Forget about the elected L.A. School board. Eli Broad has picked his own school board, one run by his surrogates and the charter-happy privatizers of the Walton Family Foundation. Why not make the elected board irrelevant and let a billionaire from L.A. and a billionaire family from Arkansas run schools for half the children in Los Angeles?
This is one of the boldest, brashest, most outrageous attempts to destroy public education in the history of education in the U.S. What a legacy Eli Broad and the Walton family will leave behind. Destructive, anti-democratic, union-busting, a need to control whatever they can buy, a belief that everything–even public schools–are for sale. They are utterly shameless.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We should focus some of our efforts on trying to talk people out of working at these charter schools. I know people need jobs, but not like these.
I’m proud to say that I helped talk a recent college graduate (A liberal arts major) from taking a job with Teach for America (middle school math, no less!).
If they can’t fill these jobs, they can’t open their “schools.”
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Hope you all noticed at the bottom of the article that it was paid for by the Broad Foundation. The LA Times still, despite public outcry, writes for and about Eli.
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What do you think would happen in LA if Donald Trump paid the LA Times to cover the presidential election?
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And again…why is there no commenting or investigation of the Alliance Charter Schools, the largest group in the district I have been told? They have a legal brigade fighting their teachers over allowing them to join the union.
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Kudos 7gt,
That liberal arts major will find more gratification in another job. Middle school math classes should be taught by certified math teachers/majors.
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Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/L-A-education-reform-grou-in-General_News-Charter-Schools_Education_Education-Curriculum_Fraud-160615-363.html#comment602198
with this comment which has links to posts at this blog
Take a look at Chicago, and see what happens when billionaires take over and privatize education: The Chicago Sun-Times reported on a startling conflict of interest.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/news/watchdogs-foundation-funded-state-agency-and-2-schools-it-saved/
The rightwing, anti-union Walton Family Foundation has been funding the Illinois State Charter School Commission, a state agency, as well as many charter schools in Illinois. When the Chicago Public Schools recommended closing two charter schools because of their poor performance, the Commission blocked the closing. The two failing charters were also funded by the Walton Family Foundation.
BUT, as Mike Klonsky reports , Chicago’s open enrollment public high schools are driving the city’s improving graduation rate. You know, the public schools that accept everybody!!!!!
“Well, it’s that time of year when the media spotlight in all the privately-run charters schools that supposedly enroll 100% of their students in a college program. Of course they fail to mention they mean 100% of the 25% or fewer that make it from freshman year to the graduation ceremony.
. See my series on privatization,
http://www.opednews.com/Series/legislature-and-governorsL-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150217-816.html
https://dianeravitch.net/?s=legislature
using information that Diane Ravitch provides about the state legislatures which are taking over the local schools, with nary an educator on board, and giving them to charters, with not a shred of oversight! Here is a link to Dian’es posts on charter school corruption .
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Education Destructionism
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Conflicts of interests galore, same old pitch about high quality this or that, then put in more TFA temps and “leaders” as if the panacea. Beware of anything with “great” as part of the .org label. This includes the marketing website greatschools.org, the great students org, the great parents org, and slogans like Make America Great Agian. These are all GREAT husksters who regard funds for public education as if these are really private hedge and slush funds for startups.
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Broad can’t live forever. What happens to his pet projects when the man eats worms and vice versa? His children can’t even stand him. Will his Broadies and Toadies uphold all he holds dear when the gravy train stops? Will the gravy train continue after he bites it?
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Donna,
You can be sure that Eli has used every accounting trick in the book to preserve his fortune after his death
Taxes are for the little people, as Leona Helmsley famously said. She and her husband are dead, and their foundation is now funding corporate education reform. Who is in charge? I don’t know
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In this other article from yesterday, also by Howard Blume, a “coalition” of the same privatizers is trying to force the district to defund teachers’ salaries and “fringe” benefits to redirect over a $billion of funding into schools in the very same parts of L.A. named in today’s article. They want all the Prop 30 money. Money for charter executives straight out of the teachers’ retirement and health benefits.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-edu-groups-fault-lausd-spending-20160613-snap-story.html
This private board is set up to manage the grand scale theft of public money from the oversight of a democratically elected school board’s choice of superintendent, Michelle King.
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Dear Leftie…where are all our colleagues who read this news? Why aren’t they here and screaming loudly at this most egregious new gambit. Classes with 40 pubescent kids is counter productive to learning…so why isn’t that Prop. 30 money we voted to give the state not being used to hire REAL teachers and pay them fairly? What the hell is our Governor doing? Certainly not his job, nor keeping his word when he conned us all to vote for his Prop. 30.
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Why is there so little reporting on the dozens of new administrators hired by LAUSD. rather than teachers? Why is there a need for even more administrators at Beaudry when student enrollment has gone down the last few years?
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I am guessing by dozens of new administrators hired, you mean the hiring of assistant principals. After 2009 here in San Diego our schools got rid of 1/5 of their AP’s and class sizes ballooned to 40+. There was little choice – the money dried up. I suspect LA made similar moves, however, AP’s have an important function in school safety and in complying with state and federal law. Most reasonable people are looking at those hiring-es as prudent.
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No, tultican, they’re not assistant principals. They’re breathing the stale air that fills the district headquarters. Since PTSDeasy, schools are not deemed to require an assistant principal unless their enrollment rises above 800 students! Any principal, teacher, student or parent at a school below that magic number can tell you how absurd it is.
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A Hollywood script? A Buster Keaton false facade? Como se dice? Chutzpah!
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On this blog, we are aware that as Peter Greene continually repeats, “the BS Test tells us nothing.” That old fallacy of bad test scores is based on the supposition that these scores scores reveal school quality (they do not) and the scores are from three years ago – California no longer produces that data.
Test scores are the Broad teams only argument why LA should abandon its elected school board and let a group of rich political power players destroy their once great and still decent public school system. As usual their game plan is to attack poor and minority communities and take away their right to comprehensive public schools in their neighborhoods.
Instead of using wealth to attack the poverty in those neighborhoods which is the only clearly identifiable cause of the poor scores, they cynically look to implement their greed driven or hubris driven privatization agenda.
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The Broad group just handed out their first grants. Surprise, all the money went to charter schools.
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