Laura Chapman wrote the following expose of a new series that will appear on PBS. It must be public television’s effort to curry favor with the Trump administration, as it reflects the extremist agenda of Betsy DeVos, who is intent on creating a free market in publicly-funded schooling. Since Trump’s budget has proposed to eliminate funding for public television, this series may be a demonstration that even PBS will give a showcase to libertarians who want to destroy public institutions.
More than ten years ago, PBS ran a four-part series called SCHOOL, produced by Sarah Patton, Sarah Mondale, and Vera Aronow. It was a history of public education that documented the role of public education in welcoming generations of immigrants and leading the way to a better society. For the past four years the same team has been creating a one-hour documentary exposing the corporate assault on public education. They have struggled to find funding, but they are near completion. The very least that PBS could do to compensate for featuring a one-sided rightwing diatribe against public education would be to show “Backpack Full of Cash,” which portrays the bitter forces of reaction that seek to destroy one of our most treasured democratic institutions, public schools funded by all and open to all.
It is ironic and sad that public television would lend credibility to an attack on public education. Encouraging the forces intent on destroying everything “public” will not save public television.
Chapman writes:
“I just posted about the SCHOOL, INC. television programs on PBS. I did not do enough research. Here is what you really should know about the programs.
“These programs are pure propaganda for so-called free market education. They have been produced courtesy of Free to Choose, a promoter of all things that the late Milton and Rosa Friedman would love.
“The PBS website says that funding for these programs has been provided by the Texas-based Rose-Marie and Jack R. Anderson Foundation. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Rose-Marie_and_Jack_R._Anderson_Foundation
The Anderson Foundation s one of several ultra conservative funders, but the series is also sell-funded by being part of the Free to Choose Network. That Network is a non-profit set up by the one of the Executive Producers Bob Chitester
“Bob Chitester is chairman, president and CEO of Free To Choose Network, a 501-c-3 public foundation housing Free To Choose Media, an award-winning, global entertainment company which produces and distributes thought-provoking public television programs and series. In 1977, Chitester and economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, undertook a film project which became Free To Choose, an award-winning PBS TV series and an international best-selling book based on the series. You can learn more about the connection of this non-profit to the Friedman doctrine of market-based education here and elsewhere on the internet. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Free_to_Choose_Network
“Among the others responsible for the series is Andrew Coulson. Coulson is the Creator, Writer, and Director. His bio, posted on PBS, says Coulson studied mathematics and computer science at McGill University and worked as a Microsoft software engineer. In 1994, he became ” troubled by the fact that teaching and learning were being left behind by the relentless progress in other fields. His book, Market Education: The Unknown History, received endorsements from Washington Post columnist William Raspberry, Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman, Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson, and University of Chicago education psychologist Herbert Walberg. His 2009 paper for the peer-reviewed Journal of School Choice was the most comprehensive review of the worldwide scientific literature comparing alternative education systems. In 2011 he conducted a statistical study titled “The Other Lottery: Are Philanthropists Backing the Best Charter Schools?” Coulson has ….testified before the United States House and Senate on the state of American education and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court. He was senior fellow in education policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute, and contributed chapters to books by the Hoover Institution and Canada’s Fraser Institute. Prior to his death in February 2016, Coulson made arrangements to ensure School, Inc. would be completed for broadcast television.”
“There are many reasons why I support my local PBS broadcasters. This programing is not one of them.
“Overall, I think that PBS has done a miserable job of seeking spokespersons for public education, especially parents, students, administrators and politicians. Diane Ravitch has appeared on Tavis Smiley, Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers and a few other programs, but I have seen no real coverage of the issues facing public education right now.
“I wonder if PBS scheduled this series to coincide with the Betsy DeVos/Trump agenda that will pour money into vouchers and set in motion market-based education as if the new norm for American education. I wonder if Milton and Rosa Friedman smiling. Did PBS intend to insult many of their supporters, including me, by scheduling this series now?
“Please be aware that this PBS series is a propaganda machine for market-based education. The programs are not presented in a context that makes that obvious.
“I intend to let my local PBS stations know that this series looks like a well-planned and perfectly timed promo for the DeVos/Trump agenda.
“I will also ask for them to take affirmative steps to support public education and the public schools in their viewing areas.
“PBS seems to be satisfied with educational programming for use by teachers and cartoony programs for children. Sesame Street is hosted after it has made money elsewhere. Unless I am mistaken, Trump’s proposed budget for PBS will bring a 20% cut, not total elimination.
