Yes, Virginia, there is one billionaire in America who supports public schools, not charter schools.
His name is Charles Butt. He became fabulously wealthy through ownership of a large chain of small-town grocery stores.
He must be a genius because he understands that it makes no sense to create a parallel system of publicly funded but privately managed schools.
Inside Philanthropy writes:
“Texas has the second-highest number of public school students in the U.S., just after California. Some 5 million kids are enrolled in more than 1,000 public school districts around the state. And nowhere is the K-12 population growing faster than in Texas, which is projected to see a 14 percent increase in students enrolled between 2014 and 2026. Already, the state is struggling with teacher shortages and experts believe the problem could get much worse.
“Enter Charles Butt, a Texas grocery mogul with a net worth of over $10 billion, who earlier this month announced his latest push to improve public education in his state, launching a $50 million initiative aimed at teacher training. The grants will provide scholarships for aspiring teachers and technical support for teacher training programs across Texas.
“The gift from Butt, chairman and CEO of the HEB grocery chain, is the latest in a multimillion-dollar effort to improve Texas education. Earlier this year, Butt gave $100 million to establish a leadership institute for school administrators.
“Beyond the size of Butt’s gifts—among the biggest for K-12 in recent years—what’s significant about these commitments is that Butt is not focused on bolstering charter schools or the array of nonprofits that support choice and accountability strategies. Instead, this mega-donor is looking to improve leadership and teaching in the traditional school districts that still educate the vast bulk Texas school children—and will for the foreseeable future.
“Whatever you may think about charter schools, funders have struggled to scale this approach to improving student outcomes. Butt has apparently concluded that his giving will have the greatest impact by bolstering the school system that exists, as opposed to building out a parallel K-12 universe. These days, more top donors seem to be thinking along the same lines as Butt. Even as existing charter funders double down on this strategy, it appears that fewer of the new mega-donors arriving in K-12 are focusing on choice.”
I sure wish I knew who those other “top donors” are. Where are those other “mega-donors”?
Thank God for Charles Butt.
He sees what billionaires like Gates, Broad, and the Waltons don’t: Help the schools where 85-90% of the students are. Do not fund Betsy DeVos’s privatization agenda.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/new-texas-textbooks-whitewash-civil-war-history-2015-7
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We have a local businessperson who really supports the public schools. He’s the second largest employer but maybe more importantly he attended them and feels grateful.
It IS really nice. He’s able to explain things to the public in a way the people from the school cannot. The median income in this county has gone down over the last 20 years. That means our public school population is poorer, which is a challenge. They accept the challenge. They just object to ed reform’s insistence that it doesn’t exist.
He was able to explain that to people because they need to get it- the student population is poorer here than when they went to school. That has to be admitted before anyone can go about dealing with it.
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25 years of privately managed charter schools has demonstrated that a competitive parallel system of privately managed charter schools is a failed experiment undermining public education rather than improving it.
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Thank you, Diane, for this good news.
And THANK YOU, Mr. Butt.
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God, you would NEVER KNOW California has more public school kids than anyone, looking at the “debate” in LA.
Charters, charters, charters. I don’t think public school kids were mentioned at all.
If I arrived from Mars and looked at the ed reform debate I would assume every child in the country attends a charter or private school.
I looked it up the other day. There are about 6,500 charter schools. Now go look at the focus of our state and federal lawmakers and ask if that focus makes ANY sense.
They completely ignore 90% of schools. It’s nuts.
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It can be hard to get people to vote for school funding, because people who don’t want to fund schools adopt the ed reform mantra of “throwing money at the problem” as an excuse.
Ed reform provided them with a handy response to any and all requests for funding.
Thanks “advocates for children” ! Good work! you poisoned the well for every public school kid in the country.
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H-E-B is always on my list when I go to Texas. They have the best homemade soup. Mr. Butt was an undergraduate at Wharton, and he holds an MBA from Harvard. Fortunately, Mr. Butt knows how to apply business principles to his business, and he has the wisdom to not apply them to education. Unlike some other ivy league graduates, Mr. Butt probably earned his spot at theses prestigious schools from the education he gained from the public schools in Texas.
