This is a very interesting interview with Bobby Turner, who is the partner of Andre Agassi in opening new charter schools for profit across the country. He seems to think that destroying public education is a way to perform good works.
Charity is laudable, Bobby Turner says, but if you really want to raise enough money to improve a thorny social problem you have to introduce the profit motive.
An associate of 1980s junk bond king Michael Milken who made a fortune in real estate, Turner is now turning that personal philosophy into action.
He set up a company last year called Turner Impact Capital that seeks investors to pay for blue-collar housing, promising returns more typical of conventional moneymaking businesses.
And already some big names are risking capital to invest with Turner, a deeply connected Los Angeles financier who already has a similar fund with former tennis star Andre Agassi to build inner-city charter schools.
The Turner Multifamily Impact Fund launched in June so far has drawn investments from high-profile hedge fund manager Bill Ackman; Citi Community Capital, a division of Citibank that invests in affordable housing; the University of Michigan endowment; and Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a philanthropic organization operated by the Rockefeller family.
This is the reasoning of the hedge fund managers and equity investors who are privatizing public schools. If they can generate a profit, taking public money that should be paying for the arts, for raising teachers’ salaries, and for reducing class sizes, they think they are doing good works. Please, someone, tell them they should stick to selling stuff and leave the taxpayer money for the kids, not for investors and profits. They are getting rich, and they are not doing good. They are hurting children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is largely, perhaps entirely, unrelated, but I just came across it, and it seems like the kind of thing your readers would find amusing.
Brilliant! Love Key & Peele.
Rationalization makes it easier to look at yourself in the mirror if you try to “brand” yourself as a good guy.
It’s my personal belief that, “Doing Good” and “Doing Well” are mutually exclusive.
Yeah, and from now on, if anyone wants me to volunteer, they’d better pay me to do it.
I made this point yesterday. A rheephormista playah has just confirmed my assertion.
When the profit motive is the #1 priority of a few adult investors and their chief enablers and enforcers, then maximizing ROI/monetizing children aka $tudent $uccess takes precedence over that of providing a genuine learning and teaching environment for the vast majority of teaching staffs and students and parents and their associated communities.
Hence cheap gimmicks and least inexpensive low-level skills training for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN; don’t forget that for THEIR OWN CHILDREN they spare no expense—the sky’s the limit.
The educational/pedagogical side of the “equation”? That’s for the testing experts and educrat and edubullies to deal with. But when the bottom line is black, not red, then the movers and shakers of the self-styled “education reform movement” declare victory.
There is nothing inevitable or natural or ordained about this. It’s all about making decisions about where to put resources. It’s about priorities.
The right priorities. The only question is: cui bono [Latin for “to whose benefit?].
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
The answer to cui bono? is: Not the rest of us.
Correction: “Hence cheap gimmicks and least inexpensive low-level skills training” should read—
“Hence cheap gimmicks and least expensive low-level skills training.”
😎
People with money will continue to function this way so long as government makes it possible for them to do so. Take away the profit making ability, take away the tax deductions, etc., and you will see the money flow dry up. In the meantime, the best we can hope for is that what happened in Washington State happens elsewhere: that channeling public taxdollars to charter schools is deemed illegal.
If the government did not incentivize the destruction of public education, there would be fewer players in the game. You may actually attract more people that genuinely want to make a difference. The New Market Tax Credits are an anathema to public schools. Also, if you truly do not understand or care about public schools, it is very possible you would think you are doing “good,” especially if you have been brainwashed by the smear campaign against public education.
See my earlier report on the first payout that the state of Utah must make to investors put together by GoldmanSachs who “lent” money for the Utah preschool program designed to prevent children from needing special education services and thus saving the state money…enough money to pay back the investors and about 5% interest. This is the first high profile preschool “pay for sucess” contract, also called a “social impact bond (SIB)” in educational/social services with a payout. There is a similar financial deal for a preschool program in Chicago. A social service program packaged as a Goldman Sachs SIB, intended to reduce recidivism rates at Riker’s Island, failed.
Enjoyed the Livestream of your inaugural lecture at Wellesley.
It’s disgusting that Utah is selling children to make a profit. The Utah legislature has hated children and public schools for years. This is just the latest example.
The reason teachers can only afford to rent rather than buy a home is due to his and his peers tactics. So now he can still benefit from their lowered salaries by collecting their rent. I do not think he should be proud that teachers and nurses now require assistance in order to support their families.
