High school students in the West Ada school district made a 3-minute video to respond to the Albertson Foundation’s attack on public education. (Read here about the Albertson Foundation’s attacks and its plan to open enough charter schools to enroll 20,000 students.)
The Albertson Foundation is leading a mean-spirited attack on public education in Idaho. They have underwritten television ads saying that the public schools are no good and 80% of the graduates are not prepared for college or careers. Attacks like this are always the prelude to demands for privatization and for replacing public schools with charter schools, vouchers, and virtual charters.
The students got tired of hearing these stale and erroneous complaints from a handful of billionaires who don’t like public education, so they made their own video. Of course, they can’t afford to put it on television, but they can put it on social media.
Let’s hear it for the kids! They are alright in Idaho!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Rather than add more administrative voices to the debate over the Albertson Foundation’s ad, school officials decided to ask some students what they thought.”
It might be best stated that “High school students in the West Ada school district IN CONJUNCTION WITH DISTRICT ADMINISTRATORS made a 3-minute video to respond to the Albertson Foundation’s attack on public education.”
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I’m proud of the students, and administrators in West Ada school district who made such a great video. Shame on the money that the Albertson Foundation is putting into destroying public schools.
I’m a graduate of Borah High School in Boise and always watch for news that comes from Idaho. I just checked to see where West Ada school district is located. Oh my goodness! It is in Meridian, a town close to Boise. I went to 1-3rd grade in Meridian.
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When I tried to view this, the link was blocked and I was not able to access the file. 😦 I don’t know if others are also having this problem or not. Kas Winters
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Kas, I had no trouble viewing the video. It was well done and expressive of the intelligence of students graduating from West Ada school district.
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Kids and administrators know more than the Albertson Foundation wants the public know. The narrative of everyone is unprepared and destined to fail needs to be stopped.
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Oh, geez. I thought that the Albertson Foundation was the same family who started the Albertsons Grocery Store chain, and indeed, it is. We used to shop at Albertsons when we lived out West, years ago.
And after looking it up, it seems that Albertsons acquired Safeway in 2014.
That’s it for me, no more shopping at Safeway.
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In Utah, the Albertson’s grocery stores all went out of business.
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I hope all of their stores go out of business.
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Sadly, Joe and Kathryn Albertson would be appalled at the actions of their grandchildren. Both were very community minded. Now it’s all about corporate reformsters and the business model. The Foundation is separate from the stores.
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Mary, that’s true of other foundations, as well. The Walton Family Foundation is separate from Walmart. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is separate from Microsoft.
However, the money that the owners of various companies made/continue to make from their commercial enterprises serves to fund their non-profit foundations.
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The Albertson Foundation is a family foundation established with money from the estate of Joe Albertson. It has no relationship with the Albertsons chain of supermarkets, which operates under the name “Albertsons” but has been sold twice since 2006. Boycotting Albertsons stores will have absolutely no effect on the Albertson Foundation’s attempts to privatize the Idaho public school system.
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I live in West Ada and volunteer in the schools. I also follow education news from around the country. The Albertson Foundation supports and subsidizes charter schools. The foundation influences legislation…the kind that denigrates teachers and opens the door to TFA. Here are my questions to the adult education activists: Do we have a role in helping students who share our goals connect with one another? If we do, how do we help? Action plan? Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter?? I’m serious. How do we support the young ones to get engaged?
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Another grifter scam to siphon public tax dollars into the pockets of the wealthy few:
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Since 2007, Albertson’s supermarket heir Joseph B. Scott has had a golden touch with one of his investments, a company that sells online education courses and other services to public schools.
Scott’s investment company, Alscott Inc., has brought in more than $15 million by selling part of its stake in Virginia-based K12 Inc., which was founded in 1999 by former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett.
But it isn’t just luck on Scott’s side. His family’s tax-exempt foundation has helped develop customers for K12. And Idaho’s taxpayers have been paying for it.
Here’s how: For nearly a decade, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation has chipped in millions to lay the foundation for Idaho’s online public education system. One of those online schools, the Idaho Virtual Academy, has, in turn, directed tens of millions of public dollars into K12’s company coffers, for services ranging from curriculum to administration.
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2011/feb/19/albertsons-heir-made-millions-k12-inc-promotes-it-idaho-schools/
We once had Albertson’s grocery stores here in Florida, often located in the less-affluent areas which were strongly lower to middle middle class..
The one across the street from me was a lifeline for the mostly retired and elderly neighborhood surrounding it; people could walk or ride their scooters to the store safely and easily.
All the Florida stores were closed suddenly a few years ago because they weren’t raking in enough profit for shareholders after an idiotic over-expansion into saturated markets. The customers were left with crossing a dangerous, speedy and busy main artery to get to the only other grocery store in the area and several have been hit by cars. The employees, many who had worked there for years were just thrown out on the street in the matter of a couple of weeks. And so the so-called ‘free market’ devastated another community while the shareholders and CEO raked in millions more dollars.
This is the same idiocy that has destroyed and is destroying many long-lived companies who once had a reputation for customer service and treating their employees well before being taken over by a greedy idiot CEO who didn’t know squat about long-term business management..
So passe now, that idea of some small social and cultural obligation to those who fund your wealth, under the new century motto of “More! More! More!” for the shareholders and nada for the employees and customers. This is the greed that creates wealth for a very select group that underwrites extremist right-wing political interference and the band plays on.
It will be fascinating to see how this all plays out in the coming decades. I hope to live to see the inevitable balancing the history shows us is waiting for the greedy wealthy like the Albertson’s Foundation and heirs.
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Monks: details the pattern of CEO compensation tied to stock buy backs and the disinvestment in other stake holders , like workers and consumers . He touches on the same Round Table assault on education.. As Nick Hanauer has said detailing the same pattern that guts the American Economy and the corporations these CEO’s serve ,these things usually don’t end well “Tell my Fellow Plutocrats The Pitchforks are Coming.”
What we see in the working class flocking to Trump a delusional demagogue, is the tip of the Iceberg . If Clinton wins and foolishly maintains the same course which I am certain she will, God only knows what will come after her.
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Ed reformers are scolds. 90% of their “advocacy” is delivering patronizing lectures to the masses.
I love the cluelessness of it- how they’re always shocked when people object to being characterized as lazy underachievers.
In my opinion it’s an indication of how closed and insular they are- they literally do not hear how terribly these droning lectures come off.
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Just think if we restored 1960’s, better still 1950’s tax structures, foundations like Albertsons or Peter Petersons Fix The Debt, would have less money to advertise how to fix schools or the debt and things would be fixed. But the money in politics will prevent any progress on anything .
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Yes. I have often thought that if the money was simply not available, there would be very little interest in invading schools and “helping children.”
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I love how each of these ed reform sermons beings with the Litany of Failures- I could recite it I’ve heard it so many times.
Who told the people at these foundations that it was their job to determine the “performance” of the unwashed masses? Is that what they teach at America’s finest private schools? That they’re Born Leaders?
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Ouch
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Reblogged this on patthaleblog and commented:
Public Schools bad. Charter Schools good. Too bad the evidence doesn’t support that.
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