If you follow the money, you notice that Reed Hastings of Netflix is a major funder of corporate reform. He contributes to the campaigns of pro-privatization candidates across the nation.
His Wikipedia bio says: “Hastings is active in educational philanthropy and politics and one of the issues Hastings most strongly advocates is charter schools, publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each school’s charter. “If public schools don’t adopt the same principles of competition and accountability as exist in the private and nonprofit sectors, they will continue to deteriorate,” says Hastings. “One way to permanently impact the system would be to have 10 to 20 percent of California schoolchildren enrolled in charter schools. That would be critical mass, and enough of a force to induce a competitive dynamic in the system,” he added.”
Apparently his views on education reform get into the programming he sponsors.

I cancelled Netflix over a year ago. Please cancel Netflix and encourage others to do so as well.
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What are options to replace Netflix? I don’t have cable so I depend on it for missed series, etc.
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Netflix options are: Amazon Prime, VUDU, Apple TV, HULU and more.
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Thank you Michael for offering some suggestions. I was very close to restarting Netflix but after reading this, I am looking elsewhere.
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These options are not any better than Netflix! Amazon has partnered with InBloom, Walmart owns VUDU and the widow of Apple’s Steve Jobs’ was on the board of TFA and funds corporate “reform.”
I went from HULU to Netflix because HULU has just a limited number of shows in a series and they actually refer you to Netflix. (Also, Hulu is a joint venture of NBC, FOX NEWS & Disney-ABC and I don’t support the right wing Fox News)
I so did not want to read this and find out the details about Netflix, because I’ve become obsessed with British TV and they have such a great selection. Ugh…
Is there no way to get around these billionaire “reformers”? They’re everywhere! Any more choices???
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Unless one is radical, left, socialist, Fox News is centrist. It has been good on Benghazi without being strident, and even better on the James Rosen affair, where in a declaration to a judge, Eric Holder, asserted that Rosen was a co-conspirator in a national security leak. Even President Obama as spoken up repudiating that approach to the press, although, of course, Holder is still in place after contradicting himself in a statement to a Congressional Committee about whether he had ever signed off on such a request. Typical, I’m afraid. You’ll get much more of the “truth,” or at least a fair and balanced treatment of current stories on Fox than on any other news outlet. It’s the only one that isn’t totally cowed by the Presidential threat of squashing your life and livelihood if you ask the President too many questions.
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Cosmic Tinkerer’s post demonstrates what a challenging (I’m sorry to say it, but even futile) method small-scale boycotts are for effective advocacy. Are you then going to examine the political activities of every single company you patronize? Boycott Microsoft? Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs’ widow, is donating to and supporting various extremely destructive education “reform” fads.
I did see a small successful move. Apple stores apparently just in the Seattle area were offering some special deal just to TFA teachers, not to real teachers. They had signs in the stores and an announcement on the website. Someone organized picketing at a high-profile Seattle Apple store, and the announcements about the special deal for TFA teachers quietly disappeared from the stores and the website. There are cases where I believe the business is just blitheringly clueless and has no idea the “cause” is controversial, and a little slap in the face demonstrating that they’re actually offending customers rather than impressing the whole wide world will wake them up.
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Get rid of them all. Do just the opposite of turn on and tune in. Turn off and tune the boob tube/idiot box out. Walk in the local park, head out to the woods if you aren’t fortunate enough to live in them. Commune with ol Ma Nature. Delight in the tiniest of flowers that can only be found upon close inspection. Delight in the myriad insects that inhabit this place we call Earth. Lay on your back and look at the clouds in the day and the stars at night. Learn more about the world and it’s inhabitants. Go to the local library, get a good book, sit back and enjoy the reading. Use the internet for news of the world not filtered through the corporate machine. Go sit by a river and watch the water go by, or if on the coasts watch the waves come in. Get into rock formations-geology can be fascinating. Enjoy local bands, not the headliners. Go to local festivals. Play some sports. Clear your mind of any and all thought! And just do nothing at times!
But definitely give up the BOOBTUBE!!
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No TV is not an option for me. I am disabled and homebound. I do not watch any traditional TV. I like PBS and British TV because they have a lot of old Masterpiece Mystery shows and I love Who Done Its. (I’m in the middle of the Agatha Christie’s Poroit series now)
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“You’ll get much more of the “truth,” or at least a fair and balanced treatment of current stories on Fox than on any other news outlet.”
