A year ago, Paul Horton wrote a letter to Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, asking him to conduct hearings on the Common Core and Race to the Top, and specifically to inquire about the role of the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation in shaping federal education policy. Nothing happened. Now that the world knows that the Gates Foundation, working in alliance with the U.S. Department of Education, underwrote the creation and promotion of the Common Core standards; now that we know that Bill Gates bought and paid for “a swift revolution” that bypassed any democratic participation by the public; now that we know that this covert alliance created “national standards” that were never tried out anywhere; now that we know that the Gates Foundation’s willingness to invest $2 billion in Common Core enabled that foundation to assume control of the future of American education: it is time to reconsider Horton’s proposal. How could Congress sit by idly while Arne Duncan undermines state and local control to the chosen designees of the Gates Foundation? How could Congress avert its eyes as public education is redesigned to create a marketplace for vendors?
Paul Horton wrote:
CORPORATE INVOLVEMENT INTHE RTTT MANDATES AND CCS
Jun 4, 2013 by Contributor EducationViews.org
The Honorable Tom Harkin
Chairman, Subcommittee on Labor,
Health and Human Services, and Education
Senate Appropriations Committee
June 3, 2013
Dear Chairman Harkin,
I was very saddened to hear that you have decided not to run for reelection as a United States senator. You have always represented the most honest branch of the Democratic Party and the long proud legacy of Midwestern prairie populism extending from James B. Weaver, to Williams Jennings Bryan, to Bob LaFollette, the Farm-Labor party, Paul Simon, George McGovern, and Tom Daschle. We could also count the comedian turned senator from Minnesota in this, but he needs a few more years of “seasoning.” I am sure that you are mentoring him in the tradition. Your friend and my senator, Dick Durbin, shares this tradition, but I am worried that he has cozied up too closely with the Chicago plutocrats to be an effective spokesperson for “the small fry.”
I write because you hold a very important position in congress that has oversight over Education. I am a history teacher, a historian, a leader of history teachers, and a critic of the No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top Mandates. I have thirty years of teaching under my belt, including service to the people of the great state of Iowa at Malcolm Price Laboratory School in Cedar Falls where I taught high school students and trained pre service history teachers at the University of Northern Iowa.
Your friend and colleague, Senator Grassley, has sent you a letter expressing his concerns about the Race to the Top mandates and the Common Core Curriculum Standards, so I will not belabor the concerns that he has already expressed to you, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/19/common-core-standards-attacked-by-republicans/.
I would like to encourage you to call our Secretary of Education before your committee and ask him some hard questions about the way that the RTTT mandates were constructed. His responses to the concerns that many citizens have from all points on the political spectrum have been exceedingly evasive. He typically claims that those who are opposed to the RTTT mandates and the Common Core Standards are hysterical wing nuts who fully embrace Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories about attempts to create a one world government: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/04/paul_horton_of_common_core_con.html
In fact, despite the claims of a recent Washington Post story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tea-party-groups-rallying-against-common-core-education-overhaul/2013/05/30/64faab62-c917-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html), critics of the RTTT mandates and the CCS come from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and the libertarian wing of the Republican Party. In the national education debate, the status quo agenda that is being pushed comes from the corporate middle of both parties that is backed by many of those who have been the biggest beneficiaries of the current economic “recovery” in Seattle, Silicon Valley, and Manhattan (and Westchester County) and large foundations.
I humbly recommend that Mr. Duncan be called before your committee to answer some serious questions under oath about corporate and investor influence on Education policy. Mr. Duncan told a committee of congress that he did not want to “participate in the hysteria” surrounding the RTTT and the CCS. Because he is a public servant, it is his duty to serve the people of the United States. Part of his job is to be accountable to the public.
I recommend a few questions that any populist or progressive senator would have asked in the 1890s or early twentieth century:
How many of your staffers have worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Who are they, and why did you hire them?
What role did these staffers and Bill Gates have on the formulation of the RTTT mandates?
How much classroom teaching experience do the principal authors of the RTTT mandates have, individually, and as a group?
Why are these individuals qualified to make decisions about education policy?
Were you, or anyone who works within the Department of Education in contact with any representative or lobbyist representing Pearson Education, McGraw-Hill, or InBloom before or during the writing of the RTTT mandates?
