/Education-Eli-and-Edythe-Broad-Michigan-Education-Acheivement-Authority
That was in 2013. Michigan lawmakers no longer promote this idea. We’re all supposed to pretend none of this ever happened, that they had absolutely no evidence any of Broad’s reforms “worked” in Detroit and yet they were ready to expand it!
Thank God he met some opposition in the Michigan statehouse, is all I can say, or half the state would be privatized.
There was no money for Eli to make in Detroit. Its a ghost city.
For those mystified by (and waiting to see ) what Peter Cunningham’s call for civil dialogue amounts to, the LATIMES has helpfully provided an English-to-English translation:
“Stop Whining.”
To be applied, of course, only to the critics and opponents and victims of self-styled “education reform.”
Just wanted to make sure that nothing was lost in translation…
😎
The whining editorial sounds like Karin Klein. Karin, is this your writing, or one of your Broad toady colleagues?
Oligarchy never sounded so good 😦
It seems that the LA Times now is publishing fiction.
It has arrived at “fiction” for years with both lies of omission and lies of commission. When reporters soft play issues, and only quote their favorite sources (as with Ben Austin and Caprice Young, that is a lie of omission IMO.
The “Eli Times” has overlooked much of the impact of its patron’s charter plan and what it would mean to students, taxpayers, the public, and district employees. For starters, it would shift billions of dollars in public funds to private nonprofits with little or no transparency or public and taxpayer accountability, and no requirement of participation from the district’s numerous stakeholders. Los Angeles is the largest public school district in the country that elects its board of directors. This plan flies in the face of the intent of our City Charter which provides for that representation.
The Times’ criticism that this resolution fails to cause any real action might be fair. But even in supporting Monica Ratliff’s transparency motion, Eli’s transcribers think the public has no business knowing how schools spend public monies or whether the schools serve junk food or healthy food? I wonder which information the Times would deem “important” enough to share with parents.
Parents, teachers and other public education supporters want their elected school board members to take definitive action to stop the self-proclaimed King of Los Angeles from taking our public schools as his own private bounty. The board meeting is going on at this very moment. If this resolution is flawed, I hope one of our elected officials fixes it. Now.
Eli Times. Brilliant.
I just read this article
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na
and realized I have to change my username. According to the Post, I don’t live on the Left Coast anymore. The Left Coast goes from the Bay Area to Juneau. Los Angeles is part of El Norte of Mexico. No wonder Eli Broad is able to exert so much influence here. There aren’t any real liberals left!
I will soon call myself either TeacherDelNorte or BroadyWoodLandTeacher. I would ask laschoolreport or LATimes/USC/Dornslife to conduct a poll to see which username is better, but they would just muck it all up and confuse me. Que piensas?
The Chicago Tribune, owned by the same company, regularly churns out the same propaganda in Chicago.
“Unchain the charters!” say the Tribune:
http://my.chicagotribune.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-75015772/
This was covered here;
DIANE RAVITCH:
“In an editorial today, the Chicago Tribune says it is time to “unchain the charters” because they have along waiting list.
“The ‘waiting list’ is sheer propaganda. No one knows if it exists. No one knows how many duplications there are. No one acknowledges that charters spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to generate demand and ‘waiting lists.’ The lists are a marketing tool.
“The Tribune wants to end public education in Chicago. Even if the charters got higher test scores than the public schools–and they don’t–this would be an abandonment of civic responsibility.
“Suppose the Chicago Tribune did a poll and discovered that most of the parents in the CPS want more resources, smaller classes, arts programs, and social workers in their public schools? What if their poll showed that most parents prefer public schools, not corporate chain schools? Would they print that?
“Don’t hold your breath.”
Other way around…Chicago Trib owns the LA Times.
The “Eli Times”. That is a keeper. Thanks Karen Wolfe.
This is absolutely incredible:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Colleen Grady, who has advised Republican members of the Ohio House on education issues since 2012, is leaving to join the Ohio Department of Education.Grady will leave her $80,000 per year post as senior policy advisor of the House Republican Caucus on Friday and take the same position at ODE Monday, Nov. 16.
She has also taken strong positions on several controversial issues involving education in the state. She is a former lobbyist for the White Hat charter school network”
The Obama Administration just gave 71 million federal dollars to a state education agency run by a for-profit charter school lobbyist. Not just “a” charter lobbyist. A lobbyist for the worst charter school chain in the country.
“Grady’s departure comes just as State Rep. Andrew Brenner takes over as chairman of the House Education Committee.”
Brenner is the state rep, paid by the public, who is ideologically opposed to the continued existence of Ohio public schools.
It’s about to get very, very bad for the 93% of Ohio children who attend public schools.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/11/former_state_school_board_memb.html
It looks like the White House “summit” on high schools was actually just a summit on building new charter schools:
Click to access fact_sheet-white_house_summit_on_next-generation_high_schools.pdf
Do they even invite public schools to DC anymore, or are they barred?
