Peter Greene is not impressed with the new form of philanthropy. The new philanthropists are not content to give money to worthy causes. No, they insist either in plastering their names for the public to see, a vanity project or paid advertising. Or they insist on controlling what they find, to make sure the recipients do as they are told. The names Gates and Broad cont to mind.
He writes:
“If you give an organization like a school or a hospital or a sports team a whole bunch of money in order to build a facility with your name on it, that’s not philanthropy. That’s advertising. Nobody looks at a building with TRUMP in huge gold letters on the side and thinks, “Wow, what a great, giving humanitarian.” Why should that work differently if, instead of building the big TRUMP building himself, he gave someone else money to do it for him?
“In fact, modern philanthropists have strangely confused “giving money to improve the life of human beings” with “hiring some people to do work that you want to have done.”
This is known as “philanthrocapitalism” or “vulture philanthropy.”
“Hacker Philanthropy (as laid out by Sean Parker, napster co-founder), isn’t really philanthropy at all. It’s a process of putting yourself in charge of something and then imposing your idea of a solution on the problem, confident that your outsider mindset allows you to see what the weakness is and “disrupt” it.
“The classic view of philanthropy, the one most commonly shared by givers who aren’t filthy rich, is that you find people who are doing something worthwhile, and you help them do it. But in current Rich Guy Philanthropy, you decide the solution you want to implement, and then you hire people direct your giving toward that goal.”
“So we finally arrive at a point where the word “philanthropy” means absolutely nothing at all. Hell, Donald Trump is a philanthropist. Vladamir Putin is a philanthropist. Every time I pay my phone bill, I’m a philanthropist. Apparently any time you give anybody any money for any reason, you’re a philanthropist.
“Look– here’s the rule. If you are giving money to somebody with the expectation that they will carry out your instructions, further your agenda, owe you compliance and assistance, or complete a project you’ve assigned them– you’re not a philanthropist. If your giving is designed to give you power or control over an aspect of public life in our country– you’re not a philanthropist.
“You know what else happened over the weekend? A couple dropped a check for $500,000 in a Salvation Army kettle. And then when news outlets wanted to follow up on the story, they insisted on remaining anonymous. And they didn’t tell the Salvation Army how to spend it, what to spend it on, or where to put their name on the side of the building. They just remembered how hard life was when they couldn’t get enough to eat, so they were hoping they could help other humans in similar dire straits. I may or may not love the Salvation Army, but I know an anonymous philanthropist when I see one or two.”
Peter has rediscovering a Talmudic principle.
The highest form of charity is when the giver doesn’t know who will receive his gift, and the recipient doesn’t know who gave the gift. No ego. No sense of power or control. No self-gratification.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I object to the defamation of vultures, who are very polite and social creatures that perform a useful function in nature cleaning up carrion. This is very different from the neo-narcissicists who make carrion of our social institutions.
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Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse.
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Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads.
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It is certainly not someone who, backed by hedge funders or not, expects and demands a return on investment. A gift is a gift, without strings attached. A gift that anticipates a return is an investment; nothing philanthropic about our friend Billy Gates, Eli Broad, the Kochs, Bloomberg, etc.
These men are evil doers who want to ruin the world. They are masterful at rhetoric.
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Donna, so true.
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Restore tax rates back to where they were when Dwight Eisenhower was president, and that will hasten the extinction of vulture philanthropy.
Vulture philanthropy at its worse:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/47754/shadow-chancellor-katherine-bradleys-influence-dc-education-reform/
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Peter again hits it out of the park.
Thanks to Google, I was able to dig out a couple posts (from this blog) from another favorite writer, Julie Tran, dealing with the same subject.
In the COMMENTS section, Julie references this article where bought-‘n-paid-for school privatization queen and LAUSD board member Monica Garcia lets her true agenda slip out:
JULIE TRAN: First, corporate reform’s bought-and-paid-for
Monica Garcia welcomes charter expansion,
and dismisses the damage it will do to existing
system of public schools, because regarding that
system… she “hope(s) that system ends.”
She contrasts the charters, as a “one system emerging is a
learning organization that meets the needs of kids” with
the traditional public schools as a “the system that didn’t serve
(students) as well. I, too, hope it ends.”
http://laschoolreport.com/garcia-welcomes-foundations-promoting-charter-school-expansion/
L.A. SCHOOL REPORT:
(Garcia) also doesn’t believe more charter schools will spell the end of LAUSD.
“A successful LA Unified cannot be over, we will only get stronger (with charters comprising 50% or more of LAUSD),” García said. “We’ve had people talk about one system dying and one system emerging. That one system emerging is a learning organization that meets the needs of kids. The (old) system that didn’t serve (kids) as well. I, too, hope it ends.”
” … ”
“I would go to any philanthropic arm and say ‘Please invest in our kids,’” García said. “We have many, many good strategies that need support.”
In reading the first set of quotes from LAUSD Board Member Monica Garcia, what strikes me is that Garcia doesn’t even grasp how contradictory and downright idiotic that her own rhetoric is. (The two words I put in CAPITALS are contradictory)
“I would go to any PHILANTHROPIC arm and say ‘Please INVEST in our kids,’ ” García said.”
“Philanthropic” actions are the exact opposite of “investing.” Philanthropy—literally meaning “the love of humanity”—is charity, OR voluntary giving of help to those in need, as a humanitarian act.
Philanthropy is most certainly not the capitalist concept of “investing”—which is basically the “love of money”—as the philanthropist, unlike the “investor,” neither desires nor expects a monetary return on the money he donates, nor does he demand control over any organization to which he donates money.
