Peter Greene analyzes the Vergara case, now case closed after the California Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from its billionaire backers.
Reformers say that getting rid of teacher tenure will spur innovation. Peter says, “What?” What teacher will dare to be different when they may be fired at any time for any reason.
Reformers say that getting rid of teacher tenure will attract more bright young people to teaching. Peter says, “What?” More people will be drawn to teachers if there are no job protections?
Peter refers to a mass email by Jeanne Allen at the pro-choice, pro-charter, pro-voucher Center for Education Reform in D.C., and he writes: :
“Yes, being able to hire and fire teachers at will would totally drive innovation because… reasons? It’s the Dread Pirate Roberts School of Management (“I’ll probably kill you today.”) But then, Allen also assumes that hiring and firing are only based on years of experience– wait– hiring is based on years in the classroom??!! In fact, firing is pretty much always on turning out to be bad at teaching. Now, maybe she means layoffs based on years of experience, but as we see in places like Chicago, that’s not even true everywhere. At any rate, we know that the traditional system promotes stability and protects the district’s investment in teaching staff.”
Be sure to read the comments, where Jeaane Allen responds and Peter parries.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Allen’s article is called “Sad Day for Teachers’ Rights”
and Peter asked … and what right is that, the right
to be fired for any reason at any time?
See also the masterful tracking of money by Mercedes Schneider:
StudentsMatter Is Millions in Debt from Vergara Lawsuit, Yet It Keeps on Suing
It is obvious that Jeanne Allen really does care a lot about school choice/charters for poor black and brown children. She and her friends can make lots of money off of them! I would be embarrassed to have a Masters in “Education Entrepreneurship”– but I must commend the honesty of the degree title… at least it describes the true motives of the reform movement… making money (from poor people at taxpayer expense)!
We — we, not the general public — all know that the true purpose of the attack on teachers’ mislabeled “tenure” is all about just two things: Power and Money. The power to break unions and to fire teachers at-will and the resulting money that “saves” because higher-paid veteran teachers will always be the first to go, to be replaced by low-paid new teachers…or by people who have no teacher-training at all.
We — we, not some billionaires — are to blame for the success of the groups who are attacking teachers’ rights because we have done a miserable, weak, virtually non-existent job of public media relations with the general public to explain what “tenure” and “seniority” actual mean and how they serve America’s children.
Teachers’ rights are children’s rights — children’s rights to be taught by thoroughly-educated, properly-trained, well-experienced professional educators…not by new-hires with only weeks of sketchy training, no experience, and often not even properly educated with a university degree in the specific skill of teaching.
The succinct message we need to relentlessly hammer away at toward the general public is this: The only right that “tenure” gives a teacher is the constitutional right to, when faced with termination, have evidence produced that establishes a just cause for firing the teacher. That’s it. That’s all. “Tenure” is not a guarantee of a “job for life.”
But we have utterly failed to do that.
Moreover, it should be the right of every American in every kind of job to have the right to not be fired unless the employer can produce a just cause; and making a bigger profit is not a just cause for taking away a person’s livelihood. That’s what unions provided in the past for American workers before the politically powerful corporations launched a concerted media effort to convince people they would be laid off BECAUSE of unions.
But, we have also done an equally dismal job of public relations via public media to educate the general public about the fundamental role that unions performed in bringing about the rise of the American Middle Class. In that public relations task we can and should enlist the active participation of America’s churches, nearly all of which have official statements that strongly support unions, as shown in the following examples of official church statements and position papers:
CATHOLIC CHURCH — UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS, Pastoral Letter “Economic Justice for All,” 1986: “The [Catholic] Church fully supports the right of workers to form unions or other associations to secure their rights to fair wages and working conditions. This is a specific application of the more general right to associate [this makes unionizing a constitutional right under the First Amendment right of freedom to form associations]. No one may deny the right to organize without attacking human dignity itself. Therefore, we firmly oppose organized efforts — such as those regrettably seen in this country — to break existing unions or prevent workers from organizing.”
