The California Teachers Association created a useful graphic of the billionaires who are supporting charter schools and privatization of public schools. (There are many more billionaires supporting privatization, but this is a good start.)
Here are a few things you should know about the people on this site.
The Waltons are probably the richest family in America. Forbes estimates their family fortune at $130 billion. Privatizing public education is a family hobby or passion. Wherever there is a critical election, whether in Washington State or Georgia, you are likely to find that a Walton has put in big money to help those who want to replace public schools with private management. They don’t like unions. They boast that they have funded one of every four charters in the nation. I don’t know if any of them have a union, but I doubt it. Walmart is non-union, and it has thrived–for the Waltons, if not for its workers. Workers at Walmart had to fight to get minimum wages. Many qualify for food stamps. If the Waltons wanted to reduce poverty, they could do it by raising the wages of their workers to $15 an hour. They have 1 million low-wage workers. Imagine the good the Waltons could do if they gave their workers a living wage.
Arthur Rock not only gives generously to charters, he is a major contributor to Teach for America. He personally pays for its Washington, D.C., interns who work as Congressional staff and diligently protect TFA’s financial and political interests.
Reed Hastings owns Netflix. He told a meeting of the California Charter Schools Association that he looks forward to the day when there are no local school boards. Think of it. You would get to pick your charter but have no voice whatever in its decision making. Democracy is such a nuisance. Hastings contributed to a fund to oust the chief judge of Washington State this fall because she wrote the opinion saying that charter schools are not public schools. He established a $100 million fund to promote charter schools headed by the guy who ran New Schools for New Orleans.
Doris Fisher is the matriarch of the Fisher Family that owns the Gap and Old Navy. The family has heavily supported KIPP and TFA. The three Fisher children went to Phillips Exeter Academy.
Eli Broad pushes to eliminate public schools everywhere. His Broad superintendents have been strategically placed in key positions in school districts across the country after being carefully indoctrinated in his view that the best way to improve public schools is to replace them with charters. He likes to work with school districts where there is minimal public participation, preferably where the mayor has total control. He wants to put half the children in Los Angeles in privately managed charter schools. He is another reformer who doesn’t like democracy. The more autocratic control, the better the environment for his top-down management plans.
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation of Houston has made its mark beyond supporting charter schools in California. John Arnold tried, but failed, to turn Dallas into an all-charter district. He has a passion for eliminating defined-benefit public pensions and replacing them with 401Ks, which fluctuate with the market. When investigative reporter David Sirota discovered that Arnold was financing a PBS program on the “crisis” in public pensions, PBS was shamed into returning Arnold’s donation of $3.5 million.
Know your reformers!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OY! I am constantly amazed that such creeps can do this to our young and this country. Guess $$$$$ talks, esp. since there are profits and their own children don’t have to put up with the nonsense the deformers think is good. Look at what they practice and preach … DISCONNECT.
Former teachers displaced by the Walmart-funded expansion of unaccountable, privately-managed charter schools — where Sam’s progeny only or mostly hire uncertified teachers, in order to save money by paying them slave wages — can always get new jobs working at … you guessed it… Walmart!
After changing careers from public school teacher to Walmart worker, those former educators will now have to start their day a little differently.
Instead of say, “Good morning, class. Could you please open your textbooks to page … ?”
… they’ll experience the joy of participating in one of Walmart’s universal start-of-the-day rituals:
( “WE – ARE! WE – ARE …. WAL-MART! … “You’ll get to be a cashier some day.” Freddy Mercury’s twirling in his grave…)
or perhaps they’ll be required to bring down the house this way:
(NOTE the gorilla-like roaring & chest-pounding at 00:31)
God save us all! Seriously … GOD – SAVE – US – ALL !!!!
Money, power and greed!
In the last Gilded Age the robber barons contributed to the arts and culture. We have many museums and universities that benefited from their largesse. This nouveau riche crew want to suppress democracy and destroy public schools. Unions resulted from the misdealings of the last robber barons. Today we are no longer a manufacturing society so I doubt unions will save us. Our only hope is to get the money out of politics, and let the will of the people prevail. Otherwise, democracy as we know it will be gone.