Broad, Walton, and the rest have been called “vulture philanthropists.”
To bridge this contradiction, Broad and others have sometimes resorted to calling themselves “philanthropreneurs”—what they believe is a benign descriptor of their predatory activities.
I mean… really! “philanthropreneurs” ??? Seriously?
That word is an oxymoronic mash-up of “philanthropist” and “entreprenuer”. That’s like describing a geometric figure as is a “square circle.” You’re either one or the other. You can’t be both.
You’re either…
— a “philanthropist” whose motives are selfless and lack any desire for person gain or control,
or you’re…
— an “entrepreneur” who’s motives are selfish and out for personal gain or control.
You can’t be both.
—————————-
Karen Wolfe posts an article about how — like it or not … and Karen doesn’t like it — there is a changing view of what philanthropy is and is not — what Karen calls a “paradigm shift”, and how there is yet another term for what Peter condemns… called “impact investing”:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/skollworldforum/2013/07/30/why-impact-investing-is-an-emerging-paradigm-shift-in-philanthropy/
Julie reads the article, then posts this:
——————————–
JULIE TRAN:
I read the article and I stand by what I said. They’re bastardizing the terms and concepts of “philanthropy”, “philanthropic,” “philanthropist,” etc. This “Impact investing” is nothing but ruthless capitalism covered the thinnest veneer of social responsibility and “charity”.
FROM THE ARTICLE: (Note the capitalization)
“Attached to all this fervor is a fair amount of confusion about what impact investing actually represents. Is it investment, philanthropy or both? Simply put, impact investing is THE DEPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL WITH AN EXPECTATION OF FINANCIAL RETURN, where the success of the investment is also contingent upon achieving a stated social or environmental goal. For example, at JPMorgan Chase we are committing capital—more than $50 million to date—to private equity funds THAT WILL DELIVER US AN APPROPRIATE FINANCIAL RETURN while simultaneously improving livelihoods for underserved populations around the world.”
I mean, come on… “deliver us an appropriate financial return”… this is not “philanthropy” by any current or past definition.
In Eli Broad’s and the billionaires’ approach hostile takeover of education, it allows them to make the specious argument:
“Sure, we’re making millions off this ‘education reform’, ‘reforms’ that allow us to seize control of hundreds of millions of the public’s tax dollars, and control over massive school districts / schools with absolutely no oversight, transparency or accountability from the public who are kicking on those tax dollars…
” … but we’re also helping improve the education of poor black and brown children at the same time… so that means EVERYBODY WINS, and that means our profiteering really is ‘philanthropy’ and that makes it okay!”
Those millions should go to the classroom, not into the pockets of hedge fund managers, or the bank accounts of money-motivated charter honchos like Eva Moskowitz ($ 600,000 / year). Once all of this is exposed to the public, they’ll feel and think the same way, and resist such “reform.”
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I love how they pretend it’s a market. It’s not a “market”. If it were a market they wouldn’t be manipulating the result to equal “50% charter schools”.
They’re acting as if this is being driven by mysterious market forces when instead it’s a deliberate and careful plan by government + wealthy people to privatize schools.
They’re using the public schools as the back-up while they convert to a charter system. Every one of those public schools will be gone in 20 years.and in the meantime they’ll slowly starve them to death.
Go look at what the Broad Foundation promotes on their website sometime. It’s all charter schools. This “agnostic” stuff is deliberately deceptive and also cowardly. They know privatizing all public schools is considered radical and would be rejected so they hide behind “agnostic”. Forget the policy part, people should resent and reject it just because it’s manipulative, dishonest. and patronizing.
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The failure of the enemy to declare war, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, was a cowardly and vicious act. Gates and Broad are vicious cowards.
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“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doest”, is a Biblical prescription for anonymous charity.
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Why do we have philanthropists at all? If the rich were paying their fair share of taxes society wouldn’t have to depend on these super rich families to help fund projects for the public good. During the 1950’s the middle class exploded while the maximum marginal tax rate was 90%. The wealthy paid an effective tax rate of close to 50% of their total income. We need a return to an effective progressive income tax, less dependence on sales taxes (regressive) and a return to much higher estate taxes to prevent once again the rise of aristocracy. Finally, In my opinion it’s not inconceivable that the super rich Koch, Walton, Gates, Bloomberg, etc. could join forces to build their own military!
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Absolutely. But the super rich have bought off most of the Democratic party. They are happy to ignore what is most repulsive about their agenda and all the young children damaged by it and exaggerate all positives if it means more donations. Who wants to look closely at what is true or not when your billionaire donors are already telling them exactly what to believe? And telling you that a few lies in the pursuit of a higher goal are always worth it.
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If Drew Franklin (at Popular Resistance, “TFA Embedded in Black Lives Matter”), is correct, the moneyed interests are targeting another, unionized, public sector group, police. Oligarch’s want to return to a time when the land owners hired mercenaries and, there was no countervailing force.
Why aren’t the spokespeople of Black Lives Matter demanding a police force that is well-paid, recognizing pay attracts a higher degree of professionalism? Why isn’t Black Lives Matter demanding a tax increase on the wealthy to pay for it? The rich have the most to lose from the societal chaos, they’ve created, by their bigotry and impoverishment of 50%, of the population. Why isn’t Black Lives Matter advocating for the hiring of public servants, who are respected and receive salaries that make them independent enough to stand up for the average Deshawn, Joe, or Juan?
An example that makes the point- a police officer was dispatched to a domestic situation in my area and, the officer fired, killing someone at the scene. The judge, in sentencing, looked at community members in the courtroom, and asked, “What did you expect for $ 12 an hour?”