POPE BENEDICT XVI, “Caritas in Veritate,” 2009: “Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labor unions. The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum, for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honored today even more than in the past.”
AMERICAN BAPTIST CHURCHES in the U.S.A. Resolution, 1981: “We reaffirm our position that workers have the right to organize by a free and democratic vote of the workers involved.”
CENTRAL CONFERENCE OF AMERICAN RABBIS, Preamble to the Workplace Fairness Resolution, adopted at the 104th Annual Convention, June 1993: “Jewish leaders, along with our Catholic and Protestant counterparts, have always supported the labor movement and the rights of employees to form unions for the purpose of engaging in collective bargaining and attaining fairness in the workplace. We believe that the permanent replacement of striking workers upsets the balance of power needed for collective bargaining, destroys the dignity of working people and undermines the democratic values of this nation.”
DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, Resolution on the Church and Labor, 1938: “We believe in the right of laboring men to organize for protection against unjust conditions and to secure a more adequate share of the fruits of the toil.”
CHRISTIAN METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH Discipline doctrine, adopted 1982: “Free collective bargaining has proved its value in our free society whenever the parties engaged in collective bargaining have acted in good faith to reach equitable and moral solutions of problems dealing with wages and working conditions.”
EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA, Resolution adopted at Churchwide Assembly, 1991: “The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America commits itself to advocacy with corporations, businesses, congregations and church-related institutions to protect the rights of workers, support the collective bargaining process, and protect the right to strike.”
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH U.S.A, “Principles of Vocation and Work,” adopted at General Assembly, 1995: “Justice demands that social institutions guarantee all persons the opportunity to participate actively in economic decision making that affects them. All workers — including undocumented, migrant and farm workers — have the right to choose to organize for the purposes of collective bargaining.”
UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION OF CONGREGATIONS, adopted at General Assembly, 1997: “The Unitarian Universalist Association urges its member congregations and individual Unitarian Universalists in the United States… to work specifically in favor of mechanisms such as: reform of labor legislation and employment standards to provide greater protection for workers, including the right to organize and bargain collectively, protection from unsafe working conditions and protections from unjust dismissal.”
UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST, “Resolution Affirming Democratic Principles in an Emerging Global Economy,” adopted at 21st General Synod, 1997: “The 21st General Synod reaffirms the heritage of the United Church of Christ as an advocate for democratic, participatory and inclusive economic policies in both public and private sectors, including … the responsibility of workers to organize unions for collective bargaining with employers regarding wages, benefits and working conditions, and to participate in efforts further to democratize, reform and expand the labor movement domestically and abroad.”
Well said!
I located an article from 2014 on the then-new Vergara case:
Why that ruling against teacher tenure won’t help your schoolchildren http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80476702/
“Students Matter has done nothing that will put a needed book or computer in a school,” Cohen observes. “Not one wifi hotspot. Not one more librarian, nurse, or counselor. Not one more paintbrush or musical instrument. Not one hour of instructional aide support for students or professional development for teachers. They don’t have any apparent interest in the more glaring inadequacies that their considerable wealth and PR savvy could help.”
I have been trying to post a long comment with facts appended, and it does not go through.
Ellen,
It was in moderation and I was offline
Thanks for getting it posted…
Just came in from mowing the lawn in the hot sun…and, I was NOT using one of those mowers you ride around on. I was pooped.
Then I sat down here and read Peter Greene’s razor sharp obituary for Vergara (and his reply to Jeanne Allen) and I got a shot of energy….and a good laugh, too. Way to go, Peter!
Sorry Peter and Diane….The Vergara Case is far from over. It will be filed repeatedly, nationwide, in various permutations. The deep pockets of this treacherous billionaire cabal will fund it and since they own most of the US and world wealth, a few hundred million dollars paid to Gibson, Dunn, Crutcher, and other notable law firms is meaningless to them when their long term goal is to kill the union movement and to privatize all public agencies to make them Free Market investment opportunities.
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Note: Bruce Reed is now head of the Broad Foundation and Academy.
