GSV Advisors is leading the movement to bring investors into public education and to create new companies to profit from public education funding. GSV stands for Global Silicon Valley.
Who are they, you might wonder? Here are their leaders. Note how much they know about investing and building equity. Note how little experience they have as education professionals (none).
Here is what I previously described as a “field guide to the education industry,” produced by GSV.
Here are some of the partnerships they have underwritten.
The founder of GSV is Deborah Quazzo. She is also on the boards of KIPP, Teach for America, and other “reform” (privatization) groups. Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed her to the Chicago Board of Education in 2013 to replace billionaire Penny Pritzker. However, in early 2015, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the public schools had tripled their spending on companies where Quazzo had a financial interest (she said she recused herself from votes on those contracts). Demands for her resignation forced her to resign in June 2015.
In the movement to privatize public education, GSV is a national leader.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
It always leads back to Chicago, all of it. Obama, Duncan, Emmanuel, even Delaware Governor Jack Markell. They are all part of corporate education reform. What is their obsession with all of this? Someone needs to start doing some serious digging into the money trail behind all this.
These people are not interested in building a better America, a more informed citizenry or equal access to opportunity. They are interested in extracting profit from our young people. Business people will flock to whatever will lead them to more profit. Our irresponsible government enables this grand human experiment, and it is wrong to continue to waste education dollars on for profit entities when our concern and resources should be focused on what is best for students. Unless charters operate under ideal circumstances, they are failing to deliver what is best for students. Parents need to be informed that “choice” may very well lead their children down a rabbit hole where their children will be short changed rather than some idealized education miracle.
It’s all about maintaining CAPITALISM , first and foremoat.
Agreed. The sole driving principle behind these people–who are very slick, smart, savvy con-artists– is to maximize profit at any cost. It doesn’t matter who or what they ruin in the process as long as they maximize that profit at the end of the day. How can these people sleep at night? Have they no conscience? I have a B.A. in economics and–maybe I’m one of the few– but I believe we desperately need some form of moral, ethical, sustainable capitalism NOW. (Does the airline industry seriously need to make 20 billion in profit? Won’t 5 or 10 do just fine instead?)
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Education Experience ZERO!
The GSV advisers must all be handpicked psychopaths who worship at the alter of Milton Friedman, and they have no children of their own. But to psychopaths it doesn’t matter if they have children.
After all, to Friedman “GREED IS GOOD” and to neoliberals and neoconservatives, it is noble to lie to the people and fool them to achieve your group’s wealth goals.
Deborah Quazzo, as part of Rahm Emanuel’s rubber stamp Board of Education, besides the own self-serving deals she orchestrated, allowed the questionable SUPES $20.5M no bid contract to go through. She also serves on the GEMS World Academy board: http://www.gemsworldacademy-chicago.com/Page/About-Us/Leadership-and-Faculty/Our-Leadership-Team. You can read more about Ms. Quazzo here: http://windycityteachers.blogspot.com/2014/10/you-quazy-quazzo.html
And this is the gist of our book… that corporate interests want our schools. How do they do it? With their weapons of mass deception… much of our book is free here — http://weaponsofmassdeception.org/
Hi, I followed your link before. Your narrative is so clear and easy to understand that I couldn’t stop reading until I finished it. I have also recommended it to others and posted a link in a comment on Daily Kos. Great work!
It just dawned on me that the reason Pearson, Gates, Broad, Walton, Rhee, Cuomo, Christie, Duncan, Coleman and all the rest of the RheeForm psychopaths are coming together to push their agenda of greed and abuse of power is because the internet has brought them together in ways that never existed before.
Wealthy and powerful psychopaths have always been around but as individuals and not an organized movement like we are seeing today.
This is a war of the 99% against the 1% and “Psychopaths make up about 1 percent of the general population …”
http://www.livescience.com/16585-psychopaths-speech-language.html
In addition, Forbes lists the top ten jobs that attract psychopaths. Here are the top three on the list:
1. CEO
2. Lawyer
3. Media (Television/Radio)
“psychopathic attributes [are] actually more common in business leaders than in so-called disturbed criminals — attributes such as superficial charm, egocentricity, persuasiveness, lack of empathy, independence, and focus.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyclay/2013/01/05/the-top-10-jobs-that-attract-psychopaths/
Or we could call this the war of the Psychopaths versus the Empaths, because teachers alongside nurses, care aides, creative artists, charity workers and doctors are listed on the ten professions with the least number of psychopaths.
