The billionaires’ front group called “Families for Excellent Schools” has enlisted the actress Jennifer Hudson to support their campaign for charter schools. She probably thinks these are regular families, not realizing that the “Families” are the Waltons, the Broads, the Paul Tudor Jones family, and other hedge fund managers and equity investors. These are the billionaire families, not the people who need quality public schools for ALL children. Their schools will exclude children with disabilities, English language learners, students returning from prison, and children with behavior problems. All of these children will be dumped in the public schools, while their more fortunate peers are skimmed off. Then the boasting begins. FES is the same organization that has tried to derail Mayor de Blasio’s progressive agenda for children and heaped tens of millions on charter schools, not public schools. Please, Jennifer Hudson, don’t be fooled!
Here are sample tweets:
Good Morning Twitter Brigade!
We need your help RIGHT NOW! Popstar Jennifer Hudson is set to perform at a Families For Excellent Schools Rally in support of Charter Schools.
Read Here for Details: http://bit.ly/1VmbqYA
Unfortunately, Hudson is under the misconception that Charter Schools bring equality to the city. That’s why RIGHT NOW we need your help!!
TWEET WITH US RIGHT NOW, tell Jennifer Hudson @IAMJHUD, the truth about charters!
See below for sample tweets, and if you need a little more inspiration, check out FES’ most recent racist ad here: http://politi.co/1NRNaND
Don’t forget to follow our tweets:
@AQE_NY
@zansari8
@BEastonNY
@Fam4ExcSchools recent ad has Outraged Communities & Civil rights leaders @IAMJHUD please #SAYNO to Performing http://politi.co/1FmqT9B
Let @IAMJHUD Know Why She Shouldn’t Be Supporting FES Rally, Just Look at Their Recent Racist Ad http://politi.co/1NRNaND
@IAMJHUD You Should Know the Equality You Stand For IS NOT in Charters. They Don’t Serve ALL Students http://bit.ly/1O4ZpI7
.@IAMJHUD Please #SAYNO to Performing at FES Rally, They Are Hurting Our Public Schools
See the Truth About FES, Watch Their Racist Ad and #SAYNO to Performing @IAMJHUD http://politi.co/1NRNaND
FES Has Outraged Communities with their Recent Racist Ad, #SAYNO to Performing @IAMJHUD http://politi.co/1FmqT9B
FES and Their Charters Are Hedge Fund Controlled, NOT For the Community @IAMJHUD, #SAYNO
Support the Local Community, #SAYNO to the FES Rally @IAMJHUD
FES Rally is a Political Rally to Promote Eva Moskowitz, NOT Schools, OR Our Children @IAMJHUD #SAYNO
Don’t Become Apart of Their Race-Baiting @IAMJHUD #SAYNO to FES Rally! http://politi.co/1FmqT9B
.@IAMJHUD If you Stand for Equality, #SAYNO to Charters and FES!!
.@IAMJHUD Charters Are Destroying Public Schools Nationwide While Racking Up Public $$ #SAYNO http://bit.ly/1NXhTZC
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The Waltons, the Broads, the Paul Tudor Jones family, and other hedge fund managers and equity investors are the billionaire families behind the growth of corporate Charter schools. They are not for quality public schools for ALL children. Their schools will exclude children with disabilities, English language learners, students returning from prison, and children with behavior problems. All of these children will be dumped in the public schools, while their more fortunate peers are skimmed off. The price to do things their way is to surrender our transparent, non-profit, community based public schools to them—and of course only our best children, who will then be treated as if they are in a totally autocratic Marine Corps boot camp.
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This speaks to a broader problem we face. The reformers narrative is clearer, easier to digest and understand, and rather effectively has co-opted the language of civil rights, the civil rights movement itself, and social change and reform.
Our side has lost the narrative war. To fully grasp the points of our side, it requires a fairly committed investigation and the understanding of some nuance. Beyond that, we speak in loose terms of “democracy” and offer no broader insight in our narrative of the reality of reformers: hyper-capitalistic privatization. We are further hampered by the fact that large and important elements of or side have deeply confused our narrative by their outright support of reformers agenda items (common core) and then “sitting at the table” for the remainder of the reformers agenda items.
It should be no surprise that Hudson is now speaking for the reformers. Their narrative was stronger and to most people, that makes their case stronger.
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If Jennifer Hudson is donating her time to appear because she supports this, that is one thing. If she is getting paid, that should be an important part of the narrative.
It mystifies me why the “reformers” think that having stars perform will convince people that they care. In fact, all that money spend on style over substance makes people wonder what they are so desperate to hide. Do reformers really need “stars” to convince parents?
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Unfortunately, some are more attracted to style than substance. Atlanta superintendent Meria Carstarphen practices with various schools’ football teams as a way of promoting the public schools privatization agenda of Broad, Gates, Walton, Blank, etc. with style. Who would dare question the motives behind such style?
Right now, my head wants to explode from not knowing how to respond to this with, well, substance.
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Practicing with school football teams is very different than hiring a famous celebrity or two (at what cost?) to “entertain” during an event that is supposed to be about kids who need more resources. It’s unseemly to see all the money going to waste for a PR cause.