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Gates own company is currently holding $100 billion offshore to avoid paying $30 billion in US taxes.
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That’s why I’m supporting Bernie.
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Setting up an LLC (limited liability corporation) is not charity, It’s seed money for a business venture. Nobody asked billionaires to make money doing “good.” That’s just neoliberal rhetoric. Destroying public education is not a worthy endeavor. The fact that our government buys into these unfounded ideas without considering the implications is irresponsbile. Trying to create a corporate welfare system while undermining middle class jobs is harmful to the economy and its citizens while it widens the income gap.
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Sadly, the privatizers — some of whom post here — care about democracy as much as they care about honesty. They support the notion of a few rich people wielding lots of power because those rich people happen to agree with their agenda. What’s sad is that those people are so short-sighted not to see that they are embracing a dangerous notion. There is no need to be truthful if being dishonest gets you more money and more of what you want.
Some day the few rich people in charge may not support the same agenda the privatizers want — maybe it won’t be about charter schools but about freedom of religion or gay rights or rounding up the people who believe in democracy and putting them in concentration camps because they are “dangerous”. But by then, the dishonesty in our public debate that they embraced when it served their purpose will be a fact of life, and it will be too late.
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Peter Greene, wrong! The insight that Gates and others had was that there was a reason they were so successful in the private sector and that so many public sectors have abysmal results. The true value from their philanthropy comes not from turning large amounts of money over to highly questionable public sector managers, but by contributing their oversight, management and project management connections in addition to huge resources to accomplished defined and targeted goals.
We realize you want them to give their hard-earned money to essentially socialist, incompetent organizations like unions or public school officials, but that would do very little good. If you are so much smarter than these titans, why don’t you create a successful … anything! And then you can choose how to leverage your resources for the greater good. But for you to imply that you have anywhere close to the insights they have on how to effect change and success is beyond laughable. This is why socialists hate capitalism. They prefer to stand on the side and say “I am so smart”. But when there is an objective score (succe$$), then their alternate reality crumbles before everyone, including themselves.
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Virginiagsp, sorry but I disagree with you strongly. Gates has made a mess of his investments in education. It is true that he is rich, but that doesn’t qualify him to reconstruct American education as he thinks best. Public education belongs to the public, not to the highest bidder. Gates poured $2 billion into his small schools idea, not a bad idea, but poorly executed via cookie cutter; he found it didn’t raise test scores, and he dropped that plan. Then he invested in Common Core; when the dollars are someday added up, it is likely to be another $2 billion. As you know, many states that said yes are now backing out of either the standards, the test, or both. Of course, if you idolize money as the most important measure in the world, then you will watch with glee as the billionaires buy up our democracy.
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Diane, one problem we always had was that there was no randomized testing of various policies. People used anecdotes or correlated data to prove their points. Folks like Charles Murray suggested $100M+ investments to conduct such tests but who was going to do it? Well, Gates put his money where his mouth was. And he listened to the results.
On school size, he bought in. But when the data didn’t support his hypothesis, he didn’t throw good money after bad. Jeffrey Sachs just rationalizes bad foreign aid but never admits the truth. $T’s in aid didn’t help Africa until the Gates Foundation and other technocratic organizations came along because they abandon ideas that don’t work. Gates also put up the funds to demonstrate VAMs weren’t just due to non-random assignment of kids to teachers. For those reasons alone, he should be celebrated. Others have neither the will nor the ability to conduct such true tests.
I am still amazed you oppose a limited number of standards in K-12. The fragmentation of state standards are what generated such huge $$$ for the textbook makers and the testers. Just like Goldman and their peers like “custom derivatives” instead of standard derivatives traded on open markets because those specialized arrangements generate monopoly profits. None of the big players can corner the market when there are standards. This is why the hardware makers on the Microsoft and Android platforms are hard pressed to make a profit. I understand you disagree with the standards for legitimate reasons. But I think you would agree that Gates heart is in the right place.
Michael Brocoum, are you kidding me? Zuckerburg pushed out the Winklevoss twins because he instantly recognized the profits to be made off Facebook. MS DOS had to overcome not only IBM DOS but had to compete against Apple’s McIntosh windows-based system and the Office suite was a big improvement over WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, at least for the younger generation. Nobody establishes a behemoth without adding value. One might argue that MSFT hasn’t been the innovator since the late 1990’s but it created a lot of value for its users of the time.
SomeDAM Poet, many folks would ask why these companies don’t shift their money and central HQ overseas since most of their revenue is non-US. When every other country has a different tax system, one must ask why we don’t change ours. Those companies like MSFT who keep $$$ offshore do so because they either plan to invest it overseas or because of unfair tax implications from bringing it back. Even it were brought to the US, it would simply be given to shareholders not invested. They simply don’t have the opportunities to invest that size of capital. It’s a silly argument. I guess you think folks in high tax states shouldn’t be allowed to move either?
Krazy, stack ranking has a lot of proponents, but a central problem is how to rank folks in a high-performing organization. What if one does live in Lake Wobegone. The good news for schools is that they don’t have that problem. In all of the VAM systems, you don’t rank teachers against their peers in the same school or even the same district. If that were the case, you could find concentrations of mostly high performers. VAMs are based on statewide rankings. So you literally could have all teachers in the same school receive the very highest rating. And talent loves talent. Trust me on that. Great teachers congregate together because they don’t have to clean up from another teacher who wasn’t effective. MSFT’s ranking system has nothing to do with Gates research on teacher effectiveness.
