Foundations are tax-exempt because they are supposed to do good works on behalf of society. But more and more foundations are putting their vast, untaxed wealth into the national effort to undermine public education and to hand it over to entrepreneurs, amateurs, fast-buck operators, and religious institutions. Privatization does not promote the common good. Privatization is harmful to the commonweal.
Tom Ultican, a high school teacher of advanced math and physics, takes a look at the powerful San Diego Foundation. Sadly, most of its funding in education goes to nonpublic schools. Public schools seem to be an afterthought.
He writes:
San Diego Foundation was established in 1975 and has grown to almost $700 million in assets. It’s self-described purpose: “As one of the nation’s leading community foundations, The San Diego Foundation strives to improve San Diegans’ quality of life by creating equity and ensuring opportunities to be WELL (Work, Enjoy, Live & Learn).” In 2014, they gave over $10 million to educational endeavors. The following table illustrates the spending bias against public education.
Of that $10 million, only $373,000 went to public schools. That’s odd, because the overwhelming majority of children in San Diego attend the neglected public schools.
Another favorite recipient of San Diego Foundation funds is competency-based education. The goal of CBE is to put every child on a computer. We know from multiple studies that children learn best from human teachers who respond to them. Yet the San Diego Foundation has jumped on the Bandwagon to Nowhere.
And here is another strange pattern:
The largest single grant bestowed by the SD Foundation was $2,6 5 0,7 0 9 to the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego. The JC Foundation had net assets at the end of 2014 of $171,593,990.
The Jewish Community Foundation spending on education follows a similar pattern as the San Diego Foundation. They spent $466,830 for groups working to privatize public education most of which went to TFA ($406,330). They also spent lavishly on private schools including $146,000 to La Jolla Country Day, a decidedly upscale K-12 private school.
By far the largest grant by the Jewish Community Foundation was the $25,817,228 bequeathed to University of California San Diego. A major patron of both the Jewish Community Foundation and UCSD is the Qualcomm founder and billionaire, Irwin Jacobs.
Three more grants from the Jewish Community Foundation were interesting. They gave Cornell University $5,511,000. They also gave the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund $6,362,171. The Goldman Sachs fund asset total at the end of 2013 was $1,500,395,380. And the JC Foundation gave the SD Foundation $1,515,800. Why give money back? It is like the Charter School Growth Fund giving their benefactors from Walmart $15,000,000 in 2013. Why?
Why would any foundation give a donation to the Goldman Sachs fund, which has assets of $1.5 billion? Puzzling.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for highlighting the issues of competency-based education. It continues to play out disastrously in Baltimore County Public Schools. Administrators keep changing the way they use words, and PR speak, and now the verbiage sounds more like the “maker” movement, but BCPS has also just given increased and massive contracts to iReady, Strategic Measurement and Evaluation (eScore NY), Dreambox.
Cross-posted athttp://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Tom-Ultican-Why-is-the-Sa-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Bias_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Education-Funding-160715-664.html#comment607061
with this comment which has links aback to this site.
“As I say over and over public schools are disappearing and with it the road to income equality as well as a democracy. Shared knowledge is a requirement for a democracy, and when Billionaire Koch can write North Carolina’s social studies curricula…..
See my series on privatization, http://www.opednews.com/Series/PRIVITIZATION-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150925-546.html
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 Diane’s posts on charter school corruption, or put that in the search field at there site and learn what these private schools do with the funding lavished on them. .
Hello Susan,
Your second least favorite person here to challenge your assumptions once again.
I contend that the move toward privatization arises from the philosophical failures of the public school movement over the last thirty or so years in which anti-capitalist, and indeed anti-American attitudes have characterized those responsible for the education our children.
It isn’t mainly greed behind the privatization movement; rather it is an attempt to retake control of education from the world-wide communist movement and return it to regular real Americans, nationalists, in the form of parents, rather than the corrupt internationalists prominent in public school leadership and staffing.