“PBS needs all the support it can get. This is not a way to support the public schools who serve the majority of our students and with uncommon ingenuity and devotion in the midst of budget cuts and unwarranted, unsupported attacks from billionaires, including the funders of these programs.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
PBS also partially aired a series titled “Pension Perils”. PBS failed to mention that it was solely funded by John Arnold, a biliionaire extremely hostile to pensions, who made his money at Enron and took the 5th (I believe) to avoid self incrimination. David Sirota exposed this story but PBS said it would continue to air until public outrage forced it to stop airing the series and return the money. Hopefully there will be another public outrage at this series that may actually backfire against the privatizers.
It is unfortunate that PBS is acting as a corporate shill. In the name of truth they should look at facts and evidence rather than paid propaganda. The facts show us that every market based approach to public education has failed. No other nation is attacking its public education they way the billionaires and corporations are doing in our country. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/08/pisa-education-test-scores-meaning
retired teacher,
Your comment is right on. It is just so sad that the billionaire boys and girls club are motivated by accumulating even more wealth and power over the citizenry.
I am re-watching the Oscar winner film: GANDHI. What would have happened if we weren’t sucked into the deforms and just peacefully resisted rather than cooperated and give away our profession to the rich? The rich know how to pit us against one another. It’s an old technique used for eons and eons.
I have tried to be agitated about the Trump administration attack on PBS funding, but I can’t quite get there. Far too often these days, PBS does exactly this– give the protective cover of their supposedly unbiased “brand” to a piece of corporate propaganda.
I agree, but I’m a sucker for “Masterpiece” and the many wonderful British mysteries.
You can watch them on ACORN TV for $50 a year! That’s what I do. PBS isn’t necessary. Unfortunately they have destroyed credibility. The NPR radio stations are the same.
Cross Posted at OpED News: https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Trump-DeVos-Suck-Up-Watch-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Billionaires_Diane-Ravitch_Education_Funding-170402-739.html#comment652779
with 2 comments:
Comment 1:$ is for $chools: “Venture philanthropists” push for the privatization of public education. This important article–“When Billionaires Become Educational Experts” https://www.aaup.org/article/when-billionaires-become-educational-experts#.WOETNxiZP2J
–describes the right wing foundations and business groups that are financing the war on public schools and their teachers. For years we see the decreasing ability of health-care professionals to make decisions and provide services because of the demands of insurance companies and health-management organizations to sustain profits. Health-care decisions are too often made by the wrong people,So, too, with public education. Current reforms are allowing certain individuals with neither scholarly nor practical expertise in education to exert significant influence over educational policy for communities and children other than their own.”
Comment 2
Look at how New York Hedge Funds Pour Millions of Dollars into Cuomo-Led Bid to Expand Charter Schools | Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/11/new_york_hedge_funds_pour_millions
HERE ere IS SOMETHING that you can do TO FIGHT THE CORRUPTION. BE INFORMED.. because if you only hear fake news how will you be able to discern what is afoot out there… They are coming for the kids through the schools, because if they # GET ‘EM YOUNG, they got our future workers and citizens.
r Go to the NPE site and learn what you can DO as parents and as citizens! https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2015/11/newsletter-15-years-of-bill-gatess-
Here is information that Diane Ravitch provides about PRIVATIZATION https://dianeravitch.net/?s=PRIVITIZATION as the state legislatures take over the local schools, with nary an educator on board, and giving them to charters, with not a shred of oversight! OR her piece on the A Slick Campaign for Privatization!
The Newshour opening sequence reads like a who’s who of privatization. I’m sure the Bill and Melinda Foundation by itself donates more than “viewers like you.” The station has been running pro-free market education embedded advertising on a near daily basis for years. Literally Rheeally. They’ve been slam Duncan against teachers for years. I’m sure the billionaires are happy to make up any public funding losses, and to attach accompanying strings. “Public” television? Ha! There is no such thing. This is the 21st century. Money equals free speech.
YES. For years I’ve been thinking they could change that little blurb about being “Funded by viewers like you” to: “Funded by viewers like you, Bill and Melinda Gates.”
To whom at PBS can we write to question this selection?
Time for letters, postcards, emails, tweets to PBS.
Yes. A letter writing campaign would let them know that public schools should not be sold out by public TV
You can also make your wishes known to your local PBS affiliate(s). Local stations read their mail, I know, I used to work for a PBS station.
Register your protest with PBS at 703-739-5000.
Everyone knows public schools are worse than charter and private schools, Diane.
Why, just listen to the propaganda the Trump Administration pumps out on a daily basis!
