T.C. Weber blogs in Nashville (and around the world) as “Dad Gone Wild.” He is a parent of children in the Nashville public schools, and he is as bewildered as everyone else by the movement to hand public schools over to private interests. He is equally appalled by the amount of money that has been spent to defeat school board members who support public education and oppose privatization.
In this post, he interviews Amy Frogge, a public school parent, lawyer, and school board member who just won re-election despite being outspent.
Amy describes why she decided to run for the Metro Nashville school board, how she won her first election despite her opponent having a 5-1 advantage in campaign funds, and how she won again, despite the money from groups like “Stand for Children,” which supports school privatization. When she first became involved, she knew nothing about the battle against privatization, she just wanted to help.
The Nashville story should be told in every state and every district. It is a valiant story of parents and friends of public education banding together to defeat the deceptive advertising and campaign funding by privatizers and corporate interests.
Whenever anyone feels down about the amount of money pouring into the state or the district to privatize public schools, think of Nashville, pick yourself up, and keep fighting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow, in the wake of the recent 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 eventually 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, and allied with another corporate ed. reform group Advance Illinois.
At the Aspen corporate ed. reform conference in 2011, Edelman was caught on video bragging about how, in legislative terms, Stand for Children & Advance Illinois — 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 union clowns didn’t know what was being done to them, until it was too late. Heh-heh-heh … ” (not an exact quote)
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 is truly one of the Machiavellian and evil performances by a corporate ed. reform yet captured on video:
( 5:52 – 6:01 )
( 5:52 – 6:01 )
“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.”
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)
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
Here’s more about the current and past history of Stand for Children:
—————————–
“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
( 5:52 – 6:01 )
( 5:52 – 6:01 )
– – – – – – –
“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.”
Oh, and here’s piece about parents’ calls for investigations into alleged illegalities on the part of Stand for Children in the last election:
Billionaire school privatizer Eli Broad gave Peter Cunningham — former P.R. man for the pro-privatization Secretary of Ed. Arne Duncan —- $12 million dollars to start and run a pro-privatization propaganda website, which Cunninhgam named “Education Post.”
Mercedes Schneider had to do a lot of detective work to find Cunningham’s Education Post salary, as Education Post was nowhere to be found in the database of non-profit groups tax forms. This was because the Education Post tax info was actually listed in the tax forms of another, virtually unknown corporate ed reform group called “Results in Education (RIE) Foundation.
After much on-line probing, Mercedes found out that Cunningham pulls down an annual salary of $190,700 as the top dog at Education Post.
TWO CLICHES:
That which one hides is that of which one is ashamed.
He who pays the piper (Eli Broad) calls the tune (played by Eli’s toady Peter Cunningham).
You can read that whole story here:
Well, in the aftermath of the Nashville elections discussed by Amy Frogge, Cunningham was out earning his $190,700/year salary.
I found some tweets from Education Post’s top dog, Peter Cunningham, in the aftermath of the Nashville elections, where local “grassroots” folks defeated of the out-of-town, well-funded charteristas:
https://twitter.com/PCunningham57/status/761601400346247168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
————-
PETER CUNNINGHAM: “Nashville parents seeking more and better educational options saw their dreams fade in yesterday’s election. Sad.”
———————-
The back and forth on Twitter following this is great to read.
Here’s that back-and-forth: (with Peter. C bemoans the triumph of the dreaded “status quo”, blaming it, in part, on holding the election on a Thursday… whatev’s … and also references those mythical 30,000-strong waiting lists):
https://twitter.com/PCunningham57/status/761601400346247168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
—————–
ROB POWERS: “A nice victory for grassroots and against dark money, it seems.”
PETER CUNNINGHAM: ” ‘Grassroots’ or status quo? And who picked a Thursday in August for a school board election? Wonder what the turnout was.”
ROB POWERS: “Gives me hope for #NoOn2 (campaign) in MA. @GreatSchoolsMA has millions of $, but had to pay for signature gatherers. We have real people.”
PETER CUNNINGHAM: “What you have is a union protecting the status quo, despite 30,000 parents on waiting lists. That’s real people..”
ROB POWERS: “And the 30k number has been debunked. Will you correct your talking points memos?”
– – – –
http://www.mass.gov/auditor/news-and-updates/press-releases-2016/bump-statement-on-charter-school-campaign.html
– – – – –
PETER CUNNINGHAM: “It looks to me like the audit confirms what I said — well over 30K..”
ROB POWERS: ” ‘Status quo’ is semantics. But if u dump big dark $ in a slow primary & can’t win any seats, you don’t have people on ground.”
