Stand for Children was once an organization that fought for better education for all children. Then it discovered the corporate reform gravy train and jumped on. Now, SFC can be found fighting teachers and public schools in states across the nation.
In this post, MercedesSchneider reviews Stand’s infamous activities in Louisiana.
In Louisiana, there was a state school board election last October. One of the anti-corporate reform candidates was an incumbent board member named Carolyn Hill. She often joined with two other dissidents who wanted to improve–not eliminate–public schools. At election time, Stand for Children put up a fake TV ad that accused her of criminal behavior. It was totally false. But it worked. She lost at the polls. That helped build a stronger majority for the group on the board that wants more privatization, more charter schools, more vouchers, more efforts to demoralize career teachers. Carolyn Hill was a great loss.
Jason France, the blogger known as Crazy Crawfish, describes Stand for Children in Louisiana this way in the title of a recent post: “Stand For Children Louisiana” is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations. As Jason put it, in his post about this sordid business,
This is how Stand chose to stand for children, by lying and deceiving people about a real champion of children in their community.
Of course this behavior wasn’t limited to Stand but this was one of the more egregious cases. In addition to the primetime commercials Stand also spent tens of thousands of dollars on direct mail to people’s homes, warning them about Carolyn Hill.
But not only does this organization not “stand for children”, it doesn’t stand for the “Louisiana” part of its title either! 98% of their funding came from corporations, tax exempt entities including one funded by the Sierra club (seriously), and billionaires outside of our state. Several of these organizations probably broke federal laws and should lose their tax exempt status for contributing to a purely political organization that spent all their money on attack ads and propaganda.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Despicable.
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During the 2013 LAUSD school board races, the corporate reformers’ campaigning was equally heinous.
Case-in-point: how the same corporate reform campaign handled the issue of the RFK complex of schools, which went over budget prior to its completion, and the was publicized in the pres. See how it relates to its campaign ads for two incumbent candidates in two different races:
public schools advocate Steve Zimmer for LAUSD Board District 4,
and
corporate reform and privatizer Monica Garcia for Board District 2.
The same corporate reform PAC used the RFK situatinagainst Zimmer, claiming it was his fault for the production going wildly overbudget on the group of schools.
However, with Monica Garcia, they used RFK in Garcia’s favor, claiming that she helped bring a state-of-the art group of schools to low-income Latinos — no mention of out-of-control budgets.
But here’s the kicker: Zimmer was not in power when all the decisions that led, or may have led to the project going overbudget. He was teaching at Marshall High School. As someone said, “It was like blaming Watergate on Obama.”
Meanhwhile, Ms. Garcia was in power and signed off on the decisions that led to the project going overbudget (or again, may have … the reasons for the overbudget situation were and are murky.)
I just had to add one more tidbit to my comments about Monica Garcia’s backing from privatizers and any resulting conflicts of interest. Back when she was running for re-election in 2012, Garcia gave an interview on that very topic a reporter from the Huffington Post and L.A. School Report (LASR).
Check out these interesting (to say the least!) answers to these two conflict of interest questions:
(KEEP IN MIND… these are YES or NO questions, so the first word out of Garcia’s mouth should be “Yes” or “No”, and then a further clarification and explanation behind the “yes” or the “no.” That’s not what happened here.)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/monica-garcia-lausd-board_n_2347337.html
–
LASR: “You’ve raised a lot of money from charter schools. Isn’t that a conflict of interest since it’s the school boards job to approve or disapprove of charters?”
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MONICA GARCIA: “I’ve raised money from a very diverse set of folks. Charters are one of them. That’s a separate conversation than the way I do my job.
“I need people to invest in the campaign. Whether it’s the largest public works program that built 129 new schools, 160,000 new seats, and the equivalent of 8 acres of parkland, or the people that, everyday we buy paper and pencils and toilet paper and napkins from — those people care about who’s here.
“Like I said, there are people who contribute to a campaign and want to support my reelection. I welcome that.”
–
LASR: “If a Congressman was on the Energy committee and was taking money from the coal industry, I think people would look at that as a story. Isn’t this the same thing?”
–
MONICA GARCIA: “The effort to raise money for my campaign reelection is not about the influence in how I do my job. Or the decisions. I’ve done my job, I have a record, it’s been very clear, it’s about kids. I’m inviting whoever wants to invest. They can do their $1,000.”
–
Great questions… ridiculous answers….
Let me see, Monica… you get millions from privatizers, yet you tell LASR with a straight face that there are no strings attached or expectations from the privatizers for donating those millions to your campaign?