Barry Munitz was the head of the Getty Center and was tossed out in disgrace for various miscreant behaviors like using museum money to live high, and to purchase stolen art works which eventually had to be returned to Italy at a huge financial loss for the museum.
As Deasy had Aquino fall on his petard for the billion buck iPad fiasco at LAUSD, Munitz saw to it that M. True fall on her petard for his actions. SEIU union boss, Andy Stern, is there too. And Rajan from Green Dot…what a group!
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“Broad Foundation and Academy
Board of Directors
Russlynn Ali
Chief executive officer, XQ Institute
Former assistant secretary for civil rights, U.S. Department of Education
Becca Bracy Knight
Executive director, The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems
Kent Kresa
Chairman emeritus, Northrop Grumman Corporation
Sherry Lansing
Chief executive officer, The Sherry Lansing Foundation
Former chairman and chief executive officer, Paramount Pictures
Barry Munitz, vice chair
Chancellor emeritus, The California State University
President and chief executive officer, J. Paul Getty Trust (retired)
Bruce Reed
Former chief of staff, Office of Vice President Joe Biden
Andrew L. Stern, chair
President emeritus, Service Employees International Union
Ronald O. Perelman senior fellow, Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law and Public Policy, Columbia University
Solomon D. Trujillo
Principal, The Trujillo Group
Jay S. Wintrob
Chief executive officer, Oaktree Capital Group LLC
Alumni Advisory Board
Chris Barbic, former superintendent, Achievement School District
Jeremy Chiappetta, executive director, Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy
Akeshia Craven-Howell, assistant superintendent of school options, innovation and design, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools
Aarti Dhupelia, vice president, strategic initiatives, National-Louis University
Patrick Dobard, superintendent, Recovery School District
Sylvia Flowers, executive director of educator talent, Tennessee Department of Education
Katina Grays, managing director of data and operations, KIPP NYC
Lillian Lowery, chief executive and president, FutureReady Columbus
Tyra Mariani, managing director, Opportunity@Work, New America Foundation
Nithya Rajan, vice president of strategic planning, Green Dot Public Schools
Abelardo Saavedra, superintendent, South San Antonio Independent School District
Ash Solar, executive director, Great Oakland Public Schools
Ron Steiger, chief budget officer, Miami-Dade County Public Schools
Superintendents in Residence
John Deasy, former superintendent, Los Angeles Unified School District
John Simpson, former ”
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“Here’s Why Bruce Reed Is Now One of the Most Powerful People in Education
AuthorL.S. Hall
In his two months as the Broad Education Foundation’s new president, Bruce Reed has spent much of his time with Eli Broad, learning about Broad’s vision for education reform and examining the work the foundation has supported in years past. It’s been a quiet transition. But don’t be fooled; this may well be the lull before a major new spending spree by Broad and a hugely influential role for Reed in U.S. education policy.
The Broad Education Foundation approaches school reform at the system level, funding projects that design new schools and education systems. That includes staunch support of charter schools, but also big investments in bolstering the management skills of public education leaders. The foundation favors reforms that are designed to reduce what Eli Broad sees as bureaucratic barriers that interfere with teaching and learning. The foundation also supports value-added teacher appraisal models. And there’s more: the foundation gives generous scholarships to high schoolers who graduate from urban school districts that have made big improvements. And it has a initiative to connect schools to new digital resources for “personalized learning.”
That’s a big agenda, and one with serious money behind it: Forbes’ most recent billionaire list estimates Eli Broad’s wealth at $6.9 billion. After the Gates Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, Broad has been the biggest spending education philanthropist of recent years.
Now he seems poised to rachet things up further. Eli Broad has always favored what he describes as a national education system. “Rather than having 14,000 school boards across America, it would get governors involved, big city mayors involved, and it would have a longer school day and a longer school year,” is how Broad described his idea of the perfect education system to California radio station KPCC.
In Bruce Reed, the 80-year-old Broad may have found the perfect man to expand the foundation’s national scope and impact. Reed has the knowledge and political clout to ramp things up. He’s been chief of staff for Vice President Biden, a speech writer for former Vice President Gore, and a top policy expert in the Clinton administration.
