Please read this report and send it to everyone who cares about the future of public education in the United States. Send it to your friends, your school board, your legislators, your editorial boards, and to anyone else who needs to know about the money that is committed to demolishing public schools and turning the money over to private hands.
Common Cause has released an important new report about the dramatic increase in funding and lobbying by groups in New York State committed to privatization of public schools. The report contrasts the political spending of the privatizers to the political spending of the unions, and it is a fascinating contrast.
The report is titled: “Polishing the Apple: Examining Political Spending in New York to Influence Educational Policy.”
The report rejects the term “reformers” and uses the term “privatizers.” It explains here (p. 3):
We use the terms pro-privatization and privatizer to describe PACs and coalitions whose central mission is “education reform”—increasing funding and support for alternatives to standard public education, market-based educational programs, decentralizing control of education policy from government, advancing charter schools, supporting private schools, and private school tax credits. Examples of the groups we identified and analyzed as pro-privatization are Students First, Democrats for Education Reform/Education Reform Now, the Foundation/Coalition for Opportunity in Education, and Families for Excellent Schools. When we describe union spending, we include funding from unions such as New York State United teachers (NYSUT) and United Federation of Teachers (UFT), public school teachers, school board leaders, school administrators and other public school employees. Their primary policy goals have related to education budget allocations, teacher evaluations, protecting teacher tenure, testing regimes, mayoral control of schools and, more recently, education investment tax credits.
The report points out that 2014 was a watershed year. It was the first year in which the spending by privatizers exceeded spending by unions by over $16.8 million. (p. 4).
Before 2014, privatizer contributions averaged $3.9 million annually; in 2014, privatizers’ campaign contributions “jumped to $11.2 million.”
The top three recipients of privatizer campaign contributions were: the New York Senate Republican Housekeeping account ($5.06 million); Cuomo-Hochul 2014 ($3.06 million), and The Independence Party Housekeeping account ($1.2 million).
The top three recipients of union campaign contributions were: the New York State Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee ($916,600), the Working Families Party ($874,550), and the NYS Senate Republican Campaign Committee ($772,387).
Where the money comes from:
“Pro-privatization campaign contributions totaled $46.1 million raised through 5,700 contributions from less than 400 wealthy individuals, associated organizations, and PACs. The top five individual pro-privatization political campaign contributors were Michael Bloomberg ($9.2 million), James Simons ($3 million), Paul Singer ($2.2 million), Daniel Loeb ($1.9 million), and David Koch ($1.6 million).”
“Union campaign contributions totaled $87.6 million raised through at least 75,000 contributions to Union PACS from well over 18,000 individuals, associated organizations and PACs. Union assert that dues are separate and not used on political spending. The top five union PAC contributors were: New York State United Teachers ($56.1 million), American Federation of Teachers / United Federation of Teachers ($22.8 million), National Education Association ($443,000), Buffalo Teachers Federation ($269,000), and Say Yes To Education ($242,000)….”
The pro-privatization bills introduced in New York are based on bills developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council as part of its national education agenda.
o The major pro-privatization donors in New York are also political contributors to education privatization efforts in other states.
o Pro-privatization lobbying includes “dark money” contributed through c4 advocacy organizations and foundations.
The top 2 recipients of contributions from privatizers (Senate Republicans and Gov. Cuomo) have introduced more extreme versions of education tax credits than those in other states.
o New York’s proposed bills would advantage affluent tax payers and scholarship recipients over low and middle class New Yorkers.
o It would be difficult for everyday New Yorkers to access credits due to unique procedural requirements and application timing.
o New York’s proposals have unusually high income eligibility for scholarships: $500,000 family income limit in Senate bill is almost 400% higher than highest income limit in other states.
o There would be no caps on private school tuition costs, which in New York can top $40,000 annually.
o New York versions of proposed education tax credit programs lack oversight and accountability measures enacted in states such as Arizona, Florida and Georgia, or even those contained in ALEC model bills.
The report gives a brief history of the privatization movement, then says this:
The current trend of market-based education proposals can be seen as interrelated to the ideology and policy goals that contributed to the pre-2008 deregulations of the financial industry and to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. Using a long term, multi-pronged strategy, the self-styled “education reform” organizations (whose boards are populated by the very hedge fund executives who have dominated Super PAC contributions since the Citizens United decision) are framing this issue. They have used their wealth to access and infiltrate the policy landscape on almost every front except one: the teachers’ unions. 13 In an increasingly polarized debate, these camps are battling for ideological control of the future of education policy at all levels of government.