What is the Broad Foundation? What is your connection to the Broad Foundation? What education policies does the Broad Foundation support? How do these policies support public education? How do these policies support private education? What was the role of the Broad Foundation in the creation of the RTTT mandates?
How many individuals associated with the Broad Foundation helped author the report, “Smart Options: Investing Recovery Funds for Student Success” that was published in April of 2009 and served as a blueprint for the RTTT mandates? How many representatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation assisted in writing this report? What was their role in authoring this report? How many representatives of McKinsey Consulting participated in authoring this report? What was David Coleman’s role in authoring this report?
Do you know David Coleman? Have you ever had any conversations with David Coleman? Has anyone on your staff had any conversations with David Coleman? Did anyone within the Department of Education have any connection to any of the authors of the Common Core Standards? Did anyone in your Department have any conversations with any of the authors of the Common Core Standards as they were being written?
Have you ever had any conversations with representatives or lobbyists who represent the Walton Family Foundation? Has anyone on your staff had any conversations with the Walton Family Foundation or lobbyists representing the Walton Family Foundation? If so, what was the substance of those conversations?
Do you know Michelle Rhee? If so, could you describe your relationship with Michelle Rhee? Have you, or anyone working within the Department of Education, had any conversations with Students First, Rhee’s advocacy group, about the dispersal foundation funds for candidates in local and state school board elections?
This is just a start. Public concerns about possible collusion between the Department of Education and education corporations could be addressed with a few straightforward answers to these and other questions.
Every parent, student, and teacher in the country is concerned about the influence of corporate vendors on education policy. What is represented as an extreme movement by our Education Secretary can be more accurately described as a consumer revolt against shoddy products produced by an education vendor biopoly (Pearson and McGraw Hill). Because these two vendors have redefined the education marketplace to meet the requirements of RTTT, they both need to be required to write competitive impact statements for the Anti-Trust Division of the Department of Justice.
Senator Harkin, I have a simple solution to this education mess. You represent a state with a great education system. In Iowa, there are great teachers in Cumming, Hudson, and West Des Moines. Most teachers across the country are dedicated, talented, and creative. They, and not Pearson, McGraw Hill, or InBloom , have a better sense about what is good for kids. Allow teachers to create national rubrics to evaluate authentic assessments and allow teachers to do their jobs and grade these assessments. We can save billions of dollars in a time of austerity if we do this. You have control over the disbursement of RTTT funds. These funds should go to teacher assessments, not assessments designed by people with little or no classroom experience. Likewise, these assessments should be graded by teachers, not by temporary employees or computers under the control of for profit corporations.
Let’s invest in our teachers to insure that this investment stays in our communities and states. Education vendors are not loyal to kids, parents, or states. They seek profit, and they will invest their proceeds wherever they can make the most money. It is time for some common sense. We need education policy for the small fry, not education policy for plutocrats.
I would love to speak to you and to your committee on these issues.
The very best to you,
Paul Horton
History teacher, The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools (former History Instructor, The University of Northern Iowa, Malcolm Price Laboratory School, Cedar Falls, Iowa)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We need to add that over the more than decade-long time frame that Gates did these things, he had many “enablers.” My two examples, because we know them best here in Chicago, are the national leadership of the AFT (which prior to 2010 was reflected in Chicago’s local leadership) and the various “Chief Executive Officers” of the Chicago Public Schools (once the school system had been put under mayoral control in 1995). History is important here because Gates could not have gotten away with so much of this without the lucrative buy-ins from three AFT national regimes (Feldman, McElroy, Weingarten) and several Chicago school officers (primarily Vallas and Duncan) along with most (not all, just most) of the Chicago academics who convoluted their “research” and praxis to serve the various Gates gospels.
Without going further, I’ll just leave it with those facts. By the time Randi Weingarten sat smiling while Bill Gates hectored the 3,000 delegates to the 2010 AFT convention in Seattle, the comradeship between Gates, the AFT national leadership, and several AFT outposts (Tampa; Pittsburgh; Colorado) had become lucrative to the tune of several million dollars — a year.