I so agree! Get $ out of politics needs to be #1 on every activists agenda!
But I disagree with “today we are no longer a manufacturing society.” I will not lie down for that. Just today, WSJ reported we are at a 15-yr low in terms of USmfg jobs going wanting due to the “skills gap.” Yet for a decade many articles have seen that trend and forecast this problem. And if you search, you can even find a few articles pointing out that the mfg industry has created its own skills gap by abandoning training & apprenticeship in high-tech skills — just too expensive, per the last quarter-century’s habit of measuring the ROI of job-training over the short, rather than the long term.
The “skills gap” is the excuse the oligarchs make when they set of shop overseas. It blames American workers and hides the real reason which is all about increased profit. They can manufacture for pennies on the dollar.
Very informative: thank you.
“retired teacher” just nailed it. There was no sudden skills gap. That’s just an echo chamber myth. It’s about profits and having the US think you,as a corporation, simply have no choice but to outsource to other countries. The skills gap lie also serves to hide the real reason for outsourcing jobs, which is increased profits, and turns the spotlight onto supposedly failing US education. Corps benefit from no longer funding their own training programs and insisting that that is now the job of high schools and colleges, just because THEY say so. Through the business-led CCSS “college and career-ready” we have all fallen into the trap of accepting the rhetoric without question.
To retired teacher–yes, I guess the Rockefellers, who supported, and still support, public libraries and museums, would be thought of as rubes in today’s privateering, anti-democratic boardrooms.
Men like Carnegie were captains of industry. The people mentioned in the Ravitch post, are tyrants of exploitation.
Carnegie did some good things, but gained his wealth through dubious means and did not care for the union working at his plant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie
See “Railroads” and “1892: Homestead Strike”.
Many, if not most of the captains of U.S. industry were deplorable. But, the current tyrants of exploitation are setting a new standard for repugnance. Unlike Carnegie’s contribution, the financial sector creates nothing and drags down GDP. The new breed, in their villainthropy, steal the common good, where as, Carnegie contributed to the common good with his libraries. And, unlike Gates, Carnegie didn’t scheme to enrich himself, while boasting about his largesse.
Arnold’s claims to fame (1) Enron employment. Enron was the 6th largest U.S. company,when it went down in flames. (2) financial fund management. It’s estimated that America’s financial sector drags down the economy by 2%. The Roosevelt Institute recently published research showing that the financial sector costs citizens, half of their retirement wealth.
How much influence do they have re:public school policy, given how their employees move in and out of government?
Reed Hastings endorses a tech heavy charter chain. Does that have anything to do with the private sector/government effort to push tech product into public schools?
Hastings is described as “partnered with” a chain.
The US Dept. of Ed is heavily populated with Gates employees and former Gates employees. They certainly have a lot to do with pushing tech and also with the Gates privatization of schools agenda. Money buys access to the highest levels.
Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/California-Meet-the-Billi-in-General_News-America_Billionaires_Corruption_Culture-Of-Corruption-160901-79.html#comment615916
MY comments has many links at the site:
I put this up many times. Several charts about wealth distribution in America. Go to the last chart and the last words. THOSE are the people who Diane is discussing.
The EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX with these very people at the top is taking over our education INSTITUTION. https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf
How sad… because democracy depends on shared knowledge
There are 15,880 school systems, and the media is hiding there reality that schools are being systematically privatized, state by state. Put ‘PRIVATIZATION’ into the search field at the Ravitch blog, and see for yourself, or Put charter school failurein the search field and judge for yourself what is happening.
Here is the scary truth: Koch writes Social studies curricula in North Carolina.
https://dianeravitch.net/2014/12/05/north-carolina-plans-to-adopt-koch-funded-social-studies-curriculum
Not a word in the media that they own about the takeover of our schools, as PUBLIC EDUCTION, and thus DEMOCRACY AND INCOME EQUALITY disappear in America AS LEGISLATURES take over public schools that were MADE TO FAIL by removing real teachers and instituting common core crap and VAM. This week Eli Broad took over the LA public schools, replaced them with charter schools, and crated his own board of ed, ignoring the real board…. and
As John Oliver noted, “the problem with letting the free market decide when it comes to kids is that kids change faster than the market. And by the time it’s obvious the school is failing, futures may have been ruined.” The truth is, their beloved deregulation also produces dismal charter failures, taxpayer fleecing and fraud. And that, in the end, could cause the whole charter system to collapse.” When no one is held accountable and rules & regulations don’t apply, bad things happen,as it did to teachers when their civil rightsdisappeared Our public schools arecrucial to our democracy
Submitted on Thursday, Sep 1, 2016 at 2:04:06 PM
Susan Lee Schwartz
Thanks for the animated chart about the wealth disparity.