Donna, you are simply wrong. Here are the sites I have posted on:
1. Leesburg Today: was never banned but editors did allow other posters to suppress my comment. Leesburg Today is no longer a functioning newspaper as it essentially went bankrupt. The local competitor “bought it” for a nominal price and laid off all its staff. Good riddance.
2. Loudoun Times – never banned or even censored on here. Not sure what you are talking about.
3. Diane’s blog – never banned/censored. She put post limits on and doesn’t allow a few types of posts but nothing to complain about here.
4. Washington Post – some readers tried to block posts (reporting them) and ombudsman doesn’t believe unless you show screenshots, but they will repost comments that were mistakenly suppressed.
5. Loudoun Schools Facebook page – caught them censoring my posts and they were forced to ban all comments for a period of months to avoid 1st Amendment violations. It appears they have decided to allow comments once again; however, there decision to censor comments on individual school sites will likely be challenged in court.
6. Many Loudoun County school board Facebook pages – definitely censor posts in violation of the 1st Amendment. Will file case in federal court (limited public forum must be content neutral) just as soon as a few new board members are sworn in in January so I can be sure they are included in the suit.
For those interested in 1st Amendment legal issues, stay tuned as these cases will be quite enlightening and possibly set precedent. Not a lot of 1st Amendment cases on Facebook but mostly because most public officials are not foolish enough to just ban their critics and engage with their supporters.
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The founders of Facebook, Twitter, had no idea that their ideas would grow to enrich them at all. Both grew up programming computer code and created programs as a hobby. Zuckerberg to have students rate female students and Twitter’s founder (forgot name) to imitate abreviated language of some emergency conversations in messaging. Essentially it’s not too far off base to call them accidental billionaires. Bill Gates realized the value of software when IBM built the P.C. He sold IBM the MS-DOS system that he didn’t yet have. After securing the contract with IBM he purchsed the software from its maker for about $50,000 as I recall. When the original maker of the software found out what Gates did he sued in court. After some period of time Microsoft was order to pay many millions of dollars to him. As John Maynard Keynes once said: “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”
Hint: He was being sarcastic.
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dianeravitch: it’s simply a restatement of the “billionaire envy” argument made previously on this blog. Or as the LATIMES editorial board says in its most mature fashion to all that criticize rheephorm and don’t engage in “civil conversation”: “Neener neener.”
Summed up neatly in one grand “thought” is Bill Gates’ idea [shared by the other heavyweights of self-styled “education reform”] of using stack ranking to make anything work “better” [aka “better for a very few and much much worse for everyone else”].
Uh, sure. Except that facts, logic, consistency and intellectual honesty eviscerate their argument which turns out to be nothing more than a thinly disguised/rebranded self-serving version of the old “proof by assertion.”
Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
And a rather contradictory/hypocritical feature of the “envy riposte” cum stacking ranking is that not only is it not clever or witty, but that it only applies to “anyone else.”
From the above Vanity Fair article:
[start]
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
Supposing Microsoft had managed to hire technology’s top players into a single unit before they made their names elsewhere—Steve Jobs of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Larry Page of Google, Larry Ellison of Oracle, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon—regardless of performance, under one of the iterations of stack ranking, two of them would have to be rated as below average, with one deemed disastrous.
For that reason, executives said, a lot of Microsoft superstars did everything they could to avoid working alongside other top-notch developers, out of fear that they would be hurt in the rankings. And the reviews had real-world consequences: those at the top received bonuses and promotions; those at the bottom usually received no cash or were shown the door.
[end]
Read the rest of the article. *In the most up-to-date reiteration: Trump’s Dump, i.e., it’s all about the magic of management by those that aren’t themselves subjected to stack ranking in any way, shape, or form.*
Exactly why Dr. Raj Chetty and the rest of his fanboys/fangirls prefer Campbell’s Conjecture to Campbell’s Law—rheeality is sooooo much more amenable to their chimerical schema than reality.
Today, tomorrow, forever: why a 13th percentile will get you a 90th percentile will get you a Michelle Rhee that is a hero greater even than Arne Duncan [greatest civil rights leader since the 1960s!]—yes, the greatest edufraudster of all! Hard data points can be, like, so managed and tortured into a pretzel of self-aggrandizement that only rheephormsters won’t choke on them!
😏
And will get you a bell-ringing endorsement of malanthrophy.
But when one follows every twist and turn of rheephorm philosophy, doubling down on proven failures is just second nature:
‘If at first you don’t succeed… So much for skydiving.” [Henny Youngman]
😎
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“If you are so much smarter than these titans. . . “, why don’t you create a successful … anything!”
Titans? I see no titans. Hell, they got stomped by the Jets today, but I digress. Now if you’re talking Greek then realize that: “As they had overthrown the primordial deities, the Titans were overthrown by younger gods, including many of their own children – the Olympians.”
If the Gates, Broads, ZBergs of the world are the “titans”, they too shall fall to the Olympians who in this age are those who hold to the concept of “fidelity to truth” and although who have not the resources of those supposed titans you worship do have the numbers and truth to overcome these modern day false titans.
“. . . why don’t you create a successful … anything!”
Many of of us have, just on a local scale, not looking for fame and fortune but a better community. Do you need examples?
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virginia…..you have been banned from posting on so many other sites…and you complaint on those sites about it. You throw fits on other sites about it. Frankly, if there were an ignore button here, I would use it. On you. Please…just go away.