Ideologically, Reed looks like a perfect fit for Broad, whose political affiliations lean Democratic but who is an ardent foe of teachers unions, a traditionally reliable Democratic constituency. Reed’s political resume includes a stint as CEO of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), the centrist Democratic organization whose founders included Bill Clinton. In its quest to remake domestic policy, the DLC supported some forms of school choice, such as charter schools, and didn’t hesitate to ruffle the feathers of organized labor, including teachers’ groups.
If the Broad Education Foundation does rachet up its work nationally under Reed, its first president, one question is whether it will also begin moving a lot more money out the door. In 2012, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation gave out a total of $153 million for all its activities (which also includes giving for medical research and the arts), putting it among the top 35 foundations by giving that year. Yet at this rate, the Broads—who signed the giving pledge—won’t make much of a dent in giving away even half their fortune while they’re still alive.
That’s why bigger giving for education—maybe much bigger—seems highly likely. Perhaps that’s how Broad convinced Bruce Reed to move across the country to take a foundation job, when he surely could have snagged more prestigious positions.
If Broad really opens the floodgates, it could mean major opportunities for groups that have already gotten Broad money, but also for new organizations and school districts. If you’re an educator who’s yet to get Broad funds, now’s a good time to suddenly remember that you and Bruce Reed knew each other in college. Or whatever. Reed is likely to become one of the powerful figures in U.S. education philanthropy starting, well, now.”
What a nightmare and tangled web of opportunists trying to build a scaffold to access public funds with the ultimate goal of destroying democratic public schools! So many grifters and charlatans hide behind their fake shield of civil rights as they line their pockets and waste our resources intended for our public school students. Billionaires should not be able to buy policies to suit their own misguided agendas.
Yes, dear colleague, it is indeed a nightmare.
This cabal of billionaires (who are funding not only Vergara lawsuits nationwide, but also so many other efforts to privatize education and other government run agencies/industries such as transportation, the postal service, health care, etc.), with the determined goal of all things being run by the Free Market for investment opportunity, represent not only most of the wealth of the US, but most of the world’s wealth. Toting up their combined billions leads to assets closer to trillions of dollars.
Therefore, this minor Vergara debt is of little consequence to them. What is a hundred million more or less, paid to law firms like Gibson Dunn, Manatt, Olson, etc. when their pockets are bottomless money pits? By killing all unions they are well on their way to complete takeover of society and establishing a total oligarchy.
All this is at the expense of the rest of us.
The Mylan pharma epi-pen is an exemplar of wealth and greed run amuck. This same system gave us Big Pharm and Big Banks/Insurance running all our health care, with the collusion of our elected legislators including our recent president(s). And now we get to choose between two crooks running for Prez, for another round of public theft for redistribution to them. Public education is merely one more pawn for them.
There is NO real philanthropy involved with the DFERs nor any of their vulture ilk. They will never be satisfied until they have it all, so breaking the union movement is their first step in taking it all.
Ellen,
A rhetorical question, where is the countervailing force to wealth and power to be found? You and Diane and others seek to educate as many as possible on these issues but your reach is limited for one by those who read and two by those who seemingly care.
I maintain that we have other tools available to us to counter “manufactured consent”. However it has to be something broad enough to attack the root cause of the larger problem. In 2011 we saw the budding of a movement that started to change the narrative, pretty effectively I might add. It did not change the outcomes, but it certainly changed the narrative. To this day we see elements of it’s effect both in left and right wing populism. However that movement was abandoned instead of co-opted by those with the organizational skills and the resources to carry it forward, abandoned to the political expediencies of electing a lesser of two evils. Once abandoned it was brutally crushed. We saw again this same dynamic played out this Winter and Spring . This time the failure was partially due to the same cast of characters but also to another element whose lack of courage aligned them with the forces of economic oppression rather than progress. Perhaps their new position on education is a sign of change to come. Trump is not wrong to ask what have the Democrats delivered. It is the alternative to that question,that he offers, that is wrong.