Public schools are terrifying places where all children are bullied on a daily basis and all teachers are sex offenders. They’re “factory schools” or “government schools” or “crumbling prisons”. There are no successful graduates of public schools in the United States- we’re all “mediocre” compared to the Best and Brightest in the “movement”.
Here’s a story about a solid public school district Betsy DeVos will never visit and which will never be mentioned at any ed reform convention or meeting:
The Trump Administration and the ed reform movement more generally are anti-public schools. It’s glaringly obvious when reading any of their stuff. They only reason they don’t see it is because it’s an echo chamber.
If that picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words, then it is a condemning picture of what passes for the teaching and learning process that actually should go on in a public school classroom
Duane, that was my first thought, as well.
Although, it does some great things, like offering extended hours, before and after school, with art, music etc. offerings, but it’s not clear to me from the article if these are offered during the normal school day, or mainly during the extended hours.
So kudos to them for what they have done for poor kids and the community, but not all children are (nor should they be) plugged so firmly into the STEM subjects. Do they have classes during the school day that emphasize literature, the humanities, the arts, etc, and not just mainly after school?
I would have been much more comfortable if they had featured a photograph of a teacher reading to a bunch of kids gathered around him/her.
But maybe that’s just me.
What I love about this is bashing public schools is an occupation now. It’s a career choice. There are thousands of people who are paid to attack public schools and push charter and vouchers.
They talk a lot about “adult interests” in ed reform. I think I found one. How many people make their living with this? Thousands.
These anti-public schools propaganda pieces are practically a genre in ed reform circles.
Chiara,
The many adults who are paid to attack public schools apparently have no “adult interest,” like keeping their job.
I’m just one parent but when ed reformers wonder why I don’t want them in my son’s school they should take a look at the anti-public school stuff they fund and back.
Why would I want a group of adults who are opposed to public schools IN my son’s school?
This I don’t need. Take your political campaign elsewhere. We’ll struggle along without adults who claim to support “public education” but don’t support any actual public schools. Go to a charter or private school. Those are the schools you’re promoting. Leave us out of this ideological mission to destroy us.
Betsy DeVos expects me to believe she can’t find a single successful public school student in the United States nor can she find a single parent who supports a public schools.
This is pure ideological zealotry and she should be ashamed she’s using public dollars to promote her agenda, an agenda that completely omits 90% of US kids.
Ol Betsy is just doing her god’s work. Sometimes it is a nasty business to be done, but her god put her in that position so she must continue her crusade.
And my god put me in my position as a public school teacher.
I stoppeed donating to PBS because of their acceptance of money from mega donors. I relented recently and signed up with PBS for $60 per/year donations to get their shows whenever I want to see them via streaming. Now with this latest anti public school program I am thinking of cancelling.
If you search guidestar you will find this “Non Profit” organization’s data.
Take a look at travel which is the major expense of the company. They conveniently list $800 K+ as salaries but do not list what they are paying the folks they list. $204 K goes to Chitester’s other company. See: http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2015/521/455/2015-521455677-0c6365b8-9.pdf for thee Free to Choose 990. Most of the expenses are for the type of work they put together for PBS.
Look on the expense page.
There is a war going on. Disappointing to see PBS giving them airtime for their propaganda traducing the public schools.
This series is reminiscent of the “hit piece” series that PBS produced a few years ago against public employee pensions to curry funding from Wall Street. That series was yanked and never aired after a huge ground swell of protest because of its one-sided attack on public pensions. If the National Education Association and all the state and local teachers’ associations deluge PBS and Congress with protests against this new anti-public school series, perhaps it will also be shelved. But the protest has to be HUGE and unrelenting. Teachers need to email, text, and tweet to their local PBS stations telling the stations that they will no longer contribute to PBS and no longer purchase and use PBS materials if this series is aired. And they need to act NOW!
Diane, I don’t think that this is PBS trying to curry favor with the Trump administration, I think it is PBS trying to curry favor with the Gates Foundation and all the other billionaire foundations pushing for charter schools (and vouchers), so they can receive more money from them.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting may indeed be privatized and it’s funding cut. Funding for both PBS and NPR is very complex. Some years ago, funding for National Public Radio was slashed, and only about 10% or so of their funding now comes from the Feds. The rest they get from their ubiquitous fund drives, and a whole heck of a lot from foundations like the Gates and others (as well as commercial entities, although they don’t call them “advertisers,” they call them “sponsors.” Well, they certainly sound like advertising to me.)