And frankly, if the UFT was spending money to hire entertainers at a march for education, I would find that just as wrong.
I don’t consider a superintendent practicing with a football team to be anything offensive. I do consider spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to manufacture a “rally” that is attended primarily by students at a single charter school chain that is desperately marketing to affluent parents (and desperately losing unusually large cohorts of AT-RISK children) to be pretty sad. And it reinforces what people believe — that these charter schools are DEMANDING money from scarce public school budgets when they have millions to waste on this. I wish Success Academy and FES would spend some of that money to make sure all students who win the lottery REMAIN at their school instead of repeatedly flunking 10 or 20% of them because they are apparently unable to teach many of them what they need to know in a single year despite their extra long school days.
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Reformers are using every angle they can to dominate the narrative. Having folks in Hollywood is always very helpful, especially if a “public schools are awful and a savior is needed” movie needs to be made.
It’s actually how you effectively carry forward and maintain a narrative. Jennifer Hudson doesn’t know better. Like most people she is responding to a narrative that seemingly promotes social change. She doesn’t know that she is promoting some of the ugliest elements of our society….insane predatory capitalistic privatization. She doesn’t know because the other side of the argument, US, have failed to smartly, creatively, smoothly, and bluntly educate her (irony) and provide her with a better narrative. That we are right and actually the side of real progress and democratic furtherance hardly matters.
Lay off her. By focusing on her we are doing our level best to ignore the real issue here, which is that we are losing the narrative war.
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“Lay off her” – I’m not criticizing Jennifer Hudson. But there is nothing wrong with making clear that FES seems to have boatloads of money to pay her (and a DJ) for their appearances, and to ask why so much money is spent on rallies instead of figuring out how to keep at-risk kids in their charter schools.
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Unfortunate, too, some of us will respond only after the torrent arrives. We tend to not sweat the small stuff, not understanding that small stuff accumulates. There is truth in the Butterfly Effect.
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Reblogged this on The Withering Apple and commented:
Let the Tweets start flying!
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I didnt mean “lay off her” as if she or her handlers, funders, etc were not guilty of insanely shallow and uncritical thinking and choices. I also didnt mean to somehow say “back off” of pointing out the awful piles and networks of money the reformers have on their side. I obviously agree with you on every point.
The point I was making, which I think was not particularly deep or sophisticated (or particularly well articulated by me), was that there is a glaring, enormous thing that moments like this illuminate….and that thing is or side’s failure to gain control of the narrative or even craft a particularly good one. This, from the standpoint of winning, matters more than everything….even more than the fact that we are right. Even more than the fact that we are often horrified and aghast at the depths and levels the reform movement and their political supporters will go to to push their agenda. I’m a working teacher. This stuff is not an intellectual exercise for me. It is not a movement that gives me identity. It’s is quite literally my career and my ability to participate in the economy. I am hyper critical of our side’s strategy and tactics (insofar as such exists) because from my perspective we need to win this. I am deeply convinced we are right on every level that is academic and intellectual. I am not, however, convinced that we are winning the WAR and BATTLES against the reform movement. We seem to think that the more we point out that we are right, the more we talk to one another at how horrific the other side is, that will somehow bring in the win for us. It will not. Opt out has emerged as our biggest thing. We are lucky. Opt out emerged very organically. Organized teachers (our leaders) were agreeing to common core and sitting at tables when parents started to think clearly and tactically and strategically. They also started pulling triggers. We are very lucky. We need to start opening another front to compliment opt out. I use the language of warfare because, you know, it’s a war. Not a debate.
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Call me cynical, but maybe they have hired Jennifer Hudson to this event to make sure people show up. Success Academy has been closing their schools and forcing families to rally at least bi-annually for the past few years. Not to mention that NYC school kids have already had four days off for religious holidays this month, so how can they ensure that families, especially those in which the parents work outside the home, will show up? Bring in the American Idol/Oscar award winner.
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I don’t tweet. However, I did just write and op-ed (to be published Week and attached) that covers some of these issues, and would be glad to send Hudson a copy (email), if I only knew her email.
Here, in Tennessee, Chris Barbic came from Houston to show Memphis how to raise test scores in a charter system. Unfortunately for him, Memphis, unlike Houston, had ‘zoned schools’, and his charter system schools had to educate every public school kid in their zone. The result was that test scores in his domain went up in math at about the State average, but dropped in reading to a greater degree than the rest of the State.
I say the above understanding that the ‘test’ (TPAC, Tennessee’s Common Core disguise) is bogus as an instrument of measuring ‘education’, but it is the chosen measure by those Broad/charter types. So, live by the sword, and die by it (we can only hope).
Even as Barbic leaves, the proponents of privatization cover his ass. The man understands his failure, but not the forces that led him to his delusion.
9/28/2015 11:30 AM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote: > WordPress.com > dianeravitch posted: “The billionaires’ front group called “Families > for Excellent Schools” has enlisted the actress Jennifer Hudson to > support their campaign for charter schools. She probably thinks these > are regular families, not realizing that the “Families” are the Waltons” >
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Stop going to her concerts, stop buying anything with her name on it or connected with her! Pass it on.
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