The Black Swan moment should have been the 08 crash. It was skillfully avoided by a charlatan. Who never was who we thought he was. We knew that from the moment he appointed his transition team. There will be other events and the history of our neighbors to the South may reveal that this is a rocky road but power is not monolithic. What that change will look like is yet another question.
Yes, Joel….2008 does seem like a classic “Black Swan” and yes, we were fooled by “hope and change” malarkey. When Occupy took over Wall Street, so many were fascinated to see this movement become world wide in only about three weeks…and many, of even we oldies but goodies, rushed to Wall Street, and to all the downtowns of cities across the country. We even learned the sign language used by the democratic leadership. And for a few short months we thought this movement would start to institute change.
What did NOT see coming was the meeting of the mayors, mine was the mendacious Villaraigosa…and in NY there was plutocrat Bloomberg, who in their secret meetings devised the plan which drove the Occupy movement into the ground…and under the heels of the oligarchs.
I personally gathered a few of my white haired friends and went to LA City Hall a few time hoping to keep the young leadership from getting beaten up. And also I loved sitting in my California office at 4 AM directing traffic in downtown NY, where teachers were on the march, as police and violent others tried to attack them. It still amazes me that we were loosely, but effectively, coordinated so that I could see on my computer where the police on horseback were charging, and by cyber communication, could message the teacher brigade to move rapidly and regroup blocks away. But like the Arab Spring, the movement was overcome by the hedge fund managers and their robocops…and by those we elected to represent US. Funny how that works.
I am too old for this.
A teacher I know was laid off in violation of contract three summers in a row, twice when the school board at the time was trying to hold off paying younger teachers for the salary bump they’d get when they qualified for tenure and the third time in order to shuffle positions and hire one school board member’s son. Each time the union stepped forward and filed a grievance that resulted in a reversal. When she got tenure all of that stopped. Imagine if every teacher had to face those kind of shenanigans every year–arbitrary furloughs and firings would rule the day and personal interest and personal grudges, not to mention petty political considerations, ruled the day.
Um, we have that sort of thing all the time in Right to Work states. I’m currently in a situation of that type.
Mercedes Schneider did a bravura “close reading” of the public filings of Students Matter, the organization behind the Vergara and other corporate ed. reform lawsuits.
In its public filings, the organization’s full name is:
“Students Matter, the Students First Foundation (SFF)”
She found some statements that were very interesting, to say the least, emanating from this ( in Mercedes’ words) “corporate reform lawsuit factory”:
StudentsMatter Is Millions in Debt from Vergara Lawsuit, Yet It Keeps on Suing
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MERCEDES SCHNEIDER:
“This next part is my favorite:
“Creating grass-roots-ish buy-in for top-down-birthed education litigation. Also included on the second 2012 tax form:
Students First public filing:
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“THE ORGANIZATION ENGAGED IN A PROGRAM OF COMMUNITY OUTREACH TO CREATE A GRASSROOTS EXPANSION OF ITS EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND STRATEGY WITHIN THE COMMUNITY. THE ORGANIZATION SUCCESSFULLY CREATED AWARENESS OF ITS VISION, MISSION AND THE BENEFITS ITS ACTIVITIES WOULD BRING TO THE COMMUNITY.”
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That sure perverts, or at least, contradicts the meaning of “grassroots.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots
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Wikipedia: “Grassroots movements are associated with bottom-up, rather than top-down decision making, and are sometimes considered more natural or spontaneous than more traditional power structures.”
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Mercedes’ article also states how Students Matter /Students First Foundation (SFF) now has millions of dollars of legal expenses, with much less money taken in for fundraising, leaving it now millions of dollars in the red.
Other than those hefty legal fees, which constitutes the bulk of that debt, what else did David Welch & Co. spend money on?