Similarly, Gates’ projects were well funded in Chicago, from the crazy “Chicago Academic Standards Exams” that I helped debunk in 1999 and 2000 (costing me my job and teaching career) through “small schools” and into so-called “turnaround” (which is still ruining schools behind a wall of corporate nonsense).
The details of history are important, because just as no abuser gets away with abuse without allies, so no tyrant can push his theories into praxis as Gates has been able to do without many Paul Vallases, Sandy Feldmans, Marilyn Stewarts, Arne Duncans, and others — including our mayors Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel.
It is time for all of us follow up with a letter writing campaign of our own. I read somewhere it takes 10 letters for an issue to be looked at.
Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and a few other anti-Common Core Republicans might be better allies on this issue. Politics make strange bedfellows.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/eight-senators-join-fight-against-common-core-94876/
You might as well be asking members of the American Mafia
to investigate the Cosa Nostra.
Gates has a smooth public persona, but he embodied a scorched earth, win-at-all-cost corporate strategy at Microsoft, and he’s obviously bringing this philosophy to Common Core and corporate reform. He has infinite resources and many allies whom he’s bought over the years (and who share this common interest). The real question is whether our democracy is stronger. I hope so.
Diane, I have no doubt you’ll be interested in reading this perverse piece: http://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhusock/2014/06/18/bill-gates-and-the-common-core-did-he-really-do-anything-wrong/. My favorite line? “The idea that money alone can buy impact is no more true in public policy than it is in elections.”
As far as I can see, the piece actually supports what is being said. Gates has been seeding the reform agenda for decades. Husock implies that the claim is that Gates dumped a bunch of money one day and, voila, RTTT and CCSS were born. Nice try.
In recent conversations with colleagues, we calculated that students currently lose between four to six weeks of expertly facilitated instruction each school year because of data collection (assessment) mandates. Nowhere does brain research say that spending less time on essential learning tasks, with less opportunity for real time practice and feedback from teachers, increases student success.
You see, a teacher is one amongst many in an often overcrowded classroom. They need all of the time they can get to deliver curriculum effectively and thououghly.
We often get rolling on a unit of important and engaging instruction with kids, then WHAMMO!…the artifice of the standardized assessment delivery window forces everyone to drop everything valuable and engaging to kids..and shift into data collection mode.
So, four to six weeks of time dedicated to assessment yearly per grade level for 13 years is a whole lot of LOST instructional time.
Yes, this ridiculousness is applied even in kindergarten. At the kindergarten and early elementary levels, I might add, “on demand” academic performance assessments are developmentally inappropriate and often stress inducing in the young child.
I mourn for our continued loss of humanity in this time of the imposed data collection regime. A general estimate of data points collected per child in kindergarten, could be as high as 2,000 per year.
I understand the occasional necessity of an appropriately delivered performance task to gain information. The purpose would be to inform prescriptive and individualized teaching, but not to populate a database, and not to rob kids of essential practice time.
Thanks for making this extremely important point.
Losing 10% to 15% of valuable instruction time to testing that does not help improve teaching or learning is morally unacceptable. It is also a waste of taxpayer dollars. A conservative estimate would be approximately 5% to 10% of a school’s entire operating budget used to pay teachers to administer and score standardized tests and local exams required for APPR/VAM evaluations.
An academic secondary teacher has a little more than 100 hours in a school year to deliver their program to any given class of students.
That is the equivalent of just two and a half, 40 hour work weeks. Maximum.
Add in all of the other routine interruptions (12 fire drills, 2 bus drills, one go home early drill, one lock down drill, 4 half days, 6+ two hour weather delays, assemblies, field trips, class trips, teacher absences, student absences, in school and out of school suspensions, and more) and time is a more precious commodity than the non-teacher would suspect.
“An academic secondary teacher has a little more than 100 hours in a school year to deliver their program to any given class of students.”
I figure about 160 hours per year per class which is the equivalent of about 10 days at 16 hours awake to teach students Spanish. How much will one know after ten days in a foreign country? I guarantee that if they try and use the methods suggested by me that they actually learn a great deal more in that “ten days”.
