During the strike, there was an outpouring of ads undermining and attacking the union. This blogger wondered who was paying for them. The group is called Education Reform Now. It is the non-profit arm of Democrats for Education Reform. DFER, as it is known, is the political action group of Wall Street hedge fund managers.
So many of them went to Andover, Exeter, Deerfield Academy, and other elite private schools. But for some reason, they want something different for poor and minority children: Not schools like Andover, Exeter, etc., which have small classes and a rich curriculum and beautiful facilities, but boot camps, where children learn to be silent, to walk in straight lines, and to obey without question.
Someday sociologists will figure out how the hedge fund managers became the primary players in “school reform,” and why they want minority children to have a schooling for compliance, not the kind of schooling they had or the kind they want for their own children. And why they hate unions and look down on teachers.
For now, it will remain a puzzle of our time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe these hedge fund managers held off on their concern for the poor children in our country for one reason only. They took their time and wanted to be very careful. You see they needed to figure out how to make money off of their tired, hungry, growing little bodies and minds first. Once they got that figured out, it was time to pounce and feign concern. There is always money to be made and why not use and abuse children of color…..if you are willing to screw the middle class, why care about the lowest classes?
We are constructing our own caste system right here in the USA. Go reform!
Diane, I don’t believe it’s a puzzle for our time as to why those in power don’t want a well educated society.
It’s so much easier to control a population that has limited education, just enough to do low level and low paying jobs and provide them with bread and circuses as a distraction to the grinding poverty of their lives.
It’s sad to see our country on this downward spiral.
Look at other countries where a small percentage of people control the entire country and you will see where we are headed. Not a pretty picture.
I agree. And don’t forget that our 30-year love affair with deregulation and laissez-faire economics has brought a return of social darwinism too. Not only do these people want control; they believe they are the winners of nature’s red-in-tooth-and-claw struggle, which is why their kids deserve the best classical education and everyone else gets little better than K12 and Khan Academy.
This was very much part of the agenda of the original reformers, who viewed the incoming immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe as nearly sub-human, blacks as definitely sub-human, and the rest outside of their circle not much better. They couldn’t understand–and fought–the public’s demands for more high schools: only the college-bound need such education, and we just know college is too good for “those” people who are only good for soldiering, digging ditches, and working on the assembly lines.
All of this was well supported by a misguided and often fraudulent eugenics movement that in turn built on the misuse and abuse of Binet’s intelligence testing to show “scientifically” that the monied classes were in power by dint of their better genetic material. Why then waste everyone’s time and money with good public education. In fact, the education schools elites like Columbia’s Thorndike argued that it was “undemocratic” to put people in schools they could not handle and give the educations for jobs they could never hope to master. The “democratic” approach would be to find a place for everybody and put everybody in their place.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/7/juan_gonzalez_big_banks_making_a
Imagine this scenario.
A mayor has control of a school district and an appointed school board. He creates an City Infrastructure Trust to encourage private investment in public services — desppite record low interest rates. The trust is wrapped inside a non-profit shell, so FOIA and the Open Meetings Act don’t apply.
The mayor made millions during an investment banking sojourn. He is a friend to business and Wall Street and a big fan of charters.
Out of town groups who are funded by Gates, Walton, Broad and hedge fund managers show up, supporting the mayor’s corporate-style education initiatives: multiple online assessments starting at three years of age, privatization of preschool and fine arts teaching, more charters, more online learning inside the neighborhood schools that are left.
Non-profit Infrastructure fund + Private Investment funds + the Clinton-era new market tax credit + non-profit charters equal a risk-free doubling of the original investment in a few years.
I think your a victim of your lifestyle 😉 ??
Out here in Seattle, I’ve lived on hte fringe of the good hoods for 20 something years. The same Democratic movers and shakers who back SFC & DFER & LEV & PFL & CRPE & NCTQ & A4E & the rest of the a$tro turf$ ASLO write fat checks to planned parenthood and naral and LGBT orgs and … and … and ever do gooder outfit going.
Some of the backers are just despicable elitist sell outs looking to be Ringwraiths of Sauron … I mean head henchmen of Gate$. The others are being persuaded by the sell outs because the sell outs are good at that ‘leader’ game.
Personally, I only run into these types a few times a year, when they deign to go to the 25 or 50 buck a plate events designed to make us underling campaign fodder think we’re more than just pawns and toilet tissue for the elites.
Maybe you get to see them more often, and are therefore more likely to be exposed to their persuasive sales pitches that they’re NOT lying despicable sell out scum? 😉
I grew up on welfare in Holyoke, in a lower middle class neighborhood in the 70’s, and was a fine dining cook for 5 years in Boston during the Raygun boom. I voted for this $ocial cla$$, for decades, cuz I thought they were gonna use their savvy and their connections to destroy the right wing thieving liars – NOT use me and my kind as f’king doormats to Gate$-Ill-Vain-ia.
rmm.
And in the same city, a senior FOX news exec will soon arrive to run the Tribune.
The paper’s editorial writers — and certain reporters — have been waging a years’ long battle against the CTU and the public schools. Their ideology espouses charters, no matter how they perform.