Mr. Trump is a symptom of that same movement, but on a larger scale, to retake control the country from the feckless, incompetent, ignorant internationalists of the last two administrations (both Bush and Obama and by the Democrat candidate in this election cycle).
I had hoped Red Bernie would win the Democrat nomination in order to make the choice even more clear, but he sold out to Hillary, who at least has a shred or two of Americanist credibility via her husband in spite of her attempts to put decisions of the government up for sale for personal gain as Secretary of State, and presumably would do the same as President (although I’m not sure of that).
Public education no longer has any political credibility since it adopted Communist Howard Zinn’s view of America and American history. These are historic times of struggle, equivalent to the struggle between British Loyalists (you) and Patriots during the founding of the country and between slave holding Democrats (you) and Abolitionists (Republicans) during civil war times.
I have only moderate confidence that the side of nationalism and independence and virtue will triumph in this election cycle. The extent of the ignorance of true American values of freedom and independence under law is so extensive in the country primarily because of the communist utopianism of progressives in the public schools systems. The minds of so many voters have been brain washed by the appeal of elitist progressivism to expect a win for truth, justice, and the American way.
You and your family’s personal success apparently is owing to the old fashioned virtues; it puzzles me still why you don’t recognize that your own happiness arises from a life-philosophy diametrically opposed to the one you advocate here.
But that’s just one of the paradoxes of this country, that so many of the elites in government (in which I include public education) who have risen by merit or quasi merit at least, strive for an equity for others who have not earned by merit the status that the elites have.
Perhaps you can explain that to me.
Privatization efforts seem to support the notion of a ruling class. Although many like to bring up the term “government schools” or attach the “communist” label to public schools, this distracts from the real issue. That is looking at government as a continuum from tyranny to anarchy. When local public schools are told what to do by the federal or the state governments…or by a charter corporation we would be remiss in not looking at how this undermines the principles upon which The Republic was founded. Our founding fathers left a great deal to local governments. Locally controlled public schools belong to we the people and are governed by our consent. This is ground zero for our form of government. The push to privatize or to apply market principles to public education is really about politicians and corporations getting in bed together to rule.
No one is more familiar with anti-American attitudes than America’s oligarchs, rather it is Marc Andreeson praising colonialism or Peter Thiel, lamenting the right of women, to vote. Nothing is more anti-American than a tax code that permits carried interest and offshore profit tax avoidance. Nothing is more anti-American than suppliers of capital robbing labor of its contributions to productivity. Nothing is more anti-American than the profile of the Koch’s provided by Jane Mayer. Nothing is more anti-American than a person who uses bankruptcy as a business strategy, leaving his creditors holding an empty bag,
Mr. Underhill:
You seem to be confusing two things. As a result, you are making exactly the wrong argument about government control and so-called “communism” in the schools.
First, America’s public school system, with locally-elected officials, is about the closest thing you can get to pure democracy. Its roots go back hundreds of years in Anglo-American history and arguably all the way back to the city states of Greece. It has nothing whatsoever to do with government control over the economy, or the one-party system which is communism.
True, a local school system is a monopoly, but it’s a natural and necessary one, no different than the local fire, parks and recreation, or police department—and even more democratic than those. (You don’t want people to choose the police department that serves them, do you? The economics would be all wrong and we’d almost certainly see a more fractured and violent society.). A municipal utility may be the best analogy. For efficiency and proper oversight, a city can have only one. Typically it’s under the authority of a public board of trustees, if not the city council.
What you seem to object to is the *curriculum* in the schools. That is quite different than the public school system itself. The curriculum is under the authority of states—or at least it was until the federal government started meddling deeply with NCLB, Common Core, and now ESSA. If you want democracy, not what you call “communism”, you should be pushing for the return of local governing authority.
Regarding curriculum, you do have influence over that—your vote. If you turn America’s schools over to private operators, charter schools and the like, then you, as a citizen, will have less
control—zero influence, actually—over what gets taught. Did you ever think of it that way? Instead, you’re turning all of that control over to people who may or may not represent your interests.
