Most people who are active in school board elections never heard of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), know nothing of the duplicity of Stand for Children, and are unaware of the privatization agenda of corporate reformers.
This article by Justin Miller in the American Prospect seeks to demystify the strange confluence between hedge fund managers and the charter school movement.
Miller tells the story of the transformation of school board elections, once a sleepy affair, now attracting large sums of money from out of district and out of state organizations. The key organization in the race to control local school boards is Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the hedge fund managers’ group.
He gives illustration of how they operate by focusing on school board elections in Indianapolis, and to a lesser extent, Minneapolis and Denver.
Flying under the radar, DFER bundled money to put their allies in charge.
The list of original funders is chock-full of Wall Street A-listers. There was Joel Greenblatt, head of Gotham Asset Management and author of the seminal high-finance book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. There were Charles Ledley and James Mai of Cornwall Capital, perhaps most well known for betting big against the subprime-mortgage market, which was depicted in the book-turned-blockbuster The Big Short. There was David Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, who has drawn scrutiny on more than one occasion for financial wrongdoing.
Basically, if you were anybody who was anybody in hedge funds, you probably chipped in. [Whitney] Tilson called the group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), and set it with a mission “to break the teacher unions’ stranglehold over the Democratic Party.”
Early on, DFER identified then-Senator Barack Obama and then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker as promising politicians willing to break with teachers unions. DFER was instrumental in convincing Obama to appoint charter-friendly Chicago Superintendent Arne Duncan as secretary of education, and it spent a lot of time and money lobbying the administration to pursue reformist education policies like Race to the Top and Common Core. Tied to Obama’s coattails, DFER was now one of the most influential political players in the ascendant education-reform movement.
Who is involved in DFER? Miller answers:
The list of original funders is chock-full of Wall Street A-listers. There was Joel Greenblatt, head of Gotham Asset Management and author of the seminal high-finance book You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. There were Charles Ledley and James Mai of Cornwall Capital, perhaps most well known for betting big against the subprime-mortgage market, which was depicted in the book-turned-blockbuster The Big Short. There was David Einhorn, head of Greenlight Capital, who has drawn scrutiny on more than one occasion for financial wrongdoing.
Basically, if you were anybody who was anybody in hedge funds, you probably chipped in. Tilson called the group Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), and set it with a mission “to break the teacher unions’ stranglehold over the Democratic Party.”
Early on, DFER identified then-Senator Barack Obama and then–Newark Mayor Cory Booker as promising politicians willing to break with teachers unions. DFER was instrumental in convincing Obama to appoint charter-friendly Chicago Superintendent Arne Duncan as secretary of education, and it spent a lot of time and money lobbying the administration to pursue reformist education policies like Race to the Top and Common Core. Tied to Obama’s coattails, DFER was now one of the most influential political players in the ascendant education-reform movement.
It is important for reports like Miller’s story to be circulated widely, among school board members across the nation. They need to understand where the “dark money” is coming from. They need to know why a race that once could be self-financed now requires large sums of money. They need to know who DFER is, who Stand for Children is, and know that their agenda is privatization of public schools. As the recent election in Nashville showed, outside money poured in but it was not enough to defeat the candidates who were fighting to improve the public schools, not to replace them. Since the “reformers” always fly under a false flag, promising to improve public schools and to save children from “failing schools,” democracy requires that voters know who they are and what they seek.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
These two articles just in from Inside Higher Education:
Clinton campaign taps 2 prominent for-profit critics: Two Obama administration veterans are now advising Hillary Clinton’s campaign, suggesting that as president she would continue aggressive enforcement policies of the current Education Department.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/02/clinton-campaign-taps-2-prominent-profit-critics?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=4b5742079a-DNU20160902&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-4b5742079a-198488425&mc_cid=4b5742079a&mc_eid=f743ca9d07
AND
For-Profit Group Tries New Approach, Again – Inside Higher Ed
For-profit group’s new leader calls for self-regulation and collaboration; For-Profit Colleges Seek Reprieve on ‘Gainful Employment’ Rule; For-profit-college …
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/02/profit-groups-new-leader-calls-self-regulation-and-collaboration
Differentiating between non-profit and for-profit, is a convenient talking point. The Waltons are privatizing through non-profit charter schools. The analogy is the camel’s nose in the tent, with the expectation that profit-taking will occur down the road.
Linda writes: “Differentiating between non-profit and for-profit, is a convenient talking point. The Waltons are privatizing through non-profit charter schools. The analogy is the camel’s nose in the tent, with the expectation that profit-taking will occur down the road.”
Yes–they make us all have to play whack-a-mole with their deceptive appropriation of basic language. I understand (from Mayer’s “Dark Money” interview on booktv.org) Is that the Koch brothers are saying they just need to work on their brand, and that they are now appropriating the term “well-being” in that service. So I guess we need to watch out for that BASIC TERM and its transposition AKA Koch-meaning. Is it any wonder that a person like Trump was able to attract voters on the idea that he isn’t a puppet of plutocrats who are trying to take over the Republican party and then destroy democracy. (Those voters got the disease right, but the cure . . . not so much (duh)–though apparently the billionaires are not so happy with him either.
The Aspen Institute brags about its success (political) in getting reform implemented. Gates funds Aspen’s education programs like Senior Congressional Education Staff Network and Pahara Aspen Institute. Until earlier this summer, David Koch was in the photo array of Aspen board members.
On Sept. 2, American Prospect’s Rachel Cohen wrote about the threat to local community charter schools, posed by the charter chains. A quote from the article, “Officials seem to be aiming at all of the independent charter schools.” In a second quote, “Political and financial competition” is too steep for neighborhood schools to survive. My takeaway, urban neighborhoods are left with segregated schools that describe themselves as “culturally affirming”, while lesson content is limited to that found on standardized tests.
An internet article, from a few years ago, described Bill Gates as going to Capital Impact Partners, a spin off from a government created bank (NCB), created to assist community co-ops, to get assistance in financing for the charter chain partnered with Netflix’s CEO.
It is the law of the jungle. The strong will consume the weak. This is our current vulture economy. It is a winner takes all way of thinking and doing business. However, our young people are caught in the crossfire of disruption. Our policymakers that should be looking to protect our young people are complicit and part of the problem.
This makes even more sense in our current school reform game if the phrase “the strong will consume the weak” is turned into “the greedy will impoverish the dependent.”
Concentrated wealth strangled economic opportunity. The revenue source that’s remains, for Wall Street’s unproductive, is cannibalizing the young.
Why are they doing this?
Do they hope to make money investing in charters?
That is the main goal. They also get tax write offs and in many cases tax credits. Some of these hedge fund people cash in by investing in the real estate shift that occurs from setting up selective, mostly white charters and the cheap charters for the locals. They profit from the resultant segregation.
(1) Charter school debt portfolios return 10-18% to Wall Street. That’s our tax dollars, which we intended for education. (2) The for-profit charters enrich plutocrats who buy politicians in the state capitols (Ohio’s experience is recorded at the website, Plunderbund). (3) The non-profits self-deal in schemes like paying excessive rents to the for-profit buildings that they own. And, they also pay outrageous salaries for administration (often themselves).
Bill Gates’ foundation gave $22 mil. to the New Schools Venture Fund, which described its marching orders in a Kim Smith interview at Philanthropy Roundtable, “to develop diverse charter school organizations that produce different brands on a large scale.”