Yes, the public is wishing up. They want public schools, not privatized charter schools! In addition to losing four school board races in Nashville to pro-public school candidates, Stand for Children list major races in Memphis.
As reported in The Tenneseean:
“House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart, D-Nashville, noted late Thursday that advocacy organizations supporting charters that had “a similar agenda” as Stand for Children ran “big money operations” against Memphis Democrats Rep. Johnnie Turner and Rep. Antonio Parkinson. Turner and Parkinson also won, Stewart said, calling it a win for public schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good news, but this year the Waltons have targeted Memphis for more TFA hires and facility grants for charters. Charters will receive low or no interest loans for facilities.
This is the beginning of much longer fight that the newly elected board will have. Memphis is in the crosshairs of the Waltons. The Waltons want make TFA and charters the norm for the city.
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Too often these billionaires target mostly minority communities. What gives them the right to decide what is best for other people’s children? The local communities are not clamoring for more charters. It is outside money and influence that are deciding what somebody else’s community deserves. These outsiders want to blow up the existing system and neighborhoods without any consideration to the students and families that live there. A researcher from the University of Pennsylvania is finding all this disruption comes at a price the children and their families. We need more educators to study this. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/04/reformers-disrupted-public-education-now-an-ivy-league-dean-says-the-consequences-for-kids-are-devastating/?tid=pm_local_pop_b
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“We (at STAND FOR CHILDREN) we had clear political capability to potentially jam this proposal down their (union members’l/leaders’) throats, the same way the pension reform had been jammed down their throats six months earlier.”
———— JONAH EDELMAN, STAND FOR CHLDREN leader,
at the Aspen corporate ed. reform conference, captured on video
– – – – – – –
“Throat-jamming has been a favored technique of ‘STAND FOR CHLDREN. … Watch Edelman in that video — children aren’t even on the radar.”
———— PETER GREENE, CURMUDGUCATION blog
———————————————-
I almost forgot. Peter Greene over at CURMUDGUCATION also weighed in on Stand for Children’s shenanigans and the hostile corporate takeover that was executed about seven years or so ago:
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/07/tand-for-children-astroturfing-of.html
Here’s fuller quote: (including a state-for-state breakdown of the folks who are now running the various STAND FOR CHILDREN state chapters — all of them non-educator profiteers backing school privatization and union-busting)
PETER GREENE:
“Throat-jamming has been a favored technique of ‘STAND FOR CHLDREN.’
“In Massachusetts, SFC mounted a huge media campaign to push the idea of erasing tenure and seniority protections and won concessions from the teachers union by the old-fashioned technique of blackmail– you can give us some concessions now, or we will throw our weight behind a ballot initiative that will be even worse. As a further sign of their astro-turfy nature, they promptly vanished once their work was done.
“By the time the current decade had rolled around, all traces of the original group and its original priorities had vanished. In 2011, Texas faced serious budget problems and the prospect of serious education budget cuts. The old SFC would have advocated for protecting schools and children from those cuts; the new SFC was busy throwing its weight behind new teacher evaluation programs.
“The current SFC Board of Directors is, well, unsurprising:
” * Anne Marie Burgoyne, Chair. Holds an MBA from Stanford and is currently manages the social innovation initiative for the Emerson Collective, the reformy group headed by Steve Jobs widow (Laurene Jobs was on the SFC board back in 2006) and which hired Arne Duncan to do something-or-other.
” * Emma Bloomberg. Michael Bloomberg’s oldest daughter, and chief of staff at the Robin Hood Foundation (founded by Paul Tudor Jones, a hedge fund manager who dabbles in ed reform).
[Update: Bloomberg is no longer on the Robin Hood board, and has not been for almost two years. SFC’s website has not been updated to reflect that. I have no idea what else they may have wrong.]
” * Phil Handy, Treasurer. CEO of Winter Park Capital. Six years as Chairman of Florida State Board of Education under Jeb Bush.