And yet you want the public to believe it’s just pure coincidence that—before and since—you’ve said and done everything that that your privatizer backers wanted you to?
Whatever you say, Ms. Garcia.
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It’s tragic that working people, who were denied the rewards of their productivity, by the manipulative rich, have to spend their scarce dollars to buy back democracy, from those same rich.
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Jack
Steve Zimmer was elected to LAUSD school board in 2009 that was four years before 2013.
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Sorry for the confusion.
Steve, like Monica Garcia in her district, was the incumbent running for re-election in 2013. He faced corporate reform puppet Kate Anderson, and won
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A similar campaign took place in Contra Costa County in California between Steve Glazer and Susan Bonilla in March 2015 for a senate seat in the state legislature.
A tsunami of fliers and ads flew into our mailbox supporting Glazer. They were all paid for by one oligarch and a front for corporations. Compared to Bonilla who only sent out about one flier to every ten and Bonilla’s were paid for by her own campaign. I understand the teachers’ unions supported her by running newspaper ads but they were outspent by the oligarch and he front for the corporations.
The flyers that supported Glazer were filled with cherry-picked facts and outrageous lies and exaggerations. I know because I fact checked these claims and they were always designed to mislead lazy voters.
Glazer won the election. Outside groups spent $7.2 million on this election.
The outside money paid for TV ads, mailers, polling, door-to-door canvassers and other expenses. Of the spending total through Monday, $4.2 million backed Glazer or hits Bonilla and almost $3 million supported Bonilla or hits Glazer.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article18209540.html#storylink=cpy
Bonilla is a former public school teacher with a history of supporting education in the state Assembly. Glazer came out strong against labor unions having the power to strike and he clearly supports the corporate public education demolition derby.
Huge sums of money were spent on this special general election. Glazer ran as a Democrat but his agenda was right out of a far-right conservative play book. Because the GOP and conservatives have a difficult time winning elections in California, they are now running candidates who often claim they are Democrats who end up running against real Democrats.
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It’ll go as low as Red Cross corporatization (ProPublica), the Center for American Progress, in service to its funders, the United Appeal agencies furthering social impact bonds and charter schools, as low as the AAUW and PTA endorsing Common Core, as low as university faculty publishing the research that oligarch funders want, as low as universities taking strings-attached Koch money, the Center for Public Integrity taking Arnold money, as low as the non-profits that fail to identify their funders, as low as the “charities” of the privatizing Gates, Walton and Broad foundations, as low as the state and national capitol agencies, with their industry revolving doors, as low as our bought politicians?
It would be difficult to identify the group at the absolute bottom. But, thanks to you and Crawfish for joining the ranks of David Sirota and Matt Taibbi, in exposing yet one more huge disappointment.
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Here’s an old YOUNG TURKS video:
NOTE: TYT’s Cenk Uygar’s fessing up here that he was once pro-charter school (i.e. pro-competition). However, Cenk (pronounced / JANGK / , I believe) has reviewed the overwhelming evidence of the poor performance and massive corruption in the charter movement as it has played out in the last decade or so. No, sorry to say, the “cream does not rise to the top”, charters “do not outperform” the public schools they want to replace, and the rampant profiteering and conflicts of interests abound—i.e. the charter backers’ push charter leaders to use vendors owned by them instead of hiring more teachers or whatever..
Given all this, Cenk has now changed his mind. A private company, Cenk now concedes, places the goal of “making every red cent” they can the priority, not the best interests of kids’ education.
While you’re here, you can watch this Schoolhouse Rock-ish animation on charter schools:
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Jack: thank you for the embedded videos.
😎
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Here’s Steve Zimmer, from a speech I transcribed
way back when, referencing his own David-beats-Goliath
re-election to the LAUSD School Board:
( 7:35 – on)
( 7:35 – on)
STEVE ZIMMER: (at the August
2013 UTLA Leadership Conference
at some hotel near LAX airport):
“The budget crisis (of 2008 and on) was absolutely intentional. It was caused by corporate greed… corporate greed! It was caused by privatization, and it was caused by radical de-regulation of the housing market, of our economic system, and of our banking system. It was very clear. People got rich as our kids suffered. That’s what happened. It wasn’t an accident.
“It was intentional. It was purposeful.
“And the same folks, the same millionaires and billionaires, and privatizers who caused this economic crisis that our school communities suffered so much from…
“… are the very same people who are donating millions and millions of dollars to the privatization movement, to charter schools, to Teach for America, to everything that is intended to privatize and corporatize this last vestige of a public sector, of unions.
“They did NOT come after just ME in this last election. They came after ALL of us.