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As is said: The proof is in the pudding.
And from what I can surmise, his “leadership” school will be more of the insane “I’m the leader, you must follow or I will get rid of you” modeled after Broad’s “leadership” academy.
It’s all about test scores all of the time. From a prior article by the IP site:
“Meanwhile, some funders, like the Broad Foundation, have focused on the school leadership niche for a long time. Explaining why he initially focused his K-12 giving on training school superintendents, Eli Broad wrote in his memoir, “In determining how best to leverage our investment in improving America’s public schools, we relied on the essential ingredient in any successful organization: smart people.”
The results of Broad’s investments in the leadership space have been vigorously debated, but the larger point here is hard to dispute: We need talented, well-trained, and highly motivated leaders running America’s $600 billion public school system.
Butt’s big gift is a great example of how to think expansively about boosting both the skills and knowledge of school leaders.
Participants in this effort also will travel nationally and internationally to observe best practices in school leadership and learn from some of the most successful educators in the U.S. and abroad. Singapore is among the international destinations for school leaders taking part in the Holdsworth Center program. International rankings of education systems place Singapore at or near the top. The island city-state ranked first in 2015 in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) test conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). After ending British colonial rule in the 1960s, Singapore began an extensive transformation of its education system under longtime Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who saw human capital as necessary for the country’s prosperity.”
Sounds like more of the same in “leadership” in raising “student achievement”. And I believe most regular readers of this blog know that. . .
. . . I don’t give a damn about “raising student achievement” as it is a false and worthless educational goal. I give a damn about students learning the subject matter at hand and that the teaching and learning process helps to fulfill the fundamental purpose of public education–
“The purpose of public education is to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.”
(from Ch 1-“The purpose of Public Education” in my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education”)
“Raising student achievement” has little to nothing to do with the fundamental purpose of public education. This “gift” has all the earmarks of more of the same failed edudeform horse manure nonsense.
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Duane,
Charles Butt has nothing in common with Eli Broad other than money.
Butt is a genuinely modest man. He wants to help public schools. Period. He doesn’t shape administrators in his mold.
Thank all the gods and goddesses for Charles Butt.
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And Bill Gates sounds like a really nice guy and don’t forget the Zuck! How has this all played out? I really hope that this guy is for real, but experience says otherwise. Call me a “Debbie Downer” if you like. but I am a realist and someone will have to prove to me that Mr. Butt is doing this from the kindness of his heart and for the welfare of the children and not to direct more money into his own bank accounts. Sorry…not buying it!
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He may very well be a genuinely modest man. But from what little I’ve read I see nothing more than the same “leadership” nonsense that came into vogue in the late 90s and flowered into an Audrey Jr devouring any sense of democratically shared decision making. Top down, all the time. And that type of “leadership” reeks of Broad, Gates, Bloomberg, Murdoch, Kochs, Waltons, etc. . . -all “good” hyper money grubbers.
For an explanation of his “leadership school” see: https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2017/1/25/charles-butt-education-philanthropy
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Oh, boy!
“As part of their continuing education through the Holdsworth Center, school principals and district administrators will meet with business and military leaders, and attend lectures and discussions with prominent faculty. School leaders will learn about change management, team building, and school board relations.”
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Just one of the many red flags, Ed J!
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Now let’s see who decides how the money he has committed gets used. I am leery of leadership training these days with the overwhelming number of whelps we have pretending to be administrators. The same applies to teacher training. With Mr. Butt’s understanding of the value of public education, I hope he will be setting an example for other wealthy philanthropists.
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I am not encouraged by the other examples of philanthropy that are mentioned in the article. I am particularly not impressed by the descriptions given about his leadership training efforts. If you go to the link for that article, you will find some disturbing people/organizations are included in this effort.
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He chose Singapore as a shining example of success! How about Finland?