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Oh my…
Apparently this Lake Woebegone place is loaded with fanboys and fangirls of stack ranking fed by its lifeblood aka VAM and SGP. Although I haven’t seen this place on an actual map it must exist somewhere, perhaps just in the fevered imaginations of those mercilessly exerting Rheeality Distortion Fields on themselves…
Here on Planet Reality stack ranking/rank-and-yank/burn-and-churn in schools is toxic to genuine learning and teaching. A proven failure borrowed from business as shown in the Vanity Fair article.
But then again, what do I know? I can read Dr. Audrey Amrein-Beardsley’s RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION (2014) about the real world effects of stack ranking & VAM/SGP and it turns out that I made a crucial mistake—
Perusing a book loaded with facts presented in a logical, consistent and transparent manner just leads one astray, violating one of the secondary principles of rheephorm thinking aka the Henny Youngman Corollary:
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.”
Silly me! Reading! Thinking for myself!
That’s, like, so 20th century.
Well, I plead guilty. Even worse, in some respects I consider myself a kind of 19th century person:
“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”
Free, because “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”
I’ll go with Frederick Douglass on this one.
😎
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For my amusement, will virginiasgp please spin the Ohio charter school experience? Political donations that result in legislators allowing taxpayers to be ripped off, for the benefit of schemers
(Knowyourcharter.com), I want to laugh at sgp’s portrayal of it, as a gift to America’s future prosperity and, the nation’s representative democracy.
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Linda, as many of you know, I think the concept of charters sounds appealing but the devil is in the details. And there have definitely been problems.
1. Charters should be held to the same standards as public schools including transparency standards. This means their VAMs should be published and any qualifying information about student retention should be included. Charters should take the same standardized tests as the public schools.
2. There should be complete transparency in terms of their backers and funders. If a new charter company sprouts up backed by known charter operators, those ties should be revealed. In other words, firms are often tempted to create several branches of a single entity and see which branch “works”. The failures are put to bed and the successes are used to create even more and bigger firms. (think mutual funds where the same manager has multiple funds and advertises only the winners).
3. There should be a review over contracts especially when real estate or IP is involved. Transfers of assets through these back-door deals are essentially fraud and punished as such.
4. The funds provided to charters should be appropriate. Costs for a general education student as well as various levels of SpEd students should be accurately computed and transferred based on the charter school’s year-long enrollment. ELL costs should also be accurate. Thus, if a charter only takes general education students, they should not receive the average per pupil cost across an entire district since gen ed students don’t cost that much. There are ways to do this accurately and transparently.
5. Charters should be open enrollment or favor the disadvantaged. They should not be mechanisms by which privileged can escape city schools. However, I have no problem if poor but diligent, disciplined kids wants to escape their peers who couldn’t care less.
I am no expert on Ohio’s charters. But I am aware that the charter “referee” resigned because he was ignoring his failing charter schools. Unacceptable in every way. And I am aware that Imagine Schools pulled some shenanigans when it made a $1M+ profit off a real estate arrangement for a school that it then rented back to its charter school for ~60% of its annual revenues. That sounds criminal to me. Imagine Schools’ owner Dennis Bakke got his right-hand man Eric Hornberger elected to my district without ever disclosing his ties to charter schools and Imagine. Now, Hornberger is pushing charters as hard as he can and still doesn’t think he has to disclose the conflicts. A local judge sanctioned me $6500+ merely for trying to force him in court to comply with Virginia’s Conflict of Interest Act. But I won’t back down simply because a local judge misinterprets the law and wants to punish me for speaking out. What actions have you taken to highlight such misdeeds?
So I’d be careful before claiming I’m a shill for charters. I like the concept but so far, many implementations are suspect.
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Here is a story about a man in Florida that has spent $11M over 21 years to help a community.
“Nearly all its seniors graduate from high school, and most go on to college on full scholarships Mr. Rosen has financed.”
“It’s not inexpensive,” Mr. Rosen said. “You stay until the neighborhood no longer needs you. But, he added, “there are a lot of wealthy people with the resources to do the same thing if they choose.”
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Now that’s philanthropy!
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Amen.
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Companies like Microsoft stand to make billions off of public schools and national standards and tests are the best way to make that happen.
“Billyanthropy’
Billyanthropy
It’s plain to see
Is quite a different bird
It’s not a gift
But more like grift
No matter what you’ve heard
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TARGO!
😎
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The L.A. TIMES has been pretty much a blatant propaganda organ for the school privatizers, putting out what are essentially regurgitated press releases from the California Charter Schools Association at least once-a-month, sometimes more
Here are but two examples , where the TIMES lashes out at those trying to protect democratic control of schools, and public schools in general:
1) “EDITORIAL: Stop Whining About Charter Schools”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-school-board-20151110-story.html
EXCERPT: “The expansion could be a good thing for L.A. students, providing them with more chances to attend excellent new schools … It’s time to end the conjecture about whether charter schools enroll students selectively or whether they make the achievements of their students look better by pushing out low performers. L.A. Unified should research the issue. If charters are doing that, go after them; if not, stop complaining about them.”
and
2) “EDITORIAL: A Charter School Expansion Could be Great for L.A.
EXCERPT: “The rapid ramp-up, if successful, would bring the number of students in Los Angeles charter schools to nearly 300,000, more than twice as many as anywhere else in the country. And if the charter schools of L.A.’s future are like the ones of its past, this could be a great thing.
” … ”
“Those respected (charter school) groups are reportedly involved in the expansion talks, as is the Broad Foundation, whose philanthropist founder, Eli Broad, has long donated to charter schools.
