ALEC is a super-conservative organization that writes model legislation for vouchers, charters, and every imaginable way to privatize public education, undermine unions, tenure, certification, and anything else that is associated with teacher professionalism.
ALEC is supported by major corporations. It writes legislation on every topic of interest to its backers, reducing government regulation, reducing the role of government, attacking unions and maximizing profits. It also opposes gun control and seeks limits on voter rights.
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, said on the Diane Rehm show that he regretted that Google had given money to ALEC because it denies climate change. Google cares about the environment.
But Google spokesmen would not say whether Google had actually quit ALEC. Facebook, AOL, and Yelp belong to ALEC.
Learn more about ALEC here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Postcard from Los Angeles: Google came to my school last week and I joked that they were okay because they didn’t care much about school reform; they were just after world domination.
They surprised our teachers by presenting them with the materials that every single teacher at our 80%+ Title I school was asking for on DonorsChoose.org. Sure they participated in a press conference with the Mayor of Los Angeles to announce that they were also funding every DonorsChoose project in LAUSD that day–to the tune of $1 million. But the thing that struck me was that they did not do what Gates had done in his DonorsChoose media blitz the month before. It seemed that Melinda Gates was on every news show announcing their gift AND taking the opportunity to sell Common Core. My point is, Google supported teacher-led projects. They didn’t say “Here’s a million dollars. Now we want you to do exactly this and only this.” They gave what the teachers asked for and the gift did not seem to come with strings attached. So far so good.
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And missionaries go to poor countries to feed and clothe the “natives,” and eventually they convert them to their religion. And then they take political power. And then you get laws passed like death and imprisonment for “homosexual acts.” Too extreme an analogy? How about a drug dealer? The first one’s free…
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You’re chain of thought concerning the effects from “missionaries” to “imprisonment for ‘homosexual acts'” lacks logical coherence.
Although I can see the analogy with the drug dealer for B&MG.
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It only lacks coherence if you don’t pay attention to news in Africa. A quick search will set you right.
I think both analogies have something to offer, but the fact that corporations have any influence at all in public education should have people in the streets. It is a measure of their infiltration into society, their unchecked power, that it is a debatable subject at all.
This corporate led neoliberal capture of public institutions is out of control. When one does adequate research, one sees it is world-wide and accelerating by the day.
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I think I get the connection. It’s basically a variation of “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. Google, like missionaries, like drug dealers, gives away a bunch of freebies, all out of the goodness of their hearts, of course. Next thing you know, you’re dependent on the “freebies”, so in order to keep getting your “hit”, you have to change your religion, allow the freebie supplier to change your laws – basically sell your soul. Sorry, I’m probably just further muddling up the metaphors, but I think both are quite apt.
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UPDATE: Google has confirmed to Bloomberg News that “it won’t renew its ALEC membership at the end of the year.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-22/google-quits-alec-says-link-with-climate-skeptics-wrong.html
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So how does Google “undo” the damage it wreaked by supporting ALEC in the first place I wonder? Is due to bad PR that made the company change its stance? Is it really only ONE reason (global warming) that made Google stop supporting ALEC? I can think of a lot more with respect to ALEC! Is Google trying to tap into the LA market when they pull a “here is free money” exclusively to LA (you know that region with the “little” school district I-Pad problem”)??? At this point in time, my suspicions run high. How could they not? If a marketing and PR team is “on the company payrolls” my distrust runs high.A corporate “change of heart” is very unlike an individual having a change of heart. Let us not confuse corporations with individuals.
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“Let us not confuse corporations with individuals.”
I guess you won’t be nominated for the Supreme Court any time soon with that kind of thinking.
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Duane… Indeed… there are definitely some “corporate bobbing heads” on that bench!
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If they’re just now pulling out of ALEC then I’m not sure it makes any difference. It’s like the people who voted for Bush or Obama a second time knowing what they got the first time and only renouncing their support once popular opinion changed radically. We’ve all known who and what ALEC is for quite some time. If Google is just figuring it out, shame on them.
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It’s okay I guess, but I’m not really ready to give them an award for announcing they’d scale back one of their many lobbying efforts.
I think we should set higher standards for business and political leaders. They tell me high expectations creates results for third graders. Let’s see how that works with adults.
What if Google announced they were getting out of the “buying politicians” business completely? Why not? Be first. Lead on corruption and capture.
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ALEC, it sounds like my kind of organization. I’ll have to investigate more. “Climate change” is just another way for political power elite to control our lives.
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Please do “investigate” more and get back to us.
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The Kochs, main funders of ALEC, have put their tentacles in every aspect of our lives. In Chicago, both BP and Koch Industries have been sued for dumping petcoke on the the shores of Lake Michigan in poor neighborhoods on the south side of the city where children inhale these horrible and unhealthy particles of petcoke. The Kochs, whom I don’t separate from ALEC, put their names on hospitals, universities, arts centers, and more, and people think they must be good people, but no one talks about the fact that people who live adjacent to their fracking and factory sites are getting sick all the time from run-off and air pollution surrounding these facilities. Koch/ALEC are spending hundreds of millions dirtying up candidates who disagree with them–and since lying is legal in campaigns based upon the SCOTUS decision, they make up all sorts of things about their opponents. I spent time yesterday with one of our best legislatures (who shall remain nameless) and he was telling stories of what ALEC and the Kochs are spending on commercials and ads to destroy his candidacy. This is not the America I care to live in. So when you talk about ALEC, to me they’re interchangeable with the Koch Brothers and Koch Industries. They want an end to all government as we know it and want everything privatized. It’s not about money any longer, it’s about control of our political system and our children’s minds. They not only donate to universities, but they insist the curriculum the next generation is taught is based on a libertarian, Ayn Randian free-market, egocentric philosophy.
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Off topic (I hope)…Andrew Frear was here last night, presenting the latest from Rural Studio, Auburn U’s innovative design-build program set in Hale County, Alabama. One of the best things happening in education anywhere anytime. Auburn spends $400k/yr. the rest is soft money, in-kind, materials, donations on a per-project basis. Awesome results, for relatively small investment.
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I’m not a big fan of Eric Schmidt, but I did listen to that interview. At the 10:15 mark Diane Rehm asks, “Are [millennials] perhaps more open to the kinds of ideas that Google has come to stand for?”
Schmidt’s reply: “Certainly the millennials that we recruit, hire, and so forth. In every way they seem better than my generation. They’re better prepared, they’re better educated, they’re more collaborative than my generation, and they’re more socially conscious.”
To repeat: “In every way they seem better than my generation. They’re better prepared, they’re better educated, they’re more collaborative . . . ”
I’ll bet that most of the young people he’s talking about attended public schools. I’ll further bet that most of them attended WELL FUNDED public schools. I’ll go so far as to speculate that many of them became “more collaborative” than the previous generation partly as a result of the much-maligned trend toward cooperative learning that started to take hold in the mid-1980s.
Schmidt says it again later in the interview: “They’re better educated, better trained, more capable of taking on responsibility.”
He says, “We look for something we call smart creatives.” He says Google looked for “three broad characteristics” in the people they hired: 1) “They were technical in some thing . . . They had to know something analytically, 2) “they had to have some business savvy,” and 3) “they had to be curious.”
He puts a big emphasis on curious people with “new insights.” He says, “We want those people that have great insights and great ideas, even if they’re wrong.”
It’s hard to imagine that what the education “reformers” are pushing will result in the kind of “career readiness” that Schmidt is talking about.
http://thedianerehmshow.org/audio-player?nid=19936
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