Great news from Nashville!
All four incumbents on the Metro Nashville school board won re-election. They were opposed by well-funded charter advocates.
The corporate reform group Stand for Children funneled $200,000 into the Nashville contest to try to defeat the pro-public school incumbents.
Across Tennessee, the corporate reform candidates fared poorly, despite SFC’s $700,000 of dark money.
“More than $750,000 buys plenty of campaign mailers and advertisements. But it doesn’t necessarily buy election wins.
“Stand For Children, an education advocacy organization, found that out the hard way Thursday night. After spending a small fortune, all four candidates it backed in the Metro Nashville school board election and a handful of state GOP primary challengers lost their races.
“I think Nashville has become a model of how you defeat an obscene amount of dark money in local school board elections. At the end of the day, there’s a certain sanctity between public school parents and their locally elected school board. And it’s not for sale to the highest bidder,” said Jamie Hollin, a former Metro councilman and political operative.
“Noting he’s a proud public school parent, Hollin added, “I am particularly proud to put the nail in the coffin of the charter school movement in Nashville.”
“Stand for Children, which advocates for charter schools as well as prekindergarten programming and other education issues, financially supported 10 school board or statehouse candidates in the primary, specifically spending more than $200,000 on school board races. Only one who faced an incumbent won: Sam Whitson easily defeated embattled Rep. Jeremy Durham, who had suspended his re-election campaign after an attorney general investigation detailed allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Durham against 22 women.
“Metro school board incumbents Will Pinkston, Amy Frogge and Jill Speering defeated their Stand for Children-backed opponents, Jackson Miller, Thom Druffel and Jane Grimes Meneely, respectively. Only the Pinkston-Miller race was close, with Pinkston winning by 36 votes. Miranda Christy, the Stand for Children-supported candidate in the race to replace retiring board member Elisa Kim, lost by more than 30 percentage points to newcomer Christina Buggs.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fool me once, shame on you,
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Our voices are being heard and the general public is catching on to all the flaws in the Rheformer’s plans.
This is good news, but here is some of the spin offered by Stand by Children. in Nashville.
Notwithstanding the misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric, here are the facts. The overwhelming majority of the $708,080 spent by the Stand for Children, Inc., Independent Expenditure Committee in this report has been to defeat virulently anti-public education candidates in state Republican legislative primaries.
The $216,540 the Stand for Children, Inc., Independent Expenditure Committee has spent to educate voters in four Nashville School Board districts about the stakes of this election and the record and behavior of specific incumbents is absolutely necessary given the array of powerful forces aggressively defending the indefensible status quo in Nashville.
Given the context and the urgent need for new leadership that will bring crucial progress for Nashville students, we stand strongly behind those investments in change for Nashville’s children.
http://stand.org/tennessee/blog/2016/07/29/statement-nashville-elections
These statements sound like those from the Trump, designed to damage the reputation of legitimate critics by calling forth inflamatory warlike rhetoric to disparage critics, as if there is no fundamental problem with these expenditures.
Money spent on a campaign, that comes from outside the district, is oligarchy.
The Peanuts character Lucy used to say, while holding up her hand, “These five fingers, taken alone, are not very powerful. But, when curled into a fist, they can do damage.” (Or something like that) The point is that the good people of Nashville curled themselves into a powerful fist that defeated the Dark People.
If they are defeated it is in large part due to you, and the other activists who have energized the parent base and told the TRUTH!
The key to defeating big money interests is organization and information. Sometimes local elections are the only way to express disillusionment with the way things are going. Once it gets to the state level, it is easy for privatizers to buy the key players such as governor and state representatives. At that point the public rarely gets to voice their dissention, except in protests. It is more effective to stop them at the local level.
Case study of ed reform-bought politicians…Ohio.
One thing that has been mostly overlooked in all of the triumphant talk about beating down the big money poured into the Nashville School Board elections by pro-charter organizations such as Stand for Children is the fact that the ability of the local newspaper (the Tennessean) editorial board to sway voters was also rendered impotent!! “We the People” have spoken!