” * Eliza Leighton. Co-founder and now independent consultant. Left SFC in 2001 to get a law degree.
” * David Nierenberg. An investment guy, now running his own firm after years of managing money for other people’s firms.
” * Lisette Nieves. Partner at Lingo Ventures, her own consulting firm. She’s “an experienced social entrepreneur and public sector leader.” Some government work, too, including Bloomberg appointee on NYC Board of Education.
” * Don Washburn, Secretary. A private equity investor who has held executive positions at Northwest Airlines, Marriott Corp, and Quaker Oats.
” In other words, not a single person with education credentials in the bunch. But they know a lot about investing money. Does it get any better if we look at the heads of their local affiliates?
” Arizona’s director’s previous experience is help Jan Brewer push her education reform program.
“Colorado? Fifteen years as a “successful contract lobbyist.”
“Illinois — lawyers who worked for ed division of Tribune publishing. Indiana’s head has background in communications and marketing, having helped shill for reformy Bart Peterson.
“Louisiana’s director first joined SFC as Marketing and Communications Director. Massachusetts gets a Teach for America guy.
“Oklahoma’s director was a journalist who moved into political communications work.
“Oregon’s is former TFA, former KIPP, former Alliance for Excellence in Education, and a former aid to Senator Hillary Clinton.
“Tennessee doesn’t have a state chief; the Nashville head is a former Obama administration liason for Department of Energy, and the Memphis head is a political activist and consultant.
“Texas and Washington don’t have full staff presence.
“In 2012, national leadership of SFC, ‘to ensure that we are maximizing our collective impact, …decided to develop a shared viewpoint on how to accomplish our mission and to prioritize strategies that have proven effective in closing the achievement gap.’
“In other words, ‘Let’s get everyone on the same page.’ The six-page manifesto is relatively harmless, even as it uses plenty of reformster dog whistles.
“But words are cheap, and Stand For Children may be many things these days, but cheap they are not. I spent my Saturday morning reading up on them because they have surfaced twice this week, in both cases busy trying to buy themselves some democracy.
“In Washington State, SFC is trying to buy itself a judge. See, the current judge, the one they’d like to buy a replacement for, had the temerity to rule Washington’s charter law, the charter law that charter supporters paid lots of good money to get passed, unconstitutional (Mercedes Schneider has the painful details)
“Sigh.
“This is the sort of thing that should bother you even if you don’t even care a little about education– for these folks, laws and democracy are just obstacles to getting their way.
“Want a particular law passed? Just buy the law you want…
” … and if that isn’t enough, buy the judge that will interpret the law the way you’d like it. So Stand For Children is funneling three quarters of a million dollars of reformster money into the judge’s race (meanwhile, that judge who is not being backed by funders from across the nation, has about $30K to defend herself with — if you would like to help her with that, here’s the link:
http://www.chiefjusticemadsen.org/
“Meanwhile, in Tennessee, spent (or passed through) another $700K to buy itself some Nashville school board members. At “Dad Gone Wild,: you can read just how far off the rails that effort has gone (it appears that SFC is a little muddied on PAC and campaign law):
“I confess to some mystification.
“How did a guy (Jonah Edelman) with such a child-centered, activist background become such a tool of corporate interests?
“How did a group that started with Rosa Parks saying …
” ‘If I can sit down for justice, you can stand up for children’ …
” … end up being a group that doesn’t stand for much of anything except stacks of money wielded like political clubs?
“How do these folks decide that law and democracy are simple obstacles to be leveraged and used, cast aside or buried under stacks of cash?
“Watch Edelman in that video — children aren’t even on the radar:
——————
PETER GREENE:
“Reformsters like to say that you can’t fix schools by throwing money at them, but they sure do like to throw money at politics and politicians. I suppose it is somehow comforting to believe that everyone can be bought when you yourself have long since sold out.”
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EPIc Charter schools is another facade.
~~ Anita ~~
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