EduShyster interviews Sarah Lahm, who has been doing investigative reporting about reform monkey business in Minneapolis. She followed the money and asked questions about why some of our narion’s most beloved billionaires were dropping a load of money into a Minneapolis school board race. Out of the goodness of their hearts, to be sure.
EduShyster makes an interesting point: these monied reformers don’t believe in throwing money at schools but they do believe in throwing money at school board races!
One of the questions that we all wonder about is why billionaires are so determined to squash public education. When they see charter school frauds and scandals, does it give them pause? Will they get bored? We can’t let them continue on their path of disruption. If you didn’t win the last election, start organizing now for the next one. Frauds are frauds, and the public will catch on.
The reformers can’t keep railing against the status quo when they ARE the status quo.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You seem to have focused in on the profit making potential of all of these efforts and I think that misses the point. Bill Gates isn’t interested in making profits for his foundation, for example. What these billionaires have in common is a hatred of labor unions. As the labor movement in this country has been decimated over and over, the few unions left standing tend to be teacher’s unions. And teacher’s unions donate money and willing and capable working volunteers to political efforts, most Democratic ones.
Do you see the picture?
The evisceration of labor in this country started around 1970 and really took off under Ronald Reagan. This is just more of the same. (See Scott Walker and “public employee” union disempowerment in Wisconsin for an example of the continuation of this effort.) With the unions out of the way, there will be no large institutional opposition to the efforts of the plutocrats to reshape our society to their liking.
This is a sad day for the American Experiment.
Keep fighting Diane! I used to dislike you and now I love you!
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The real evisceration of the labor movement began when the unions began to cleanse themselves of radicals, including alleged and actual communists and fellow travelers. this began in the 1940s and continued through the “commie” scare and black list years of the late 1940s and ’50s. what we have now, by and large are company unions. for example, i cite the AFT and NEA.
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Education is the one and only area where questioning the the role of big money in politics is considered fringe.
We’re having a whole national debate about this, asking if lawmakers are captured, how the money influences their policy choices, whether it will lead to rampant and unchecked corruption.
It isn’t crazy or a conspiracy theory to ask these questions about the funding of political campaigns. It is crazy NOT to. It’s crazy to exclude this ONE area , public education. from the same scrutiny every other policy area receives.
If the nation’s wealthiest people had gotten together to “reform” another public system, say Medicare, or the VA, EVERYONE would (rightfully) question why they were doing that. Public schools should be no different.
I have absolutely no obligation to defer to Michael Bloomberg on public schools. I don’t know if he’s a good person or a bad person and I don’t really care. That isn’t the question. The question is if he’s buying influence with lawmakers on public education. It’s a good question. It gets asked in every other policy area and political campaign. Why not public schools?
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Chiara,
Perceptive observation, as expected. “Education is the one and only area where questioning the role of big money in politics is considered fringe.”
Thomas Suddes, a columnist for several big Ohio city newspapers, described Common Core opposition as “fringe-o-foes”. Tactics attributed to Rick Berman, suggest ridiculing, labeling opposition as fringe and, and giving corporate funding, total anonymity. Media’s blindness to corporate funders of Common Core, the Fordham Foundation, and others, has become the elephant in the room. Media article lead-ins, are quick to identify worker association
funding.
I’ve e-mailed Ohio University’s Scripp’s School of Journalism to get some insight into the treatment disparity.
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I don’t understand the disparity, or the deference given to reform groups.
If you are a person who believes teachers unions act (politically) completely in their own interest, wouldn’t you;also begin from that point with ed reform groups?
I don’t buy the framing. There is nothing presumptively better or more pure about ed reform political/lobbing groups than other political groups.
It isn’t “fringe” to question the role of the incredibly wealthy in our political system and public policy. It is debated ALL THE TIME. It is a HUGE subject of debate, in every other policy area.
But not in ed reform. In ed reform, these political campaigns are presumed well-intentioned and self-sacrificing. That’s baloney. It”s nonsense.
It’s also nonsense to claim, as they do, that they are not “political”. OF COURSE they are. They fund campaigns and lobby lawmakers. They are absolutely “political”, in every sense of the word’s definition.
I question the revolving door at the Obama Ed Dept and ed reform groups. That’s rational. The fact is former Obama hires DO go on to run the same ed reform groups which lobbied the administration. That’s fact. It happened.
I want to know if they’re going back to lobby their former colleagues on behalf of Broad, or Gates, or the Walton family. That’s a fair question.
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Also, if you’re an ed reformer and you’re out there ranting about the influence of labor unions in political campaigns but giving the billionaire funders of ed reform initiatives a complete pass, then you’re not consistent and you’re not credible.
You can’t question one while giving a complete pass to the other. If you do that you’re not an “agnostic”. You have taken A SIDE, whether you admit it or not.