Seeing Gold in the Schools
Adoption of federal programs, such as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 and the Common Core State Standards Initiative contained in the Race to the Top Fund (RTTT) (2010), pushed states—using threats to funding as incentive—to establish standards akin to a corporation’s bottom line and employ the burgeoning field of “big data” to determine who was reaching benchmarks or not.
The push to look at education benchmarks in a “bottom line” fashion bolstered a rapidly growing market for nonprofit and for-profit test publishing, test analysis, test preparation, student data management and— for schools who failed to make adequate yearly progress—tutoring, interventions, and alternative school options. Hundreds of new for-profit and nonprofit organizations, from test prep to consulting to charter schools, have opened in the past ten years to meet the demands that NCLB and Race to the Top created. This wave of market-based educational interests has been financed by powerful national foundations and wealthy private investors who, as discussed below, are major political contributors across the country, including in New York. These “venture philanthropists” have been positioning themselves on several fronts: funding research institutions, reframing the national debate in the media, positioning sympathetic leaders into educational regulatory bodies, and lobbying policymakers to enact their desired educational policies.
The Role of the American Legislative Exchange Council
Through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), some of the nation’s largest companies invest millions of dollars each year to pass state laws putting corporate and private interests ahead of the interests of ordinary Americans. ALEC’s membership includes some 2,000 state legislators, corporate executives and lobbyists. ALEC brings together corporate lobbyists and state legislators to vote as equals on model bills, behind closed doors and without any public input, that often benefit the corporations’ bottom line. These model bills are then introduced in state legislatures across the country. ALEC and its member corporations often pay for legislators to go to lavish resorts to participate in ALEC meetings. Among ALEC’s legislative portfolio are bills to privatize public schools and prisons, weaken voting rights, eviscerate environmental protections and cripple public worker unions.
Common Cause has filed a “whistleblower” complaint against ALEC with the Internal Revenue Service, accusing the group of violating its tax-exempt status by operating as a lobby while claiming to be a charity.
The group’s tax exemption allows its corporate supporters to take tax deductions on millions spent each year to support ALEC’s activities, in effect providing a taxpayer subsidy for its lobbying.
Addressing the market demand created by NCLB and Race to the Top, ALEC’s Education Task Force has issued 29 model bills dealing with K-12 education since February, 2013,16 including The Great Schools Tax Credit Program Act,17 and the Parental Choice Scholarship Accountability Act,18 which provide models for state scholarship tax credit programs. ALEC model bills appear to have been the basis for education bills introduced in New York.
Does Common Cause (“Holding Power Accountable”) publish a list of who *their* donors are? The names seem to have been redacted from the Form 990 they’ve posted to their site.
Charter trolls seeking to misdirect with irrelevant points, and wasting no time…
If it is important for people to know the sources of political funding in New York State, and I think that it is, then it should also be important for people to know the sources of organizations that report on it. Is this organization funded by interests who would take a huge financial hit if more and more children were offered a choice other than their hypersegregated neighborhood school, for example?
Tim,
I will gladly publish the sources of funding for Common Cause if someone relates them to me. The issue at hand, however, is whether the facts they state are true or false. Are they wrong? If they are correct and accurate, then why does it matter who funds them? Follow the money is usually a very good principle, and I am prepared to follow it for all.
If you actually had some data to back up your insinuations, then you might have some credibility. However, you simply engaged in the time-worn technique of seeking to instill unsubstantiated doubt about this report.
This is a propaganda technique that has been used for a long time, most notably by the tobacco industry. It’s currently used by the fossil fuel industry to undermine the science behind anthropogenic global warming, and the possible regulation that could result. Christian fundamentalists use the same tactic when trying to raise doubts about evolution and insist on their “right” to “teach the controversy” between creationism and evolution.
You and other charter shills are in exalted company when you do this, and it reveals a lot about the whole “movement.”
Oh, and by the way, while de facto segregation in the public schools (as everywhere else in US life) is a reality, your constant and disingenuous use of it as as an attempted shield for your charter shilling is bogus.
Thank you, Michael F. The charter trolls like to cover themselves in concern for segregation as they tout highly segregated charter schools. Highly or totally segregated. And no excuses for them!
Perhaps as important as who their donors are is what they stand for, their goals, objectives, the way they operate etc.