“They’re also free of sometimes stultifying union rules. The large charter presence in L.A. speaks volumes about the high levels of dissatisfaction with many of the district’s regular public schools. Charter schools also have put significant competitive pressure on traditional schools, many of which have improved as a result, especially at the elementary school level.
Now, charter school organizations and their supporters seem ready to bet that within eight years, they can double their enrollment. It has taken two decades to build enrollment to the current level, but charter advocates say there is pent-up demand among families who believe their traditional public schools are improving too slowly or not at all. Waiting lists for charter schools in L.A. already exceed 40,000 applicants.
“The boldness of the plan should be applauded — poorly educated students can’t wait forever for help — but charter leaders should move carefully if they are to be successful.
“And there will undoubtedly be pushback from within the district. Some will come from the teachers union — United Teachers Los Angeles — which reviles charter schools and is dedicated to protecting its members’ jobs at regular district schools.
“A new era of charter schools is at hand, one in which they seek to be a bigger, more established player in the education arena rather than simply a model of how public schools might improve. But California law and policy need to be brought out of the 20th century. The state needs well-enforced rules requiring charters to keep their doors open to all students. Poor academic performance cannot be grounds for keeping a child from enrolling, or for telling him or her to leave. By all means, bring on more charter schools, as long as they are built on the principles of academic excellence and equal access for all.”
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For a counterpoint to these screeds, Peter Greene wrote: (it’s a long, but necessary read)
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2015/09/la-plan-to-crush-public-education.html
PETER GREENE: “I am absolutely bowled over at the magnitude of this power grab. Imagine if Broad and his friends said,
‘ ‘We’re not happy with the LAPD, so we’re going to hire and train our own police force, answerable to nobody but us, to cover some parts of the city. Also, the taxpayers have to foot the bill.’
“Or if they decided to get their own army? Or their own mayor?
“LA Plan To Crush Public Education
“The LA Time published further confirmation of the story they broke in August– Eli Broad and friends would like to replace public education in Los Angeles, taking over half of the district’s ‘business.’
“The confirmation comes by way of an extraordinary document– the Great Public Schools Now Initiative.
http://documents.latimes.com/great-public-schools-now-initiative/
“It’s nothing short of amazing– a plan to do away with democratically-controlled, publicly accountable education in LA.
“Granted, LA schools have never been short of people willing to just go ahead and impose their will on the school district. It was just last week the Times ran the news that a group of ‘concerned citizens’ had gotten a meeting with LAUSD school board president Steven Zimmer to tell him what they think he should do about filling the superintendent spot.
“How cool is that?!
“I think I will call the mayor of my town and tell him I want to meet to discuss my recommendations for how to make a budget. In fact, speaking of budgets, maybe I’ll just summon my state’s governor and some key legislators to a meeting where I’ll tell them what they should do about the budget impasse. Because, you know, representative democracy is for suckers and little people — People Who Matter just pick up the phone and tell elected officials what’s what.
“But the Great Public Schools Now Initiative puts the ‘aud’ in ‘audacious’ and the ‘balls’ in ‘holy schneikes but you have a big brass pair on you!’ It’s forty-four pages of ‘How To Completely Circumvent the Public School System For Fun and Profit.’
“The Times coverage hits some special highlights, so I am going to skate across this pond of barely frozen pig poo as quickly as possible. But just in case you think some of what you’re seeing about this plan involves scrutinous depalabration (my new term for close reading– patent pending), here are the goals of the plan in the plain executive summary English:
“This effort will be structured over an eight-year period from 2016 to 2023 with the following objectives:
“(1) to create 260 new high-quality charter schools,
“(2) to generate 130,000 high-quality charter seats, and
“(3) to reach 50 percent charter market share.
“That is, not incidentally, almost doubling the current charter capacity in LA. But the creators of this plan say that ‘the opportunity is ripe for a significant expansion’ of charter baloney in LA.
“Big Ripe LA Dreams
“GPSN thinks that LA is redolent with potential, positively fecund with charter possibilities, because reasons. [Insert Chamber of Commerce boilerplate here.]
“But the dream is not just to tap into the huge market of students trapped in failing blah blah blah waiting for their chance for high-quality seats (and, man, I would love to see one of these seats, sit in one of these seats, visit the High Quality Seat Factory and see how these seats are made) blah blah blah.
“No, the dream is to ‘create a national proof point for other states and cities seeking to dramatically improve K-12 education.’ GPSN wants LA to be the new New Orleans, the exemplar for charter champions everywhere, as they head out to double down, buckle up, and cash in. Gosh, let’s see what kind of program they have in mind, because I’m sure it won’t turn out to be a hollow, costly, unscaleable, irreproduceable, unsustainable plan at all.
“But first…
“Background: LA Schools Suck
” ‘Urban minority students trapped in zip codes blah blah blah no change in last years blah blah blah. Poor minority students have potential for success, and that potential goes untapped because of schools and not at all because of systemic racism and poverty. Nuh-uh. Just bad schools. Which, incidentally we keep throwing money at, but they don’t get any better. Also, achievement gap.’
“Charter Schools Fix Everything While Riding Unicorns Across Rainbows
“LA is filled with parent demand for charters, plus the suckiness of LAUSD. Oddly enough, the Deasy-loving tablet-pushing reformsters behind GPSN are not going to pause to consider their own role in the LAUSD suckness. But it doesn’t matter because they have the biggest charter sector in the world, and it’s awesome.
“Charters ‘have maintained impressive growth’ and now show a ‘total market share’ of almost twenty-five percent. This is because of “the success of charters to push past environmental and political factors and achieve sustainable growth over time.”
“So success = more of them.