This would make a good MoveOn.org petition. Go to
http://petitions.moveon.org/
Unlike Gates, the Broad Foundation has tried to fly below the radar so people would not notice it has trained hundreds of school Superintendents around the country. Its latest project, The SUPES Academy http://tinyurl.com/mw4oqt9, targets principals to find those who will cooperate in its attack on public school teachers. http://tinyurl.com/7gj4v8p For a history of The Broad Foundation, see “Who is Eli Broad and why is he trying to destroy public education.” http://tinyurl.com/qypo6yy
As a LAUSD teacher having a Broad graduate as supt. I can assure you that Eli Broad is every bit as dangerous and subversive as Gates. They simply decided to bypass democracy and do it their way. Deasy the supt. of LAUSD wasn’t even interviewed by the board. Really Board? After getting a 96 % poor rating as supt. by teadhers, launching a mess with ipads, making a mess out of the sexual harassment case in which he removed an entire faculty from a school for over a year for one mans crime, trying to destroy adult education and early childhood education, the board gave him a raise of 20000 dollars. This when the teachers of LA haven’t had a raise in 7 years. And now he testifies at the Vegeara trial and tries with his buddy Broad to bust the unions and take away tenure and seniority through the courts cause he can’t do it otherwise. This is all planned out by Broad who wants charters, unions busted and non educators as leaders. One supt he tried out on us was an admiral in the navy. Oh Broad loves that.He hates educators and doesn’t want them in positions of power. My hope is that soon, with a new union president, that if the vegegara mess goes into the legislator and they try to remove tenure and seniority that there will be a state wide strike in Calif. for however long it takes to get our rights back and Deasy will retire in shambles. If only…….
Sorry Phil…since 1999 when the Broad Academy was set in place, it has trained thousands, not hundreds, of CEOs to run school districts, top down, using their business model. And these corporate shills are now placed all over the US.
I have been writing about this on this site for almost two years. Eli Broad is the prime decider at LAUSD and generally operates under the radar. He handpicked and placed Supt. Deasy, with no search and no other candidates in consideration by the BoE.
I hope you follow what is happening to students and teachers in Los Angeles where the Broad/Deasy game plan to to charterize all schools “rapidly”.
I feel like a broken record and apologize to my colleaugers here for being endlessly redundant. But at least the handful of us have awakened the LA Times and their articles about Vergara, teacher jail, Magruder, etc. in the recent past have been very informative and for that I thank them.
But Phil…thanks for the reminder and the links for any newcomers here.
Bill Gates Out Of Education Now!
Go buy a sports team. Stay in your own sand box. Quit throwing sand at us.
I still don’t understand (even though I myself do not care for the Broad or Gates influence on education) what the difference is in their level of influence than that of, say, the Carnegie Foundation.
Can someone explain that to me in plain English with no expletives or characterization with name calling? Just a good honest explanation of what the difference is? Is there one?
Gates spends the most money in the most diverse ways, thus he/the foundation have the most influence. Broad spends lots of money too. Carnegie spends a lot less on education “reform” projects.
Should the education strategy used for your child be for sale to the highest bidder, the philanthropist willing to spend the most on his pet theories and projects? Or should experts decide? Should you, as a parent and voter, decide?
The Carnegie Foundation operates as a 501c3 non profit.
Gates and Broad, although both have non profit arms, are also individual plutocrats, not like the Carnegie Foundation which must operate with a Board of Directors and an annual audit.
Neither Gates nor Braod, and not most others of the billionaires need do this except with their foundations. All else, like pouring money into school board races as individuals, they can do at their own pleasure.
Both give huge personal donations fo manipulate elections and to influence school districts and others to do their bidding. Broad gave even Malloy a campaign contribution. Bloomberg dumped a million bucks, and Murdoch, Gates, and the Waltons added to that to make 4.7 million into the last LAUSD school board elections…this was not their foundation money but was their personal money.
Fortunately it did not work…yet…in LA. Carnegie as a non profit entity is not allowed by the IRS to do this.
addendum….In past LAUSD school board elections, the average a candidate has spent is about $30 K.
Citizens United and the new SCOTUS ruling of course makes this totally legal. Under the new ruling, individual donors and corporate donors do not even have to be identified.
Isn’t our democracy wonderful?
Hello all Education Advocates in NY!
I know I have posted about this a couple of times already, but want you to
know about this extremely promising campaign. Please get on board!!
Daniella Liebling – mom of a third grader at the Brooklyn New School.