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It is good that Butts is supporting public schools with his largess, however it is another example of the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands leading to less democratic control. Even though I like the direction of this billionaire’s philanthropy, It would be far better if every citizen had a more equal influence on governmental policy. That is not possible when wealth and income are so concentrated in the hands of the few. I used to think a CEO earning 30 times the shop workers income was untenable. Now we’re seeing disparities of more than 1000 times.
Under Eisenhower the top tax bracket was 90%. Kennedy lowered it to 65%. Today it is less than 40% with lots of tax loop holes. Still the avaricious wealthy continue to call for tax cuts. Our tax policy is driving a massive transfer of wealth to the elites. The time has come for a change.
It is time to tax billionaire’s out of existence.
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We would not find ourselves with so much income inequality if we had the Eisenhower tax rates, and we would have a lot more revenue for common causes. Trump’s “tax reform” is scheduled to further skew the tax brackets by placing more burden on working people while the wealthy get more tax “relief.”
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During the period of Ike’s presidency, the top tax rate was 90% !!! You cannot be serious, in wanting to see rates like that again!
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Charles, speaking only for myself I might not want to see a 90% tax bracket, but certainly one that is closer to 90% than the current highest rate of 37% or so.
The redistribution of our nation’s wealth into the hands of a select few must stop and be reversed. A top rate of 75% would be a good first step.
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The Americans for Financial Reform site has a petition, focused on 3 proposed laws.
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Oops. Q During the eight years of the Eisenhower presidency, from 1953 to 1961, the top marginal rate was 91 percent. (It was 92 percent the year he came into office.) END Q
see
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/15/bernie-s/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/
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I wish I could understand all of this enmity that liberals/progressives have against wealthy individuals and corporations. I have been working since 1973, and no poor person has ever hired me. I have only been able to work for wealthy individuals and corporations. (notwithstanding my military service and federal service)
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Charles, could it be because the Koch brothers and their billionaire brethren are destroying our democracy?
Read the new book “Democracy in Chains.” Read Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money.”
Your feigned innocence is tiresome.
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There is always dislike of billionaires. I think that is why the TV show “Dallas” was so popular.
In our last election, the turnout was around 50%. Almost half of the eligible voters sat it out, and look what we got for it.
The maxim in law is “Quietat es consentiri”. Silence gives consent.
Shame on us as a nation.
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I don’t dislike billionaires. I admire Charles Butt.
But I dislike billionaires who use their money to undermine democracy and privatize public institutions.
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Charles,
No poor person has ever hired me, either. But does a wealthy person who does hire people need or require or deserve an income hundreds of times more than the people they hire?
When I worked as a consulting geologist my employers were all wealthy, but most lived lives not dissimilar to my own and the rest of their employees. They deserved their success, which was dependent, in part, on the labor of their employees. Some of my employers were cheap…they didn’t pay their employees as well as the competition. They are no longer in business. Other firms that paid their people better are still operating.
One firm I worked for failed on two counts. The owner paid his employees poorly and he paid himself hundreds of times more than the people he employed. Not only did the company fail, the owner (not surprisingly) went to prison for a time.
The drawbacks of capitalism were a major factor in my changing careers and becoming a teacher. I’d rather work for the people than simply to make my employer more wealthy.
This absurd idea that we should give the wealthy all they ask for because they and only they can improve the economy through their investment has been proved false countless times. For some it may be the case, but far too many times the wealthy separate themselves from the rest of society and focus on the accumulation of even more wealth at the expense of the rest of us.
A return to sensible tax rates and progressive taxation is but the first step in regaining a dependable and strong economy. Sadly, that probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but I’m hopeful for my daughter. In my view, this dark time in America will continue to get worse before it gets better.
Gotta go back to cleaning out the basement. It’s far easier than cleaning up our oligarch-controlled economy, and a lot cleaner.
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I do not know who “deserves” to earn a huge income. Rock stars and movie actors make huge salaries, the market tends to work in their favor. (Personally, I would pay $10 to see Meryl Sreep read the back off a cereal box, she is the greatest actress alive).
I have worked for the US Government, and I promise you are not going to get rich working for uncle sam.
The republicans could not get health care reform done, they are going to be up against the same brick wall on tax reform.