Note that the White House commits to replication of P-TECH schools, the first of which opened in 2011. Not much of a track record.
One of many reasons I gave up on the LA Times about three years ago, their anti public school and teacher agenda.
I had been reading the times as a kid in the 60’s. Those were the days when LA had three newspapers: The Mirror, The LA Times and The Herald Examiner.
I cancelled my subscription to the L.A. Times years ago because it was painfully obvious that they abdicated their duty as a member of the forth estate and instead became cheerleaders for corporations/ government. Now they no longer hide it.
BTW what exactly is the difference between corporations and government nowadays? Does the government control and monitor corporations or do corporations control and monitor the government? They cross-pollinate so much that I think that they are essentially the same now. Think Gates and education or Cheney and Halliburton.
To Raj and Charter supporters:
In case that you miss reading public school supporters’ expression.
Here are some important reminders for you to debate about the reason for NON-EXISTENT charter schools: ( please read comments from this link:
“”http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-school-board-20151110-story.html””
* From: Quentin Compson
Our children are not “human capital,” and their education should not be a figure in an entrepreneur’s bottom line. If Eli Broad wants to open a chain of free private schools, he certainly can. If his model is truly viable,HE DOES NOT NEED PUBLIC FINANCING.
Charter school networks aim for a greater share of the public money (i.e. students) so that they can operate economies of scale. And, if their business model doesn’t work out, they can just shut their doors and MOVE ON TO THE NEXT INVESTMENT. What will LAUSD do then, having fired its teachers, shuttered its facilities, and abdicated its responsibility to students?
LA needs an honest broker in the area of education. Not a wealthy media player with a vested interest in its outcome.
* From: Randy Traweek1
Here is just one, gc. Eva Moscakawitz’ Success Academies in NY. The LA Times could, but does not, reveal such abuse in LA. “At Success Academy Fort Greene, the same day that Ms. Ogundiran heard from the principal, her daughter’s name was one of 16 placed on a list drawn up at his direction and shared by school leaders. The heading on the list was “Got to Go.”
In another example, a current employee said, a network lawyer in a conversation with colleagues described a particularly UNRULY STUDENTS’ WITHDRAWAL as ‘a big win’ for the school.”
Please wake up to smell the terrorized culture in PRIVATE education. Back2basic.
Every major sports stadium in the country now is branded by the corporation that paid the most to get its name on it, You can name the field or complex in your own hood.
Out here in LA we have the Staples Center where the Lakers and Clippers play.
They are covered by the Eli Broad LA Times which also opines on many other important issues of the day filtered through his vast empire and fortune.
In this editorial, The Eli Broad LA Times worries about BOE’s Scott Shmerelson’s charter resolution saying: ” It would create division without action, and could backfire by making any future votes against individual charter school applications appear biased.”
I’m touched by the Eli Broad LA Times concern on the subject of unbiased appearances..
In fact, the LAUSD BOE should be more like the Eli Broad LA Times who literally takes money from Eli Broad to pay its education reporters while indignantly dismissing critics of such a tawdry arrangement that they are indeed pure in their unbiased reporting and advocacy.
My proposal:
Mr. Broad write me a check and the the tone of my comments will change enormously. We just have to work out the figures, but let’s talk!.
Yours,
–Eli Broad’s Geronimo (Has a great ring, don’t ya think?!?)
Dear pal Geronimo…there is plenty of Broad money doing just as you say, but within LAUSD. This smelly pus has festered within the district for years. He paid many of Deasy’s bills and part of his salary. Of course, there has also been quid pro quo as with his selling the district the Beaudry headquarters, that giant building where they hideout and keep their doings away from public view. But then, Karin Klein would say I am whining. Tsk, tsk.
Ellen
And someone should look at the deal that Broad made with the BOE. I heard he sold it for more than it was worth at the time.
Yellow journalism!!
Buy the media.
Spread disinformation/propaganda in order to destroy those who stand in the way.
Relentless barrages from these multi billionaires for so long. Does it ever occur to them that they might just be wrong?
Question: is what they’re doing illegal?
The Los AngelesTimes should stop whining over reasonable and needed initiatives to make charter schools account for what they actually do with public tax money in the same way that conventional public schools must account. After all, accountability in public schools is one of The Times’ most fervent crusades. Charter schools get public tax money and should file the same state Standard Account Code Structure (SACS) budget reports that conventional public schools must file and should be subject to the same audits as conventional public schools. What’s unreasonable about that?
There’s nothing, whatsoever, that could be defined as “unreasonable” about that. You want our money? Then we’d like to know what it’s going towards, thanks very much.
It’s just unbelievable that a major news source would be spewing out such BS.