The two careers you mention are dominated by women. Maybe one underlying motive of undermining women’s options is to keep women in their “place.”
Utah’s rate of women earning a degree has actually receded, unlike the national average. Utah women make 75 cents (or less, for minority women) to every dollar that men make. A lot of that is because of the denigration of education and the horrible funding of Utah schools, where 80% of the employees are women. This is what is coming your way, everyone. The Utah legislature has been doing this for almost 30 years now. We can’t even get Lily Eskelsen-Garcia to speak out against this, and she’s from Utah.
http://www.sltrib.com/home/3091319-155/why-is-utahs-gender-wage-gap
They know exactly what they are doing. Strategic communication is simply part of the recipe.
cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Advice-from-a-Billionaire-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Diane-Ravitch-151023-236.html
with this comment which contains links to posts at this site.
When the people wake up, the 1/10th of 1% will control the education our children… and we see how well their control of congress has worked.
This story is a bit more than a year old, but it remains relevant as an update on the education “reforms” favored by the mammoth Walton Family Foundation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/us/a-walmart-fortune-spreading-charter-schools.html
It has spent more than a billion on its far-right, free-market vision of school reform. The foundation estimates that it has provided funding for one of every four new charters in the country
In part, it’s the tax code that makes charter schools so lucrative: Under the federal “New Markets Tax Credit” program that became law toward the end of the Clinton presidency, firms that invest in charters and other projects located in “underserved” areas can collect a generous tax credit — up to 39% — to offset their costs.
So attractive is the math, according to a 2010 article by Juan Gonzalez in the New York Daily News, “that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.”
It’s not only wealthy Americans making a killing on charter schools. So are foreigners, under a program critics call “green card via red carpet.”
“Wealthy individuals from as far away as China, Nigeria, Russia and Australia are spending tens of millions of dollars to build classrooms, libraries, basketball courts and science labs for American charter schools,” says a 2012 Reuters report.
The formal name of the program is EB-5, and it’s not only for charter schools. Foreigners who pony up $1 million in a wide variety of development projects — or as little as $500,000 in “targeted employment areas” — are entitled to buy immigration visas for themselves and family members.
“In the past two decades,” Reuters reports, “much of the investment has gone into commercial real estate projects, like luxury hotels, ski resorts and even gas stations. Lately, however, enterprising brokers have seen a golden opportunity to match cash-starved charter schools with cash-flush foreigners in investment deals that benefit both.”
More at.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/09/10/charter-school-gravy-train-runs-express-to-fat-city/
Susan-You are so right about the green cards. It’s possible for Osama Bin Laden’s wealthy family, to buy a green card, but Mexicans, who are on a totally dysfunctional wait list to enter legally, will never be called. Whom would you fear more?
The question is, does anyone really believe this? I mean, the hedge funders and the politicians they’ve bought are just salesmen – they don’t need to believe their own schtick. But does anyone else believe that we can take the pot of money set aside for, say, subsidized housing or special education, offer private companies the opportunity to take home the profits from any money they can save from that pot and *not* think that that’s going to have a negative effect on people who need subsidized housing or special education? I mean, where do people think the “profit” is coming from? Do they think the homeless or special ed kids are somehow working harder and generating more profit through productivity? Obviously, any “profit” has to come from taking away from people who need those services. When did our society decide that taking food out of the mouths of babes is okay?
Well, it’s already happening in Utah, and no one has spoken out yet. The Legislature kept the Goldman Sachs deal with preschools so quiet that it wasn’t reported in the news until this month.
There’s something really disturbing about the fact that US business leaders can’t seem to figure out how to make money anymore without privatizing public services.
They’re not creating anything. They’re just skimming some off the top on public funds that were already going out and replacing services that already existed.
Maybe we should stop focusing on the problems in the public sector and find out why these people feel they have to consume the public sector to survive. Is it a lack of imagination? Are they just out of ideas? Is there some kind of “skills gap” among the tippy-top rungs in business, where they can’t create an actual, new private sector product or service so start pushing out the public sector?
Exactly. Amazing that more people don’t see this for what it is.
I was incredulous reading the Ohio charter school management company case. The attitude was the public was taking something that belonged to the company. I was waiting for someone to remind the team of lawyers that every penny they take in was 1. public funding, and 2. formerly going to a public entity. In fact, the public was paying the team of lawyers, since the company has no revenue other than school funding.
