The Eli Broad-funded group “Great Public Schools Now” (sic) has released its plan for the destruction of democratically controlled public education in Los Angeles.
Despite the failure of charter schools to improve the education of low-income students unless they are free to choose the students they want and kick out the ones they don’t want, billionaire Eli Broad wants to put 160,000 children who are now in public schools into privately managed charters. The twist in this plan is that Broad and his allies have promised to take control of public schools, magnet schools, and other schools as well as their own charters. It seems that the billionaires and their minions know how to create successful schools. One wonders if this means that even the public schools will adopt “no excuses” discipline and kick out the kids who refuse to conform. To do this, the corporate reformers have to retain some public schools where they can drop the kids they don’t want.
The goal is to expand access for 160,000 students GPSN has identified as attending failing schools in 10 low-income Los Angeles neighborhoods to successful schools it wants to help replicate or expand.
The neighborhoods are in South LA, East LA and the northeast San Fernando Valley, chosen because they have “chronically underperforming schools and few high-quality school choices for struggling families,” the plan states.
GPSN says it will provide funding and support to high-performing schools no matter what type of school — charter, traditional, pilot, magnet or partnership — so they can be replicated and expanded. It will also support proposed schools with the potential to be high quality.
The widening focus is a shift from an early plan leaked last year that was developed by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation to expand charter schools in LA.
“This is a different kind of initiative, very different than has been attempted in Los Angeles before,” said Myrna Castrejon, GPSN’s executive director. “I am particularly excited about the opportunity to really work across sectors to really strengthen all of public education.”
GPSN also is revealing today the makeup of its seven-person board, all of whom boast decades of experience in education. In addition to Siart and Flores, who is also a senior fellow at the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the board members are Gregory McGinity, executive director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation; Maria Casillas, founder of Families in Schools; Virgil Roberts, chairman of the board of Families in Schools; Marc Sternberg, K-12 education program director for the Walton Family Foundation, and Allison Keller, senior vice president and chief financial officer and executive director of the W.M. Keck Foundation.
All of these are corporate reformers with “decades” of privatizing public schools.
Bear in mind that in California, charter schools are not only deregulated, they operate without any supervision. There have been numerous charter scandals involving fraud and misappropriation of funds.
This is a disgrace. Eli Broad was educated in the public schools of Michigan, and he has become–along with the rightwing Walton Family Foundation–the major destroyer of public education in the nation. Naturally, the Walton Family Foundation’s education director Marc Sternberg is on the board of Eli Broad’s latest venture, bringing together the two most powerful and union-hating, public school-hating organizations in the US.
Expect a billionaire-funded drive to take control of the Los Angeles school board in the spring of 2017, to pave the way for the end of democratic public education in Los Angeles.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
No on ever mentions the Alliance Charter Schools. Their leadership is fighting teachers to the mat NOT to unionize.
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Ellen, UTLA fights its own teachers and refuses to act like a union. Is there a legal requirement for a public sector union to represent private sector employees? How about Catholic school teachers? They have few protections and receive no public money. Don’t they deserve a champion as much as charter school scabs? UTLA has actively worked to eliminate the jobs of 5,000 senior teachers.
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And although our union isn’t titled UTLA, it has managed to do the very same thing.
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LAUSD is claiming this is a way to teach 160,000 students in need.
What happened to the Billions sent by the state and federal governments? Who’s accountable for the funds to educate our children in L.A.? Why couldn’t LAUSD use those funds effectively?
Seems like there is such a big void for honesty at LAUSD that the likes of Eli Broad control not only development but now education.
When LA Mayors starting getting oversight of certain L.A. Schools they gave away the School Board’s authority and here we are today with the children suffering the consequences.
The new superintendent is as bad as John King.
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Remember that Mayor Villaraigosa wanted mayoral control of Los Angeles schools. He didn’t get it. But the legislature gave him some public schools to control to show what he could do. His schools underperformed by every measure.
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These folks are out for the money. I have seen up close and personal how a Senior board member refused to let LAUSD apply for grants so Families in Schools would have access to grant funds without competition.
Funneling funds to friends and family is a cottage industry in the charter movement. Oh, and running up personal credit cards for first class tickets to Hawaii and expensive bottles of wine is now considered OK by some charter boards.
I have also been on a selection committee for bench contracts serving LAUSD where the same board member made it clear certain providers in his/her board district should be approved. We rolled our eyes and knew it was a done deal.
Just yesterday a very upset Parent came before the board and cried and pleaded not to let profiteers suck the money out of our public schools. The Charter friendly board members looked somewhat shell shocked that she was calling them out. She said Charters are leaving our neighborhood schools under resourced and resulting in overcrowding and overstressed systems.
Why don’t these yahoos work to increase economic stability and created jobs for these families? Research shows this is the key to closing the achievement gap. Clearly they don’t care about what research shows. They care about ego, opportunity for profits and pats on the back from each other.
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Right on!!!!! So TRUE.
