The world of rightwing corporate reform is ever-changing. It seems like only yesterday that Michelle Rhee announced her intention to challenge teachers’ unions, destroy tenure, and take away due process from teachers across the nation. She said she would raise $1 billion in a year and gather 1 million members for her new organization, which she called StudentsFirst, because (she said) teachers don’t care about students, only billionaires really care. She did raise some money–only $7 million or so, far from $1 billion–and she spent it trying to elect Tea Party Republicans and others who support charters and vouchers. Her organization turned into the public voice of anti-teacher, anti-public school activism. But in 2014, she stepped back from the national stage to help her husband Kevin Johnson, the Mayor of Sacramento (whom she married in 2011), and joined the board of Scott’s Miracle-Gro. She also assumed the chairmanship of her husband’s charter chain, St. Hope.
And now we learn that Michelle Rhee is folding the tents of StudentsFirst and merging it with 50CAN. The latter organization is funded by hedge fund managers and the Sackler family of Connecticut, whose fortune was made from pharmaceuticals, specifically the opiod drug Oxycontin, that is now causing so much addiction and death across the nation. Forbes says they are the 16th richest family in America. Jonathan Sackler’s daughter Madeleine made a documentary about Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain called “The Lottery.” It gave viewers the impression that these were the world’s most magical schools, and any child lucky enough to win the lottery would have a blessed life. Never having attended a public school, she bought into the myth that they are horrid places that one must escape from, and that charter schools are sort of like the private school she attended in Greenwich.
The leader of StudentsFirst is Jim Blew, who most recently worked for the Walton Family Foundation (e.g., Walmart money), which funds StudentsFirst, Teach for America, KIPP, and every organization that promotes the privatization of public education. Now Blew will head the California branch of StudentsFirst, whatever is left of it after the merger.
What a close and tight knit world the corporate reformers live in!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This inbred cabal, who live off the efforts of most of the rest of America, have mastered the methods of avoiding IRS scrutiny by using the legal means to form endless partnerships under the aegis of 501(c)(3) non profit law. It is time that We the People shout out that this law must be reviewed, and/or repealed. All religious organizations, all Rheeform organizations, all phony charter organizations, and all the vast array of gangsters who use this law to feather their own nests, should be put on trial for FRAUD.
These nonprofits have not submitted their IRS 990s for 2014.
And ewwwww, Bill Cosby is on the StudentsFirst board. Can you image the conversations between Bill and Kevin?
Here’s a great one-liner from twitter:
Lawrence A Feinberg @lfeinberg
.@alexanderrusso .@Joy_Resmovits .@mkeierleber
More convenient for the @WaltonFamilyFdn –
They’ll only have to write one 7 figure check
The fact that Bill Cosby is still listed on $tudent$ La$t as a board member show the level of disarray they are in, though they remain a dangerous and foul bunch. But they also had a vehemently anti gay fool as emir reformer of the year until public pressure forced them to revoke that award. All these lobbyists care about is their agenda, they most definitely view the kids as commodities to be exploited for profit and ideological gain.
The following national funders of 50Can illustrate the interlocking directorates and funding schemes being used to undermine public education.
The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
Bush Foundation
Harold K.L. Castle Foundation
Education Success Network
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Google, Inc.
The Mike Jones Fund of the Ayco Charitable Foundation
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Tina and Kurt Kloehn
Koaniani Fund of the Hawai’i Community Foundation
Carl Kullback
Kathleen and Marc Porter Magee
Steve and Sue Mandel
The Minneapolis Foundation
Agustin A. Ramirez, Jr. Family Foundation
Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock
Jonathan Sackler
Walton Family Foundation
If you goto the website, you can see long lists of state-specific funders, including many community foundations.
All of them are determined to spread the myth that charter schools are public schools and that choice leaps over the zip-code barriers of enrollment in public schools
The number 50 reflects the intent to make tax-subsized privately operated charters the norm in every state.
StudentsFirstInTheCan?
That could equally work for as a tagline for Rhee’s husband.
So students aren’t first anymore? I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you… (I tried to say that with a straight face, but it was really hard)
From personal experience – I can tell you – it was never about the students.
🙂
Purdue Pharma will have to donate an awful lot to charter school organizations to come close to what they’ve cost states:
“Kentucky’s former attorney general Greg Stumbo filed a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma in 2007 for illegally promoting OxyContin after 484 people died from OxyContin overdose in the state the year before, according to USA Today.
A U.S. Government Accountability Office investigation found Purdue encouraged doctors to prescribe OxyContin for numerous conditions not considered severe pain. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also reported Purdue promoted the drugs to doctors who weren’t trained in pain management and delivered coupons and promotional items for patients.
Kentucky demanded more than $1 billion in compensation for costs for drug abuse programs, law enforcement efforts and payments to Medicaid and the state’s pharmaceutical assistance program.”
That’s just Kentucky. Add at least a billion for Ohio, and that’s just the direct costs. The law enforcement/incarceration costs states had to cover when the addicts turn to heroin must be in the tens of billions by now, not to mention families destroyed, foster care, and on and on.
Maybe they should skip paying all these ed reform lobbyists and just compensate states directly for the damage they’ve done.
And now people who truly need heavy duty pain medication are being under-medicated to protect doctors and hospitals. Tell me again why the U.S. pays outlandish prices for drugs.