They seem to have convinced themselves they “make money”.
All the rhetoric about “failing schools” and our students not being “college and career” ready feed the narrative that so the privatizers can swoop in and dismantle public education. VAM makes is easier for states to help undermine public schools by circumventing due process laws of teachers. It’s a trifecta of abuse.
Thank you for your posting.
In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, we experienced the devastation from Clinton’s “easing” of the laws separating banks and brokerage houses, and predator lending and finance in the housing market that continued under Bush. In return, we experienced foreclosures on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, record levels of indebtedness, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and the highway robbery of the shareholders of Enron. We have also witnessed the easing of regulations regarding political “contributions”, and the creation of Super Pacs…to thwart and mock our democratic processes and principles.
Big business has, in many cases, lost its way in earning money and profits in honorable and respectable ways. Politicians, such as Cuomo and Walker have become prostitutes for the billionaires, using their offices to parade their proverbial “for sale” signs to enrich themselves by bending over backwards for the Gates, Bloomberg’s, and Waltons of America.
Hence, the “night time” illegal and illegitimate thrusting of Common Core, created by the covenant of business behind closed doors, the stacking and ranking of teachers, a perverse objective to destroy the lives of those who educate our children in public schools. The blaming of public schools and their teachers for the ills of society, the labeling of students as failures, based on the unproven but rah rah sounding “internationally bookmarked” and “college and career ready”, whatever the heck that means!
The purpose of a public education was intended to teach our children to be good citizens, while allowing them to pursue their career aspirations and goals. My children do not attend public school to be measured on international bookmarks, and I reject the privatization mantra of college and career readiness, as aspired by the education deform movement. My children are encouraged to live normal, good, healthy and wholesome lives, and to pursue that which interests them, not the billionaires who have paid for this seeking a rate of investment on their returns, either financially or socially.
We will fight this “faux and undemocratically foisted, corrupt authoritarian mandate” today, tomorrow, and for as long as we must. Business and politics must not be allowed to profit in terms of money and power, at the expense of our children.
We do not object to healthy capitalism, but to crony corporatism, as politicians and business predators wash each other’s back, and plot against our public schools and our children.
We will protect our children, from the “state-sanctioned” and “business-paid for policies that have launched an unprecedented system of CHILD ABUSE across our nation, as governors and CEO’s hie in the shadows, counting their money, or browse their spreadsheets how best to control the populace, while they lust for more power and wealth…
…at the expense of OUR CHILDREN.
Steve B.-Well stated about our inglorious path.
Chiara’s point is spot on, and is the reason why it’s no exaggeration to call these people social vandals and parasites.
Vandals in that they are destroying a priceless public good, parasites in that they are enriching themselves while doing so.
“Philosophy of Parasites”
Philosophy of parasites
Is “Suck it till it dies”
Relentlessly through days and nights
Till naught remains but flies
Among the best of your poems.
The “profit motive” is lazy by nature. If you can make more money doing less, that’s exactly what you will do if money is your main consideration.
This is why “free market capitalism,” without a major leap in ethical understanding across the whole of humanity, will not bring the quality that businesspeople think it will. It is not a system that prioritizes what is right. It says that the easiest path to wealth is the right path. The most vulnerable are not the people we should help. They are the people to take from.
Milton Friedman’s ideology is at work in consuming the public sector. What is relatively new I think, is that the “imaginative” investments are financial products and services that, by design, are intended to disrupt and to transform as much of the public sector as possible.
Privatized prisons have been a real bonanza. The pipeline is big and continuous.
Now investors are looking toward public education, where franchises of charter and online schools offer “economies of scale.” These savings come through personnel reductions and eliminating any hint of professional status for employees—witness one teacher monitoring hundreds of computers. Technology is efficient for: (a) delivering conventional content, (b) offering “strategies for social emotional learning” and (c) data-gathering to sharpen “the customer experience.”
The latest push is for digital delivery of lessons for students based on a revival of the best-selling “Power of Positive Thinking” ideas that minister Norman Vincent Peale promoted mid-century last. But the Bible has been dumped as a rationale for good conduct, in favor of Brainology and Mindset training (both are brands for educational materials).
A couple of weeks ago, USDE shoved about $200 million out the door for products and training on mindsets and other “Skills for Success” that will, of course, also enable cuts or reductions in the need for counselors and social workers.