The Gates’ kids’ grandfather is a lawyer. Their dad was a CEO. Nature or nurture, America should be wary of the offspring by-product.
Thanks for the post. It provides insight.
The Koch brothers father was a CEO who started what is today one of the largest privately owned oil corporations in the United States. The money that launched that empire came from the Koch brothers father going to the Soviet Union during the Stalin era and being paid to build Russia’s oil industry.
The father of the Waltons was the founder and CEO of Wall-Mart who ruthlessly drove mom-pop stores out of business throughout rural America creating many ghost towns before he moved the company into urban America.
I’ve read compelling evidence of scientific studies that it is possible to genetically inherit psychopathic traits.
“genetically inherited psychopathic traits” -An excellent rationale for high inheritance taxes and a progressive income tax structure.
Rahm, evil man that he is, put a privatizer on the CPS Board. Hasn’t he done enough damage closing down 50 public schools and opening charters? May Karma pay a visit to Rahm in our lifetimes, so we can at least enjoy a moment of schadenfreude.
The track record of GSV Capital, in terms of educational investments, is not very good. Perhaps its biggest dud: Coursera. But that’s the corporate wing. There are also “personal investments” by GSC Advisors (http://gsvadvisors.com/about/personal-investments/). Besides the obvious conflict of interest with this investment strategy—which should be no surprise for anyone following Deborah Quazzo’s career—it’s striking how poorly most of the companies are doing. If not for Japanese-like keiretsu (for example, a GSV-funded company called Clever partnering with other GSV companies), most would falter. It’s like a 1999 tech bubble waiting to pop. Or worse, GSV is fleecing investors with a pyramid scheme, complete with its own market research firm and cheerleading press (edsurge.com, also GSV funded).
For more on this, see http://hackeducation.com/2015/02/05/whos-investing-in-ed-tech and Mercedes Schneider’s Chronicle of Echoes.
All investment talk aside, it’s sad to think that GSV compares its corporate mission to the American revolution (see http://gsvadvisors.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/gsvadvisors/American%20Revolution%202.0.pdf). There is no lack of irony here. The extraction of profits from public schools is not democratic. It’s the reverse. It’s more control by corporations and less control by individuals over their own lives. It’s meant to replace the human endeavors of teaching and learning with machines, solely for the purpose of efficiency and maximizing profit. “Reform” is just a pretense to pull in more investors. (When your fund under-performs, it helps to fall back on some notion of social responsibility.) GSV’s mission is totally antithetical to freedom and self-fulfillment, two key ideas behind the real American Revolution.
Please read the following sentence from http://www.tealsk12.org/staging/wp-content/uploads/formidable/The-New-Role-of-Business-in-Global-Education_Final_1.8.2014.pdf. And before you read the sentence, know that the report comes from a kindred spirit of GSV Advisors. The subtitle is, “How companies can create shared value by improving education while driving shareholder returns”. The authors swoon over these companies, saying:
“They are transforming the education pipeline by reimagining education as a dynamic ecosystem in which companies are fully engaged from cradle to career.”
Cradle to career? That should make us shudder.
Thanks.
As I looked at the post’s linked list, I wondered how many partners/ clients had gone belly up.
One of the two gaming companies identified, foreclosed in 2009, according to Las Vegas Review.
Another partner/client, APU, (if it is the stock, listed as APEI), is a for-profit school, with the word, public, included in its branding.
Another partner/client appears it might be Apollo Education Group, which BNK Invest, describes as “oversold”. On Aug. 3, BNK listed the stock’s 52 week hi at $34.55 and, on that date, a price under $13.
Why doesn’t the press expose this? It is so calculated, organized, and well funded. It is financial theory applied without knowledge to real people. If the public could look at all this information, there would be a huge outrage against the reform movement. Our union needs to do more to educate the public.
Yes, Laureen, yes!
Forward these stories to the education reporters and editorial writers of your local paper.
We need to find the rare journalists who will pursue this issue relentlessly. The material is there to make a career project out of it. Maybe we should form a team that scans mainstream media for whistleblowers, and then pushes them into action.
Laureen
You make an excellent point.
The problem exists at the national political level. Democratic politicians aren’t behaving as expected. They have joined with Republican ideologues and profiteers, as proponents of Common Core, high stakes testing and, charter schools. Working people only contributed 1/4 of the money, that the wealthy did, to the last presidential campaign. As a result, Democrats shifted position to where the money is. Without a pre-packaged kit of information, reflecting what should be the opposing Democratic position, media are forced to be idea people and investigate. In newspapers, and on T.V., journalists function, 99% of the time, as superficial reporters of events. They know their bread is buttered by advertisers, like, for-profit schools and charter school owners and their capital lenders, so there is little inducement for them to write original copy, championing children or, the community, as a whole.
