Jonathan Pelto reports on the big money that will flow into the Massachusetts referendum on expanding charters. Most of it will flow from the coffers of hedge fund managers, who never showed any prior interest in improving public schools but get excited by the opportunity to privatize them.
He writes:
A group of billionaires and corporate executives are using a front group called Great Schools Massachusetts and the New York based charter school advocacy group, Families for Excellent Schools, to pour an unprecedented amount of money into a campaign to expand the number of charter schools in Massachusetts.
According to published reports, the charter school industry is on track to dump up to $18 million into a record-breaking campaign in support of Massachusetts Question 2, a referendum question on this year’s ballot that would effectively lift the legislatively mandated cap on the number of charter schools in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Families for Excellent Schools, a pro-charter school, pro-Governor Andrew Cuomo, anti-teacher group has led a series of expensive advocacy campaigns in New York State and Connecticut on behalf of the charter school industry.
Expanding first to Connecticut and then to Massachusetts, Families for Excellent Schools has become the preferred money pipeline of choice for a group of corporate elites who seek to anonymously fund the effort to privatize public education in the United States.
Thanks to the demise of campaign finance laws at the federal and state level, Families for Excellent Schools can accept unlimited donations from those who profit from or support the rise of charter school, the Common Core and the Common Core testing scheme.
While most of the money flowing into the Massachusetts Question 2 campaign can’t be traced, public documents reveal that a handful of hedge fund managers and corporate executives donated $40,000 each to kick start the campaign aimed at diverting even more scarce public funds from public schools to charter schools.
Most of the key players in the Question 2 operation are directly or indirectly associated with a handful of hedge fund companies including, Bain Capital, the Baupost Group and Highfields Capital Management.
Leading the effort from Bain Capital is Josh Bekenstein, the managing partner at the infamous company. Bekenstein is a long-time charter supporter having donated massive amounts of money to pro-voucher, anti-teacher, pro-charter school groups including Stand for Children, Teach for America, and the KIPP and Citizen charter school chains.
In addition, Bekenstein has played an instrumental role for both New Profit, Inc. and the NewSchools Venture Fund, two of the major funders behind the charter school movement in Massachusetts and across the nation.
New Profit, Inc.’s “investments” include major donations to underwrite the faux teacher advocacy group called Educators 4 Excellence, which is actually another New York based, anti-union front group. New Profit, Inc. also funds Achievement First, Inc., a charter school chain with schools in New York, Connecticut and Rhode Island, and the Achievement Network and Turnaround for Children, two more pro-charter school lobby and public relations organizations.
Through Bain Capital, and on his own, Bekenstein’s has also helped fund and lead Bright Horizons, yet another charter school chain with operations in multiple states.
There are many more financiers and bigwigs piling on to advance privatization. Read Jon’s post to see the cast of characters.
Jon’s post was written before we learned of the $1.8 million donated by two members of the Walton family of Arkansas. I wonder why they don’t fix the low-performing schools of Arkansas instead of telling the nation’s top state how to “reform” its successful public schools by opening up a dual school system.
CROSS-POSTED TO PELT’S SITE http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Charter-School-Industry-ta-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Charter-Schools_Hedge-Funds_Massachusetts-160925-345.html
go to this link ignored to see the embedded links in this comment which I put up with the Pelto article
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Charter-School-Industry-ta-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Charter-Schools_Hedge-Funds_Massachusetts-160925-345.html#comment619668
THE billionaire scan’t wait to take over our schools. Look t them at work in California.
and if it ain’t enough yo take over the schools here —> Anya Kamenetz wrote an illuminating and actually frightening article about Pearson’s ambitious plans to introduce for-profit education around the world. I quote the article at length because it is so important. I urge you to read it in full. It appears in “Wired” magazine.
Nonetheless, public schools are disappearing and with it the road to income equality as well as a democracy. Shared knowledge is a requirement for a democracy, and when Billionaire Koch can write North Carolina’s social studies curricula…..
See my series on privatization,,using information that Diane Ravitch provides about the state legislatures which are taking over the local schools, with nary an educator on board, and giving them to charters, with not a shred of oversight! Here is a link to Diane’s posts on charter school corruption .
The corrution is the begging of the fall and at this monsters got to much money and the money is prejudicial , we are in the middle of the storm and that is .
I just posted this at Oped News , where I write.
Corporate Profits Are Way Up, Corporate Taxes Are Way Down | OpEdNewshttp://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Corporate-Profits-Are-Way-in-General_News-Corporate-Citizenship_Corporate-Greed_Corporate-Profits_Corporate-Responsibility-160926-326.html#comment619906
And here is my comment about the ‘loopholes’ that allow these corporations who earn most of the money in our GNP, to pay nothing or very little.
THIS is the crux of th corruption… th great wealth that buys our Congress, and corrupts our politics and media.
This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM is my favorite video EVER on because it is clear to anyone, what it means to possess such wealth. The laws and rules that apply to you and I, do not apply to them… the ones a the very end of this video of charts.
Don’t miss this one either. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1Ql87-Y620
There is plethora of facts about revenue, about the falling taxes from corporations and the increase in the increase in the income of the 1% –a 3 decade trend , and the staggering fact about working class wages Over 50 years from 1973 to 2011, have hardly moved at all. Workers over this time earn 2 cents more per hour per year!
It is no coincidence that CEO pay has reached astronomical levels at the same time that income inequality has widened to a level not seen since the eve of the Great Depression or even the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. A wide body of scholarship has linked the two. CEOs, who earn 335 times the pay of their average employee, make up a big chunk of the 1 percent. Some ideas to change that are kicking around.
This fabulous video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWSxzjyMNpU shows how 64 people have more wealth that over 3.5 billion people. This while, ” according to this he percentage of families earning middle-class incomes fell in nearly nine out of 10 major metro areas across the country between 2000 and 2014, according to new research by the Pew Research Center.
This corporate Marburg virus is taking out the top performing states thinking the rest will fall like dominoes as they bury the U.S. Constitution and the republic it was written to support and protect in piles of money so they can make back even more money by turning tax payers that are earning less and less each year into tax slaves for their profits.
Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse and commented:
It isn’t if, it’s when will they come for the traditional public school in your state?
The virus contaminated my state state the sunshine state and the sun is going to on fire . The virus is the fired of the correction .Miami Fl the hot is close to 80 but some times , plus 100 degree . CORRUTION is brouked record .
Nothing’s is like the fire burning kids for lovers of money
Yet again. best government money can buy. Are you not ecstatic about the Citizens United Supreme Court decision? Keep that in mind when voting. The next president will appoint probably more than one SC judge.
Reblogged this on DelawareFirstState and commented:
Massachusetts: Billionaires Ready to Pour Up to $18 Million into Charter Referendum