I googled Common Cause funding and came up with a list of the board of directors and this statement:
Funding
“Common Cause is financed, in large part, by the dues and contributions of its individual members. Because it is a 501(c)(4) lobbying organization, such contributions to Common Cause are not tax deductible.” The Common Cause Education Fund, the 501(c)(3) “affiliate, conducts research, education, and outreach activities and is supported by foundation grants and tax-deductible contributions from individuals and institutions. The combined annual operating budget of Common Cause and the Common Cause Education Fund is approximately $10 million. Common Cause does not solicit contributions from labor unions or corporations.”
Here is a link of the Common Cause website with 990 forms and financial report. http://www.commoncause.org/about/our-impact/faq/financial-statements-and-990s.html
All of this about the funding source is a distraction from their findings. Tim, which of their findings do you challenge?
His trolling exposed, from Tim we hear… crickets.
It would seem that Citizens United v FEC was a turning point,
http://www.citizensunited.org
“Citizens United and Congressman Jeff Duncan are proud to be teaming up to bring grassroots activists from across South Carolina and the surrounding area to hear directly from conservative leaders on how we can get America back on track by focusing on our core principles of pro-growth economics, social conservatism, and a strong national defense. The South Carolina Freedom Summit comes on the heels of the tremendously impactful New Hampshire and Iowa Freedom Summits. We are striving to build on those successful events as we bring the series to the Palmetto State.”
and the effort of ALEC
http://www.alec.org
are paying off.
In addition to the thorough research in the Common Cause report, with hope, the next step will be a focus on the charter school lenders.
A bank, National Cooperative Bank (NCB), was created with seed money from the government for enterprises driven by “democratic organizing principles”, like coops. Subsequently, it was privatized, with the government becoming a creditor of the firm.
NCB Capital Impact became a behemoth in the charter school financing business, changing its name to, Capital Impact Partners. Capital Impact Partners worked with Bill Gates to provide money for charter schools. One of those charter schools is Aspire, which is partnered with Reed Hastings, who is the subject of the Washington Post article, “”Netflix’s Reed Hastings has a big idea: Kill elected school boards”.
Governance by plutocratic philanthropies is, IMO, antithetical to the concept of community “member-run and member-owned”, which was used to describe NCB .
Reblogged this on History Chick in AZ and commented:
Please read Diane Ravitch’s summary of a report on funding and lobbying in NY state. Even though the report is about NY, it is representative of what is happening all across the country.
Excerpt: “The current trend of market-based education proposals can be seen as interrelated to the ideology and policy goals that contributed to the pre-2008 deregulations of the financial industry and to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC. Using a long term, multi-pronged strategy, the self-styled “education reform” organizations (whose boards are populated by the very hedge fund executives who have dominated Super PAC contributions since the Citizens United decision) are framing this issue. They have used their wealth to access and infiltrate the policy landscape on almost every front except one: the teachers’ unions. 13 In an increasingly polarized debate, these camps are battling for ideological control of the future of education policy at all levels of government.”
Privatizing is bad enough. The “corporatizing” of education is downright disgusting. Here’s the goal for Washington DC schools taken directly from the website of NewSchools Venture Fund, which has the usual list of wealthy “reform-minded” investors:
“NewSchools goal is to double the capacity of quality charter seats in DC and catalyze a shift in the market towards 50% quality charter seats. That means creating 7,500 new high quality charter school seats while closing 5,000 low- and mid-performing seats.”
Since when is the school system a “market”? Since when are children “seats”? This description of the students that schools are supposed to serve is really scary, especially when “performing” means nothing more than scores on a standardized test.
What the students (not seats!) in Washington DC public schools need are:
* Well-trained and dedicated teachers who serve more than 2 years (not TFAers). These are the teachers who will inspire the next generation of leaders, just like those in wealthier private schools in Washington DC and in well-to-do public schools in the suburbs. High teacher turnover sends a message to young-learners that “college and career ready” doesn’t include a career in the classroom—or more hypocritically, a mere five weeks of training can get you ready!
* Rich and varied educational experiences. That means art, music, drama, creative writing, real science labs, field trips and as much as exploration, inquiry-, project-based and hands-on learning as possible. This is the kind of school experience sought by parents in affluent communities—not more test prep! Perhaps nothing is more telling of the corporatist approach than this simple fact: the backers of most Charter Schools would never allow their own children to be educated under the “no excuses” model that is so prevalent. That model is not for them but for some looked down-upon other America.
