Mercedes Schneider describes here the billionaire-funded plan to disrupt and privatize public education in Los Angeles, while deceiving the public and hiding the men behind the curtain.
Mercedes uses her superb investigative talents to follow the money and show the tight collaboration be tween the faux-Democrat Eli Broad and the far-right, union-hating Waltons of Arkansas.
She writes:
“It seems that the Walton-funded writing on the Los Angeles wall might well entail expanding charters as the answer to making all Los Angeles schools better. It also believes in bringing traditional school districts around to its market-driven-reform thinking via corporate-reform-group infiltration. Too, it seems that the Walton Foundation believes that grass roots support for its effort is a matter of getting the public mind in line with the Walton charter expansion priorities.
“The Walton intentions in incubating and expanding corporate reform fit hand-in-glove with the Broad intentions for Los Angeles. On its website, the Broad Foundation generously tosses around the term “public schools” even as it features KIPP, Success Academies, and Teach for America among its handful of “key grantees.” Furthermore, the Broad listing of current grantees is for the most part a corporate reform festival:
4.0 Schools
Achievement First
Achievement School District
Bellwether Education Partners
Bright Star Schools
Broad Center for the Management of School Systems
Building Excellent Schools
Center for American Progress
Central Michigan University Foundation
Charter School Growth Fund
Common Sense Media
Education Reform Now
Education Week
EXED, LLC
Great Public Schools Now
Green Dot Public Schools
Harvard University
IDEA Public Schools
Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP)
Leadership for Educational Equity
Michigan Education Excellence Foundation
Michigan State University – College of Education
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
National Center on Education and the Economy
National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ)
Noble Network of Charter Schools
Orange County Public Schools
Partnership for Los Angeles Schools
Policy Innovators in Education Network
Progressive Policy Institute
Results in Education (RIE) Foundation
Scholarship Management Services
School of Visual and Performing Arts
Silicon Schools Fund, Inc.
Success Academy Charter Schools
Teach For America
“Note that Broad is currently funding ExED, and that Great Public Schools Now has two ExED reps on its board/team: William Siart and Anita Landecker. What this illustrates is the all-too-common corporate reform funding incest. (According to the Walton 2013 tax form, Walton has also given ExED $50,000, and the Waltons loaned ExED $5 million for Los Angeles charter school facility financing.)”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Long lists like this are generated whenever you follow the money and the participants in the infrastructure designed to create the illusion that public education is thriving when, in fact, is targeted by individuals and groups for destruction and replacement with unelected managers and often by many unqualified personnel. I think that the intended LA takeover is as much about real estate development as anything else. Getting loans for construction of charter schools is no a big deal especially when there is a known flow of public income and you can bypass those teacher unions in hiring.
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And, the media persists in describing the Center for American Progress, with its funding from the Walton’s and corporations, as a view from the left side of the aisle. What a crock.
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I suppose it’s time to remind everyone that (a) Hillary served on the board of Walmart (and has never, to my knowledge, publicly disapproved of their actions regarding education) and (b) Hillary has long been best friends with Eli Broad.
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Hillary has been a friend to the rich. Trump is an enemy to everything that is decent.
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Trump’s mountain of evil makes Hillary’s a molehill.
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One of the waltons is a major Hilary contributor. Not all far right. Or are they?
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Privatizing the public schools is an Overclass consensus, and is thus bi-partisan. Privateers in both parties want to sink their fangs into the annual $600 billion-plus honey pots in the budgets of the public schools, and they also want to take advantage of the social engineering opportunities that Overclass control of the schools would provide
If anything, Party labels are a distraction from the facts on the ground, which reveal that the overwhelming majority of elected officials in both parties are feeding at the malanthropists trough, and excreting their patrons self-interested opinions and policies for public consumption.
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Excellent, Michael, and thank you.
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Wordsmith!
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“The Walton Family Foundation’s original theory of change was that expanding choice would spur competition, and consequently create system-wide improvements.” A “power grab” does not improve the state of education. It destroys public education by allowing charters to pick and choose those mostly likely to succeed while it leaves an impoverished public school to provide service for the most expensive and troubled students. Education should be about creating opportunities for all children, and not about creating a system of winners and losers. Education should also not being about targeting a specific community. Minority parents should be outraged that billionaires want to establish separate and unequal schools that target minority youth in which they will gladly provide them with “fake” teachers that receive six hours of training. This is another example of separate and unequal.
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It would be better to substitute “pretext” for “theory” in sentence #1 of your comment.
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The quote is from Mercedes’ text, but I agree pretext is an excellent word choice here.
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Been reading Policy Patrons. And it’s given me a different insight.
We all feel like Gates, Broad and others are “dictating” what happens. It’s hard – because they aren’t. What they’re doing is far more subtle but with similar results.
What they’ve done is create a “walled garden” of groups that are all paid to support their position. The list in this article is an example of creating that walled garden – a range of community organizations, researchers, university credibility, etc…
THEN, with the walled garden created, the foundations themselves never have to “tell the government what to do”. They are able to say “well, I know somebody who deals with that – you should talk with them”. Except the foundations have ensured that this “somebody” is somebody who will give the answer they want.
It’s incredibly deceptive – but politicians and press seem incapable of detecting when they’ve been had in this way. Because the “walled garden” of true “ed reform believers” are the only people they end up talking to. In a sense, Gates, Broad, et. al. deliver answers on a silver platter so that state education departments, school districts, politicians, and press don’t have to work hard.
This informal (but massive) walled garden they’ve build believes in testing as management, believes in CCSS, believes in charter schools, and believes that privatizing government services is always good.
As a result, state education bureaucrats NEVER have to wander outside the garden – so they never have to confront uncomfortable truths. (It’s dangerous outside those walls and that threatens one’s career.)