The billionaires have a mindset like Trump…that CEOs and others who have accumulated great wealth deserve to have freedom from regulation. They also beleive that democracracy is really close to nonsense if you want to get anything done.
YUP!
Of course this is bad but this is just diversion. Fellow travelers of this group anonymously fund the California Teachers Association Institute for Teaching and these contributions cover the salaries of the top three officers of CTA. To my mind this explains the lack of opposition to charter schools that we have witnessed up to now. Eric Heins, the president of the CTA announced recently to the California caucus of the NEA that, “we don’t have a problem with privatization in California.” The leaders of CTA aren’t about to bite the hands that feed them even if they have to betray the teachers that they claim to represent. In L.A., UTLA has assisted in getting rid of about 5,000 veteran teachers in order to adjust for the LAUSD’s loss of 130,000 students. KA-CHING!
Most of these students have gone to charter schools.
Your post points out just how well the plan of action and selective donations on the part of privatizers and like-minded billionaires is working! CTA should be urged to refuse these contributions.
Privatization will continue with public support as long as the public schools are controlled by those who are philosophically oriented toward international progressivism, otherwise known as socialism or communism or collectivism. That philosophy has been destroying America for fifty years. A patriotic public school system would not be under the attack it is. Trump may very well win the presidential election owing to backlash against the view of society promoted by most of the people on this site. Here “democracy” means “rule by the socialist elite exploiting the ignorant mob.” Pity though.
Please name one Socialist other than Bernie who wasn’t , no less one communist. Delusions are tough to deal with. If we had a little socialism the above mentioned oligarchs would barely exist. The only thing centrally planed is the oligarchical control of the economy. Control that allows for the economic rape of the working class. Starting with labor laws that crippled organized labor 1947.
The system we have developed here is quite the opposite of Socialism. The closest definition is Oligarchy.
“a country, business, etc., that is controlled by a small group of people”
In this case very wealthy people.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oligarchy
I would use the word Fascism except that we are still pretending that there is democratic control over the legislative process. However given the influence of money from these oligarchs/plutocrats in our political system and the propensity of our politicians to legislate in the interests of those oligarchs, rather than the vast majority of people who elect them. That description may not be too far off the mark.
You remind me of the ignorant kids. I dealt with in my misinformed days as high school sophomore back in the sixties. I was a member of the the “Young Americans For Freedom” a right wing youth group if there ever was one. The other kids called us Commies . By junior year I was over that misguided phase of my life. A pity ignorance is as prevalent in adults today,as it was in children 50 years ago.
OMG! Speechless!
I need somebody, anybody to help me to understand Professor Harlan Underhill’s expression.
[start quote]
…international progressivism, otherwise known as socialism or communism or collectivism.
[end quote]
1) GOP or Republican Party, where Donald Trump is selected to be Republican Presidential Nominee, promotes international progressivism = free market and deregulation
2) Communism forbids its citizens to gather or to move around within the community. Its citizens must apply for permission to gather or to move around alone or in a group.
3) Socialism promotes the equality in working, earning, and human rights condition.
Who is the socialist elite? Who is the ignorant mob? So far, I know that the majority of contributors in this website has their valid degree(s) from valid institutes in America and Canada, like you.
Please get real and do not contradict between theory and practice. Back2basic
Harlan and Joel,
Harlan Underhill talks about “international progressivism, otherwise known as socialism or communism or collectivism.”
Joel Herman states: “The only thing centrally planned is the oligarchical control of the economy. Control that allows for the economic rape of the working class. Starting with labor laws that crippled organized labor 1947.