How embarrassing for the plutocrat-owned, Tennessean.
The Dayton Daily News had a similar takedown, when the editorial page supported an ALEC bill, against unions. In a referendum, the voters told the legislature that they were pro-union, in a 67/33% vote.
Tennessee continues to be in the news !!!
Fred
Sent from my iPhone
>
Off topic but, a victory. The Center for Media and Democracy reports that AARP has stopped supporting ALEC. Public outrage made AARP’s lame defense untenable.
Yes. A big victory, but it should not have been necessary. I signed the petetion.
Agree. Why is a populist protest (always) required, to make corporate management act in a way that would be obvious to a person with integrity and to one, who had the most limited understanding of adverse publicity?
Why? Unfettered campaign and PAC contributions of rich guys playing out their fantasies.
Poster boy, John Podesto, Democratic Presidential campaign manager who owns a firm, where the CEO’s resume describes her as a veteran GOP political operative and a deputy campaign manager for former Gov. Jeb Bush. Perfect for triangulating profits.
Wow, in the wake of yesterday’s miracle outcome in Nashville, this seems a propitious time to review the history of “Stand for Children” — both its initial well-intentioned version, and today’s evil incarnation… as well as its current Wall Street funders, and the tactics those running it now just employed — thankfully, in vain — in Nashville
Some articles (links is at the bottom of this post) give some insiders’ view of the the history of an infamous corporate takeover of a what was originally a genuine grassroots organization — “Stand for Children.”
Most people don’t know that Stand For Children first grew out of the education-related activity during the lesser-known “Million Mom March” in D.C. in 1996, just one year after the Million Mom March for African-American males in 1995, from which it was modeled.
The current Stand for Children website falsely claims its beginnings were at the “Million Mom March,” as it touts its “20-year history”. Its homepage also includes pictures of that 1996 D.C. event …
http://stand.org/
… when in fact, both their current claim — by today’s regime of Stand for Children — of a “20-year history” and also their inclusion of the 1996 rally pictures on its site are totally false and misleading. ALMOST NONE OF THOSE PEOPLE INVOLVED BACK THEN HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE TODAY’S “Stand for Children.” Indeed, as the article at the end of this post indicates, the original founders strongly condemn and oppose what Stand for Children is and does today.
Starting about seven years ago, those corporate ed. reform coup masters (many of them Wall Street hedgefund managers, and other Wall Street folks) first infiltrated and took over “Stand for Children. Once ensconced in power, they executed a massive Stalinist purge of the organization, casting out almost anyone who was not on board with the whole corporate ed. reform master plan — including its original founders and leaders. These purge victims include anyone whose participation goes back earlier than around 2009 or so.
Again, all of this is in the story linked to at the end of this post.
However, before reading that, it’s good to once again re-visit ….
The Jonah Edelman Video — Corporate Education Reform at Its Most Sinister
Before reading the coup narrative, it’s interesting to re-examine the infamous Jonah Edelman video, which occurred about a year or so after the coup. Edelman was then involved with the Illinois state branch of the newly-corporate-controlled Stand for Children.
At the Aspen corporate ed. reform conference in 2011, Edelman was caught on video bragging about how, in legislative terms, Stand for Children — with Edelman masterminding the whole thing — metaphorically crushed the Illinois teachers union through the use of some sleazy behind-closed-doors tactics in the Illinois state legislature, and also in certain elections for the Illinois legislature that put in office Stand for Children’s hand-picked union-busting, school-privatizing politicians who carried out Stand for Children’s union-busting, school-privatizing legislation. (Sound familiar, you Nashville-ians reading this?)
In this video, Edelman’s positively giddy as he brags tp Bruce Rauner (now Illinois’ union-busting, school-privatizing governor) and other school privatization big-wigs present in the room. Edelman shares about how he put a fast one over on those easily-duped and gullible leaders of Illinois and Chicago’s teachers’ unions. Those clowns didn’t know what was being done to them, until it was too late. Heh-heh-heh ….
