Ellen Lubic, a professor of public policy in Los Angeles and a frequent commenter on this blog, comments here on the recent court ruling that overturned the Vergara decision.
She writes:
“Yes…keep on Raging, Raging. When we lose a free press, unbiased media, we lose democracy. Judging by Campbell’s new gig at LASR [Los Angeles School Report] and by the venomous LA Times (plus the biased NY Times), all is lost.
“Today the LA Times follows up on the last few articles on Vergara over the past few days, and distorts the entire matter. I am writing a full on review of this and hope Diane will post it. So won’t go into the many issues here except to say that Howard Blume and his pals follow the Broad line imposed by their Times bosses, even though they do not have the usual disclaimer on today’s front page manipulated article.*
“They chose once again to interview Ryan Smith, past hatchet man for United Way and now the darling of Edelman fame and fortune, and PRev shyster Ben Austin, former and still hatchet man for Eli Broad and now of Broad/Welch fame and fortune, to be their voices on education issues.
“These two men are in the lead in the deception to steal public education in the name of their view of civil rights. These are the two who led the infamous street charade of Oct. 29, 2013 to get the equally infamous John Deasy’s contract renewed…and the pathetic LAUSD BoE dances to their boss, Eli Broad’s tune. They use this important claim of civil rights to privatize schools, fire teachers without due process, and kill unions, but all on public funds on the backs of the taxpayers.
“No where do the reporters interview some of the skid row (see San Pedro St. in LA) crack mothers of almost 13,000 of LAUSD students who sleep on the streets. No where do these ace reporters do any in depth investigation of how these inner city kids live lives of desperate poverty, little food or rest, and virtually no parental supervision. Yes, there are poverty parents working three jobs to try to exist, but there are thousands of others who have NO business parenting children.
“But how easy it is to blame it all on the teachers. What a load of manure!!
“This story is filled with dichotomies…it is a continuum of despair of inner city life vs. the grandest of wealth and excess of WLA, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills. The 40,000 foot mansions which could house a hundred people, but are vacation homes for the billionaires who seek to run the world are what the tour buses show off…not the tents from 1st and San Pedro stretching for miles and miles, showing the degradation and filth of the poverty stricken, a twenty minute drive from Rodeo Drive.
“The Times hacks NEVER call any of the local activists you read here nor the highly regarded academics like Professor Rogers at UCLA or Emeritus Professor Kashen from USC, but ALWAYS feature the slimy corporatists from Eli Broad’s United Way, and Eli Broad’s California Endowment. So what the public reads is deeply slanted.
“So many of our colleagues from around the country write from the distance, but those of us who are on the ground in LA every day, and see the destruction these uber wealthy demi gods are inflicting in their arrogance, are the true reporters.
“Yes, Raging…I too am Raging from the thick of it.”
*The first post this morning by Mercedes Schneider reported that Howard Blume’s article about Vergara was substantially revised overnight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sent this email to Sonal Kohli, who was listed first:
The Vergara plaintiffs lost because their case was bogus from the start. I realize that having been bought off by vulture philanthro-capitalist Eli Broad, the LA Times has given up even the pretense of objectivity, but you have a choice: maintain your journalistic integrity and find a different job, or take the money and do your corporate overlord’s bidding. Right now, you and your two co-writers have lost all credibility and respect from this reader.
Make no mistake about it, the billionaire edu-deformers care not a whit for the children they purport to help. Their money would be better spent on supporting local schools through privately funded arts programs and social services that schools desperately need but can no longer afford.
Commercial Media • They Sell What They Are Paid To Sell
“Privatize” has long been the code word for “profitize.”
All the people in LA living in tents, cars, vans, housing projects, multiple families sharing tiny apartments, in and out of prison, in and out of addiction, in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan, in and out of subprime loans the banks should never have offered, in and out of work… for all the injustice and inequality in LA, the LA Times consistently presents a simple solution: Blame your neighbor. Blame an entire race of people. Blame a whole profession of people. Blame unions. Do NOT blame the 1% who profited off the subprime loans, the wars, the privatization and militarization of law enforcement, the privatization of schools… Someone’s gotta be fired and it ain’t gonna be a banker or a newspaper editor! So…. Hate thy neighbor. And buy iPads.
“Hate thy neighbor. And buy iPads.”
Wait. Don’t tell me…
Jesus Christ, right?
A carpenter or a walrus. I keep forgetting.
Just perfect, LeftCoast.
thank you Left Coast for these comments which are ‘right on’….
Left on.
Blame the manufacturers of Oxycontin who launched the opiate addiction epidemic that has now metastasized into a heroin epidemic. Let’s have the stockholders return their gains to fund methadone clinics and housing for destitute junkies and college funds for junkies’ kids.
“The Dime Feeders”
Eli Broad hates teachers
And so does LA Times
Broadly speaking, creatures
That live on Eli’s dimes
Good work on the author’s response to the LA Times; but if only it were JUST this paper, instead of virtually ALL papers in every single metro market area in the country.