I have some prime real estate where no tornadoes ever touch down in Oklahoma for sale just for you!
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I can accept your prejudice since your taste in TV is so good. My wife, also disabled, and I love British Mysteries. We are currently working through Midsomer Murders for a second time. We loved Rosemary and Thyme. She especially likes Poirot. We tried Inspector Alleyn, and liked him, but found the production a bit primative. I like Dorothy Sayers, but not the particular Peter Whimsey in the early series. Bunter was OK though. Lugg in Campion is fun too. We rather liked Sharpes Rifles, but that was only available, if I remember correctly, on physical DVD from Netflix. We’ve shifted over to streaming exclusively. I love the old cars, she loves the old houses and the clothes.
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OK, Harlan, I’ll cut you some slack, too, since we do have similar tastes in TV. I was planning on watching Midsomer Murders again myself, after I finish Poirot (love all the Art Deco!), because they added more years since I first watched it. I liked Rosemary and Thyme, too.
I’ve enjoyed so many. Wasn’t crazy about MI5 though –too anti-American, even for me. Happened to discover Kingdom with Stephen Fry. I really loved that! I don’t get the DVDs. Wish everything was streamed –and not just for a limited period either. Can;t stand to see those “Until” date warnings, like I discovered today for a later version of Ms. Marple…
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Maybe if public schools could have some of the ridiculous rules and tests removed — they, too, could do better!
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That’s what’s so funny about all of this “competition” garbage that the reformers keep spouting. They act as if the simple fact that there is “competition” that every school will be some sort of utopia. But the playing field is NOT equal. You cannot truly have a fair competition without fairly equal teams, and the teams aren’t equal. Charter schools have the corporate funding, the cherry-picked students, the positive p.r., the absence of regulations. And then they rail against the “failures” of public schools. It’s nauseating.
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What a stupid comment. How good would Stuyvesant H.S. or Bronx H.S. of Science be if they had to compete for students rather than students competing to get in. Of course it’s not fair to expect students that grow up in poverty, with all the associated ill affects to compete for entry into ANY school. It all boils down to the denial of the worst of our society. Too many people of all ages are leaving in poverty. Money talks and the poor don’t have any money.
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There is no convincing data to show that charters perform better. Take into consideration that charters eliminate “undesirable” students from their rosters, and they actually perform worse, in general. Stop commodifying education. Schools are not profit centers, and children are not assembly line products.
And don’t get me started on the evils of standardized testing. What a joke.
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“And don’t get me started on the evils of standardized testing.”
Well, how about reading Noel Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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“…freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools…” is the most telling statement.
Why not “free” the schools we already have?
Why exploit the public and public dollars and public schools to squirrel away treasures and to then turn around and criticize those who are still forced to operate under the rules and regulations?
Wouldn’t it be simpler to cut out the middlemen (corporate reformers) and allow our community schools the freedom to teach?
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P.S. add Netflix to my banned list…but we need to start a list of pro-community schools options.
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I too focused on that freedom line. What’s important, of course, is what they want to be “free” to do…such as free to discriminate on the basis of race or disability or socioeconomic status. Free to pay low wages. Free to give contracts to your buddies with no competitive bidding and no transparency. Free to teach that creationism is science. Free to decide that teachers don’t really need to be well-educated; any 20-something with a script will do. As a public school teacher I have a quite different list of what I would like to be free of. I suspect there is very little overlap between my list and that of Mr. Netflix.
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Reed Hastings founded a charter high school that perennially makes “best high school” lists, Pacific Collegiate in Santa Cruz, Calif. Pacific Collegiate flamboyantly does not serve a population representative of its community, enrolling very few low-income students and few Latinos in a high-Latino community. Although it’s showered with praise nationally, the school has been extremely controversial locally for its entire existence because of its obvious selectivity (which includes in essence requiring large donations from the families). The Santa Cruz school district initially rejected the charter proposal because the selectivity was apparently predictable; Santa Cruz County charters the school, and obviously the predictions of selectivity were borne out.
So, that’s clearly Hastings’ ideal.
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George Packer’s article in the recent New Yorker focuses on the tech big business and their increasing involvement in the public sphere. It only very lightly grazes corporate ed reform but you really need to read it if you want insight into the mindset of these people who are, for better or worse, shaping a lot of what public education will look like 10 years from now. And it’s more than a little scary. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/27/130527fa_fact_packer
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Here’s a response to this article in The Economist.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/05/technology-and-politics
It’s an interesting commentary and highlights the players and activities of FWD.us, a tech lobby group.