The AFT doesn’t oppose Common Core, accountability measures nor charter schools (given certain parameters). Commenters at this site, say AFT leadership has a lock on their positions, through a contrived election process. Last year, on Labor Day, the AFT President was in Israel. Coupled with the premature endorsement of Clinton, I conclude, the union rank and file are unimportant.
Bottom line, any success in stopping the takeover of community schools relies on people like you, me, saints like Diane Ravitch, and other people who care about their children, grandchildren and, the future of democracy.
I have a collection of these monetizing schemes. These are international. Here is one version of the money-speak on a Utah investment, retrieved from a website in Australia. The Obama administration put up $200 million to stimulate more contracts like this, known as sibs for “social impact bonds” or “pay for success contracts.” The return on investment from these financial products is marketed at 5% to 7% a year.
SOCIAL IMPACT BONDS· UTAH HIGH QUALITY PRESCHOOL SIB
SIB Details
Location-United States, Utah Commencement date-1 August 2013
Savings area-Early childhood education
Bond Amount-Up to US$7m, staged drawdown Bond terms (years)-Up to 12 years
Intervention Program
Program description-High impact and targeted curriculum to increase school readiness and academic performance.
Treatment duration-1 year (assumed)
Target population-Disadvantaged children between the ages of 3 and 4 years old, many of whom have English as a second language.
Intervention cohort-Target Population members in Granite and Park City school districts. 3,500 children across 5 annual cohorts (initial cohort 600 children). Approx one-third expected to test as below average on standardised test (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test): these form the ‘Payment Group’.
Outcome Measurement
Metric-Number of children who do not use special education and remedial services. Measured for each child in the Payment Group in each of the school years K-6.
Counterfactual
Fixed. Assumed that entire Payment Group (those with below average initial test scores) would otherwise have required remedial support. Also implicitly assumed that no children in the balance of the intervention group would need extra support.
Outcome Calculation and Target-Every year that a child within the Payment Group does not use special education or remedial services will generate a Pay-for-Success payment. Breakeven estimated as a 35% reduction in usage by Payment Group. Annual cost of services is $2,600: 95% of avoided costs paid until base return of 5% reached, thereafter 40% of avoided costs paid.
Contracting parties
Government Agency-State of Utah, Utah Salt Lake County
Service Provider-United Way of Salt Lake
Intermediary-United Way of Salt Lake
Evaluator-Unknown
Investor details
Investors-Goldman Sachs and JB Pritzker
Returns-Target base interest rate of 5% – assumed not annualised (not stated). Implied maximum return is approx US $5.5m.
Capital protection-Nil. J.B. Pritzker loan is subordinated.
Comments-Initial investment of US$1m as proof of concept, with intent to roll out 5 year program. This initiative is the first phase in a larger $20 million commitment by J.B. Pritzker, Goldman Sachs and other private investors for the Early Childhood Innovation Accelerator, a fund which aims to increase the availability of high-quality early childhood education while building a strong evidence-base of success.
Source http://socialventures.com.au/case-studies/utah-high-quality-preschool-sib/
Here are some additional facts, not disclosed:
1. There are significant costs of “intermediaries” -lawyers, accountants, the external evaluator, the auditor of the books, the data collection experts, and the salary of the contract manager of the investment group who has the power to hire and fire “service providers.” Transparency in accounting is not guaranteed.
2. The service providers, usually from the public sector, can lose control of their mission and the good will of the supporters they has as a non-profit. Their staffing arrangements and standards can be compromised if these arrangements are not cost-effective and cost efficient.
3. The “Payment Group” will be selected to ensure that these children have minor learning problems that can be addressed during the intervention. Preschoolers with serious learning disabilities are excluded. In effect the payment group is “skimmed” from the get-go to reduce the risk to the investors.
4. The Counterfactual group functions as the control group and is therefore skimmed in the same way.
5. The actual costs for special education students and sources of funds under current arrangements is not in this description.
Many others, but these financial instruments are being propagated internationally with a “launch” lab and incubator at Harvard and elsewhere.
I’m always appreciative when corporate websites, post photos of the entire management team. Thanks for the frequent links, Dr. Ravitch.
