A reader offered the following comments on the relationship between Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the Broad Foundation:
“There is no way Duncan limited testing when he was in Chicago because it would have impeded the corporate education reform agenda.
Arne Duncan was on the board of the Broad Foundation while he was the leader of Chicago schools. The modus operandi of Broad Foundation is deception. It is the method of implementing the Broad Foundations anti-democratic agenda.
On Page 10 of the 2009/2010 Broad Foundation Annual Report http://tinyurl.com/6w5sps2
it says:
“Prior to becoming U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he hosted 23 Broad Residents. Duncan now has five Broad Residents and alumni working with him in the U.S. Department of Education.”
On Page 35 of the same annual report it says:
“The election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have finally aligned.
With an agenda that echoes our decade of investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers, accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we and other reformers have planted.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, it’s all about Urban Renewal — the brand* of urban renewal that Nero and the allegorical Mrs.O’Leary’s Cow pioneered.
* firebrand, get it?
Deception is the right word to use to describe Broad, Duncan, Gates, Rhee and their associates. They represent their project in unassailable “god words” and faux heroic declaration “soft racism of low expectations,” “no excuses,” “students first,” “continuous improvement,” “accountability,” “every child deserves a great teacher,” “parental choice,” “race to the top,” “no child left behind,” “college and career ready,” etc., behind which they carry on a corporate rampage to transfer the vast assets of public schools into private hands. These rhetorical frames are propaganda ploys to evade the fateful impact of deep child poverty on school outcomes, pretending it’s bad teachers or unions that keep poor kids behind. All culture wars are also rhetorical wars or wars of words and representations, so our job is to keep discrediting their bogus claims while asserting the real issues and real needs, high among them econ ineq, child pov, and compelling need for small classes and professional educators for every child.
When Critical Thinking Is Outlawed
Only Outlaws Will Think Critically
Now that is funny!
Did you know that legislators in Texas actually did want to remove critical thinking from schools? Seems they did not take kindly to that eevoelution stuff.
I remember that. They wanted it in the Republican Platform as well.
And what would you expect when the public school is pushing socialism all the time rather than the autonomy of the individual and individual responsibility. If creationism didn’t seem to them to be the only defense left of the “sacredness” of the individual, I doubt they’d want evolution balanced. The real game is political philosophy, but it is unfortunately played out in the arena of biology. Good ethics can’t be derived from a descriptive science. Parents still think ethics and responsible individuals are important. They don’t want to see individuals reduced to atoms of the state. How can an atom have courage? Yet we know courage, integrity, and responsibility are essential to citizenship. What liberals call “critical thinking” is really “let us indoctrinate you.”
Okay, I officially find your comments scary. I have NEVER TAUGHT SOCIALISM. And if teaching a child to think critically is socialism, then let’s raise a bunch of idiots who believe the crap you’re selling.
Let’s parse this. Be honest. Even though you claim never to have directly indoctrinated kids, I’ll bet you do, in your heart, actually embrace socialism. Am I right? You have LIVED the socialist vision by working in and endorsing thoughtlessly the institution of monopoly public education. It’s the Prussian model. It’s the USSR model. It’s the progressive model. You are free in this country to profess it but you ought to be sufficiently self aware to know what ‘religion’ you are following.
I’m not aware that my political or educational view are “scary” (in what sense?). Calling them “crap” of course is not reasoned analysis.
In the corporate reformer mind, there is no such thing as a “conflict of interest.” Their goal, as Broad so so openly states, is to have as much overlap– as much “aligning of the stars”– as is possible in order to solidify the privatization of education.
What to sensible people is conflict of interest is to privatizers merely “survival of the market fittest.”
In evolution, there is no conflict of interest. There is no morality, no setting one’s self interest aside to allow others preference. How could one ensure survival if Number One isn’t exactly that?
Nothing wrong with propagating the Broad spiecies, is there??
Thanks to the reader who sent that in. We need to do more of this: linking politicians at all levels in all locations to Broad and other money monsters who are trying to decimate public education.
Here is another article about Eli Broad and other corporate Ed
Reformers.
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
Eli Broad wants to step on the gas.
http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2012/09/broad-foundation-wants-to-step-on-gas.html
If only the press would bring this to the forefront in reporting. National media is under corporate control. Reporters are controlled by their publishers or network owners & report on topics the owners/ publishers want. I wish we had a truly free press. There is much good reporting in the independent press across the country. Hopefully, more & more people & parents will see these good reports on what really is happening to our public schools. At this point, I think parents are about the only group who have a chance of having a voice with legislators aside from corporations.