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Off topic but, related to Gates-
There’s a video of the Gates family watching an equestrian event in Monte Carlo that is posted on the internet. The video appears to have been taken in the past couple of years. There’s a frame that shows Gates in a ritualistic rocking back and forth.
Nothing about Gates, personally or professionally, suggests he should have influence in education.
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I am delighted that some wealthy individuals wish to help America’s children. Although I am certainly not a billionaire, I feel that I have helped somewhat, through my contributions to the Masonic Angel Fund.
I would like for more NGO’s to get involved in education. The Masonic family of charities contributes many millions, through such venues as the Wolcott Foundation. (The foundation provides for scholarships at George Washington University to obtain advanced degrees in Government and Public Service).
I believe that if publicly-operated schools had a mechanism in place, they could reach out to the NGO’s in their areas, and obtain financial and “sweat equity” support.
A pocketful of pennies is more noticeable, than a dollar bill in your pocket.
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I took some time to see what the Butt’s gifts are funding. I think that the Inside Philanthropy report that Diane quoted is really misleading.
After looking at the Holdsworth Center program and the Center Board and Faculty and promo, it all looks like another five-year reformy effort where principals and district administrators in traditional schools” will “learn about change management, team building, and school board relations.” In addition to meeting with business and military leaders, educators “will attend lectures and discussions with prominent faculty.”
….”Singapore is among the international destinations for school leaders taking part in the Holdsworth Center program. Butt appears to admire Singapore’s approach to elementary and secondary education.” Test scores are a reason.
The Holdsworth Center Board includes (a few not included here)
Ruth Simmons, Chair of the Board. Interim president of Prairie View A&M University, Former positions: President of Brown University; President Smith College; University of Southern California, associate dean of graduate studies; Provost, Spellman College; Professor of Romance languages and a dean, Princeton University. Member of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Numerous honorary degrees. Ph.D. in Romance Languages and literatures, Harvard. See Wikipedia for more re: Goldman Sachs.
Mark C. Rohr. Chairman and CEO, Dallas-based Celanese Corporation, (global technology and specialty materials). Prior positions: CEO, Albemarle Corporation; Executive leadership at Occidental Chemical Corporation, Dow Chemical. BS in chemistry and chemical engineering, Mississippi State University. Board chair for Dallas CityYear (AmeriCorps members support at-risk students); Board member of the Commit! Partnership (includes Teach for America, Stand for Children, United Way).
Jim Postl. Retired President and CEO Pennzoil-Quaker State Company, Prior positions: CEO Nabisco International, managerial roles with PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble Company. Active in many civic groups, Board and executive committee of the Greater Houston Partnership (economic development), Chair of Early Matters, coalition of over 70 groups focused on early childhood education, specifically: “By 2025, all Greater Houston area students will be reading at or above grade level by the end of 3rd grade.”
Nolan Perez, M.D., CEO of Gastroenterology Consultants of South Texas. Created Rio Grande Valley Mentors program led by college students and professionals with scholarships to help high school students graduate into post-secondary programs. A trustee for the Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District.
Diana Natalicio. President of University of Texas at El Paso. Prior Positions: Vice president for academic affairs, Dean of liberal arts, Chair of the modern languages department, Professor of linguistics. Master’s degree in Portuguese, St. Louis University; Doctorate in linguistics, The University of Texas at Austin.
Ann Stern. President and CEO of Houston Endowment. A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Past president of the Junior League of Houston. Prior positions: Executive VP of Texas Children’s Hospital, General counsel for the Hospital. J.D., University of Texas, Austin.
Elaine Mendoza. Founder, President, and CEO of Conceptual MindWorks, Inc. (CMI a biotechnology and medical informatics, specialist in Electronic Health Record system for physician practices and health centers. Board of Regents of the Texas A&M University System. Helped regents develop “EmpowerU” including all data relevant to student success, outcome measures and institutional financial data. Active in teacher education. Chair of the Early Childhood Education Municipal Development Corporation (responsible for the PreK 4 San Antonio program), Multiple committee appointments by Governor Rick Perry for work on P-16 higher education. Member and chairperson national Commission on the Advancement of Women and Minorities in Science, Engineering and Technology. Numerous civic awards. Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering, Texas A&M University.