Well, like Eva in NYC, they sure blow a lot of money on public relations and rallies:
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MERCEDES SCHNEIDER:
“The second highest expense was to a Los Angeles-based organization,
“Rally: $809,955 for ‘public relations.’ ”
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Quick review on SFF Founder David Welch (from a Capitol & Main article):
http://capitalandmain.com/david-welch-the-man-behind-vergara-versus-california
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EXCERPT: (how Welch cashes in on corp. ed reform… read the whole thing)
“What may be unique about Vergara is David Welch himself, a man who prior to creating Students Matter in 2010 — the same year as the Reed case — had virtually no background in education policy or any direct financial stake in the multi-billion-dollar, for-profit education and standardized testing industries.
“… (Welch’s) reported 2012 income was $2.23 million, (Welch) lives in a $12.5 million estate nestled in the bucolic Silicon Valley enclave of Atherton, which ranks first on Forbes’ annual list of America’s most expensive ZIP codes.”
“Yet Welch and his nonprofit play a special role among a group of other nonprofits and personalities whose legal actions, school board campaigns, op-eds and overlapping advisory boards suggest a highly synchronized movement devoted to taking control of public education. The David and Heidi Welch Foundation, for example, has given to NewSchools Venture Fund, where Welch has been an ‘investment partner’ and which invests in both charter schools and the cyber-charter industry, and has been linked to the $9 billion-per-year textbook and testing behemoth Pearson. ”
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Another thing that I noticed from Mercedes’ piece is that David Welch, the Silicon Valley multi-millionaire and entrepreneur who “founded” Students Matter (SFF) and initiated the Vegara lawsuit, differs from big-money corporate education reform funders such as Eli Broad, Gates. and the Waltons in a least one key respect.
Like those others, David and Heidi Welch made an initial donation of $320,000 to Students Matter (SFF), which David founded — money which they will not get back.
Unlike those others, however, EVERY CENT that the Welch’s personally kicked into Students First AFTER THAT has actually been “a loan” from them to the separate entity “Students Matter /Students First Foundation (SFF).”
This is a loan, mind you that Students Matter / Students First Foundation (SFF) is required to pay the multi-millionaire Welch’s back, albeit “without interest.”
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MERCEDES SCHNEIDER:
“By the close of 2012, SFF still owed Welch a total of $949,122, which it listed on its 2013 990 as its ‘total liabilities.’ ”
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According to Mercedes, the Students First /Students First Foundation (SFF) has already paid the Welch’s back some of that:
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MERCEDES SCHNEIDER:
“SFF managed to reduce its debt to Welch from $949,122 to $480,429. However, it also took out a line of credit to the tune of $4,249,122 with Bancorp for SFF operating expenses.
“In 2014, SFF received $6,441,741 in total revenue and had $5,510,409 in total expenses. Of course, it also still had the Welch and Bancorp debt as liabilities ($5,576,311 total). The result was another year of negative total net assets: -$4,196,936.”
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Hmmm … after that initial $320,000, the multi-millioniare Welch’s have not exactly been sticking their necks out, money-wise. We never would have known that detail without Mercedes’ tenacious on-line gumshoe efforts.
To cope with all that debt to the Welch’s, to Bancorp, and to SFF’s sub-contracted law firm, those in charge of the SFF have “apparently notified the IRS that it plans to convert its status from private foundation to public charity.”
And why is that?
Because once it is re-classified as a “public charity,” SFF can choose to have its donors “remain anonymous.” According to Mercedes:
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MERCEDES SCHNEIDER:
“Perhaps SFF will draw more corporate-reform billionaire cash if those billionaires are able to hide even as they still benefit from the nonprofit-donor tax breaks.
“To keep feeding (law firm) Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the SFF behind StudentsMatter must attract more money. Much more.”
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Here’s the end of Mercedes’ article, with that information, and its significance:
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MERCEDES SCHNEIDER:
“Looming question:
“How is SFF able to afford its astroturf ed. litigation?
“SFF owes Bancorp over $4 million, and SFF paid (the law firm handling its lawsuits) Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher a total of $10,652,620 from 2012-2014, with Vergara alone, pre-appeals.