The investments in “social-emotional learning” are dual-purpose products for K-12 and for “leadership” training in business. The Brainology and Mindset materials from Stanford University professor of psychology Carol Dweck are just part of an emerging enterprise dealing with so-called soft skills, personal attributes, and the general idea that achieving “success” hinges on right-thinking. https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?language=en
Do they really believe that children will learn social and emotional skills from a computer program? Have these materials been tested as effective before they chose to spend $200 million in them? It sounds like brainwashing.
Laura, you might want to check out the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence:
http://ei.yale.edu/
It looks like they have good intentions, but I’m a little skeptical. Their research was front page news on USA Today this morning. They report that high school students have negative feelings in school–feeling tired, stressed and bored are at the top of the list. I taught high school, so this isn’t exactly news to me. I’ve browsed the website and watched some of the videos, and I’ve got some questions.
I’m all for studying the social-emotional aspects of learning and applying the findings to teaching. What I’m leery about is the idea of making a program out of the research and imposing it on teachers and kids, especially if the program is computerized and delivered as academic content to be learned and assessed. Monetizing the research would be even worse (as you suggested is happening with the work you mentioned above).
To the extent that their age and maturity level allows, kids should be encouraged to have minds of their own. I do believe in teaching them tools for self-control and self-development, though.
Here’s a program that allows students to practice mindfulness ten minutes a day:
https://www.innerexplorer.org/
I haven’t studied the website in detail, but I listened to an hour-long interview with one of the founders and was impressed. As far as I can tell, this program doesn’t tell students what to think or how to feel. It sounds more like taking a daily ten-minute break that helps students with stress reduction and self-regulation. Reported results include fewer behavior problems and less teacher stress.
I don’t think any of them believe they are doing good. Their soul-less motivation is the ROI. How can they feel good about trading ingredients to make a cheaper, and profitable, dish? No butter–margarine. No whole milk–water. No fresh vegetables–canned. No prime USDA meat–chuck. They know the stew won’t be good, but they don’t have to eat it, and they get paid for it where before they were paying for it. Let them eat cake, no?
These horrible humans, blessed with talent, or smarts, or family wealth, are just horrible humans. Many celebrities are enticed by the wolves to do good, and get an ROI. Sadly, in the process the reformers tear something down to provide something less, not something better, not something more worthwhile, and certainly nothing they want for themselves or their children.
I’m learning that my voice in this fight isn’t wanted. I feel like all I’m doing is preaching to the choir. Those parents who want charters cannot even see that they have willingly sent their lambs to slaughter. To them, Eli Broad, Eva Moskowitz and their ilk, ARE saviors–and their minds won’t be changed.
I’m waiting for powerful people in politics to figure out that their fawning devotion to these billionaires will make them irrelevant.
“Relinquishing” to the private sector will come with a price, and the price will be they will become completely expendable, because who needs government if all they do is broker private deals for public services? We can hire a professional to do that. It might go better, actually. Our government deal-makers seem to get ripped off constantly.
If you think of elected officials as brokers for the Overclass, mediating their interests with an ever more distracted, overworked, demoralized and, yes, ignorant, populace, then their usefulness may persist.
Just as none are more tightly chained than those who wrongly think they are free, so too does our faux democracy need to maintain the illusion that what voters think is of importance.
Of course they are doing good….for themselves. They are acolytes of the Ayn Rand church of me. Selfishness is good until society (which they do not believe exists) crumbles and their money is useless. There won’t be anything to buy and they won’t be able to eat their money. I have already told my kids, get land and grow your own food. I dream of them having to survive when there is no more economy.
I didn’t think things could get any worse for the 93% of children in this state who attend public schools, but that is about to happen:
“State Rep. Andrew Brenner, a Republican from Powell who serves as vice chairman of the House Education Committee, was deservedly blasted recently for calling public education “socialism” and suggesting the government privatize schools.
Brenner, who proves the pitfalls of safe political seats — his district is staunchly Republican and he has no challenger in the May primary — wrote his inflammatory column on the Brenner Brief News, a website run by his wife. Apparently, he paid no attention to the fact that Ohio’s privately managed, publicly supported charter schools have been a bust in far too many cases. ”
They just appointed an anti-public schools activist as chair of the education committee. Incredibly, they promoted him. Public schools don’t stand a chance with all the opposition coming from all these publicly-paid employees, I tell ya.
