This post was written in 2014, but it remains relevant today. DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) raises large sums of money from hedge fund managers to promote charter schools. The free market has been very good to hedge fund managers, and they think that public schools should compete in a free market too. They are not in the game to make money, but to promote their ideology of free-market competition. DFER and its related organizations, like Education Reform Now, and Families for Excellent Schools, are spending millions of dollars in places as far-flung as Denver and Massachusetts. It may be confusing to the public to see “Democrats” promoting school choice and accountability, since these have always been Republican ideas for school reform. But, it made no sense to create a group called Republicans for Education Reform because Republicans don’t need to be convinced to private public schools.
Leonie Haimson, parent advocate (and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education), asks:
How did this happen? How did our electeds of both parties enable corporate interests to hijack our public schools?
Her answer:
A small band of Wall St. billionaires decided to convert the Democratic party to the Republican party, at least on education — and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams – or our worst nightmares. And now we have electeds of both parties who are intent on helping them engineer a hostile takeover of our public schools, which has nothing to do with parent choice but the choice of these plutocrats.
What can you do about it?
Contact the Network for Public Education and find out how you can become active in your local or state organization that supports public schools and opposes privatization.
If you live in Massachusetts, join parents and educators who are fighting Question 2, which would allow unlimited expansion of charters to replace public schools.
Get involved.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Best government money can buy!
Some politicians may actually believe in what they have done. Like always, many, maybe most politicians are abysmally ignorant in so many areas. Time is spent in raising money to keep them in office. They depend on lobbyists to inform them.
Small wonder our political system is broken.
And when even so-called liberals like Senator Elizabeth Warren don’t have a problem with the Wall Street and Wal Mart billionaires taking over public schools in her home state, it’s a very tough battle to fight.
Imagine if Sen. Warren actually took a stand and brought some real attention to the mishmash of misleading PR coming out of the pro-charter side.
The GOP has been shoved so far right that it’s off the charts crazy nuts but dependably pro corporate. The Democratic party has also been shoved rightward, not as crazy as the GOP but dependably pro corporate in most instances. So we don’t get Bernie Sanders and a yahoo like Gary Johnson (free market solutions babbler) polls higher than Jill Stein. It’s so disgustingly sad.
Clinton is Republican-lite and would align closer to Reagan than any past true Democrats. I watched Johnson and Weld interviewed and thought I was viewing a comedy act where Johnson was the Tommy Smothers part of the team. Today, I watched the bland, robot Pence be challenged on Trump Foundation misdeeds and his response was to first attack the journalists, and when that didn’t work, deflect and ramble on incoherently about Clinton. Voters need to wake from their summer slumber, put down the Cheetoes, and tune in to the election.
I think Gary Johnson has a major screw loose in his skull. In one interview, he was talking with his tongue sticking out of his mouth? Huh? Trying to be humorous? It came across as being very bizarre and nutty, the interviewer looked befuddled. This clown jerk wants to “reform” Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (just like the GOP) and he’s on all the ballots in 50 states. Meanwhile Jill Stein is not on all the ballots of the 50 states and she makes sense. I blame the American public.
Apparently, when it comes to education, Senator Elizabeth Warren is Republican-lite, too. Even Bernie isn’t exactly fighting for public education.
There are alternatives to the madness. Just check these kids out!
This explains in large part why the republican platforms education plank is indistinguishable from what Obama’s education policy has been from the start. Remember that it was DFER that lobbied Obama to select anyone but Linda Darling-Hammond for Sec. of Ed. LDH was the most knowledgable and qualified person on Obama’s education transition team. There was an article about this that I can’t post here due to this being a stupid tablet, but I’m pretty sure it was titled “The Hatchet Job on Linda Darling-Hammond”
Here it is, found a workaround to page expiration. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/the-hatchet-job-on-linda_b_155104.html
The only hope for democracy is to get the money out of politics. Otherwise, the 1% and hedge fund managers will continue to suppress the power of the people. Hedge funds are vultures. They make money by destroying companies and selling off the parts for profit. They are using these tactics against public schools. Their ultimate goal is access to public money, profit, and tax breaks. They will not stop unless they are stopped by laws, and laws cannot be written when they own the legislators. This is a corrupt circle of money and influence that impedes democracy. Many countries that support strong public education have laws that will not enable a hostile takeover of public education. If we hope to remove public education from being stripped of resources, we have to pass laws that remove its monetization.
“They see no need to respond to or be accountable for their philanthropic investments to anyone else but themselves.”
Why would oligarchs want to appeal to “the people” who they have been systematically dumbing down, buying off, and misleading for so long? These are the same people who, by having been midled, scream “I HATE GOVERNMENT” while those same corporate “leaders” spoil their air and water, create earthquakes in Oklahoma and Texas, ruin the gulf of Mexico, and cheat anyone whenever they can get away with it (e.g., Wells Fargo and hedge fund managers). Why should they try to work around government regulations when they can write them, while getting the so-called electorate to hate “the government” even when “the government” is the ONLY institution who can stop the corporate carnage that puts us all in danger?
If there is a failure of education at work here, it’s in the obvious contempt for others coupled with an absence of humility in those who would foster and live in such a political, moral, and spiritual sewer.
