Steven Singer warns that the wealthy privatizers are gearing up to take back the public schools. At the last school board elections, parents, educators, and community leaders joined together to throw out the corporate reformers. The people who actually send their children to Pittsburgh public schools gained control of the board. One of the first decisions of the new board was to cancel a contract with Teach for America.
Corporate reformers can’t tolerate losing control of schools their own children don’t attend. Now they are coming back, with a PAC and lots of money, something that supporters of public schools are usually short of.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Almost any campaign with the word “quality” in it should be examined critically. This one is from a lawyer and a TFA person and one not yet identified with a bio. I’d guess they have already drafted a lawsuit to further the goal of private control of all of the schools, with a false claim of full-throttle “bi-partisan” support.
Today the “Pensacola News Journal” contained an article about a new initiative to prepare children “from cradle to career’ in Escambia County, Florida. Pensacola has a great number of children that live in poverty so they are getting a sales pitch from Strive Together, which is a subsidiary of Knowledge Works. They make this plan seem like a collaboration of community and business when I know this is a corporate endeavor to sell products and services.
Good piece about how ed reform billionaires crafted Washington’s new charter school market:
“The Washington charter saga highlights the workings of charitable plutocracy. Multibillionaire philanthropists use their personal wealth, their tax-exempt private foundations, and their high-profile identities as philanthropists to mold public policy to a degree not possible for other citizens. They exert this excessive influence without public input or accountability. As for the charitable donors who are trying to reshape public education according to their favorite theories or ideological preferences, they are intervening with too heavy a hand in a critical institution that belongs to the public and requires democratic control. But in any public domain, the philanthropist’s will and democratic control are often at odds.”
Do elected lawmakers worry they’ll become completely irrelevant with the complete take-over of these foundations? I would worry if I were them.
http://nonprofitquarterly.org/2016/04/11/charitable-plutocracy-bill-gates-washington-state-and-the-nuisance-of-democracy/?utm_content=bufferb46b7&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/apec-schools/