If it was wrong for Duncan to be on that Board, then it was also wrong for Weingarten!! Nuff said!!!
http://thebroadreport.blogspot.com/2009/09/bsa-class-of-2002.html
From page 10 of the posted link:
“Teacher unions have always been a formidable voice in public
education. We decided at the onset of our work to invest in
smart, progressive labor leaders like Randi Weingarten, head of
the United Federation of Teachers in New York City for more
than a decade and now president of the American Federation
of Teachers (AFT). We partnered with Weingarten to fund two
union-run charter schools in Brooklyn and to fund New York
City’s first incentive-based compensation program for schools,
as well as the AFT’s Innovation Fund.”
And Randi approved the use of VAM even though it’s based on junk science. She took away excessing rights and turned those teachers without classrooms into zombie squads aka ATRs. Gotta love a woman who bends over backwards to people with money like Bloomberg and Gates.
I didn’t realize it was that bad with the leadership of the teachers’ union. Yet another reason to deunionize.
No. Unions built the middle class in this country. I support my union. Just don’t support the leadership. And what is it that you do for a living??
Thank you for publishing this Broad Manifesto.
For many months I have been urging colleagues to read the original document of the Broad Foundation with the entire Mission Statement clearly spelled out. Too many folks do not understand the vast power of, particularly, Eli Broad, and that his tentacles stretch across the country in setting education policy to follow his free market views. He has been working this plan since at least 2000 when he started the Broad Academy to train ideologues such as Deasy and Rhee and Bennett.
It is a full scale war not only for the minds of America’s children (training them to be unquestioning cogs in the entrepreneurship economy), but also it determines that there shall always be a poverty stricken underclass as fallout of this plan…..all in the name of vast profit and free market opportunity.
Now, before the end of Public Schools as we have known them, “the education industry” (sic LA Times) garners over $600,000,000 in costs. When it is privatized the potential wealth coming to the privatizers is mind bending. As free market costs mount they could be 50 or more times this amount, all paid for with our mandated taxation….once again, taking from the poor and the diminished middle class to further enrich the top 1%. And this new venture is so safe because, unlike all corporate stocks listed, this is a market that will never have ups and downs. There will always be American children who need schooling.
What an investment opportunity! As always, follow the money!
Well said. It’s all in the profit margin. There’s a war our there a-raging. I live your linnets turn them into unquestioning cogs. Well said.
Well said. It’s all in the profit margin. There’s a war out there a-raging. I live your line- turn them into unquestioning cogs. Well said.
addendum…my apologies to all for leaving off the last 3 zeros as to the cost of public school education. It is today a $6 Billion industry…and with privatization could even bring in yearly more than the wealth of the Kochs, the Waltons, Gates, Broad, Murdoch, Peterson, Anshutz, combined.
Got it wrong again..sorry.
we just had a shooting in Santa Monica at the city college and on the street where I was yesterday…so am basically horrified and distracted. Anyone near Pico and Cloverfield to west of SMCC, hope you are ok.
Current dollar amount of costs of public schools is…
$600 Billion now…
…and that is in a ‘not for profit’ era. In a ‘for profit’, it is boundless…and a great stock market investment. Rupert Murdoch is drooling in anticipation.
If the Broad Manifesto has not yet captured the attention of our community, perhaps knowing that Chicago Supt. of Schools Byrd-Bennett who was appointed by Rahm Emanuel late last year, is still listed as a Broad Academy Executive Trainer, a paid job with Eli. It would seem she has a real conflict of interest if she is paid by two bosses. She followed the Broad playbook in Cleveland whose public schools are now drowning, and now she is the Queen of shut-down in Chicago.
I am very fearful that LA will continue to fall into the Broad rabbit hole since our new Mayor Garcetti has strong ties to Eli. His wife was part of the Broad Academy project.
As I said before, who can we trust?
Am bombarding this post…but point of info…Green Dot which is mentioned so frequently as the main take over charter group in LA, and their former leader who tried (with Deasy) to usurp Venice HS, is closely connected, probably controlled by Eli Broad. I have just spent more time googling on a beautiful California day.
There was an internal financial brouhaha in the past year or so, alluded to in the media, that caused changes to the Green Dot structure. If any LA folks know more about this, it would be valuable to post your info.
And let’s not forget Weingarten invited Green Dot to NYC because they would be a “union” school. However, the protections in their contract was written on toilet paper.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
On speaking to my son at the age of seven about freedom, he turned to me and said “Mom I believe we are as free as the length of a lease we are kept on and the people we are lead by..” I have never forgotten that unusual statement by such a young child, but his prophetic statement has proven to be truer now then any time I can remember. He is now in his mid thirties and I in my seventies.