Take a look at Europe. Many of the countries have very high unemployment and they are moving away from socialism. Unemployment amongst the youth in European countries is at or above 25%.
To resolve the 2008 crisis, we the USA poured a lot of money into the European banks. Without the might of the USA we would all be suffering from the crisis forever. We rescued countries devastated by socialism.
The wreckage left by central planning is the old Soviet Union, which collapsed, and the current India, which is barely functional but is finally moving away from it.
Be glad we are the USA, which is in better shape than Europe. I am very glad that we are not pursuing socialism or communism or collectivism. We do not have central planning or oligarchy planning. We do not control the economy but manage it. I would rather keep the current “ism” whatever it may be for the low unemployment and superior living conditions here. We do not have the best system here, but it is superior to all the others.
Finally, I like Bernie Sanders not because he is a socialist, but he is honest, which nowadays is in short supply amongst our leaders and their critics.
As a northern European, I’m still not sure if I should be yawning or giggling at Mr. Underhill and his notions of a virtuous society.
Well, whoop-de-do-la-la. Harlan is the big American patriot and the rest of us are just so much traitorous commie collectivists. Ain’t that special. What’s a patriotic public school system? One that supports the duly elected president, Barack Obama? Oh wait, Obama is an Islamic commie Marxist-Leninist. We here in Diane Ravitch’s blog are so powerful that we may cause Trump to win??? Ha, ha, ha, thanks for the comic relief, Mr. Underhill.
Harlan is and will remain clueless as to what actually goes on in a classroom when a professionals in there creates activities that enable a n merging intelligence to meet objectives — such as LEARNER WILL BE ABLE to write a clear sentence. or Learner will be able to understand the concept of subtraction of negative numbers. or… etc. OBJECTIVES.
The words that whirl around his brain never change or influenced by facts , tO which he is impervious. Like tRump he has litany of complaints and PERSPECTIVE that love stop lay blame on those people….’you know kind folks who he feels are ‘socialists’. He has lots and lots o labels to help his mind cope with the plethora of people out there…
he doesn’t like me, because I got his number a long time ago.
Raj
Those countries suffering the highest unemployment rates tend to have the weaker social safety nets what we tend to call socialism. It is very difficult to compare statistics across international borders .
But here is a list of EU nations and their unemployment rates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_unemployment_rate
More importantly their employment participation rates
France unemployment 10.6 employment participation rate 64.2
US 4.9 u3 Unemployment employment participation rate 62.8
US 9.7 u6 unemployment
Denmark 4.5 /75.7
Germany 4.5 /70.9
England 5.1/ 69.9
Now I am not even going to claim that these figures are a valid comparison. But blanket states are foolish .
One the EU is a very floored model . It is a unified currency and individual Nations. This limits the options available to these nations to stimulate their economies. Their banks are national banks vs EU banks. Germans reluctant to bail out Greek… … banks
Picture NY Bankers refusing to bailout Florida or Nevada in the this past crisis or Texas banks in the S&L crisis.
I will let Dean Baker explain this one
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/the-european-central-banks-sinks-ireland
http://cepr.net/publications/op-eds-columns/the-us-and-the-euro-crisis-lessons-from-a-comparison
Secondly how on Gods earth can anybody compare the resources and natural wealth of this Nation to any Individual European Nation. From farming, to minerals, to waterways to climate…. We Americans have been more fortunate than exceptional.
Now I am not here to defend any economic system. Certainly not to defend dictatorships. But lets take the above argument to the extreme. We always look at Cuba as an example of how Capitalism is superior to Communism. We then compare the lives of Cuban refugees in south Florida to the economic hardships in Cuba, a tiny island nation compared to the USA.
Why is that ?
Would you rather live in Cuba or
Honduras
El Salvador
Hatti
Dominican Republic
Guatemala… ….
Europeans are not suffering because of their social safety net or strong worker protections. If they were Denmark and Finland would be in shambles .
I wonder if Harlan is enjoying his commie, socialist, collectivist Social Security and Medicare? Ooops.
Research on a type of blog commenter, indicated sociopathic tendencies. (Mental health experts estimate 1%-3% of the population are sociopaths.) If a blog commenter, uses the language of superiority and, his words suggest the intent to inflict distress, on those he assumes to lack power, it would be characteristic of the research.