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Good to see the alternatives list! I will miss netflix… but once I know, I can’t pretend I don’t. I will actively encourage others to drop netflix to protest the ed reform movement. Is there a list somewhere of corporations that we can support (pro-public school) and starve (ed reformers)?
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Reed Hastings of Netflix supports charter schools because of their accountability factor, which he says “are set forth in each school’s charter.” Interestingly, I was on the State Board in Massachusetts which voted to allow 2 charters in one year to continue despite the State’s own evidence that these 2 charter schools were woefully underperforming and not fulfilling their own charter mandates. In Massachusetts the State Board composed of folks far removed from communities make decisions with taxpayer money from those communities to accept or reject charter school proposals. Taxation without representation did not sit well with those who pay taxes in the two communities especially when a distant unelected board voted to use their tax money in support of underperforming schools while taking funds from public schools accountable to a local elected school board. The taxpayers in these two communities kept asking ‘to whom are these charters really accountable?” – James E. McDermott, former member of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education
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These privatizers are living in a dream world of supposed “forced competition” to make public schools “improve.” And it never works on any large scale– just perhaps a few spotty charters that are “successful” islands in a sea of other charters and the charter dumping ground of community public schools.
Let Netfix sponsor an entire district– all schools– and make privatization work for all students absent any lower-tier “dumping ground.” Mind you, they would not be able to disguise “encouraged attrition” as a “100% graduation rate,” (Steve Perry or KIPP), nor would they be able to “fire” an entire 8th grade (Geoffrey Canada). And let their test scores be public from start to finish, so that no Michelle Rhee “success” requires persistent investigation. And let there be no mayoral control, so that when the entire district “fails” according to reformer standards, there can be no massive closings (Emanuel). Let their charter teachers decide whether or not to unionize, as has happened in New Orleans.
Feel free to add to the list of conditions.
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I think I love you! 🙂
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Also, Dr. Schneider, don’t forget, all cut throat businesses seek to corner the market. They truly become monopolistic. Notice, these leaders stomp out competition in their business realm. What competition does Microsoft tolerate to improve their product? The charters will become like other “free markets.” There will evolve a monopoly that is no longer accountable to anyone but a board of directors, education will cease to matter, profits will rule.
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U.S. tax laws reward corporations rather generously for helping themselves while pretending to help the general welfare, so naturally they do that to the hilt. Real charity means giving more than you expect to get back, but where’s the hard cash ROI in that?
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Truly, the corporations do not understand charity at all. They do, however, understand tax writeoffs. They don’t seem to care about real people or real education. I was told by a curriculum director that SIx Sigma is seeping into the decisions being made. It is a new way of thinking, for sure. Check it out.
I am posting a clip about how well the pressure of performance works with children. You watch it and you decide.
http://www.upworthy.com/elementary-class-solves-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-mysteries-in-10-minutes
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I just cancelled my subscription.
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Will charter schools adopt the CCSS and will their students take those assessments?
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My oldest son lives in Chicago, but he grew up in rural Ohio. He did very well in our public school, if anything he was a bit of a favorite among teachers.
We were talking about the Chicago situation, and he was essentially reciting the line of the Netflix guy. I was surprised because I was a union member for about half of his childhood and I was active in the union. I know he considers himself politically liberal and he doesn’t have children so has no experience with CPS.
He loves House of Cards, though. Maybe that’s where he got it.
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Hope you set him straight 🙂
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I did. We had an email exchange about it.
He’s a systems engineer so sort of speaks the tech industry language. I imagine people like Netflix guy would be fairly persuasive to him.
Anyway, I told him what I know and reminded him he’s done quite well with his public school, union teacher
education 🙂
He actually started in tech in high school, through a single teacher’s “tech team”.
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What really is most upsetting is that Hastings almost destroyed Netflix a few years back. Yet, the Board of Directors kept him on. I believe he took a bonus cut. Yet, he wants teachers to be fired on the basis of one test score!! If he practiced what he preaches, he would have kicked himself out the door.
Then yesterday the NYTimes reported how Wall Street and the banking industry are basically writing the new regulations. Chase is losing billions, yet we don’t see the CEO being ousted. Dell is also going downhill, and investors are about to file a lawsuit because Dell wants to take the company private which will enrich the Dell family and not the stockholders. Yet no one is outraged that the foxes are telling the farmers how to run the hen house.
