Politico’s Morning Edition posted this description of 50CAN, the pro-privatization organization that was started by hedge fund managers and big pharma in Connecticut:
FIRST IN MORNING EDUCATION: 50CAN’S GROWTH PLAN: The national education reform advocacy group, 50CAN, hopes to hire 1,000 new advocates by the year 2023. That’s a key part of the organization’s new growth plan, the first of its kind since 50CAN launched in 2011. The organization hopes those advocates will lead at least 250 policy campaigns across every single state to push on goals like more charter schools and holding schools and teachers accountable. At least two thirds of those policy pushes “will be at the neighborhood or regional level,” the plan says. 50CAN now cites 64 policy “wins” across 13 states, including a push for an A-F school grading system in Tennessee and a “more equitable public charter school funding in New Jersey.” To ensure future policy victories, 50CAN says that by 2023, its entire network of advocates “will be connected together through a best-in-class technology platform where they can plan campaigns, execute strategies and tactics, track and analyze campaign data in real time and gain key insights into how to increase their odds of success.”
50CAN will be pushing the DeVos-Jeb Bush agenda in every state. Charters and A-F ratings, which set up public schools for takeover to charter chains.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow. That’s a lot of paid adults promoting charters and vouchers.
Maybe public school kids could find a single adult advocate somewhere.
There’s certainly none in statehouses or the Trump Administration or Congress.
We should hold a big bake sale. Hire a lobbyist.
It’s political cancer.
“We should hold a big bake sale. Hire a lobbyist.”
What about hiring an assassin instead?
These hedge funds are vultures. They are driven and relentless when they smell $$$. They just shook Puerto Rico to its core. Pro-public education groups must unite to fight back. Hedge funds have money, but we have the people. Join the resistance to flip seats in the legislature, and donate to pro-public candidates.
Exactly. If enough people turn out to vote in 2018, we can flip the House and stop most of the D.C. Madness
Hopefully the corporate Democrats, such as Corey Booker, will have retreated on this issue by then.
Booker has gone over so far to the right on vouchers and charters that I would be surprised to see genuine change
Booker knows his position is unpopular. He told a student newspaper in Indiana that he wasn’t a privatizer.
Booker has been honored by the rightwing Manhattan Institute for his support for charters and vouchers. What is the difference between DeVos and Booker on these issues?
“more equitable public charter school funding in New Jersey”? I worked for many years in the East Brunswick Public Schools. The district has eight USDOE Blue Ribbon Schools and the high school is one of the top schools in the state. Nevertheless, a group decided that East Brunswick needed a Hebrew (not Jewish!) Charter School, and the state approved one. Since then, the district has had to fork over huge amounts of money to this school and has taken the school to court because it violated the terms of its approval. Judge decided it did not matter and let the school continue. Also, Princeton, one of the most outstanding districts in NJ, has a charter school when again it was not needed. A boutique school for the demanding parents who never think the schools (or anyone else) does enough for their precious offspring. Neither school has the same percentage of poor or special education students.
These types of charters are a waste of taxpayers’ money, especially in an area like Princeton. They raid the public school budget and weaken their already excellent public schools for a vanity project. What a waste!
Segregation by any other name ….
My take: Those who decry the value of public schools are deflecting attention from themselves and how pathetic they are. The deformers need a scapegoat and once again they blame public schools for their own convenience.
I visited their website. They look like any of the lobbying groups down on K Street. We call that street “Gucci Gulch”, because of the high-paid lobbyists, there, and their designer clothes and shoes.
With a hard-hitting group like that underway, the defenders of traditional public schools, need to organize similarly.
Like others. I think I have a handle on what’s happening …and I don’t.
According to Media Matters.org, 50CAN stands for the 50 State Campaign for Achievement Now. 50CAN is a network of state-level organizations pushing for pro-voucher and free-market education policies across the country. It has affiliates in Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, and “fellowships “in California, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin.
The 2016 policy goals focused on passing state legislation in affiliate states to spur the rapid expansion of charter schools and to reduce state oversight of these schools.
50CAN “partners” with many conservative and rightwing organizations that want to control school policy. Among these partners are the Commonwealth Foundation (a member of the State Policy Network) which, according to Politico includes these “associate members”: ALEC, David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation, FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation. Add the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (see Wikipedia and board of directors); and Policy Innovators in Education Network (PIE) active in 34 states promoting market-based education.
Each state in 50CAN has strategic partners and interlocking directorates among members. This inbreeding is planned and extensive. It is masked by the ambiguous language of “strategic partnerships” for policies and for advocacy, a relationship of “affiliate status,” and for “campaigns” (lobbying initiatives) with right wing organizations and projects. 50CAN state affiliates know how to find and to co-opt groups that should be defending public education. Go to jonathanpelto,com for a chilling report from early this year about the activities of ConnCAN.
Here is another example. PIE (Policy Innovators in Education Network) is a sprawling network of deep-pocket and dark money power-brokers promoting market-based education in 34 states and Washington, DC. Members can be found here: http://pie-network.org/pie-network-members/
Who finances PIE? Foundations set up by billionaires who have no respect for public education and othe institutions with democratic governance. PIE is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, New Venture Fund, and McKnight Foundation.
In March, 50CAN and Michelle Rhee”s StudentsFirst announced that they would merge and begin operating under the 50CAN name nationally, although state chapters of StudentsFirst will, for the most part, retain their “brands.”
All of that is a a fraction of what’s going on, and with tax breaks for the “non-profits” who are working together for a “collective impact.”
https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/04/27/here-are-corporations-and-right-wing-funders-backing-education-reform-movement/210054#50can
where is JIM HIMES? he had better be vociferous about this if he wants to be taken seriously.
The question to me is: “Who is JIM HINES?”
“. . . hopes to hire 1,000 new advocates by the year 2023.”
Well, all those temporary TFA teachers, ya know the two and out, need to have some kind of employment.
I’m curious how many of the minority TFA’ers will get management jobs in the oligarch-financed “philanthropies”.
That’s a pretty good joke there, Linda! 🙂
It’s a good time to be a privatization advocate. DeVos made it clear yesterday the federal government will be directing funding away from public schools and to charter and private schools.
It’s a good career move. Privatization is all the rage in DC. Public schools are unfashionable.
The more pressured teachers are by these ‘accountability’ measures, the worse the outcomes will be. Great teachers carry authority with them, and this authority extends to curricular decisions, grading decisions, teaching methods, discipline decisions, and overall social leadership. The ‘accountability’ movement has been undermining teacher authority which is the best way to adversely affect academic outcomes.