“SFF has apparently notified the IRS that it plans to convert its status from private foundation to public charity. One of the benefits of doing so is that the public charity allows for donors to remain anonymous. As a private foundation, SFF must include details about its donors (including names, addresses, and amounts) as part of its 990 tax reporting.
“Perhaps SFF will draw more corporate-reform billionaire cash if those billionaires are able to hide even as they still benefit from the nonprofit-donor tax breaks.
“To keep feeding Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the SFF behind StudentsMatter must attract more money. Much more.”
“Can’t wait for the continuing saga as told by SFF’s 2015 990 tax forms.”
Here is a list of the top 20 Billionaire philanthropists from Forbes Magazine. They list 50 (out of hundreds), but I only listed the first 20 whose combined assets are in the area of 100s of billions of dollars. Among these is a piker, Meyer Luskin, only a single billionaire, but who founded and sits on the Board of Alliance Charter Schools. Most of the listed deep pockets are charter supporter/investors, and their total combined wealth figures close to trillions of dollars.
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Forbes’ first 20 Foundations represent :
Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg, Waltons, Broad, Bloomberg, Paul Allen, Chuck Feeney, Gordon and Betty Moore, James and Marilyn Simons, John and Laura Arnold, Carl Icahn, Koch brothers, Julian Robertson Jr.,Sheldon Adleson, Stephen Bechtel Jr., Michael and Susan Dell, Hansjorg Wynn, J. Wayne and Delores Weaver.
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Almost all of these wealthiest people on earth are charter school supporters. So do you really think that a few hundred million paid to the law firms who work for them to file lawsuits like Vergara, is so meaningful that they will give it up? Never.
They can press for union killing lawsuits (teachers’ tenure is a secondary issue) forever and never miss a meal or buying another new Maseratti. Their long term goal is to privatize everything to run as Free Market investment opportunities, with all wealth redistributed only upward, to them. This has been building for the last thirty years…and horrifying to say, they are winning with the preponderance of US wealth now in the hands of their top 1/2%
BELOW is a link Jennifer “Edushyster” Berkshire’s snarky analysis in the immediate aftermath of the initial victory of David Welch and Students Matter two summers ago. Without the reversal earlier this week, everything the Vergara lawsuit wanted would have gone into effect:
http://edushyster.com/last-dance-of-the-lemons/#more-5029
Two years later and after this week’s verdict, it’s fun to drink in Jennifer’s wry commentary on a certain “coincidence” relating to exactly who else (or rather, who REALLY) benefits from an ultimate Vergara victory — besides (or INSTEAD OF) those “low income kids” that the wealthy Vergara folks claim to “love so much (more than the people who work with them every day).”
(SPOILER: it’s those same wealthy folks who claim that the lawsuit’s victory will now be triumphantly “addressing the civil rights issue(s) our our time.”)
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EDUSHYSTER:
“Might there be some other beneficiaries of the Vergara victory, besides the kids that is?
… the Vergara ruling is great news for billionaires who love low-income kids (more than the people who work with them every day).
” … when I encounter a solution that will at last address the civil rights issue(s) of our time and set aright our listing public schools, I always ask myself a single, simple question.
“Is it possible that, in addition to addressing the civil rights issue(s) of our time and setting aright our listing public schools, said solution might also — completely coincidentally, mind you — just happen to cheapen the cost of teaching?
“Completely coincidentally, the answer these days is almost always yes.
“But where to spend all of the extra money that will be freed up by replacing lemons with limes (lemon veteran teachers with low-cost, younger newbies, JACK)????
“If only we could think of something really disruptive, or at least something that allows us to say *disruption* over and over…
“And because I heart the concept of synergy, what if said solution also had the added benefit(s) of further benefiting billionaires who love low-income kids (more than the people who work with them every day)????”
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She also highlights the insanity of certain fallacies inherent in their arguments.