“Throughout the 1990’s… and my long-time friend and sister in the struggle, Cheryl Ortega is here today as well, and she’ll remember that when were out fighting against Proposition 187… we always use to say to our brother and sister teachers to motivate them, to get more involved:
” ‘That when they come after our kids, and when they come after our families, they come after US! They come after our profession! They come after public education!’
“And that’s what we said during the 1990’s, when the racists, and the xenophobes, and the Republicans were coming after immigrant children and their families. ‘When they come after our families and our kids, they come after US!’
“And now in 2013, we give the same speech in reverse, and that is that when the come after our teachers, they come after our children, and our families, and the whole thing has come full circle.
“So when we oppose Academic Growth Over Time, and Value-Added, we are not afraid of accountability, we are not afraid of responsibility. We just want a system of training and support. Let me say that again—training, support, and evaluation—that is based on improvement of instruction, and is based on real information about children and their academic growth. We did not come into teaching to check off boxes. We came into teaching because we believe in our kids and because we are about student growth and academic improvement….
“But student growth and student improvement can never be measured by a single standardized test score, and what we suffer from in this district is what I like to call a ‘data addiction.’ It’s what I like to call a ‘religious addiction’ to ‘the numbers,’ and to a ‘spread sheet,’ and to a ‘bottom line,’ and we’re taught that this is ‘objective,’ that this is ‘fact,’ and that everything else is ‘soft’… that we should go into ‘The Temple of Data’ and kneel down, and that we should bow down at an ‘Altar of Objectivity.’
“But we WON’T and we CAN’T because the gods that WE believe in teach us that EVERYTHING that is wondrous and beautiful about children cannot be measured by a standardized test score!
“We know!
“The beautiful names… and stories… of our kids—we never met a kid that was named ‘Proficient,’ and we CERTAINLY never met a kid that was named ‘Basic,’ and NEVER ‘Far Below Basic!’
“Our children have names, they have stories, and if we are to fight the battles against corporatization and privatization, we must be the warriors of re-humanization of public education that is about our children, their families, our communities, and their stories!
“And that starts with humane school communities!”
“We are not opposed to charter schools because we are opposed to choice for parents and families.
“Choice is a core value in public education, and we are creating more and more in-district programs (i.e. teacher-led schools, not private charters, Julie) for choice, and options that are built around instructional pipelines that we (unionized teachers) create with families and children.
“What we oppose… is radical de-regulation.
“What we oppose is the attack on the basic promise of public education, the basic contract of public education. That is we serve EVERY child who comes to our door—EVERY child who comes to the schoolhouse door.
“And if you don’t serve EVERY child—those who are the gifted to those who have the most special needs, and the entire spectrum in between.
“If you are not about EVERY child, then that is NOT public education, and we stand against it, and we stand against the corporatization and privatization that is embodied in the charter school takeover.
“The thing that I want to also impart to you is that this fight is a fight across our city, across our nation, and it is a pitched battle, and we need to stand in union solidarity.
“We need to stand with our brothers and sisters who are our hotel employees, and if we can give a hand to all the H.E.R.E. (hotel union) members that are here today hear serving us.
(APPLAUSE)
“We need to stand with carwash workers.
“We need to stand with our brothers and sisters from the UFCW who are at our supermarkets unpacking our groceries, and packing them up very day.
“We need to stand with the union families and the non-union families that are the parents of our children.
“We need to be out there, just like we were in the 1990’s, and in the many strikes—whether it was the UFCW, H.E.R.E., right here on this boulevard (Century Blvd., a strip near LAX airport where some high-end hotels are… Julie) , or the ‘Justice for Janitors’ strike right here in 1999.
“The Labor Movement needs to see that our teaching force is a force of social justice for ALL families in the city of Los Angeles.
“But let me say this… to my friends… and my brothers and sisters in the (L.A.) County Federation of Labor. If you ask, and if you expect us to stand against Walmart during the DAY, you had better stand with us as we fight Walmart’s effort to take over our schools by NIGHT.
“It is the SAME fight, and we need to hear our labor leadership across this city defend public education, as we defend the rights of workers and our parents and our brothers and sisters
Audience member: “FIRE DEASY!” (Oh the irony of that… Julie)
“The last thing I want to share with you is that we almost lost in this election the promise of public education.
“And in this room are teachers, families who slept on the floor of my campaign office, people who had the courage to go out and speak truth to power.
“We didn’t change who we are, or who we were. We became more of who we were through this election cycle.
“The promise of public education is at great risk.
“But I need to tell you, and we need to be honest with ourselves, that the promise of public education has not been realized for all students, and we know this.