“It’s almost as if we’re discussing an investment business, and not a school. And indeed, we go on to discuss charter unit growth and enrollment trends.
“We will also discuss student achievement, relying on API (Academic Performance Index) scores, and we don’t have time right now to discuss how much baloney is stuffed into this mostly-standardized-test-scores measure. But GPSN wants you to know that the charters do better at the API stuff, mostly, pretty much. The state also has a special sauce for setting predictions of outcomes, and while I’m not super-familiar, it sounds like one more variation on
” ‘We’re going to compare your students to other imaginary students over here that are more or less the same, even if they are imaginary.’
“At any rate, charters are awesome.
“This report does not address the possibility that charters are creaming and skimming, nor does it discuss the value in regular, intense test prep.
“Charter are awesome. Awesome! And CREDO, a group that exists primarily to promote charters, says so, too, so it must be true. So many days of learning (whatever the hell that is) are added.
“Waitlists
“If you believe that waitlists actually provide meaningful data, we have some charts for you. Everyone else can just move on. Unless you want to look at the map that highlights some great market opportunities.
“Things We’ll Need Our Friendly Elected Officials To Do
“The California Charter School Association has helpfully dragged the LAUSD into court so that judges can ‘splain to them that they have to give us whatever we want. Kewl, because we’re going to need space for all those super seats.
“We made some headway on the last school board elections. We just need to get more people involved in the elected school board who will roll over and let us stomp them in the head.
“The public support is growing. As proof, they offer a picture of a rally. You know, the kind where charter operators get all their parents to come, or else. The data point GPSN likes? There are now more charter parents than unionized teachers.
“Any Obstacles?
“GPSN spots a few.
“Real estate and builders are needed to get enough snazzy charters built and filled. But the state’s tax-exempt bond market is opening up to charter operators, so that’s a plus.
” ‘Human capital.’ Yes, that’s what they call it. They are going to need many, many teachers, even as the teacher pipeline in California is choking and sputtering (teacher ed program enrollment down 53%). The charters will have to compete with LAUSD for both quantity and quality (And–update– as commenter Jack Covey notes below, the LAUSD actually got back in the game by actually giving teachers a range, and free marketeers never want to apply the free market to teacher salaries).
“Charters look to ‘high quality providers,’ by which they mean TFA and Relay Academy, so it’s possible they have some different definition of ‘high-quality’– anyway, TFA is tanking and Relay hasn’t arrived in LA yet, so charters are stuck trying to hire actual teachers with actual training. Of course, some charter outfits like Aspire are creating their own fake teaching credentials, but those don’t serve the larger cause.
“Also, finding principals will be a real bear.
“GPSN wants to double the charter market in eight years, but by gum, they just won’t sacrifice quality to do it. So funding. And closing down crappy charters that don’t belong to the Right People.
Let’s Talk Money
“Speaking of sustainability.
“Remember when a charter’s selling point was that it ‘could do more with less’ ?
“That was apparently not in LA, where, if I’m reading these charts correctly, GPSN will need almost a half a billion-with-a-b dollars of outside money over the next eight years to pull this off (excluding any potential overruns, which I’m sure won’t be an issue when building a few hundred new schools).
“In fact, late in this report, it starts to become clear that this is, in part, an investors’ prospectus.
“That half-a-billion includes funds for building schools, ‘scaling’ schools, getting teachers (this includes pumping up TFA and Relay), recruiting principals, organizing and advocacfy, and fund management (because you don’t just stick $500 million in a desk drawer somewhere).
“I am now really curious about what outside investors are spending on LA charters right now, but clearly, LA will be one more place where the effect charter schools will be to raise the total cost of the complete school system a whole hell of a lot. I’ll say it again– only charter school operators believe you can live in two homes for the cost of one.
“They have many hopes, including parent groups, CCSA, and Emma Bloomberg’s new Big Data group, Murmuration– plus the United Way and other community groups who will, apparently, contribute to replacing a public school system with private profiteering.
“Okay, ‘replace’ is too strong a word. Fifty percent of LA students will be allowed to stay in the public schools, or whatever is left of them after the charters have sucked them dry. But don’t worry– I’m sure that the charters will call first dibs on the most challenging, difficult, expensive students in the system, taking on the challenges of students with special needs, English language learners, and the most vulnerable students, leaving the public school with the strongest, most capable, most resilient students in the city.
“Bottom Line
“I am absolutely bowled over at the magnitude of this power grab. Imagine if Broad and his friends said, ‘We’re not happy with the LAPD, so we’re going to hire and train our own police force, answerable to nobody but us, to cover some parts of the city. Also, the taxpayers have to foot the bill.’ Or if they decided to get their own army? Or their own mayor?
“Who does this? Who says,
” ‘We can’t get enough control over the elected officials in this branch of government, so we will just shove them out of the way and replace them with our own guys, who won’t bug us by answering to Those People.’ ?
“This is not just about educational quality (or lack thereof), or just about how to turn education into a cash cow for a few high rollers– this is about a ham-handed effort to circumvent democracy in a major American city. There’s nothing in this plan about listening to the parents or community- only about what is going to be done to them by men with power and money. This just sucks a lot.”
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Washington, D.C.’s equivalent to Eli Broad is one Katherine Bradley:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/articles/47754/shadow-chancellor-katherine-bradleys-influence-dc-education-reform/
Listen to her lame defense / explanation of her role in pushing the privatization of D.C. schools … er excuse me… “reform” :
KATHERINE BRADLEY: “Like most others in education philanthropy, I have a strategic view about how to build a system of schools that will serve all children well, and I have shared that perspective broadly, if primarily, with a business and philanthropic audience.”