Photos show us the demographics of privilege, e.g. those people pocketing, 18% in interest money intended for children.
Corporate, for-profits, owned by “philanthropists”, who spout platitudes about civil rights commitment, rarely if ever, reflect proportionate diversity in management. And, that’s not going to change because profiteers and their salespeople badger, with rhetorical promises, about education and jobs.
Given the potential oligarch profits, one would think minority group leaders, that endorse education reform, would negotiate a better deal. Shouldn’t they be, on the corporate-side boards and management teams, not just in plutocratic-dependent philanthropic jobs? In the America designed by Waltons, Kochs and Gates, good career-launching positions will originate exclusively, from the commerce and industry sectors. Minority group leaders shouldn’t sell themselves, short, unless they’re afraid, greater employment equality, isn’t going to be in the nation’s future.
Note that the VP has worked for the Dallas office of Bain and Company.
Business is following the course laid out in the World Bank’s draft report “World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for Poor People (WDR 2004).
In 2005 Lois Weiner wrote:
“A key element of the program is limiting access to higher education through the imposition of higher tuition and reduced government support to institutions and individual students. Limiting access to higher education means that lower education is charged only with preparing students for work, for jobs requiring basic skills, jobs that multinationals aim to move from one country to another. Schools that train most workers for jobs requiring limited literacy and numeracy, which WDR 2004 explains is all we can realistically expect for poor people in poor countries, do not require teachers who are themselves well-educated or skilled as teachers. In fact, teachers who have a significant amount of education are a liability because they are costly to employ; teacher salaries are the largest expense of any school system. Minimally educated workers require only teachers who are themselves minimally educated, and so teacher education is eliminated or deskilled in the neoliberal program.”
http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_stories.html?id=223
Neoliberalism, Teacher Unionism, and the Future of Public Education
Lois Weiner
New Politics
Vol X, No. 2, Winter 2005
Also, see her 2012 article:
http://reimaginerpe.org/19-1/weiner
Privatizing Public Education: The Neoliberal Model
By Lois Weiner
it occurs to me that raiding and privatizing public education for profit is the Corporate Democrats what defense contracts were and are to the Republicans.
Defense contractors give to both Democrats and Republicans.
Republicans champion education privatizing. It’s unexpected that Democrats, at the national level and in some states, would also be privatizers. Voters, who learn the information and thought Democrats wore white hats, are disillusioned. That’s why there is an organization, Teachers for Bernie. At least, Sanders is fighting the corporate takeover of the United States.
GSV is a syndicate of financial/investment companies. GSV Advisors is where some of the trouble lies, at least in terms of conflict of interest and self-dealing. The management team invests personally in charter schools which in turn buy the products of its other portfolio companies. GSV (Advisors or Capital, it’s not altogether clear) also supports edsurge.com, which serves as a faux-journalistic voice for this “reform” movement. And all this goes on while GSV Advisors dispenses its advice to its “sister company”, GSV Capital, which makes the big investments, including the bad ones in Coursera and Chegg. (The jury is still out on U2 and Declara.)
GSV Advisors operates in a way that probably makes its management team rich—and possibly at the expense of GSV Capital, because of the personal investments mentioned earlier. Why GSV Capital stockholders put up with this situation is baffling, because this publicly-traded company has never performed very well. It has made up for its bad decisions in the education market by smarter decisions with companies like Twitter and Dropbox. Apparently GSV’s very smart management team can’t quite grasp why its expertise in one area, growing high tech companies, doesn’t carry over to student learning. Nevertheless, its poor decisions in education substantially worsen the condition of our schools, because of all the propagandizing, “disruptive technologies”, and siphoning of taxpayer money.
You should look at this page which shows the management team for GSV Capital:
http://gsvcap.com/management/
Notice anything? It’s hard to miss: no women, no color, not a hint of educational experience. Yet this small group, *unelected* and cloistered in a corporate boardroom, is making hugely important decisions about the education of our youth. Americans need to be aware of what’s happening here. We *all* need to rise up and reclaim our schools before it’s too late. And we need to understand this goes way beyond the false notions of “choice” and “student performance”. It’s not the government that’s doing something wrong here; it’s the corporations that are meddling where they don’t belong. Please, let’s not allow a 19th century-type oligopoly to destroy public education in America. It would be worse than railroads and oil; it would mean a diminished future for our children, our communities, our nation.
…makes me nauseated….I never thought I would see the day. How could one live without a conscience?