But this also explains why politicians are so shocked when citizens confront them with dissatisfaction with their policies – they’ve been blissfully living inside the Eden of Reform – unaware that they aren’t in touch with reality. I’ve seen this in Oregon. Our legislators cannot believe it when someone rational challenges what they’ve been doing.
It’s a HUGE problem for those of us who believe in public schools and believe in the value of researched answers. Because it’s not illegal what they’ve done. They believe it’s entirely moral. And they think they’re being “good people” by doing it. And it spreads blame by breaking it into tiny bits so no single organization can be blamed for much. Kind of a guaranteed “plausible deniability” clause.
Yet the result is entirely immoral – because it’s the future of our children.
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Doug Garnett–you offer a great explanation of what’s happening and great reasons for others to make sure they have the opportunity to influence those decisions. In the words of Shirley Chisolm, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
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Yes, a very good explanation.
It’s almost as if these malanthropists have laundered their money, making it seem as if their common wealth and power grab is being proposed by “neutral” and “meritocratic” actors.
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I would like to think as highly of our policymakers as you do, but I can’t. I do not think many elected representatives are giving students, evidence and the importance of democratic public schools a second thought. Too many our our representatives have the moral compass of “ladies of the evening.” In other words, for the right price, I will provide a service. Our system of needing campaign donations creates this environment. The only thing that will capture their attention is irate citizens that threaten to unseat them and take away their golden ticket.
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The policy maker questions aren’t at that kind of deep level. Rather, someone from Gates might have lunch with an Oregon legislator. At that lunch, the legislator might say “we have a bill on charter schools I’m looking at”. The Gates rep can’t say “you should pass it”. What they say is “you know, if you want some more info you might check with AIR for their research into the issue.”
That’s how deep the garden goes. For politicians it’s at a high level. For the ODE bureaucrat, it’s at the level of “I have to write rules this year about test policy”..and the Gates rep still has someone to refer them to. The Oregonian reporter might talk about SAT scores and the Gates rep will refer them to…
I think most policy makers want to believe they take their roles seriously. But they are underfunded and are term limited. So they’ll never actively question things at any deep level. That turns the power over to lobbyists (which Gates can’t do) or to the walled garden.
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It’s not very subtle for Gates to fund Aspen’s Senior Congressional Education Staff Network and the Pahara Aspen Institute. (David Koch’s photo was in the Aspen board photo array until this summer.)
It’s not very subtle when Kim Smith describes, in national media, the “marching orders” of her New Schools Venture Fund ($22 mil. from Gates), “…to develop diverse charter school organizations that produce different brands on a large scale”- Philanthropy Roundtable.
It’s not very subtle when an employee of a Gates-funded organization, writes in national media “…reformers…declare ‘We’ve got to blow up the ed schools.’ ” (Philanthropy Roundtable, “Don’t Surrender the Academy”, co-written with AEI’s Frederick Hess).
“Progressive” Senator Sherrod Brown, with full knowledge that Bill Gates is an investor in the largest retailer of schools-in-a-box and, of the Philanthropy Roundtable articles, still asked the US Dept. of Ed. to give Ohio $71 mil. to privatize its public schools.
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The good news is that the public is beginning to understand that the billionaire-funded charter movement is privatization of a community asset that belongs to the public.
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The charter lobby has grown so powerful and is backed by billionaires and hedge fund managers that most politicians are afraid to open their mouths to support public schools. Hillary criticized the cherry picking of charters. Within the next couple of days she stated she supports “high performing charters.” I am sure she had been spoken to, especially since Podesta is on her team. As you said politicians are busy, but citizens need to pester them and remind them of how many voters support public education.
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Linda – The walled garden they’ve built isn’t subtle. But it’s legal. I don’t understand all the details. But it’s illegal for them to lobby. This book through interviews at the foundations funds their goal is to push as far as they can without legal action that loses their tax status.
The garden is also so fragmented that no one can write the expose’ article. They can only attack little pieces of the strategy.
And some of these things they give the press, for example, plausible arguments. Like funding at the Aspen Institute. Gates just says “we are doing a good thing for society bringing together people to solve these problems.” Hard to argue with that idea… And the garden is big enough they can bring together a very large group (a sham to support the idea they are open to ideas) while ensuring all of those people live safely within the walled garden
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In Ohio, we receive frequent political calls-my message each and every time time, “When the Party renounces Bill Gates’ privatization plot against public education, we’ll support the political candidate you’re calling about. Pass the message up the chain.”
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Excellent post, Doug! Muchas gracias.
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Thanks, Mercedes Schneider, and Diane Ravitch for reposting this important look at Los Angeles.
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The Waltons and Broad do exactly what the Republican Congress does when it comes time to proportion representation in states after the census. They gerrymander their politics and funding to give themselves the edge while claiming they are agnostic cheerleaders wanting “everyone” to succeed.
As power players in any city’s economic structure, they have an oversized seat at the table and, like Donald Trump’s best self-preservation instincts, use that leverage to not only see that their interests are protected–but to actually TAKE MORE from the people who are the most vulnerable.
In their script, the fortunes the Waltons and Broads made is the very thing that makes America great and why they seek to brand everything they touch with their golden names–again, exactly like Donald Trump. Their Democracy is branding our public schools with their name and consumerist ethos as well.
Both their businesses reaped tremendous benefits from Republican economic policy and federal dollars that allowed them to be rapacious in their vast appetite for greater wealth and influence and, again like Donald Trump, ponied up their political contributions to WHOMEVER could best help them gobble more and more and more.
With insufferable self-congratulation, they tout their participation in Education Reform as “democracy” and “choice” in action.
Remember citizens…Their way of “giving back” always ends up in their taking more.
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