If you question “self interest” and suspect poor motives when labor unions fund political campaigns, then you have to apply the same scrutiny to Michael Bloomberg of Bill Gates or the Walton(s).
Ranting about “interest groups” and ignoring the obvious possibility of self-interest in ed reform groups is biased and blind. There’s nothing special or presumptively well-intentioned about a political campaign because it’s run by ed reformers. They shouldn’t get a pass.
It’s an absolutely fair question to ask why these wealthy people are donating to local races and what they want. It’s not just fair, it is the MINIMUM amount of due diligence that has to be applied.
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It is really disturbing to me that the CEO of PARCC promotes ed reform and ed reform leaders (exclusively) on her Twitter feed.
The Common Core and the PARCC tests is now being tested on tens of millions of public schools. We have a political divide in this country over ed reform. I object to the fact that the CEO of one of the national testing organizations seems to be solidly in the ed reform camp.
The federal government seems to be solidly in one camp, and my state government in Ohio is completely captured. Having the CC testing CEO also cheerleading for Joel Klein and charter schools and the former Obama Administration’s ed reformers is a bit much.
“Agnostic” has a meaning. It doesn’t mean “I promote one side”. It looks to me like the Common Core comes with the entire ed reform political agenda as baggage. That isn’t how it was sold to parents. If “the Common Core” means privatization and closing public schools and union-busting and the whole rest of the agenda then we were misled.
https://twitter.com/lmcgslover
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America has become a country where the rich have their way, and the rest of us have to pay for it in one way on another. Working folks are little more than collateral damage.
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The two people who won the school board race discussed in this post placed first in the primary, before major funds were injected by local (and possibly national ) teacher unions and wealthy “outside” people such as former Mayor Bloomberg.
It’s not clear whether any of this outside money made much different in the final results.
The on-line paper for which Sarah writes (and for which I write a periodic blog) is supported in part by a local foundation (Minneapolis) that has promoted many of the things Sarah criticizes: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/news/2014/11/06/how-much-does-seat-minneapolis-school-board-cost
Apparently that foundation money is open to a variety of viewpoints.
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But Joe why is it okay to ask about the influence of teachers unions but a “conspiracy theory” to ask about the people who fund what are obviously ed reform political campaigns?
Why are public school advocates lectured on being “political” but ed reform groups are not?
The claim that Michael Bloomberg is not “political” is ludicrous. He shouldn’t get a pass because both Republicans and Democrats support ed reform.
Republicans and Democrats supported deregulating the finance system and invading Iraq,. That “Republicans and Democrats” support something doesn’t mean it is therefore correct or pure or not “self-interested”. . It means nothing, all by itself. Arguably. ed reform should get MORE scrutiny, since there’s no real political debate in DC or among powerful people.
I worry MORE when DC is marching in lockstep, not less. I think that’s borne out by some huge mistakes that were “bipartisan”. Republicans and Democrats together can be WRONG.
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Chiara, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to discuss the variety of funders for a school board campaign. I also think that when all was said and done, the significant outside funding did not have much impact.
The two winners of the contested city wide campaign were a white woman from a predominantly wealthy white area of the city, and an African American man from a low income section of the city. They finished 1-2 in the primary and 1-2 in the final citywide election.
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To be clear—-
Funding that comes from middle income workers, LIVING AND PAYING TAXES, in our communities, is the opposite of “outside money”. Aggregation of association dues, the method that brings the money together for spending purposes, is immaterial.
The money of 0.1%’s, who live in far-off states, gaming the tax system through false charities and who make political contributions to candidates that they don’t have residency to vote for, both destroys our democracy and defines outsider coercion.
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The national teacher unions also provided some funds to Minnesota elections. I agree that we need transparency about where funding is coming from, regardless of the source.
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The teachers unions represent their members, who are teachers. Who do the Kochs and Waltons represent in the schools?
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Diane – The issue we were discussing was the reporting of “outside dollars” in local school board races. You have encouraged people from all over the country to contribute to local school board races, which is fine. Former Mayor Bloomburg who contributed to the Minneapolis local school board race also contributed to the Democratic Senator Al Franken from Minnesota, who won his campaign.
Current campaign laws allow individuals and organizations from all over the country to contribute to campaigns all over the country.
National Unions have been contributing to campaigns for many years. That’s their right. Others are now doing the same thing.
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Those, refusing to recognize the sacrifice of Americans, making $30,000 -$55,000, are contemptible. Workers forfeit scarce dollars to fund organization efforts, in hopes that their families won’t be, entirely, shut out of the democracy, that they had the right to inherit and, the economic benefit, for which they toiled.
A person who falsely compares workers’ hopes to the clout of individuals like Koch, Adelson, Arnold, Gates …. deserves condemnation.
Without the consumers’ ability to prevent it, multinational corporations use profits from sales, to break the backs and spirits of the 99%. It is not free enterprise. It is oligarchy.
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I really wish Sarah would talk about the Northside Achievement Zone.
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