Certainly the online schools like K12 Inc don’t represent your interests or anyone else’s, not parents, children or the taxpaying public. Parental “choice” is a ridiculous concept here. As a taxpayer, I just say no to K12 Inc and every other charter which is stealing my hard-earned dollars with self-dealing, cooked books, and a shoddy product. I want a well-educated citizenry, taught a curriculum that I’m able to review in a school system whose finances and practices are subject to oversight. I don’t get that with charters or vouchers. I have at least a chance of getting it with a real public education system.
At this point, I have to throw at you the cliche, “careful what you wish for.” Democracy is messy. You might not always like what your fellow citizens vote for, or who gets elected at the local school board level all the way up to president, but at least they are *elected*. If you’re a believer in freedom, the last thing you should be doing is turning more power and control over to oligarchs, social engineers, and idealogues. Your vote is your voice, your power, your legacy. That’s what puts the “public” in public education.
The Boston Foundation has been on this course in Boston for more than 20 years. And the new player in town at this game is the Barr Foundation, operating largely off the radar.
http://bluemassgroup.com/2016/01/how-the-ed-reform-sausage-gets-made-the-barr-foundation/
Our privatizer mayor, who has underfunded our schools in a time of great prosperity, has a cabinet level advisor on education, Turahn Dorsey, who many believe is the puppeteer for our Broad supernintendo, Tommy Chang, formerly of LAUSD’s iPad scandal. Dorsey (and his wife, a board member of the notorious charter management organization, UP Academy) are former fellows of Barr.
In a terrible decision, MA Attorney General has found that it’s ok for the Boston Compact to meet in secret to decide assignment procedures for Boston’s public schools because a majority of members aren’t appointed by the BPS. It’s a primer on evading open meeting laws.
http://www.universalhub.com/2016/group-could-change-boston-public-schools-student
So-called community foundations are eager to survive. Some have become money-laundering operations. Here is one example from the Gates Foundation sending money to Houston, April 2013
Purpose: to support Texans Deserve Great Schools, a Field of Interest Fund established at the Greater Houston Community Foundation to improve public education in Texas Amount: $2,000,000
That money combined with money from John Arnold’s foundation and others funded the Texans Deserve Great Schools…the name for a charter school legislative initiative and marketing program to drum up “grassroots” support.
See for example: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2013/05/pro-charter-school-group-buys-more-than-675k-in-tv-air-time/
To Professor Harlan Underhill:
I respectfully disagree with your knowledge that Public Education is communist scheme.
[start quote]
…The extent of the ignorance of true American values of freedom and independence under law is so extensive in the country primarily because of the communist utopianism of progressives in the public schools systems…
[end quote]
Today American Education Policy is closer to Communist Education Policy = bully, intimidate, threaten, underfund, and harm educators and all young learners with
ALL STRENUOUSLY INVALID TESTING SCHEMES.
You are “aging”professor, but you are gullible and unwise.
I have read many “secret novels” which glorified patriotism in Communist in my youth, as well as I witnessed the brutality in their policy within a month after April 1975 in VN.
My mother taught me through questions and answer after tell us any stories in Fables, or in our daily living, or from our inquiry.
Here is one lesson that I want to share with you about my favorite legendary Tarzan who can command the animal kingdom.
My brother wished to ride on tiger and I wished to ride on a dragon if it would be possible.
My mother asked both of us whether we would be capable to survive when animals decided to eat us alive? I answered her that I would not risk my life for a fancy ride, but my brother accepted it with a reason that he would be outsmarting tiger.
In reality, many southern commanders in Southern Viet Nam died because they, who are like my brother, thought USA will be outsmarting China and Russia. People forget the simple principle in life that whenever we play with fire, we will get burn.
You are professor or an educator and you attack the Public Education = the bedrock of American democracy. I am speechless. Back2basic
Many, if not the majority, of the “philanthropies” named after cities, have in common, the destruction of public schools, with the intent to kill off the nation’s most important common good. Often, the foundations have a “green” propaganda component, as subterfuge for the oligarchical takeover of U.S. democracy.
