The Walton Family Foundation gave away $375 million last year. It gave away $202 million to educational groups.
The foundation’s money is generated by the vast earnings of Walmart. The foundation was established in 1987 by Sam Walton. At least six of the Walton family members are billionaires, maybe more. As they die off, the foundation will grow larger.
The leader of the education part of the Walton Foundation is Marc Sternberg, who worked for Joel Klein in the Néw York City Department of Education. From 2010 to 2013, Sternberg was in charge of school closures and charter co-locations inside public schools.
The foundation is not only very wealthy, it has an ideology. It is rightwing. It is reactionary. It does not like public schools. It favors privatization and deregulation, which is what you might expect of a powerful corporation that hates government telling it what to do (like paying its employees a living wage). It hates unions. It loves charters and vouchers.
You might ask, how can billionaires sleep at night when they know their employees are surviving on meager earnings? I don’t know. Maybe they don’t think about it. Maybe they say, “Tough. That’s life. Life is unfair. Where’s my Bentley?”
I think you will find it enlightening to see where its money went in the 2014 year.
The biggest chunks went to Teach for America and KIPP.
Here are some of the many beneficiaries of the Walton family’s largesse:
AMONG THE DOZENS OF GROUPS THAT RECEIVED $80 MILLION TO “SHAPE PUBLIC POLICY” WERE:
50CAN, INC. ($2.5 MILLION);
ASPEN INSTITUTE, INC. ($250,000);
BELLWETHER EDUCATION PARTNERS ($1.1 MILLION);
BLACK ALLIANCE FOR EDUCATIONAL OPTIONS, INC. ($3.4 MILLION);
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION ($237,000);
CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASSOCIATION ($3.5 MILLION);
EDITORIAL PROJECTS IN EDUCATION, INC (PUBLISHER OF “EDUCATION WEEK”) [$250,000];
EDUCATION REFORM NOW ($2.5 MILLION);
EDUCATION TRUST ($930,000);
EDUCATION WRITERS ASSOCIATION ($250,000);
EDUCATORS FOR EXCELLENCE ($825,000);
FAMILIES FOR EXCELLENT SCHOOLS ($5 MILLION);
FOUNDATION FOR EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION ($3 MILLION); Jeb Bush’s organization
FRIEDMAN FOUNDATION FOR EDUCATIONAL CHOICE ($624,000);
KIPP FOUNDATION ($300,000);
MIND TRUST ($500,000); Indianapolis
NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF STATE LEGISLATURES ($227,000);
NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO ($342,758);
NEW TEACHER PROJECT ($2.5 MILLION);
NEWSCHOOLS VENTURE FUND ($2 MILLION);
PARENT REVOLUTION ($1 MILLION);
STAND FOR CHILDREN ($350,000);
STUDENTSFIRST FOUNDATION AND STUDENTSFIRST INSTITUTE ($4.250 MILLION);
SUCCESS ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOLS ($1.5 MILLION);
TEACH PLUS ($250,000);
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY GROUP ($550,000);
THE NEW YORK TIMES ($150,000);
TEACH FOR AMERICA ($2.43 MILLION);
THE THOMAS B. FORDHAM INSTITUTE ($742,050);
UNITED NEGRO COLLEGE FUND ($105,000); UNITED WAY OF LOS ANGELES ($350,000).
In addition,
KIPP RECEIVED GRANTS TOTALING $9 MILLION, IN ADDITION TO $300,000 FOR “SHAPING PUBLIC POLICY.” TEACH FOR AMERICA RECEIVED $17.5 MILLION, IN ADDITION TO $2.43 MILLION FOR “SHAPING PUBLIC POLICY.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ugh. NPR?
The slant at NPR is definitely not pro public education. Yes, follow the money.
No corner of our society uncontaminated.
The slave-owning mentality never dies, it just changes its PR from millennium to millennium and century to century. It will never cease trying to re-engineer civil democratic societies into plantation and pyramid economies.
Couldn’t be more true.
Influencing Public Policy gets the most money. In short, bribery on behalf of the wealthy to maintain their ways. Will wonders never cease?
It is sad that one company/family has so much money to support causes that are right wing crusades with no real evidence that they do anything other than drain resources and denigrate public education. Money seems to be “trump”ing democracy everywhere you turn!
The New York Times? NPR? Atlantic Monthly? How can we even pretend that journalism (or should I say “journalism”?) is objective any more?
It’s the urinalism of the trickle-down economy …
BINGO.
May have to use that one Jon!
The list includes all the usual suspects that lie, distort, and produce biased studies that extol the virtues of charter schools as well as those that establish for profit schools. Some people just have too much money!
Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads.
Democracy is the same as it’s always been… democracy for slave owners (Lenin). These people obviously do not pay enough tax, the tax that should fund the publicly accountable education system. When one family is fiscally equivalent to 28% (or 42%, depending on how much debt you take in to account) they should be paying more tax, and not taking over the state education system. They do it for control, to take control away from “the masses”.
We are now beginning to suffer this in the UK, except we don’t have so many home-grown billionaires – ours come from Russia, China and the Arab States, so while they will buy a football team, they are only at the beginning of privatising the state education system.
When State Education goes, Democracy will follow, and that’s what the super-wealthy want. It needs to be resisted. They are obviously not paying enough inheritance tax!
Public schools are failing in the inner cities and not doing well for minority children even outside of the inner city.
Why keep doing something that is not working for everyone?
Some will say we need more money for the public schools as they are under-funded but if that is the case how can charter school sponsors get “rich” while a school that gets the same amount, or usually less, government money cannot succeed in teaching every child to grade level.
The New York Times! That explains it — or helps to.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The Walton family is doing all it can to buy the U.S. democracy and end it. They are not alone.
Money is the root of all evil.
For me, looking through the list is appalling. Several of those listed are working against their own interests. Sad!!!
We can have great wealth concentrated in few hands, or we can have a democracy, not both. We can a handful of fabulously rich families and businessmen dominating public discourse and national policy, or we can have freedom of speech and a robust contest of opinions and debates on what’s best for the nation, but not both. We can have some schools over-funded and under-regulated, while most schools are under-funded and over-regulated, but we cannot have democratic schooling and well-nurtured children as long as the billionaires finance this dreadful long ugly private war on the public sector. The defense of our kids and our public schools is a fateful turning point for the nation.
Ira Shor,
Are you the CUNY professor? I really appreciate your comment, and I’d like to cite it. I just want to make sure.
Thank you.
Valine Zeigler
Whenever I hear NPR announce the support of the Walton Foundation, my skin crawls and I understand the reporting on education is not to be valued and cry because of the great education reporters they have who have been sent off the the radio woodshed.
My very favorite happens to be NPR. Do they have a mirror?
My favorite part of the article is the revelation that Duncan helped shape the NEA resolution “Thirteen things we hate about Arne Duncan.” One of them must have been, he is far too modest about his accomplishments.
As it happened, at that time I was upset that the NEA rushed to endorse Obama without getting any pledges of change in return. I got a call from the NEA executive director assuring me that the RA “threw Arne under the bus.” I didn’t knew it was a Kabuki play, engineered by Arne. I now know the bus was parked, and the ground under it was fur-lined.