PETER CUNNINGHAM: “You’re right about that, but don’t pretend it (Nashville’s anti-corp ed. reform victory) was ‘grassroots.’”
LESLEY: @PCunningham57 “It absolutely was (a grassroots victory). Perhaps you should read the facts here. @TennesseeStand even called us an ‘army of moms.’ ” @RobPowersEDU.
————————————-
That “army of moms” quote was indeed from a Stand for Children-Tennessee leader and corporate reformer named Daniel O’Donnell, who was one of SfC’s leaders in the Nashville campaign. This quote was contained in an email leaked during the campaign that then went public: (enlarge to read)
——————-
DANIEL O’DONNELL (Stand for Children – TN): ” … we’re being outworked by … an army of moms out for Amy (Frogge) … ”
——————-
Of course, when there’s ZERO grassroots support for their efforts, they need to pay their campaign workers.
Earlier, a corporate reform ally named Marsha Edwards had given O’Donnell a list of folks who might bite, but alas, none of those on the list were inclined to go shilling for SfC candidates, even if they were being paid. (from the email in the same link above)
——————-
DANIEL O’DONNELL (Stand for Children – TN): “Hey Marsha, appreciate your efforts with the list, just haven’t heard from anyone yet. We have the capacity to hire (i.e. pay money to) MANY canvassers, which would dramatically improve our trajectory … but very few takers.”
MARSHA EDWARDS: “Daniel, I’ve asked my College Success Team if there are college students or grads who want to be a paid canvassers.”
——————–
Then nobody showed to go door knocking. Go figure.
Here’s some coverage of this:
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2016/08/03/group-nashville-parent-seek-probe-into-stand-children/88000442/
——————————-
…from the above story:
CHELLE BALDWIN, parent activist:
“It’s very frustrating as parent that (a leader in) an organization (Stand for Children – Tennessee) that claims to represent children is quoted in email bemoaning that there is ‘an army of moms’ out to support a candidate.
“I want an even playing field, everything above board and everyone playing by the rules.”
Recently, teacher / activist Peter Greene, writing his blog CURMUDGUCATION, noticed something telling. In the span of just a few days, Peter Cunningham contradicted himself about what the true purpose of the movement to expand privately-managed charter schools.
In one article that posted one day at Campbell Brown’s The74, Cunningham touted the idea that privately-managed charter schools are also “public schools” and they exist merely to provide parents with extra choices, with the end game being a family of school options — traditional public, charter, private, etc equated with “siblings” in a family— all working side-by-side:
—————————-
PETER CUNNINGHAM: “First of all, charter schools are public schools. Arguing that charters take money from traditional schools is like arguing that a younger sibling takes parental attention away from an older sibling.”
—————–
at:
https://www.the74million.org/article/cunningham-why-true-progressives-should-push-massachusetts-to-lift-cap-on-public-charter-schools
However, a couple days later, Peter Greene found a tweet from Cunningham proudly and unabashedly stating a diametrically opposite view. He states that no, the goal of the privately-managed charter school movement and the school privatization movement is not co-existence with traditional public schools, but the elimination of them and replacing them with privately-managed charter schools:
https://twitter.com/PCunningham57/status/763112569372631041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Here’s Peter Greene’s article on this
http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2016-08-13T14:56:00-04:00&max-results=7&start=7&by-date=false
EXCERPT:
—————————————————
PETER GREENE: “So when a long-time charter booster like Peter Cunningham, former spokesmouth for Arne Duncan’s Department of Education and current word-ronin for well-heeled reform investors, writes something like …
” PETER CUNNINGHAM: ‘First of all, charter schools are public schools. Arguing that charters take money from traditional schools is like arguing that a younger sibling takes parental attention away from an older sibling.’ …
“… He knows he’s shoveling baloney. It was far more honest when he tweeted:
https://twitter.com/PCunningham57/status/763112569372631041?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
PETER GREENE: “Not add to or support or enhance. Supplant. ‘Replace.’
“Replace a school system with democratically-elected leadership, a system that must teach all students, a system in which taxpayers have a say, a system that comes with a long-term commitment– replace that with a system that entitles some students to attend any private school that they can convince to accept them. And keep them. And stay open.
“Are public schools perfect as is? Not even close. But the solution is not to rescue a favored few at the cost of making things worse for the many left behind. If charter advocates wanted to approach this honestly, here’s what their proposal would say–
“Vote to have your taxes raised to finance a new entitlement for every child to have the option of attending private school at taxpayer expense.
“Vote to shut down public schools and replace them with schools that aren’t any better, won’t serve some of your children, and aren’t accountable to you, ever.”