Here in Washington, the major papers all over the state, led by the Seattle Times, couldn’t be more overtly biased in favor of charters, Common Core and STTBTB (“Standardized Testing To Beat The Band.”)
Their reporting on education issues for the most part has been very poor, sometimes close to abysmal.
In fairness, some of the individual reporters at these papers are trying to be professionals who do their jobs as well as they can, but they typically have very limited control over what the final text of their article looks like; the senior editors and the owners have much more influence in that regard.
But here’s a crucial point that I think all of us need to remember: Getting to know the reporters, editors and columnists at your local newspaper is crucial. Because even if they largely ignore any advice or criticism you pass on to them, it still undoubtedly helps if you visit, call and/or email them on a regular basis. Despite everything else, most journalists take public criticism seriously and with the right approach we individual activists can make a difference for the better when it comes to reporting on this issue.
The Clinton’s are friends with Eli Broad and by their silence are on board with this. So spare us the crocodile tears OK ? Shame on you for jumping on the Clinton bandwagon.
Purple…here is another interesting article on the Clinton’s and their money.
https://harpers.org/blog/2015/11/shaky-foundations/
“It brings to mind Bernie Madoff…” The Clinton Foundation is “‘like Al Capone forming a foundation.'”
Go Bernie in NY!
…But I hope we’re not assuming our hero in shining armor is on any bandwagons.
Dear Leftie colleague…I am too old and jaded to have heroes. I just choose who best reflects my choices. Right now it is Bernie…even though I do have some discomfort on various of his perspectives.
I’m with Bernie like you, Ellen. I wasn’t referring to you or myself. But I am guilty as some other commenters, not you, that have in the past read tea leaves to mistakenly assume that Diane supported Hillary prematurely. You and I can keep Feeling the Bern, but this important blog has remained a steadfastly neutral source of information.
Dr. Diane Ravitch is my hero.
Big smile…Diane is and has been an amazing mentor and friend to so many of us…she deserves our love and respect for the many positive views she has given the world in terms of education and teachers. Her voice is world wide as the leader of American public education.
The right in this country has been pushing legal looting of the public purse for 40 years. Low taxes on the wealthy, the destruction of regulation, the demonization of the poor etc. are all part of the program. Thanks to Sergio Flores for the reminder that framing is at the heart of this and that we must re-frame the narrative. George Lakoff’s article clearly explains the technique;
http://www.cognitivepolicyworks.com/resource-center/frame-analysis-framing-tutorials/simple-framing/
Informative Lakoff article Mike…thanks.
I was born and raised and lived the first sixty years of my life in Los Angeles County — not counting the 1966 tour to Vietnam as a U.S. Marine — and my family never cared for the Los Angeles Times. In fact, we considered it a source of paper good only for wrapping fresh caught fish, and that’s all it was good for.
If anything, the quality of LA Times coverage continues to get worse. Today there was a story about a Charter School in LAUSD that has decided to pay a bonus to teachers who are close to retirement. They want them to retire on the schools district’s dime, not theirs. So far, LAUSD’s chief counsel is having none of it. Since when does an employer not have responsibility in paying for retirement? The article mentioned a large funding shortfall in district pensions implying I suppose that it was the teachers’ fault.
The CalSTRS retirement system is funded by working teachers and the public school districts where they work. Member contributions are currently 9.2% of gross earnings. Employer contributions are 10.73% of an employees gross earnings.
Unless the community based public schools are paying the employers contributions for teachers working in publicly funded, private sector corporate charter schools, then those teachers are probably not members of CalSTRS even if those teachers are paying their 9.2% into the retirement fund. This is what happens when you don’t have a labor union to protect your interests.
The private sector corporate charters must be looking for a way to increase profits by shifting the burden of employer contributions to CalSTRS to the traditional public schools where their teachers don’t work. If these corporate charters are not paying into CalSTRS, they must be paying into Social Security. That means if you teach for a corporate charter, Social Security will be your retirement when you qualify for SS.
CTA says, “Why the attack on public employee pensions? Who really benefits by their elimination? Again, the answer is Wall Street and those who seek to undermine the middle class. The elimination of public pension systems would be a huge boon for financial planners and companies that stand to invest that money while making profit off of the fees they can charge each individual. But Wall Street will also gain in an even bigger way. Institutional investors, like CalSTRS, have been the biggest champions of executive compensation reform and regulatory reform of the financial industry. Without institutional investors, no one would be keeping watch over bad corporate behavior, and there would be no guarantee that the money would go back into the state and national economies as it does now.”
The Thomas Fordham Institute reports how charter schools handle teacher pensions.
“We found that charter participation rates are low in jurisdictions where teachers in the state plan also participate in Social Security (New York, Florida, Michigan, Arizona).
“However, in states where teachers in the state retirement plan are not also included in Social Security (California, Louisiana), charter participation rates are high. In the latter states, opting out of the state system means opting in to Social Security, which evidently creates an incentive for charters to favor their state retirement systems.