I’m going to open a charter in Greenwich, Scarsdale, New Cannan, and Winnetka, Ill. Who wants to join me?
Can I be Director of your Winnetka branch?
Can you open one in Jersey?
Sure, Abigail, but can you commute to Short Hills?
But yet in the public schools I hear praise of the former TFA teachers and one principal referred to such experience as an “accolade.”
Reforms have trickled into mainstream thought, even without folks necessarily knowing the origin of it. And I hear Democrats spew off reform language just as quickly as I do Republicans. “Best and brightest;” “college and career.” etc. It’s kind of like “LOL” is now used in spoken language, where it really is for the purpose of expedient and short text messaging, if you see my point. . .people are using words and phrases started by reformers and I hear it on both sides of the equation.
I so badly want for more people to understand not only that charters threaten public schools, but how. And why. And where did they get their start? and now that they are here in great numbers, what will happen next? And how best for a professional teachers’ organization in a right to work state (read: NC) where union behavior will always be considered rent-seeking and not broadening the economy and therefore resisted to actually help public schools.
I see folks drifting farther into their corners. And that means conservative families looking for the nearest charter where they can get a bunch of their friends from their neighborhood to all agree to apply and boom. . .they have their own little corner. Meanwhile liberals demonstrate, in their own little corner. And conservatives stay away, in their own little corner.
This will undo public schools. It’s like Four Corners at the skating rink. And if you don’t make it to a corner on time, you are out of the game.
I am seeking a corner myself.
I’d like to see an analysis of how many times federal and state lawmakers met with these ed reform lobbyists compared to how many times they meet with ordinary citizens and people who run public schools.
The problem isn’t that billionaires choose to create and fund these orgs- they can do anything they want with their money and obviously they’ve decided public schools should be privatized.
The problem is that the people we elect are captured by them.
Thats right, billionaires can afford to buy their own public policies.
It is so unfortunately that this woman has any cache left. How does teaching 3rd grade for two years with Teach for America make you an expert? But she knows what buttons to push to raise money for whatever she does. But she doesn’t teach.
Garbage + Trash = CRAP.
Kalenze’s view/critique of education is a mishmash of edudeformer nonsense starting with:
“Education cannot be all things to all people; it must remain focused on the main thing—preparing students for success in America’s mainstream institutions.”
Oh, that is the fundamental purpose of public education (my assumption is that by the term education he is talking of public education)? Really? Says who? “Success in mainstream institutions”? Really? What about innovation, creativity, a person choosing his/her own life path that may very well have nothing to do with “mainstream institutions”. Sounds like Kalenze wants good little worker bees to exploit.
“Failure would be made acceptable and students subsequently repeat the course sequence or demonstrate mastery via an exit exam. Students would be supported by competency-based practice, and advisement for choosing high school options would be ramped up as they grow.”
Brilliant, repackage failed education practices of the past. Yep, telling a student he/she is a failure is a sure way to make that student be interested in schooling. Ay, ay,ay!
“Right-side-up schooling “inspires students to build lasting institutional virtues: grit, persistence, delay of gratification, effective goal setting, and what old-schoolers might call ‘stick-to-itiveness’” (p. 167).”
Oh boy!! Gotta get me some of those grits and “stick-to-itiveness” even if what one is sticking to is harmful, eh!! “Institutional virtues”, isn’t that an oxymoron?
Not sure what you see in that article involvedmom, but it certainly doesn’t fit with individual liberty concepts of freedom.
Rhee should join the 50Con since the goal is to con taxpayers out of public funds while they amass tax credits and write offs as they drain the public schools of much needed funding. It’s all smoke and mirrors, a con game!
She needs to spend time instead trying to keep her husband out of prison.
Yes, a tight family…a bit like the Borgias.
Appreciate the post, Diane. But, I believe that your group characterizations are a bit off. In addition to other activities, StudentsFirst contributed money to candidates in primary election campaigns. Their main targets were politicians opposed to Common Core–and, most “Tea Partiers” oppose Common Core. From what I have heard, StudentsFirst money managed to turn several Republican party primaries in favor of Common Core advocates.
Perhaps Rhee is closing up shop now because she no longer feels assured of receiving a high-level position in the Jeb Bush Administration.
Richard,
The campaign contributions from StudentsFirst typically went to candidates who support charters and vouchers. I had not heard that Common Core was also a criterion but that seems possible.
50can—-anything like TexasCan charters….some of the worst in history…..speaking of history….they could add another Texan to the group if what Rachel Maddow was reporting——-remember the DC madam…..whose defense was to furnish the telephone numbers of clients,,,,,,a lawyer is willing to go to jail to go ahead and release 815 clients blocked by a court order…(his client committed suicide)…..and he is claiming to the supreme court utmost urgency because failiure to do so would be favoring one of the presidential candidates whose name is on the list……is it Bernie—probably not…..I wonder if it is that guy so devoted to family values…..who is ready to fight when…yada yada……Rachel looked like a cat who had swallowed a texas sized canary….her show will run again in an hour or two…..check it out.
A big win for unions and public schools–guess what, the public really does support and listen to teachers and the shady charter corporations and foundations are being exposed for who they really are. Look into the Tri-Valley Learning Corporation in Livermore, California. Read the articles in the local newspaper, The Independent. These people are as crooked as they come.
I’m tired of the rich running this country only to get richer. When did the PEOPLE elect these folks? It’s not our country anymore, it’s a business.