Hi Diane, this might be worth a look. About ALEC, iNACOL, and ESSA.
WELL IF VERY SADLY EXPLAINED HERE: We’ve been had: for charters, ESSA is a dream come true.
It is fair to say that instead of protecting our students from commercialization, our policymakers are serving our poorest, most vulnerable student on a platter to corporations. Instead of receiving direct service from trained professionals as was the practice under Title 1, students will become wards of Silicon Valley despite the fact there is no evidence to support this agenda. Corporations understand that STUDENT CENTERED ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS is code for “personalized learning.” Gates and company made sure he and his cronies benefited from this new legislation. This is a big wad of pay to play.
“A small band of Wall St. billionaires decided to convert the Democratic party to the Republican party, at least on education — and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams – or our worst nightmares. And now we have electeds of both parties who are intent on helping them engineer a hostile takeover of our public schools, which has nothing to do with parent choice but the choice of these plutocrats.”
The author is absolutely wrong (don’t jump yet). Education is probably the least of that small group of billionaires concerns. They have eviscerated the party of “the people” top to bottom on every economic issue. Leaving it to be a party of social issues. Bernie Sanders represented nothing more than the FDR/LBJ wing of the party he was hung out to dry by all but a few, “Establishment Democrats”. The country has not move right there is no left wing alternative.
Mike Lofgren “Confessions of a Republican Who Left the Cult ” It is only gotten wore since he wrote it,five years ago.
“The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class – without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.
What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style “centrist” Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]
While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations’ bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let’s build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it’s evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.”
Here’s the ed reform agenda – what they want asked at the presidential debate:
https://edreformnow.org/2016-first-presidential-debate-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-education-part-3-charter-schools-parental-choice-quality/
Nothing whatever on public schools. Again.
What happened to the Common Core, BTW? Are they bored with that already? Weren’t public schools supposed to get some “support” attached to the mandate? Did they renege on yet another solemn vow?
I think I may have found a clue into why Hillary Clinton was mum on her plans for K-12 education when Diane gave the nominee the “elevator speech:”
“Public charter schools came up several times in the Democratic primaries, with both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders making comments that concerned charter supporters. Clinton course-corrected subsequently, emphasizing her strong support for high-performing public charter schools.
“’Today we saw what is possible in America when Congress puts its partisan interests aside and works towards making high-quality education a priority for every child…[The Every Student Succeeds Act] authorizes critical resources to support teacher development, increase access to early childhood education, and expand high-quality public charter schools.’
– Hillary Clinton Statement on Passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, December 2015.”
I, myself, am curious to see if the pro-public school protest before the debate garners any coverage tonight.
https://edreformnow.org/2016-first-presidential-debate-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-education-part-3-charter-schools-parental-choice-quality/
Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" and commented:
Leonie Haimson: How DFER Hijacked Public Education
by dianeravitch
This post was written in 2014, but it remains relevant today. DFER (Democrats for Education Reform) raises large sums of money from hedge fund managers to promote charter schools. The free market has been very good to hedge fund managers, and they think that public schools should compete in a free market too. They are not in the game to make money, but to promote their ideology of free-market competition. DFER and its related organizations, like Education Reform Now, and Families for Excellent Schools, are spending millions of dollars in places as far-flung as Denver and Massachusetts. It may be confusing to the public to see “Democrats” promoting school choice and accountability, since these have always been Republican ideas for school reform. But, it made no sense to create a group called Republicans for Education Reform because Republicans don’t need to be convinced to private public schools.
Leonie Haimson, parent advocate (and a member of the board of the Network for Public Education), asks:
How did this happen? How did our electeds of both parties enable corporate interests to hijack our public schools?
Her answer:
A small band of Wall St. billionaires decided to convert the Democratic party to the Republican party, at least on education — and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams – or our worst nightmares. And now we have electeds of both parties who are intent on helping them engineer a hostile takeover of our public schools, which has nothing to do with parent choice but the choice of these plutocrats.
What can you do about it?
Contact the Network for Public Education and find out how you can become active in your local or state organization that supports public schools and opposes privatization.
If you live in Massachusetts, join parents and educators who are fighting Question 2, which would allow unlimited expansion of charters to replace public schools.
Get involved.
dianeravitch | September 25, 2016 at 12:00 pm | Categories: Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization | URL: http://wp.me/p2odLa-f2H
{ Open the kink in the bottom }
Involve parents is not good idea .
Parents will atack the public education . Parents should know the difference between ,
Public eduantion and Charters Schools . Honestly how many out there knows who is this that corruct guy ? No many the worts enemy we has is 90 % . That guy cached on cameras is the Chariman of an charter school . Why the media keep in closed doors the true ?
Parents won’t get involve .
The bad , the worts and worts .
Sending people to fight education , is the worts mistake , before parents should know and is sad . Charters are not public schools Charters are Corruts Corporations . I’m don’t now much I think someone one at least one agreed with me and teach me more about it .
I’m very sad , parents are working very hart and Evils people are liying because criminals should be in Jail and the’r running bussines . The’r care only in money , they need it . Charters need millions to suborn , as much as they can , the proble is inside .
Parents can’t be involved yet , before parents Know nothing and the link talk by themselves .