One reason hedge funds and other investment specialists are looking to education as a source of low-risk returns is that investment returns have shrunk worldwide. And according to many financial experts the outlook for future returns is pretty dismal.
Just read the financial press. Yields on US treasury debt and other high grade debt have been very low for the past five or six years. The sovereign debt of some countries actually went negative earlier this year. This trend incentivizes investors to “chase yield” by investing in riskier assets such as junk bonds. It also prompts corporations to borrow huge sums to purchase their own shares in an effort to boost the price of the company’s shares, while adding nonproductive debt to the financial system (instead of making investments in plants, equipment, and ideas that would lead to more and better jobs for the everyday people). Meanwhile, the return on savings accounts is close to zero.
The growth of charter school financing and related activities fits right in with the overall search for higher and safer returns.
Another reason for investors to tap the education market is that the funding stream (taxes earmarked for education) is relatively stable. Add in the relatively high tax-exempt returns on new bonds (along with potential legal loopholes that might enhance returns–hedge fund owners, for example, are taxed at the capital gains rate).
School construction funding through bond sales obviously isn’t new. What’s new is that big financial interests have been working in the political sector, using scare tactics to denigrate traditional public schools and create an accelerating demand for the construction and management of schools funded, but not run, by the taxing bodies (from which they can then extract more and more revenue). New federal grants and state legislation favoring charter schools make the investment outlook in education that much more attractive.
The “good” news might be that a bubble in education investing might be bursting. Apollo Education (parent of University of Phoenix) stock has about 35% of its value in just the past few days. Pearson more than 25%. K12 stock, which traded above $25.00 per share in July of last year, now trades below $13.00.
Doubt is creeping into an education market that is already suspect due to the proliferation of bad tests (Pearson), for-profit colleges that load students up with debt (Apollo), and substandard online teaching (K12).
Even so, banks and investment companies wouldn’t be spending so much time and effort promoting and justifying the schemes mentioned in the article if they didn’t see a chance for safe, above-average returns in a risky, low-return world.
Apollo Education (parent of University of Phoenix) stock has LOST about 35% of its value in just the past few days.
I wonder if people just figured out that online for-profits were a scam all by themselves, almost thru word of mouth. Their enrollment has dropped almost 20%. We see a lot of people who are incredibly bitter about their experience and they seem eager to advise others to stay away. They have a terrible reputation and it finally caught up with them.
My middle son is Reddit fan- he uses it as his news source basically, and he showed me how they are sharing information with each other in an attempt to warn their peers away from for-profits. It was really kind of heartening, to see them protecting each other in the absence of regulation or enforcement.
Boy, they are going to need each other. There seem to be whole industries set up to rob them and no one does anything to stop it.
Chiara, it’s great to hear that about Reddit. This could be another channel to spread the word about United Opt Out and other groups that oppose testing-as-teaching and other aspects of corporate education reform. So far it’s been parents and teachers that have pushed the most. Once more students get involved things could really start moving.
http://unitedoptout.com/
I’m not necessarily advocating a student strike, but this actually happened in Seattle on May 5, 1970:
http://depts.washington.edu/antiwar/may1970strike.shtml
Bravo to your son. Let the kids spread the word.
“The Greeds of our Destruction”
What we need
Is common good
But private greed
It never could
Implant the seed
That grows to wood
He won’t be allowed to operate in California.
Reblogged this on Rcooley123's Blog and commented:
Privatizing public schools is a bad idea. Education is about more than private profit and greed.
The best schools in this country (UK) are the ‘public schools’, which are private schools, outside the state/public system. They outperform the state schools, they provide a rounded education that produces thoughtful, caring, articulate young people with the abilities and confidence to face the problems of the 21st century. I don’t know what ‘profit’ they make for the foundations and charities that ‘own’ them, but they provide an education that the state system can only aspire too, and many of us think that we should raise the level of state education to the quality they display. How you get to this situation I don’t know as these schools are often hundreds of years old, but they do provide a model for us to study and think about. Don’t be frightened of ‘private schools’, learn the secrets others have found and apply them for the benefit of our future generations. Have faith in human nature, cooperation and the goodwill of others – the secret of our species’ success.
I just read that Geri Halliwell aka Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls, wants to open a free school in the UK. I don’t know if her motive is profit per se, but I’m pretty sure she has no expertise in education.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3288164/The-Spice-Academy-ll-never-guess-Geri-really-really-wants-set-free-school.html