All over the country, PBS stations are showing anti-public school propaganda in a three-hour series called “School Inc.” This series was paid for by libertarian foundations who want for-profit schools, vouchers, charters, and for-profit teachers, competing for students. The lead funder is the Rose-Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation, which supports radical libertarian causes and acts as a funnel for Donors Trust, which bundles money from the Koch brothers and DeVos family for their favorite causes.
PBS emendation accepting money for the series, which has no opposing views and which was never fact-checked, because it likes to show divergent views.
Really?
Would PBS accept funding to run a three-hour program that was opposed to abortion rights? That argued that homosexuality was a sin? That attempted to prove that climate change was a hoax? That insisted that the Sandy Hook massacre of children and staff never happened? That defended Confederate flags and monuments in public space?
The Network for Public Education encourages you to write an email or call your PBS station. Apparently, some local stations watched the series and decided not to show it. Most, however, are running it without any rebuttal.
Here is my rebuttal, which was seen only in New York City.
Here is my written commentary.
The irony is that these foundations do not believe in public education or public television.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Koch Brothers are investing money this summer to promote school choice and also to prevent Democrats from retaining or being elected to Congressional seats. Here is part of a report for just one of these Koch funded campaigns.
Begin quote.
The Colorado faction of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation announced this week that it will spend $200,000 on a school choice “issue education effort” in June and July. The It’s Working campaign will use mailers, digital ads and “grassroots advocacy” to highlight charter schools.
The campaign is intended to show Coloradans how charter schools work and their benefits, says Michael Fields, senior director of issue education for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, whose parent company, Americans for Prosperity, is the right-wing political advocacy group funded by billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch. “We are a state that has been a little bit more progressive in terms of school choice, but there’s more we can do,” Fields says of Colorado. “I think that people aren’t fully educated about it.” End quote. More at http://www.westword.com/news/americans-for-prosperity-launches-school-choice-campaign-9140161
I wonder if PBS will be airing these ads.
There are similar campaigns to force-feed the “choice” agenda in other states during the summer months. The Koch campaign in Colorado is marketing charter schools.
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It is important to understand that Corporate Media — to which category CPB belongs — has a serious conflict of interest when it come to Universal Free Public Education. This is because Corporate Media are salivating over the prospects of becoming the delivery platform of the New, Improved, Cash Crop of Corporate-Owned & Operated Education.
I love how Pi Roman oversells the “we don’t air what our donors want us to air” argument. Just take a look at the people who backed that film and maybe you can connect the dots?
Also…he makes the assumption that giving teachers an incentive will convince them to do a good job, as if no teachers will ever do a good job unless they get a little something extra. How insulting. What–does he think we work for tips?
Go, Diane. 😎
There is nothing innovative about any of the schools he celebrates.
Dear Diane,
I’d like to see programs and articles that brag loudly about public schools. It seems to me that we write and speak a great deal about the evil doings of the privatizers, dark money, and reformers (which certainly needs to be exposed) but we don’t publish enough about public school successes. We readily point out that charters are not better than public schools but I want to scream that Public Schools are not just a bottom line but are fantastic especially when they involve whole communities. I would like to focus less on the dark money and more on the grassroots successes. I have not yet seen the Backpack Full of Cash but its title indicates that it comes at the topic from the perspective of the vulnerable victims of dark money.
I would love to fill the media with news about the herculean efforts of communities that identify their students’ learning needs and implement methods and tools that are based on research to successfully achieve their goals. How would it come across if we put the dark money at the bottom of the educationally relevant presentation and flipped the neurological and social challenges of learning to the top and then discuss funding that kind of education?
I know that organizations like NPE have many good examples of public school and community accomplishments. I know I’ve read about such successes in your blog and have seen examples in other books and media as well. I haven’t done a good job of noting them all but, since I just retired, collecting examples of public school successes is at the top of my list – along with going to the NPE conference for the first time!
I’d really love to see examples of right-minded billionaire donations that go directly to education rather than salaries of superfluous administrators and useless technology aimed at high grades on irrational assessments.
I found the gentleman who interviewed you about the PBS propaganda series to be just one more ignorant, arrogant reform disciple. I wish we had more interviewers who are either informed about the realities of public education or at least sincerely unbiased. I’d love to fill the media with very loud bragging about the public schools. Can we celebrate at least as much as we defend our efforts?
Sincerely,
Mary Cummings
Wrote. Called. Talked to a real, live person who then transferred me to a…voice mail.
Gentle reminder: Please post the link, so that the readers can see these programs.
Charles, try here:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/school-inc/
Got your back, Diane, with immense gratitude. I took the time to click your links, post on FB, call and email – copied below, subject line edited to read
“Call for NATION-wide airing of the truth about anti-choice School Inc. propaganda piece”
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PLEASE READ – not merely a forwarded response
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I was appalled and highly disappointed in PBS when you aired School Inc. – at all – but certainly without equal time rebuttal. Do you no longer fact check before airing and scheduling programming anymore?
Without CLEARLY identified equal-time rebuttal, PBS will no longer retain my respect as the unbiased “trusted classroom” you claim to be.
To present the opposing viewpoint (what used to be the definition of “balanced reporting”), please insist that your stations show the following:
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1- Educational historian Diane Ravitch’s sadly brief response (due to PBS-imposed time constraints), subsequently aired only in NYC, shared online by education advocates (vs. politicians and their corporate sponsors); and
2-the documentary film, Backpack Full of Cash.
My objections to School Inc.:
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Obvious to the few who actually research and fact-check, this film is an overtly anti-public school, questionably funded, education propaganda piece.
It gives the dangerous impression that it is an actual documentary rather than a campaign piece promoting abandoning the education of ALL of America’s populace (the essence of the FAPE legislation – Free and Appropriate Public Education, if you, like de Vos et.al, are unaware).
Not only is this high-budget glitzy film filled with inaccuracies, it provides partisan support for the Trump/De Vos agenda – cherry picking examples to promote ONLY policies which they hope to be able to enact.
The cleverly misnamed “school choice” agenda they promote is designed to benefit the wealthy, the neurotypical, the able-bodied and the intellectually gifted minority – likely to result in the continued dumbing down of America as a country. The majority of the citizenry will have NO CHOICE AT ALL but to attend increasingly poorly funded public schools, already desperately underfunded already and understaffed as a result.
Since the shamefully unfortunate appointment of a CLEARLY unqualified candidate for Secretary of Education (who did not even bother to devote the time to educate herself about the Public School system prior to her own confirmation hearing), America needs actual journalism and public school support now more than ever.
If we can no longer count on PBS for that, all must be already lost. PLEASE – by your actions – say it isn’t so!
I would also like contact information for the new ombudsman.
xx,
mgh
(Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMORE dot com)
ADD/EFD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder
“It takes a village to educate a world!”