Preston “Pete” Geren. President of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation (substantial grants to TFA, charter schools, including KIPP). Prior positions: Department of Defense, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense; Acting Secretary of the Air Force, Under Secretary of the Army; Secretary of the Army; four terms United States Congress; former assistant to US Senator Lloyd Bentsen. J.D. University of Texas Law School; BA in history, University of Texas-Austin; Architectural studies, Georgia Tech.
Robert Gates, Chancellor, College of William & Mary, 22nd Secretary of Defense (2006-2011), served nearly 27 years in the Central Intelligence Agency; Director of Central Intelligence (1991-1993). Nine years on National Security Council. Other positions: President of Texas A&M University, Partner in the consulting firm, RiceHadleyGates LLC, with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Board Service: American Council on Education, National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. Bachelor’s degree, College of William & Mary; master’s degree in history, Indiana University; Doctorate in Russian and Soviet history, Georgetown University.
Elisa Villanueva Beard. CEO of TEACH FOR AMERICA since 2015. Prior positions: COO for Teach For America’s field operations, TFA for three years, Executive director of TFA Rio Grande Valley region. Bachelor’s degree in sociology from DePauw University.
Michael J. Sorrell. President of Paul Quinn College, private, liberal arts, historically black college affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Known for creating the New Urban College Model, an urban work college with reduced tuition, accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. Many leadership roles: College Board, Center for Minority Serving Institutions at the University of Pennsylvania, DALLAS ADVISORY BOARD OF TEACH FOR AMERICA. Numerous awards for civic engagement. J.D.,M.A.,in Public Policy, Duke University; Ed.D. University of Pennsylvania,. Sloan Foundation Graduate Fellowship for studies at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and Duke University. B.A. in Government, Oberlin College.
Faculty at the Holdsworth Center
Shari Becker Albright. The Murchison Distinguished Professor in Education and chair of the Department of Education at Trinity University. Serves on the Board in addition to being a Faculty member for the Holdsworth Center. President of the Texas Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and Texas Council of Deans of Education. Prior positions: Executive director of education, Asia Society and CEO of the Asia Society International Studies Schools Network (NY); principal, the International School of the Americas (magnet school); Elementary school and central office administrator, elementary teacher. Doctorate in educational leadership, Teachers College, Columbia University.
Susan Moore Johnson. Jerome T. Murphy Research Professor in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and academic dean from 1993 to 1999. Member, National Academy of Education. Former high school teacher and administrator. Research focus: teacher and school management—teachers’ careers, alternative preparation, the role of unions, hiring, induction, performance-based pay, and teacher evaluation. Author of books on teacher unions, articles in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, Teachers College Record among others. Harvard University M.A.T. 1969, Ed.D. 1981.
Vicki Phillips. Recent Director, K-12 Education, BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION, focus on college and career ready programs, teacher effectiveness, new school designs for personalized learning, tech-enabled curriculum and instructional tools. Former positions: Superintendent of Portland (Oregon) Public Schools; Pennsylvania State Secretary of Education; Superintendent in the School District of Lancaster, PA. Founding member of the governing council for England’s National College for School Leadership; advisor to the Harvard Urban Superintendent’s Program.
Lindsay Kruse. Helped design the National Principals Academy Fellowship and the Leverage Leadership Institute at the RELAY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION. Worked with Newark Public Schools on competency-based principal selection. Helped found Uncommon (charter) Schools, Senior director of human capital and leadership development for the Uncommon organization. Graduate of the BROAD RESIDENCY IN URBAN EDUCATION, prior work as management consultant for Capgemini/Ernst & Young. Bachelor’s degree, Cornell University: MBA Columbia Business School (social enterprise concentration).