Another San Diego group that that should be on your radar: the Girard Foundation. It may be smaller than those you mentioned. But it is just as deleterious to public education.
The Girard Foundation is one of those firms that straddles the line between non-profit and for-profit, with sweetheart deals and in-family hiring. The foundation is a strong supporter of charter schools. No surprise there. It is also a builder of products, in this case, personalized learning software.
The money trail is hard to follow, but the employment of family members is not. They seem to end up as executive directors or board members of the same companies that receive grants from the foundation. Ralph B. “Buzz” Woolley, the family patriach, started the Girard Foundation and a separate grant-writing firm called the Girard Education Foundation. Their relationship is cloudy, with one or both having made questionable payments to public officials:
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/news-ticker/2013/apr/26/ucsd-exec-ex-politician-each-receiving-annual-5000/#
About five years ago, the Girard Foundation began funding a product called Activate Instruction, which was integrated into a private company’s assessment product called Illuminate Education. (Nice coincidence with the names, huh?) Those two entities, a non-profit foundation and a for-profit company, have also worked closely together to build a personalized learning program for Summit Public Schools. (As commentators on this blog have noted, “public” is a misnomer, because the schools are not under the control of an elected board and their expenses are subject to no oversight.)
Recently Activate Instruction was taken over by Gooru, another developer of personalized learning software and another not-for-profit company. Who happens to sit on the board of Gooru? Michele Hansen, the daughter of Ralph Woolley. She is also VP and President, respectively, of the Girard Foundation and the Girard Education Foundation. How she has time to serve in all of those positions and whether there is overlap in her salary is unclear.
Of course, non-profits build stuff all of the time. But the IRS rules governing them aren’t working in our information economy. When a product is made up of content and computer code, an important question is who owns it. If ownership is quietly passed from a non-profit foundation to a not-for-profit education entity, and a for-profit corporation is spun off from that, then didn’t the public just make a large tax-free gift to the “edupreneurs”? This happened, for example, when ASN, a non-profit company developing a state standards database, sold its assets to TES, a large education conglomerate.
Also, with non-profits building or funding the development of stuff, there’s a question of who gets to make money off it. Consider Common Core Inc. (a company not associated with the developers of Common Core). It reinvented itself as Great Minds — yet another non-profit! — took over national sales of Engage NY materials (developed at public expense), and re-packaged it as Eureka Math. That public investment is what made possible the current salaries and stipends for the company executives and a long list of board members, like Bill Honig, California’s former superintendent of education.
The ownership and money-making issue is important to teachers. They’re the ones who actually write the lessons and exams. Returning to the Girard Foundation and its grant-issuing to Summit PS (with Illuminate Education probably sitting at the table), it was Summit teachers who contributed at least the initial material for Activate Instruction. Shouldn’t those teachers get royalties or other compensation if they put in extra time? Or did the writing take away from instructional time? Instruction, after all, is what taxpayers thought they were paying for when sending dollars to Summit “Public” Schools. Did the teachers even know they were assigning away their copyrights so that someone else could make money off them?
Here’s the bottom line: products developed this way violate the principles of a free market. If you spoke to Mr. Woolley, the founder of the Girard (Education) Foundation, he’d attest to being a staunch conservative and capitalist. Yet his favored products are not being built because there’s a willing public wanting to buy them. Instead they’re being built by a syndicate of 501(c)(3) corporations and no small amount of self-dealing. It’s not like communism, where the government picks winners and losers. But it’s close. It’s a small cadre of individuals, self-appointed, deciding what goes into schools based on their own political and social inclinations. This way of doing business — if you can even call it that — does not create more “choice”. It goes against America’s long history of entrepreneurialism, undermines our democracy, and fleeces the hardworking, taxpaying public.
Postscript: As mega-billionaire philanthropies pop everywhere, the IRS really needs to come up with stricter rules for non-profits and family-run foundations. They mustn’t take us back to the feudal era of wealth and power being passed from one generation to the next under the guise of “public interest”. How ironic that would be!