“When charter schools do not participate in state retirement plans, they most often provide their teachers with defined-contribution plans—401(k) or 403(b)—with employer matches that resemble those for private-sector professionals. A continuing study of the alternatives employed by such schools could instruct the reform of traditional pension systems, while also informing issues of teacher recruitment, retention, and quality.”
In conclusion, charter school teachers, on average, earn about $10 k less annual than traditional public school teachers, work longer hours and end up getting cheated when it comes to retirement if they stay in teaching long enough to qualify for a retirement plan of any kind.
Why is the LA Times no longer disclosing its conflict of interest in covering education news? When a newspaper funds its education coverage by the very parties intent on privatizing public education, it has a duty to its readers to disclose that fact. The United Way, the Baxter Foundation, the Wasserman Foundation, Eli Broad and the California Endowment are certainly hoping to shape coverage. The LA Times is giving them their money’s worth.
The Dean of the Rossier School of Education, at the University of Southern California, was announced as the, first dean of a department of education, to be a Pahara Aspen Institute fellow. (David Koch is on the Aspen Institute Board).
Pahara was founded by the same person who co-founded New Schools Venture Fund (a fund that received almost $22 million from Gates). She was (1) a founding team member of TFA (2) co-founder of Bellwether and (3) is a Rocketship Board member.
She was interviewed, at Philanthropy Roundtable (available on-line). She says her “marching orders.. are to create different school brands.”
Accrediting boards have the responsibility to convene their members and address measures that prevent the influence of plutocratic agendas in schools created by the public for the public.
Linda, this is really just chilling. These folks are all incesstuously connected and dedicated to the ideal of taking money from the children of our nation and re-writing our lives so they can advance their agenda. Especially frightening is the following:
“These new Fellows will aim to not only identify the issues affecting public education, but to institute change by pursuing leadership opportunities such as district leadership, service on school boards and non-profits serving urban school-age children, and in the realm of higher education.”
I copied and pasted the whole page because it is truly an amazing “mission” these people are on.
FELLOW PROFILE
Kimberly Smith
Position: Founder & Chief Executive Officer
Organization: Pahara Institute
Initiative: Henry Crown Fellowship Program (HCFP)
Class: AGLN-Pahara Aspen Education Fellowship
Sector: Non-Profit
Location: Napa CA UNITED STATES
BIOGRAPHY
Kim Smith is Founder and CEO of the Pahara Institute. She is widely recognized as an innovative and entrepreneurial leader in education, and was featured in Newsweek’s report on the “Women of the 21st Century” as “”the kind of woman who will shape America’s new century.”” Immediately prior to the Pahara Institute, Kim was co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit organization working to improve educational outcomes for low-income students. Earlier in her career, she served as a founding team member at Teach For America, created and led an AmeriCorps program for community-based leaders in education, managed a business start-up, and completed a brief stint in early online learning at Silicon Graphics. After completing her MBA at Stanford University, she co-founded and led NewSchools Venture Fund, a philanthropic organization focused on transforming public education through social entrepreneurship, where she helped to catalyze a new, bipartisan, cross-sector community of entrepreneurial change agents for public education. Kim has helped to incubate numerous education and social change organizations and has served on a range of boards, which currently include those of Bellwether, NewSchools, and Rocketship Education, and she has authored or co-authored a number of publications about innovation and social entrepreneurial change in education. She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She is a 2002 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
LEADERSHIP PROJECT: PAHARA FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Joanna Rees and Kim Smith recognize that there is a problem in our public-education system there seems to be a shortage of hybrid minded leaders interested in transforming urban public education to better serve low-income children. They are therefore instituting a Crown-like program, which will cultivate values-based leaders who specifically aim to address leadership issues in public education. These new Fellows will aim to not only identify the issues affecting public education, but to institute change by pursuing leadership opportunities such as district leadership, service on school boards and non-profits serving urban school-age children, and in the realm of higher education. Initially, Joanna and Kim intend to collaborate with select Aspen Institute Board members and Henry Crown Fellows to line up initial funding for the program and gain knowledge from their collective experiences with the public service sector.
http://agln.aspeninstitute.org/fellows/kimberly-smith
Reminds me of a time I overheard two blue-blood Hewlett Foundation execs talking ed policy at the chi-chi Ferry Building in San Francisco. I had to butt in and give them a piece of my mind –probably their first exposure to a real public school teacher ever. These people are so far removed from the gritty trenches of real public schools it’s comical. Yet they arrogate to themselves the prerogative to “reform” the schools.
Thanks Christine. If you know a person or organization, located in California, who is interested in bringing attention to this issue, UnKochMyCampus.org (staff member-Ralph Wilson), may be worth contacting.
In a Plunderbund website post, last week, Denis Smith described the disastrous effect that the branding and, separation of schools will and, has had, on the cohesion of our nation.
“Backbacks of cash” for Silicon Valley and, the sycophants of the Valley’s moguls, in return for the destruction of the country, the Gates trade-off.