The article continues:
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WASHINGTON CITY PAPER’s Jeffrey Anderson:
“Meanwhile, DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson has hinted that her tenure could end in 2017, potentially leaving the continuity of the long-range DCPS reform strategy in the hands of Bradley, Graham, Williams, and their network of private interests. This might prompt parents and taxpayers to wonder what all these ‘Thought Partners’ are doing, and whom do they answer to?”
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According to this article Bradley was also a Rhee cheerleader and personally paid the salary of Rhee’s P.R. flack Anita Dunn, as well as the Rhee’s engagement party for her marriage to pedophile — and current Sacramento mayor — Kevin Johnson:
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“Rhee, a TFA alum-turned-reformer, enjoyed unwavering support from Bradley and her allies. Bradley served as outreach ambassador for Rhee, for whom she also hosted an engagement party in 2010 (for Rhee’s marriage to pedophile Kevin Johnson, JACK). When Rhee wanted to hire former Obama White House communications director Anita Dunn that year to conduct message control, Bradley donated $100,000 to pay Dunn’s salary, the Washington Post reported at the time.”
” … ”
” The doors of District government have remained open to Bradley and her allies. Last month, Loose Lips reported on Henderson’s meetings schedule from January 2013 to August 2015, which contained a who’s who of education advocates and philanthropists who see privatization as the future of education.
“The chancellor’s calendar shows that Bradley, Graham, and the Post Editorial Board met with her a combined total of 19 times, a frequency not inconsistent with the Post’s editorial support of Henderson, even after Graham sold the paper in 2013. (Two Post editorials in 2013 urged DCPS to make ‘former or soon-to-be-closed public schools’ available for re-use by charter schools, citing a study by New Schools Venture Fund, which, along with Microsoft Corporation, has backed CityBridge’s Education Innovation Fellowship, a pilot based on teaching models from around the country.)
“DCPEF accounted for 30 meetings with Henderson during that time period, and Venture Philanthropy Partners, which names CityBridge as a principal funder, met with the chancellor six times. The Broad Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, among CityBridge’s many funding partners, accounted for five meetings.
“Such backroom access lends itself to the perception that elites are acting as the strategy arm of local government.
” ‘Average people don’t know that [Bradley] is the puppeteer,’ says a longtime observer of D.C. government and politics who requested anonymity in order to speak openly. ‘She probably has Jennie [Niles] and Muriel [Bowser] on speed dial. And when she calls, it’s not just Katherine Bradley, it’s her entire network, which she will use.’
“Parents and teachers feel left out of the loop.
” ‘Where is policy forged? Who does the chancellor listen to? Because it’s sure not the teachers,’ says Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers Union. ‘We have a shadow government in D.C. Whether or not that continues depends on the mayor and if she allows it to influence her decisions.’ ”
“Cathy Reilly of the Senior High Alliance of Parents, Principals and Educators adds:
“ ‘D.C. has ceded power to the private sector without public input. Katherine Bradley certainly embodies that.’
“In an emailed response, Henderson denies that this level of access has a greater meaning.
“ ‘I can only speak for DCPS, but I can confidently say that the private sector has not exerted an inordinate amount of influence in the crafting of our policies,’ Henderson says.
” ‘We have determined our strategic priorities by looking carefully at data, studying best practices across the country, and engaging our stakeholders—families, educators, community members and partners—in big decisions.’
“Bradley’s stature as the darling of education philanthropy is without question, but her role extends well beyond charitable giving. When Henderson gave an address in 2014 on the state of DCPS, Bradley was there to tout gains fueled by private foundations. In October, she led a briefing in the mayor’s office in which she and Williams, along with Henderson, Niles, and Scott Pearson, executive director of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, braced councilmembers for low student proficiency scores on the much-awaited Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers study, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
“ ‘She’s seen as having a deep reach into DCPS and the charters, if you want to get them together in the same room,’ a Council staffer says. ‘She’s a force to be reckoned with.’
“That same month, Bradley sat for a Q&A at the American Enterprise Institute titled ‘The Disrupters,’ about “education innovation and designing the school of the future.” Poised and persuasive, Bradley struck a ‘here’s what we’re doing in my district’ tone, as DCPS officials sat in the audience.
“Here was Bradley on Common Core: ‘Our city has moved forward practically without a hitch.’
“On students, and assessing ‘softer skills,’ such as resilience and grit: ‘If we don’t come up with quantitative ways to measure them they’re going to disappear in terms of focus of schools.’
“On teachers, and one-to-one teaching models: ‘We’re re-thinking and re-designing the role of the teacher.;
“On principals: ‘There’s a number of things that we’re doing here locally… in terms of creating a principal training program within DCPS.’ ”
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AND ON IT GOES.
This is essentially a totally un-elected, totally unaccountable person who essentially wields the power and authority of the D.C. Schools superintendent… for no other reason that she’s wealthy. NOTE how the subject of each sentence she utters just above is “We” … with Bradley leading and controlling that “we”.
The final paragraph of this article reads:
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“Robert Tate, a senior analyst for the National Education Association, says Bradley and her inner circle may have gotten carried away with their good intentions and easy access to power.
” ‘Whenever a wealthy person gives to any cause, the question naturally arises:
” ‘Is there disproportionate influence on this cause, and if so, why this one? Is that how we want to think about democracy and society?’ Tate asks.
“No one else would have that kind of input. Is that what Americans want? I’d say Americans are over that stuff.”
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To answer this article’s question: Eli Broad + others like him + Philanthropy = Villainthropy.
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