“It’s been realized for some, but not for all.
“… and until the promise of public education has been realized for ALL students, it’s a broken promise for EVERY student.
“It’s not going to change by corporate or private sector intervention.
“It’s not going to change by some performance metric come up by McKinsey Company, and produced by John Deasy.
“It’s not going to change by competition, but it is going to change by us working together.
“In a few days, we’re going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ‘The March on Washington’…. I feel like I can say this… ”
——–
and Steve continues on with quotes from
King…
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Stand on Children first appeared in Denver in 2009 to “increase the pro-reform majority” on the Board of Education. The organization tried to get DPS principals to hand out its “organizing” literature, but luckily because there were some brave, long serving principals at the time who said this does not sound right to me, its school-based activities were halted. 2009 was a critical year for Denver school board elections. Four of seven seats were up. Our side had one seat carried over. Three more were needed to stop the “reform” nonsense. As it turned out after targeting me for removal, I had no opponent so Stand was ineffective in my race.Stand on Children then endorsed three candidates in the other races. Two lost. You do the math. 1 +1 + 2 = 4. A majority. But the newcomers to Denver along with the DPS administration headed by Michael Bennet and Tom Boasberg would not and could not allow for us to win, so they found the weak link among the four of us, turned him (even though he won with my help), promised him the board presidency, and the rest is history in Denver. Tom Boasberg grew up near Stand’s founder, Jonah Edelman and babysat for the Edelmans. Tom’s sister Margaret Boasberg was on the board of Stand for many hears.
Our side maintained a strong three seat minority until 2013 when that minority fell to one. After the election of 2015 there is a unanimous “reform” board, supporting failure after failure.
Other Stand political forays in Colorado:
2010 – provided Strong support – human and financial – for SB 191, the most punitive teacher evaluation in the country.
2012 – supported five Republicans for Colorado state house and Senate because of their education positions. All five lost, although some of the “democratic” victors have certainly changed their education positions to be more in line with Stand.
2014 – huge sponsor along with State Senator Michael Johnston of Amendment 66, a referendum to siphon more money into privatizing. Failed big time.
2015 – poured huge last minute money into a not very well thought out Denver initiative for college scholarships. The money at the end almost pulled this out for the “reformers,” but Denver voters ended up saying no.
In some ways Stand is the worst “reform” organization. When I met with Edelman back in 2009, it became very, very clear to me his organization was about demonizing teachers and getting rid of the union. His philosophy has been particularly disturbing given his background. But it was my first exposure to “democrats” going after educators and unions. The evil and maliciousness they have wrought will last for a long tome in Denver. They cannot go away fast enough.
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That’s funny when that infamous video surfaced and Jonah got caught bragging about some sleazy union-busting tactics he used in Illinois:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/07/jonah-edelman-spills-oligarchs.html
… Jonah tried to apologize or explain away this performance to Fred Klonsky:
—————————
JONAH EDELMAN: “After watching the fourteen minute excerpt and then viewing the whole video of the hour-long session, I want to very sincerely apologize.
“My shorthand explanation in the excerpt of what brought about the passage of Senate Bill 7 had a slant and tone that doesn’t reflect the more complex and reality of what went into this legislation, nor does it reflect my heart and point of view in several ways:
“–It left children mostly out of the equation when helping children succeed is my mission in life, as I know it is yours,
“–It was very unfair to colleagues leading Illinois teachers’ unions, and,
“–It could cause viewers to wrongly conclude that I’m against unions.”
———————
Ya think????!!!!
Go read the 65 comments left responding to Jonah’s “apology,” to see how well it was received.
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Jeannie Kaplan and Jack: much valuable info.
Thank you both very much.
The Fred Klonsky blog posting and comments were particularly enlightening.
Rheephorm is not only double-tongued but two-faced: in this case, the Jonah Edelman side of the mask is counter-balanced by the Steve Perry side.
Same mask. Just present different sides depending on audience and purpose.
‘Nuff said…
😎
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Jonah tried to tell me I would be a heroine if I would just say no to “force placing” teachers when they lost their current teaching positions. Oh that life altering decisions were that easy. Of course, the politics or personality differences often involved in many teachers losing their positions would NEVER have an effect on teachers losing their jobs. And way back in 2009, Denver had little knowledge about how school closures, the avalanche of charters, the emphasis on test scores, the influx of TFA and other alternative licensure programs would ultimately effect loss of employment, among many other privatization outcomes. I wish I could have snuffed out stand’s presence in Colorado, but unfortunately, its power and financing far outweighs mine!
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