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This is the way one corporation raids and liquidates another corporation. Just because the party of the 2nd part is a public-funded social institution don’t expect the party of the 2nd part to ask for the public’s consent.
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(ed) the 2nd 2nd should be 1st
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Next Broad and company plan to take over a “part” of Medicare. They plan to have a special hospitals for healthy, rich, seniors and will “allow” the public system to take care of the remaining ones and any of the original group who have the bad luck to actually get an expensive disease.
I’m sure the patients they “treat” in their special hospitals for the healthiest will give them results they can brag about. And since they have demonstrated how delighted they are to let the unworthy patients rot — just like they are delighted to have the unworthy kids rot — I’m sure the politicians who get the benefit of their largesse will be delighted too.
Eli Broad’s system is terrific as long as you don’t give a crap about the children who are unworthy of being in Eli Broad’s presence.
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Medicare is already partially privatized. That’s exactly what happened too- private insurers got the younger, healthier wealthier slice.
Medicaid is rapidly becoming privatized, also.
Social Security is the big prize, of course. They’re freaking salivating over that. They’ll get it eventually.
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Chiara,
Social Security will be the one time the privatizers are more than willing to serve the sickest, unhealthiest, oldest and poorest Americans and see that they get their social security payments as long as they stay alive.
If they couple that with taking over Medicare and making sure those same patients are in the most underfunded public hospitals getting the cheapest care, it just makes their job of “overseeing” their social security benefits that much easier.
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No, they won’t get Social Security, and they won’t win trying to destroy public education. The public is getting quite wise to the neoliberal nonsense.
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Is this the first time Walton and Broad have teamed up like this? On a small, targeted slice?
It’s sort of scary to think the big hitters in charter promotion could join forces and dominate a debate over a (relatively) narrow geographical area. That would probably be impossible for any smaller local group to overcome. They wouldn’t be able to compete at all.
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So no one outside the echo chamber permitted on the board?
That’s standard practice for ed reform, all right.
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It’s amazing how an institution like public education can just be purchased and co-opted. It’s like a prequel to Orwell’s 1984. Scary times.
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If politicians + billionaires are planning to replace all public schools with private contractors (and obviously they are) they are going to have to provide some transparency on how those contractors are chosen.
Because this current method they’re using is a problem. They’re picking winners and losers in this “market” this creating.
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Don’t worry- the Walton heirs will give the public schools a fair hearing before closing them.
They’re very data-driven and scientific. Not at all political. Just ignore the huge political campaigns they conduct 🙂
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The Waltons hate unions. If their employees had unions, they would have been paid more than the sub-minimum wage and would not be given advice about how to get government benefits to supplement their measly salaries. And the Waltons would not be billionaires.
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Has anyone considered that a future step in the autocratic, for profit, often fraudulent and opaque corporate war against community based, democratic, transparent, non profit public schools it to revise the mandatory education law that requires all children to attend and be accepted by their traditional public schools.
It wouldn’t take much to make it mandatory to go to school but put choice in the hands of the corporate charters to decide what students get to stay. Heck, the corporate charters are already doing that, and that means they are grandfathering in a precedent for that future revision.
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I think it is clear that Eli Broad knows that some children are worthy of an education and some are not.
And who better than the people who run charter schools rewarded for how high their test scores are to make that decision! They know exactly if a child is worth keeping or needs to be thrown out like the garbage Mr. Broad and company honestly seem to believe those kids are.
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How long will children that have dyslexia or ADHD last in a Broad corporate charter school?
About 11% of children 4-17 were diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011. That is 6.5 million. And of children that have reading difficulties, 70-80% are likely to have some form of dyslexia, and it is estimated that over 40 million American adults are dyslexic and only 2 million know it. Einstein was dyslexic. I’m dyslexic.
How will Broad deal with these challenges that public schoolteachers face daily in the classroom — with the two G’s: Grit and with a Gulag management style simlar to Eva Moskowitz in her child abusive, autocratic Success Academies. The children that can’t be terrorized and scared into submission will be ejected.
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Lloyd, they sped kids WON’T last at the Walmart/Broad charter school, which is why they are now planning to over see public schools too. Get it? They need a garbage can into which to toss those unwanteds.
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Broad doesn’t know about the street gangs. There are more than 100,000 members of violent street gangs in Los Angeles and the gang bangers have little brothers and sisters in the public schools. When the autocrats start treating the those kids the way Eva does in her Success Academies in New York, the backlash could be drive by, bang-bang, violent.
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These “underserved” neighborhoods with “poorly performing schools” are simply the areas ripest for takeover. The reason charter schools proliferate in poor areas of LA is because the parents in those areas have the lowest levels of education. The National Alliance for “Public” Charter Schools lists in its playbook the types of people most receptive to charter schools opening in their area. Tops on that list: people with a high school education or LOWER.
Promise the poor people you will give their kids a better education and more homework than that awful public school they’ve been attending. Pay some people to explain it to them in Spanish. Then grab a few unused classrooms at the local school and continue to starve it of resources. You might even get lucky and raise test scores one scintilla.