For example, Edelman goes into details such as his wily maneuver of spending huge Stand for Children funds (originally donated for such goals as lowering class size… a major No-No with the new regime) to deliberately hire every single lobbyist in the state capitol of Springfield— so the teachers’ unions would be unable to hire them to fight such legislation.
This truly one of the Machiavellian and evil performances by a corporate ed. reform yet captured on video:
Fred Klonsky’s blog is where this video first blew up. This explosive and damning video was accidentally put on the web by some clumsy corporate ed. reformers for a couple of hours or so, before it was hurriedly taken down. While it was up though, a friend of Klonsky copied it, and copies soon spread far and wide. This cat was out of the bag … for good.
Edelman was pilloried vigorously by just about everyone involved — union leaders, politicians, activists, journalists, you-name-it. On Fred Klonsky’s blog, Edelman finally attempted an apology of sorts that no one bought for a second: (fascinating, though, as a study of evil trying to put on the facade of good)
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/jonah-edelman-apologizes-to-my-blog-readers/
Here’s another good summary of the video, with a good background on the whole thing:
http://bluemassgroup.com/2011/07/jonah-edelman-spills-the-oligarchs-blueprint-for-crushing-teachers/
I believe this video and the 2011 Aspen corporate ed reform conference occurred before this blog existed. However, Dr. Ravitch expressed herself quite thoroughly about Edelman’s magnificent performance, and what it reveals about corporate ed. reformers, their funders (hedgefund managers, money-motivated Wall Street investors, etc.) and their despicable tactics.
This was in an interview with Anthony Cody: (it’s eerie how this 2011 interview predicts what just went down in Nashville)
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=2436
—————————————
DIANE RAVITCH (in 2011): “This (Edelman’s machinations and the video of him boasting about them) is not merely an interesting anecdote about Illinois politics, but reveals tactics that are now being employed in states and districts across the nation by small numbers of very well-funded people. Groups like Stand for Children, Education Reform Now, and Democrats for Education Reform are connected to some of the wealthiest individuals in our society; their boards include a disproportionate number of Wall Street hedge fund managers.
“I don’t know why hedge fund managers are so interested in controlling education policy, but there is no doubt about their eagerness to commit large sums of money to get rid of due process, seniority, and collective bargaining, and to tie teachers’ evaluations to test scores.
“There is nothing inherent in being a hedge fund manager or a successful entrepreneur that would make one an education expert, yet these guys seem determined to revise state laws as they relate to teachers. The part I don’t understand is why they think that what they are doing will improve education.”
ANTHONY CODY: “What do you think of the policy agenda embodied in the legislation his group was able to enact?”
DIANE RAVITCH: “The intent of legislation like that pressed by Edelman is to make the job of teachers contingent on the test scores of their students, to remove job protections, and to turn teachers into at-will employees, who can be fired if they displease their principal.
“This approach will, of course, make test scores even more important than they are now. More teachers will teach to standardized, multiple choice tests. Untested subjects, like art and music, will get less time or disappear, unless tests are devised for everything. More resources will be diverted to test preparation.
“Unfortunately, there may be more Atlanta’s (meaning the cheating scandal story, which broke at about the same time, JACK), as teachers and principals try to save their jobs. It is really a very wrong-headed understanding of education. I wonder if people who support legislation of this kind ever taught in a public school, ever attended a public school, or ever enrolled their own children in public schools.”
————————————–
Without further ado, here’s the history of the takeover of Stand for Children that preceded and, of course, enabled the Edelman fiasco — his legislative coups and the video of him bragging about it:
http://oregonsaveourschools.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporate-backed-stand-for-children.html
Without such a corporate ed. reformers’ takeover of this originally grassroots and well-intentioned organization, the attack of Stand for Children’ (the new evil version, that is) on Illinois’ and Chicago’s teachers (and elsewhere) never would have happened.