Integrity is being bought via campaign contributions or donations. ALEC is writing the majority of legislation. And I just have to wonder if teachers unions should also be accepting donations from the likes of Gates.
Is this the Democracy many in the military lost their lives for??? Happy Memorial Day!!!
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Teacher unions have no business taking grants, donations, or – call it like it is BRIBES, from Gates or any reform group. I am a union teacher and I have BIG problems with NEA and AFT leaders crawling into bed with sleazy raptor philanthropists. Their goal is to end unions so purchased puppets corroding solidarity from the inside are unwelcome. Rank and file teachers are finally waking up to this reality.
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Found this on the Klonsky blog today. Print, cut and post on your classroom door or window:
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I agree. However, I’m a bit sheepish about entering into this controversy of the NEA and AFT “Leaders” vs. an active and well-informed faction of the Rank & File regarding their acceptance of funding from the very people who ultimately want to destroy all teachers organizations.
I don’t know if Randi Weingarten and her NEA counterpart is going along with most of these odious “reforms” because she’s savvy enough to know that the Privatizer Propaganda and Politics Machine has succeeded in lowering the image of teachers in public opinion, and thus putting her and her membership on the defensive, or if she’s simply a career-obsessed sellout who only cares about herself.
Karen Lewis, among others, has chosen a different path and evoked a different vision. And it worked, coming as it did, in the middle of a presidential campaign, when Obama couldn’t afford to further alienate organized labor in a tight race.
However, the Privatizers are essentially doing to Chicago Schools what they’ve done elsewhere on a smaller scale: they’re essentially “offshoring the enterprise” as they like to think of our schools, putting it out of reach of the “terrible unions” and then later reopening the same building as a charter.
This is almost certainly their plan.
So like the factories that were once union shops, turning out manufactured goods, in Peoria, Cedar Rapids or Akron, these products are now made by overworked, indentured wage slaves living in company barracks in Longhua, Shenzhen, or Zhengzhou, Henan province.
We have to start lobbying for laws that will prohibit the Privatizers from using any former public or private schools to open charters. Denying them this real estate is one more way in which we can make their heinous objectives that much more difficult.
Those schools belong to the people who live in that community. Your schools belong to you who live there. And no one else. Don’t let them say, “We can’t afford to keep you open anymore and this school isn’t needed.” and then turn around and give those buildings to private companies that will open charter “schools”, designed primarily to make them and their buddies even wealthier than they already are.
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Savvy as a self-absorbed fox.
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Have you seen this teacher’s resignation video? If a teacher isn’t allowed to think, comment or question, how are they supposed to teach their students to do that? Answer: They’re not!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/teacher-resignation-video-ellie-rubenstein_n_3328117.html
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Teacher unions need to vote NEA and aft leaders out if they fraternized with the enemy.
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Oh, and the reason I’m a bit sheepish about getting involved in this fight: I’m not a teacher, never have been and neither has anyone in my extended family. I just hope that the right leaders are chosen for all NEA and AFT members, and their students, everywhere.
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When will America quit placing businessmen and women on a pedestal ?
They only know how to make money.
Entrepreneurialism is an intelligence, but it is only one of many.
Are people so ready to sacrifice their children to the gods of $.
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I am Mammon, I rule!!
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Our country is ALL ABOUT WHO GETS THE humongous BUCKS…the fastest and easiest way while holding us peons, according to the rich and the rich, who gets to own (buy) politicians (campaign $$$) to make rules that benefit the elite. It’s this simple.
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Painful… but I just canceled my Netflix account too.
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Great that so many of you are cancelling your Netflix… I did mine about 2 or 3 years ago … and find that I watch much less tv … I get my dvds from the PUBLIC library .. and when I cancelled I sent the Friends of the Public Library the $ I would have paid to Netflix …. Can’t stream anymore, and do not get all the latest series/movies as quickly … but I realized that I could not effect Gates $$ (no windows for me — an Apple gal) or Eli Broad’s $$ … but Hastings I could effect … I really hope more and more teachers in the public realm take a break from Netflix … He does not believe in elected school boards, seeing them as a real problem … which is fine if you have a PRIVATE school, but when they take the public funds to run their private charters it just seem illegal to me, yet its what is being done ….
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