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It is the same scenario in many cities. Charters grab the poor minority children, and generally get no better results unless it is a selective charter. All of this happens while they drain the urban public school of resources and make money for the parent company. Then, they call this progress!
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Without a totalitarian dictatorship, there is nothing Eli Broad and his minions can do to change the street gang environment in LA that exists alongside all the poverty. Los Angeles has the largest street gang population in the US at about 100,000 members and the city has a police force of about 10,000 to deal with this challenge. These fraudulent corporate charters are going to have to become little fortresses surrounded by a dangerous and often violent enemy and when the oligarchs minions start tossing small kids out of their schools, little kids that brothers and fathers that belong to these gangs, the mangers of these autocratic schools are going to become targets of a lot of drive by anger.
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Similar plan for Cincinnati. The CEO has been hired, a persone with limited experience other than manging TFA’s. See the job description and the three-point philosphy. All operators and all methods are OK as long as they product results.
http://bellwethereducation.org/opportunity/chief-executive-officer-3
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Bad news for LA. There is also a similar “plan” for Oakland that is being led by the Rodgers Family Foundation and the Oakland public education fund. In Oakland, by 2020, they want to “create 10,000 quality seats” for students. That means they want to move 2,000 students a year from public schools to charter school. If this happens in Oakland, we will become a majority charter school district. This isBad news for LA. There is also a similar “plan” for Oakland that is being led by the Rodgers Family Foundation and the Oakland public education fund. In Oakland, by 2020, they want to “create 10,000 quality seats” for students. That means they want to move 2,000 students a year from public schools to charter school. If this happens in Oakland, we will become a majority charter schools. This is the big issue. The four incumbent school board members up for re-election have all aided the takeover of our schools. They approved the quality school development policy, hired our current Broad trained superintendent, allowed charters unlimited access to our facilities including co-locations at Skyline High, Fremont High, and Westlake Middle school and giving KIPP a 40 year lease at Lafayette Elementary (and we are currently be sued and negotiating with the California Charter School Association over use of our school facilities), approved the new strategic plan that is very friendly to charters, are pushing common enrollment and working on an “equity pledge” with charters, and have voted to approve, renew, and expand nearly every charter brought before them. These four school board members were all heavily funded by charters and their billionaire backers, including the one I am running against, so their votes and policy changes shouldn’t be surprised. No school board member, or any elected official in Oakland, has taken a public stance against charter schools, none. This is the big issue. The four incumbent school board members up for re-election have all aided the takeover and oricatization of our schools. They approved the quality school development policy, hired our current Broad trained superintendent, allowed charters unlimited access to our facilities including co-locations at Skyline High, Fremont High, and Westlake Middle school and giving KIPP a 40 year lease at Lafayette Elementary (and we are currently be sued and negotiating with the California Charter School Association over use of our school facilities), approved the new strategic plan that is very friendly to charters, are pushing common enrollment and working on an “equity pledge” with charters, and have voted to approve, renew, and expand nearly every charter brought before them. These four school board members were all heavily funded by charters and their billionaire backers, including the one I am running against, so their votes and policy changes shouldn’t be surprising. No school board member, or any elected official in Oakland, has taken a public stance against charter schools, none. We must change our school board. Oakland deserves better. Mike Huchinson for Oakland School Board District 5.
Charter schools are not public schools
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This sounds like a Third Way invasion. Charters collocate in public buildings which encourages lots of blurred lines with regard to what is public or charter. These charters are like a tapeworm that continually feeds on the host until the host gets very ill and dies. This is a corporate bait and switch move that allows the charter to infiltrate and change from a democratic public school to a charter causing minimal community disruption. The big difference is students will lose their authentic, qualified teachers, and lots of money will be generated for the parent company. The children get to attend classes in the same building so many of the parents will barely notice the switch.
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Broad and his ilk want to indoctrinate young poor urban children to respect the man; want to dumb them down so they can attend community colleges and major in lawn mowing, window washing, cash register-ing, and the like. The Broads of the world want a compliant work force who will be happy earning $7 an hour, and living on food stamps and housing assistance.
For all of his in your face, what I’m gonna do, no one is stopping him brazenness, must be something in the water that has the masses falling in line and accepting this horrible fate.
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You know, this garbage never ends with these corrupt billionaires. No matter how much evidence is against privatization of public education, these people continue on. This is nothing less than sociopathic.
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The billionaires who try to steal what belongs to the public should be shamed and humiliated by the public, those who are into their predatory behavior
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They’ve been building to this goal for years. With the discrediting of veteran teachers, the abdication and sellout of the teacher’s union, the buying of state, local and federal politicians, the stage was set. Forget that much of this activity was illegal and violated federal, state and local laws, unaccountable, unsupervised tax monies was too tempting to ignore. Imagine, a chance to get rich doing a job you know nothing about and don’t have to be responsible for.
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