My impression is that too many in the leadership of this program are cut from the same mold that has been doing serious damage to public schools and to the profession of teaching by valorizing TFA temps and RELAY the original alt-Graduate School of Education, pushing pay for performance, and possibly inserting the agenda of Bill Gates in a new venue. I suppose time will tell, but there is a real heavy loading on leaders whose commitments to “traditional public schools” are right off the bat positioned as if inadequate, insufficiently informed by command and control concepts, including those from CEOs of huge corporations and military service.
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Laura,
There may be some clinkers on the board, but the fact remains that Mr. Butt does not fund charter schools. That alone is reason to give thanks.
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It is wonderful that Mr. Butt is helping schools and teachers. Unfortunately, until Principals and administrators, who have business degrees or are trained by the Reformers, are not brought in to run the schools nothing will change.
My son-in-law works at a charter school and had a surprise observation today. It is his 3rd week of school, has 36 students in this English class, and these are low income kids. The Principal and the consultant observed him and told him later his lesson was fine, his classroom management wasn’t. This doesn’t just happen in charter schools. I taught 13 years and spoke out about getting my students help through counseling or social work due to having so many with trauma issues. I was moved to three different schools until I was told I could be put on an improvement plan. I chose to retire early.
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The biggest tragedy that has occurred in the last few decades in our schools is that they have been to an enormous extent turned into test prep organizations under the standards and testing regime. This is true in both public and charter schools. “Reformers” successfully rebranded the national standards by simply changing their name. So, for example, in Florida, the Common Core State Standards–unchanged–are now called the Mathematics Florida Standards and the Language Arts Florida Standards, but make no mistake about it, these are the CCSS.
The public largely believes that the standards and testing have been a good thing, and that’s because simple arguments can be made for them: who doesn’t want “high standards”? Who doesn’t want “accountability”? These phrases are easily promulgated sound bites. But go into K-12 classrooms, and what you find is that where in the past students were writing essays and reading novels and nonfiction books and short stories and plays, they are now doing exercise sets based on the questions on the standardized tests.
An English department chairperson recently told me that this is ALL she does until the kids take the test in April or May–test prep exercises, every day, for almost the entire school year. This teacher’s approach is now the norm.
Traditional materials for teaching English language arts have been largely replaced by ones that emphasize exercise sets in which each exercise is narrowly focused on practicing one skill described by one standard. What particular readings are involved has become largely irrelevant under this regime–any reading will do as long as it is accompanied by an exercise for practicing standard x or y. The content of these readings is often completely random–a piece about Harriet Tubman here, one about invasive plant species there–and so there is no sustained work in a particular context–that of a novel or a unit on some nonfiction topic–even though brains are connection machines, learning happens when it is connected to previous learning, and comprehension is largely contextual.
Where in the past, a teacher would announce that he or she was starting a unit on Robert Frost or the literature of the Civil War (Crane, Bierce, etc.), now it’s, “OK, class. We’re going to work on our recognizing the main idea skills.” But there’s a problem: There is no such thing as a generalized recognizing the main idea skill. Such a thing is entirely mythical, like the fairies that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in. Meaning is contextual, and arriving at the main idea or main ideas (for often, there are several) depends upon particular knowledge of the text’s aims and context.
The CCSS for ELA give lip service to substantive reading and content knowledge, but the truth is that on the ground, where it matters, the national standards and testing regime has replaced traditional instruction in English with test prep exercises, and this has been a calamity of enormous proportions. It’s meant the end of the profession of English teaching as I knew it. I know many, many English teachers who have quit or changed fields because of this. They are sick of being pressured by administrators to do all test prep all the time. But the administrators are simply doing what they are incentivized to do. They are evaluated primarily on the test scores that they deliver, for who doesn’t want to be principal of an A school?
With this going on, worrying about other matters is like spending one’s time polishing the bright work on a sailboat when there is a hole in the hull.
Except in isolated classrooms where brave teachers are continuing to teach despite the standards and testing regime, the teaching of English in K-12 is dead.
RIP
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Butt funds the all inclusive human data set characteristics turbo charged by Race to the Top/ Gates takeover system. Same players, different frame. Yes, charters are being countered with this money but HUMAN CAPITAL remains the goal, not human beings.
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