Again, the story is told from the point of view of some of its its former founders and leaders, who want the current, phony-baloney, corporate ed. incarnation of Stand for Children exposed for what it is:
http://oregonsaveourschools.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporate-backed-stand-for-children.html
There’s another account of the coup, with more details, here:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/stand-for-children-a-hometown-perspective-of-its-evolution/
Oh, and and here’s another insider perspective on the takeover:
http://parentsacrossamerica.org/tom-olsen-another-former-stand-for-children-member-speaks-out/
Those folks all licked their wounds, pooled together, and went on to found the Oregon chapter of “Save Our Schools”:
http://oregonsaveourschools.com
http://oregonsaveourschools.blogspot.com
“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)
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/stand-for-children-has-725100-ready-to-unseat-charter-unfriendly-judge/
“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):
https://norinrad10.com/2016/07/30/stand-for-children-buys-its-way-out-of-the-race/
“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.”
(1) Aspen, which had on its Board, David Koch (photo removed from the array, a few weeks ago). (2) Gates- financed Aspen education programs i.e. the Senior Congressional Education Staff Network and Pahara Aspen Institute.
Here’s a good video recounting the hostile corporate ed. reform takeover of STAND FOR CHILDREN:
What a glorious day!
Now that we have beaten back the hated reformism a bit, we should pause to remember the real problem. There are too many reasons why some kids are not learning. The main reason they are not learning is so complicated that no one really has their mind around it. We focus on money, class size, social standing, teacher technique, the list is endless.
All the items on our list are important. I would never belittle the difference between a good classroom idea and a bad one or the need to spend money. Still, the big gorilla lurking in the background is the fact of one group of people making another do something. Public education is mandatory.
We know the historical reasons for this. They lie deep in the agricultural belief that children should work. Many families actually had disdain for books themselves when education on a mass level was new. It has always been a fight. Now the fight is generally with dysfunctional families or dysfunctional societies (neither is necessarily of their own making) who have not come to the understanding that sitting down with a slice of the written word is a moral obligation.
Mandating school now extends into a child’s adulthood. One of our best minds made a jaded comment at her graduation about having made it through the government requirement. Perhaps we should take a look at what we are now mandating. Ask some questions.
Should we:
Require that all pre-school kids attend a certificated day care?
Make a kid go through a college prep high school curriculum?
Attach the drivers liesence to school performance?
Mandate that a child should go to a specific school?
You get the picture. There are many things we require by law. Most of us see the need to have rules of the game, but of all the questions you might have added to the above list, we can bet that someone is saying no.
The reason reform has derailed is that it is predicated upon the idea that education can be forced on everybody. I think we need to begin again to think about the use of the carrot. The stick is broken. I really am not sure where I am going with this, I am too busy teaching to write the book I think is necessary. But I feel strongly we have moved into too much mandating and away from the freedom to learn about what we want to. Teachers have “standards” and students have “goals.” Politicians want everybody to go to college. Is there any wonder that the chief force in the body politic right now is rebellion?
We need to advocate for more choices, not more top down reform. Less mandate and more opportunity.
While I don’t believe we should throw out the idea of a compulsory education, there are definitely problems with the government forcing compliance with so many rules and regulations.
Currently we are forcing the child to meet conscripted needs instead of meeting the needs of the child. Sort of like forcing a round peg into a square hole. That could be why up to 70% of the kids are “failing”.
What used to be benchmarks to strive for have become absolutes which must be achieved and this strategy is just not working.
What we need to do is step back and take a good hard look at education as a whole. What works? What doesn’t? Which strategies were successful in the past? How have children changed since then and how does the teacher address this new paradigm.
While I understand the need to have some sort of standardization which addresses the basic skills, the standards we currently follow are too rigid with not enough play to tailor them to the individual child or class. A scripted program is not the answer.
It’s not an easy fix, but the bureaucrats have definitely mucked up the works.
First off, get rid of the concept of high school as college prep for all and stop mandating such ridiculous requirements for graduation that only the top students can pass or we will have a generation of drop outs on the public dole. Next provide alternative paths to a diploma. All children have skills, build upon those and peak their interests to do more by adding not deleting electives from the curriculum. Finally, use technology to enhance, not replace, instruction and teach children how to moderate and analyze its usage. We also don’t want a generation of zombies who believe everything they read on the Internet.
If we aren’t careful, one of those zombies might be elected President.