Harlan,
International progressivism? Never heard of it. I have heard of international corporations. I have heard of corporatism. Collectivism and corporatism are opposites. Social democracy is somewhere between the two. Americans tend to favor freedom and independence, what some know can only be with a social safety and support net, but what the corporate media claim can only be with corporatism. None of this has anything to do with Trump. He’s just a racist gangster.
Jeffrey@automat.com
Thisi as what happens when ideology is driven by the non elected mega rich few.Surely there are hundreds of other altruistic programs
You have missed the Prince/DeVos family. (It includes Eric (Black Water Security) Prince, and a brother in law that owns National Heritage Charter Schools. They fit right in with the Waltons. Betsey and Rick DeVos Jr. have pushed vouchers and charter schools here in Michigan for years!
Kenneth, you are right about DeVos but I don’t think they are active donors in CA
Laura and John Arnold are also the major funders of a think tank tied to the health insurance industry that is trying to create “studies” to deny cancer patients reimbursements for innovative–and very costly–drugs. Their largesse is tied to making money off of some of the most vulnerable constituencies.
GregB,
My Arnold story. A couple of years ago, I wrote a post about his ar on public pensions. I said something like “I can’t understand why a guy worth billions would begrudge a $45,000 pension to someone who spent decades in public service.” And I said that he made billions while the employees at Enron lost their pensions.” A few days later, I got an email from his publicist saying that I didn’t retract what I said, he would sue me. I was in the hospital at the time, and one of the worst things I could imagine was being sued by a billionaire. I immediately wrote that I was wrong, wrong, wrong about the Talented Mr. Arnold. I retracted whatever I said. I never meant to hurt his feelings.
Well Diane here is another despicable Arnold story hot off the press.
Right out of Orwell .
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/white-billionaire-funds-surveillance-black-baltimore
If Black Lives Matter has routed the TFA cohort, from the organization, they are being wise. Drew Franklin identified the TFA infiltrators, at the website, Popular Resistance.
Let’s hope the Arnold’s legal trolls didn’t see your comment, Diane! Their putrid tentacles have an amazing reach.
GregB, whenever I type his name I realize that they might come after me again.
There’d be a lot of patriotic Americans, more than willing to contribute to the Ravitch defense fund. A court case that exposed the agenda of the richest 0.1%, followed by the public’s rebuke of plutocrats, would be a testament to US democracy.
Diane
post response ,saying duplicate but not appearing.
To May ,(M4potw)
No one can understand Harlan but Harlan…ignore him
Can’t agree about not understanding. If there is one thing that any teacher should be is: understanding.
I have many close friends whose views are almost identical with the ones Harlan has written about. Those friends, many very successful in their business and careers, and Harlan are good decent folk who just have a different world view than many here, including myself. My friends all think my way of thinking is waayyyy out there but we’re still friends and generally have a good time giving each other grief about each’s opinions and beliefs. Harlan’s political views generally don’t jibe with mine but there are many educational views that we agree upon.
Like me, Harlan isn’t afraid to write what he believes, many times with a very strident attitude. And I find that to be a plus to “discuss a better education for all.” It is through conversations with my friends and with Harlan that I have learned to sharpen my arguments against the multitude of educational malpractices that are being forced upon public education.
Finding commonalities and community is paramount in a democratic republic.
Dearest my spirit sister, Susan:
Yes, I completely agree with you that Harlan does not have a logical mind from being in a profession in education
And thank you for señor Swacker’s opened minded suggestion about “understanding”.
In Vietnamese saying, there is an expression about UNDERSTANDING, like “whenever you love something or someone, the object of your love is perfectly adorable; whereas the object is adorable to the world view, but it becomes the ugliest thing or person in your view whenever you hate it.”
IMHO, through my own experience with eye cataract, I just PROFOUNDLY realize that we must learn and cultivate an open minded attitude with a logical, honest mind, NOT with prejudice or gullibility.