For example, on the one hand, corporate ed reformers and Vergara hates LIFO or seniority protections, with the underlying premise that years of experience in the classroom don’t matter in terms of the quality of teaching. Jennifer then points out that they simultaneously decry the fact that — compared to students from higher income neighborhoods — students attending schools from lower income neighborhoods are having their “civil rights” violated because a larger percentage of their teachers are … wait for it … less experienced… that same quality that they otherwise insist “doesn’t Matter.” (intentional capitalization joke based on the name Students Matter, btw).
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EDUSHYSTER:
“Another big victor: fallacies of the logical variety. Otherwise known as flaws in reasoning or *logic lemons,* these were in full bloom from the minute Judge Treu announced that court was in session.
“How else to explain the paradox by which teacher tenure laws apply to the state’s wealthiest school districts and its poorest, but only violate the civil rights of students in the latter?
“Or how about the related and even paradoxier claim beloved by Students Matter fans, including Arne Duncan, that while teacher experience doesn’t Matter, the inequitable distribution of experience (which doesn’t Matter) is the civil rights issue of our time? SEE RELATED: lemons, dance of the.”
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Read the whole thing. It’s a blast.
I left out Jennifer’s best zinger (from the COMMENTS section of her Vergara article, linked ABOVE. imo, she’s the “Dorothy Parker” of the folks who write about corporate education reform).
Jen points out another coincidence involving the wealthy Vergara funders — the folks who love “low income kids more than the people who work with them every day”:
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EDUSHYSTER:
“It turns out that a surprising number of those who are now so eager to *elevate* the teaching profession have actual elevators in their homes … ”
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Ooooh, snap!
Here’s that quote in context:
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EDUSHYSTER:
“Mother Crusader, a New Jersey blogger who specializes in following the money, has a new post up about who paid for Vergara.
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-silicon-valley-entrepreneur.html
“It turns out that a surprising number of those who are now so eager to *elevate* the teaching profession have actual elevators in their homes… ”
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http://edushyster.com/last-dance-of-the-lemons/#more-5029
Where else is there more information in the comments than here? Every comment richly valuable. That’s in intellectual currency, not the kind you get setting up and insuring boxy housing tracts in the Southern California desert, Eli Broad. The most intelligent, informed, and informative crowd around, bar none. Thank you.
Thanks. It’s nice to know someone’s even reading my stuff — and the stuff to which I link — let alone appreciating it.
Jack Covey,
If you wrote shorter comments, more people would read them.
( 29:50 – 29:59 )
( 29:50 – 29:59 )
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: “As the preacher said, ‘I could write shorter sermons, but once I start, I get too lazy to stop.’ ”
(capping off an actor’s breathtaking 4-minute monologue in which everyone involved, each a genius at his respective art/craft, is going full-tilt… Spielberg, Daniel Day Lewis, writer Tony Kushner, and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski)
That said, I’ll try. 😉
Jack,
If you don’t mind getting my two cents, I think you should write the same amount as always in your comments, but copy/paste much less. Maybe just paste the links so we can read your quoted information at our discretion? That would reduce quantity without reducing quality.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled against vouchers.
The Washington Supreme Court ruled against charter schools.
The California Supreme Court refused the illogical reasoning of Vergara.
To make a mockery of logic and critical thought is a perilous path for civilized people. Good thing a few safeguards are still working.
Voters have rejected vouchers in every state where they were on the ballot. Most recently in Utah (2007) and Florida (2012).
Charter schools are proof of oligarchy. Ellen identified people, who, if they have acted against democracy, should suffer consequences.
Our teacher friend here, Linda J. from So. Cal., got a wonderful pro-ed letter to the editor printed today in the LA Times. She (whose letters get printed regularly), and so many of the retired and working teachers here have taught me so much, and enriched my life over these past almost 4 years. Thank you to all…including but not limited to Left Coast teacher, Education, Geronimo, Tutican, Paula, Susan N. (all local), and traveling east, Christine L., Laura, Lois, Threatened in West, Ed Detective, 20ld2teach, retired teacher, NYteacher, teacher Ken, Mercedes, Donna, and so many others…and of course Diane for making this all possible. How lucky kids in America are to have all these truly wonderful people leading their classrooms.
Thanks to Ellen Lubic.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.