So what PBS is doing is trying to suck up to billionaires who love charter schools and disparage public schools.
I am a former employee of a PBS Television/Radio station. (Engineering, not policy). According to the Federal Communications Act of 1934, Public stations cannot accept paid advertising. The funding comes from a combination of federal money, state money, contributions from “viewers like you”, foundations like the John D. and Catherine T MacArthur foundation, etc. PBS stations also get funding from corporate benefactors, in exchange for running the “underwrite” announcement. At my station (back in 1996), we would run an underwrite tag for a donation of $300. The corporate (or non-profit) underwriter gets no consideration, nor any endorsement from the PBS station. Accepting an underwrite implies no endorsement, in either direction. The station does not necessarily endorse the corporation which chooses to underwrite a program.
Corporate underwriters do select the programming that they choose to underwrite. This is only fair.
Except that this is supposed to be PUBLIC, hence the name. And if all PBS does is create shows that benefit their rich overlords, what is the point of PBS? It just replicates other stations.
I do not get your comment. PBS creates many fine shows, that the networks would never touch. Do you honestly think that the commercial networks would ever come up with a show like “Sesame Street”?
The majority of the funding for PBS comes from state/local sources. I worked for a college TV station (WKYU), which was primarily financed by the college (Western Kentucky University). The balance of the funding comes from private donations (Most less than $100), and from foundations like the Gates foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur foundation.
Corporate underwriters account for some of the funding for major shows like “Frontline”, and the Ken Burns films.
The programming created and broadcasted by PBS, benefits the public, not rich overlords.
Why not mention that this is a Frontline series? Frontline has shown other programs with biased information and bad facts. And they tend not to present the other side very well.
My local program guide does not run this as Frontline. It is primarily funded by the same foundation that’s produced it.
Just emailed both of my local PBS stations. Felt they were strongly worded. But did let both stations know that I felt it was humorous (???) that on their respective home pages they were asking their supporters to get in touch with their legislators in order to decry the loss of funding for public television. How does that fit with the scheduling of SCHOOL?
So PBS goes out not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Unhappy. (I wanted to say, “sd,” but I understand that Mr. DJT has trademarked the Sd word & is now due a royalty every time someone uses it in an online comment.
Morose.
🙂
This is the email I sent to PBS. I hope everybody calls/emails etc.
I just recently joined PBS in order to stream PBS videos. I may have to rethink that decision. I learned that PBS will air a biased anti public school series funded by wealthy individuals seeking to privatize public education. Shame on PBS. I recall when PBS was airing a show about the perils of pensions which was solely funded by John Arnold who rabidly opposes pensions and crusades against them. When David Sirota exposed how PBS did not disclose that it was solely funded by Mr. Arnold, PBS stated that it would continue airing it until public outrage forced PBS to cancel the program and return the money.
If PBS insists on airing this show I suggest it provide airtime after each segment for education historian Diane Ravitch to comment.
Respectfully.
Michael Brocoum
Michael,
What’s the email for PBS customer relations?
The email for PBS in NYC is: programming@thirteen.org.
I have two PBS stations. I sent the same letter to each with a copy to our local social justice group that supports public education. The letter includes attachments to Diane’s blog and a reminder that she is the expert of choice for public education.
Reblogged this on Mister Journalism: "Reading, Sharing, Discussing, Learning" and commented:
Goddang it PBS!
I am so tired of these well funded, ultra conservative groups posing as down to earth protectors of our school children. Not one politician, Obama, Trump or Governor Rick Scott of Florida has visited or said a kind word about public education. We have been fighting hard as teachers, but we cannot doing anything if parents accept the status quo.
Therefore, I have had enough. I am leaving the profession after 27 years in the classroom. I have no more to give.
Bruce, I thank you for your many years teaching and struggling, but I certainly cannot blame you for retiring now.
Enjoy your retirement, and know that you did everything that you could.
Namaste.
Just sent to OPB: Actually, I am now ending my support for OPB. Your airing of a 4-part special called “School Inc.” is an absolute travesty and complete betrayal of me as a public school teacher. To show this right-wing piece of propaganda that does nothing less than advocate for privatizing public education is unconscionable. I cannot in good faith continue to support OPB while you cut me and all of my colleagues off at the knees. You have continued to let Portland Public Schools get away with criminal acts by breaking our contract over and over again with little or no comment from OPB. The Tribune has done a much better job covering the garbage the board and district has gotten away with. I have let that go for too many years and now your willingness to show “Schools Inc.” shows me where OPB stands.
Sincerely,
Ann Berton