*****
New Yorkers need to “Opt Out” of the conventional two party system that is destroying public schools. Our campaign is building a movement to end politics as usual and to stand up for the human rights of all New Yorkers.
Unrelenting support of public education is at the heart of the Hawkins/Jones campaign. Our youth, regardless of where they live, have right to quality, equitably funded schools. If you agree, please donate to our campaign. In the coming days, Howie will be in the Hudson Valley, New York City, and Long Island to highlight the education portion of his Green New Deal platform.
Will you help us spread the word about upcoming events?
Saturday June 21 – Westchester County – Clearwater Festival, Croton on Hudson Fill out this form you if you can join #TeamHawkins at this epic festival for outreach to voters.
Sunday June 22 – Long Island 12pm Plainview House Party with Judy Ornstein, member of Badass Teachers Facebook event page. 2pm Garden City House Party with Jen D of Badass Teachers Facebook event.
Monday June 23 – New Paltz 7pm Meet and Greet with Howie Hawkins at the New Paltz Village Hall Invite friends on Facebook.
Be part of our game changing campaign by making a donation and sharing the invite to the events above with your friends, colleagues, neighbors and political allies.
With little to show other than increased segregation, an increased achievement gap, and billions of tax dollars wasted on testing and data systems, it is clear that Governor Cuomo has turned his back on New York schools.
Howie Hawkins and Brian jones support fully-funded desegregated schools, tuition-free from pre-K through college. Our campaign supports opting-out of high stakes testing, Common Core, privatization and union busting.
Spread the word about the events above to your friends!
-Ursula Campaign Manager, Hawkins for Governor
CROSS POSTED
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Horton-Not-a-Conspiracy-T-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Conspiracy-Theory_Control_Controlled-Media_Education-140620-429.html#comment495825
WITH MY COMMENT BELOW!
Here at Oped where truth is the mission, and it is common knowledge that our democracy has been ended by wealthy puppet masters, it is time that attention is paid to the one thing that will undermine our future like no other…. the education of our future citizens. It is not merely th monetarizing of eduction that is the issue… yes, the corporate world convinced the public that education (like health care) should be run like a business… THEIR business, but THAT is not the danger.
A teacher at the bottom was once upon a time THE PROFESSIONAL AND THE VOICE in the practice, who knew what was needed to show emergent minds the truth about human behaviors, science and history.
Now, those who run the school create a curriculum that re-writes everything, including the intentions of our founding fathers and the role of The Constitution.
Snowden, surveillance, war in the middle east, occupy the headlines, and while these ‘sexy’ subjects dominate the commentary ‘threads’ here, the puppet masters have taken over the schools. The level of ignorance in this country is like the rise of the sea levels… in 50 years everything we loved about democracy will have disappeared, submerged in a sea of lies.
If you don’t know what Eli Broad and Gates are doing to our schools, you need to find out and tell everyone! and go to the links in the article. Read what Grassley’s Wednesday letter to colleagues which comes a few days after the Republican National Committee passed a resolution bashing the standards, calling them an “inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children” and saying that the RNC “rejects this CCSS plan.” The resolution says:
RESOLVED, the Republican National Committee recognizes the CCSS for what it is — an inappropriate overreach to standardize and control the education of our children and
RESOLVED, the 2012 Republican Party Platform specifically states the need to repeal the numerous federal regulations which interfere with State and local control of public schools, (p36) (3.); and therefore, the Republican National Committee rejects this CCSS plan which creates and fits the country with a nationwide straitjacket on academic freedom and achievement.
Grassley sent a letter to colleagues on the appropriations subcommittee that handles education funding
DON’T LET THEM STEAL THE COUNTRY WHILE YOU SLEEPWALK AND ARE DISTRACTED.
Duncan released an #askArne video answering questions about the role of private corporations in education. He said they have a prominent role because schools are so underfunded and have many unmet needs. He said schools should not become islands and should be integrated into the [corporate] community.
He also said that CC should result in savings as states throw in together to use the same tests. Not sure about this claim.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2FWlEzkew
And Senator Harkin did absolutely nothing? That’s very disappointing. He’s traditionally been one of my heroes, but the more carefully you look at Democrats the less you see that’s heroic.