For instance, VN communist PR always spreads and magnifies its glory of 1000+ years under Chinese colony, 100 years under French colony, and 30 years in war against USA. The brutal truth is that:
1) All CORRUPTED and TALENT-LESS leaders, commanders in academe, business, religion work together to bully and to harm innocent, law abiding citizens.
2) All rich class will protect their FORTUNE at any cost to others
3) All academe class will protect their FAME at any cost to others
4) All commoners will protect their COMFORT at any cost to others
We must acknowledge that human beings, whose weakness in greed, lust and ego is very difficult to be self-control, MUST live through trials and errs = experience = wisdom by alleviating pain in those unfortunate in society. May.
Reblogged this on Matthews' Blog.
Obama Administration continues their 8 year policy of never leaving the ed reform echo chamber:
“Perhaps unsurprisingly for those who have followed the Education Department closely during Obama’s tenure, King and his colleagues will make four separate stops in Tennessee, which became the darling of the administration in 2009 when it was one of the first states to nab a Race to the Top grant.
Using funds from the administration’s hallmark competitive education program, it ushered in significant education policy changes, including the adoption and implementation of the Common Core State Standards and aligned state tests, the expansion of charter schools, new teacher evaluation and compensation systems based in part on student test scores, and an aggressive school turnaround effort for the state’s worst schools.”
Tennessee and New Orleans- the two ed reform showplaces. It’s like they’re barred from entering a public school or a state or city that didn’t adopt the whole agenda.
Testing and charters. The Legacy.
They steer well clear of states where ed reform isn’t going so hot. Expect the usual charter cheerleading and droning denunciations of public schools. No dissenters will be invited or allowed to speak.
We opened a new public school here. No one from the state came to the opening. I was glad they didn’t show up. They’ve done nothing but cut funding and add gimmicky mandates. They’re a net loss for public schools.
Educrats a “net loss for public education.”
Gotta luv that thought!
Reblogged this on Network Schools – Wayne Gersen and commented:
Diane Ravitch provides a rogues gallery of “reformers” including the Waltons, who pillage food stamp funds, the Arnolds, who want to deny pensions to public employees, and Reed Hastings, who finds democracy to be a nuisance.
Excellent article Diane. I’ve taught in a right to work state and a state with unions. The difference is night and day. Right to work states offer teachers lower wages and more demands on your time, larger class sizes and less support for various populations. It’s frustrating to know that people with so much money are behind the shift from public education to charter, cyber, and private schools. You would think they would have something better to do with their time and money. I used to love my job as a public school teacher but with all the interference from idiots like these people, it’s very hard to go to work every day. I go for the kids. The rest of it is frustrating. Thank you for your ongoing support.
I was surprised to see this:
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/08/30/491810422/a-new-school-year-brings-renewed-focus-on-attendance
It’s a story about public schools that isn’t negative. It’s about attendance in public schools, though, which isn’t exciting or “game changing”.
It seems to me though that ed reform could have saved a lot of money if they had invested in making sure kids get to school rather than extending the length of days or number of days. If they’re THERE more that’s additional time in school. If the child used to miss 15 days a year and that child misses 5 with a focus on increasing attendance that’s 10 more days in school for the same price. The kids who are there every day probably don’t need the additional time and “additional time” is already available for kids who do need it- they just have to show up.
I have questions….should it be comforting that this is not really that much money within the big picture of politics and education? or should it be disturbing that such a relatively small amount of money can be used effectively to guide very greedy and destructive policies?
Ohio just dramatically watered down their new charter school regulations:
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2016/09/charter_school_reviews_are_back_on_schedule_after_state_superintendent_paolo_demaria_sidesteps_rule_change_controversy.html
Lawmakers folded to charter lobbyists. Again. I guess the taxpayer funded charter promotion event the state just held didn’t mollify the lobbyists.
Maybe the state could fund an event to promote public schools so it’s a level playing field as far as politician marketing efforts. Unimaginable, right?
“House Bill 2, a major charter school reform law passed last fall, mandated that the compliance portion of sponsor reviews should cover how well sponsors and schools meet all laws and rules. ”
Charter schools should have to comply with only the laws and rules they agree with?
Then they’re not “laws and rules”, are they? They’re optional.
We should protest in front of Gap and Old Navy stores.