* High-level instruction. This is the sort of instruction originally envisioned for Common Core math before it got dumbed down with lousy materials (e.g., EngageNY and its corporate-backed cousin Eureka Math). Parents want their children to enjoy and excel at math and a variety of other subjects, but even more importantly, to be inspired by great teachers, the kind of teachers who are well-trained, dedicated to their craft, and (dare I say it?) tenured at the best public schools. What affluent parents don’t want are the low-level, drill-and-kill math programs commonly adopted by Charter Schools under the guise of “personalized learning” but which actually serve as a low-cost replacement for the great teachers just described.
It is baffling that any civil rights group would align itself with the corporate-backed reform movement. For the most that movement is producing factory-like schools. Despite PR to the contrary, they are not all about the kids. They’re about the seats. They’re about tearing down public education, diminishing the prestige of teachers, or interjecting a profit motive or some false notion of choice in the education “market”. What they’re not about is top-notch, well-rounded education. That will require a massive investment in public schools and in the teachers who work there. Some may argue (in the face of contrary evidence) that the “seats” removed from public schools perform better. But from a civil rights perspective, those seats are separate and unequal. They are an excuse to spend less than is needed to educate our children and, in a most insidious way, they are producing a new class-based society. Those “seats” may as well be jobs in a sweat shop. After reading about Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools, we may already have reached the tipping point. God save us.
The privatizers have this peculiar idea that if a student moves to a charter school, she is now in a “high quality” seat. The seat seems to transmit grit and a thirst for knowledge. Since we know that charters on average do not outperform public schools, this is reformster bunk.
Is the brand name for the 2.0 update to “human capital pipeline”…… “schools-in-a-box” and “high quality seats”?
In a recent AARP article, Melinda Gates bragged about her foundation’s data-influenced decisions. KnowYourCharter.com and the critics of Bridge International Academies provide proof that Melinda’s foundation makes decisions, based on oligarchical superiority, unrelated to number crunching. Based on appearances, the arithmetic that matters to the Gates household, is a false public image and continued inclusion on the “richest” lists so that politicians and people, with their hands out, grovel at their feet for hand-outs.
Well stated, DL Paulson. I also cannot understand how the civil rights groups can be hoodwinked by corporate garbage. There is no benefit to minority students in cheap, corporate schools, and their parents’ lose their voice and a say in the process. How any civil rights group can tolerate this is disturbing? When I reflect on the power of the players, I have come to the conclusion that many civil rights groups have sold out many of our urban students. This also led me to reflect on the utter disengagement and passivity of the AFT and NEA leaders; their silence and reluctance speak volumes about their allegiance. They act more like observers than leaders.
Hooray for Citizens United???? It sure is making for a democratic form of government.
Must be my dyslexia, but I keep reading “privatization” as “piratization”. Perhaps a
Freudian ship, er slip.
Randi must be outraged about those taking more money for Common Core, than she did, a news conference must be in the offing about her outrage.
It just gets worse and worse.
What really gets to me is that teachers with years/decades of experience are now looked at by administrators (not by colleagues) as dinosaurs with little clue as to what would best serve the needs of their students. Thirty year old principals and APs in their bunkers, hunched over their computers and checklists, intent on rebuilding that airplane in mid flight.
Who in their right mind would proudly proclaim that thy are building an airplane in mid flight without the expertise of those who actually understand the construction and aerodynamics necessary to assure a safe, comfortable flight?
The propaganda campaign has been so successful that people who I consider to be intelligent human beings are buying into the “need” for the big data model and everything that goes with it. They express disbelief when I tell them about my first hand observations of the destructive nature of the new policies and where they can and most likely will lead us, as a nation.
“But what about those lazy, ineffective teachers in the inner city schools? Don’t you think they should be removed?”.
Who was the most recent lazy, ineffective,inner city school teacher that you observed or spoke with?
I’ve spent decades in schools with those kids. The vast majority of my colleagues have been hard working pros who take a difficult job very seriously.
We’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, folks. If you’re somebody who’s on the fence about this situation, please do some more reading here and elsewhere, away from the major media outlets. The stakes in this game are very, very high and the teacher’s voices are being silenced.
Imagine if this commitment of time and energy (billions of hours) and money (billions of dollars) was instead directed to lowering class size and one-on-one mentoring programs.
This is a superb post! You have hit all the right nails right on the head. Thank you.
Thanks. I’m in NYC, too. It’s easy to hit the nail on the head when you’ve been living it for this long.
I don’t know if you checked out the link to the Common Cause PDF, but did you notice who was at the top of the list in terms of dollars spent? None other than our good buddy, Michael Bloomberg; now free of those bothersome (but easily manipulated) restraints that he had to deal with in the public sector. No surprise there, though. Not like he was going to just “go away”.