Howard Fuller recently decided to close down the organization Black Alliance for Educational Options, which received funding from billionaires to promote charters and vouchers to African Americans. BAEO was funded initially by the rar-right Bradley Foundation, then added millions from the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and others, all to sell privatization to people who need good public schools, good healthcare, and good jobs, not free markets.
Now, Fuller tells ace education journalist Alan Borsuk that a $15-an-hour minimum wage would mean more to kids in central cities than better curriculum (or, may we assume, School Choice).
The billionaires got good return on investment. BAEO lined up support among key blacks to pass charter legislation in Alabama, Mississippi, and D.C.
But Fuller has second thoughts. The damage is done. Will he now repudiate the conservatives who pumped millions into BAEO to perpetuate the hoax that privatization is “the civil rights issue of our time”?
“One force behind his changing views: A deeper understanding of the life circumstances of young people and the difficulties a school has in changing the trajectory of their lives.”
Nice.
Will he reach out to the Walton Family, whose Walmart stores employ more than one million people, and persuade them about the importance of paying $15 an hour and giving them enough hours of employment to support their families?
Will he tell the powerful Bradley Foundation? The Gates Foundation, whose idea of fighting poverty is to promote the Common Core Standards?
Fuller was a bitter critic of trachers’ unions. Has he figured out that union jobs are a godsend for Black and Hispanic workers, providing better pay than non-union jobs and a measure of job security. Fuller appeared in “Waiting for Superman” harshly criticizing public schools, teachers, and unions.
Has he figured out that he helped to shred the route to the middle-class for many of the families and children he claims to care about? Has he noticed how many of the thriving charter chains are run by wealthy white men?
Was he cynically used? Was he duped? Was he a willing collaborator? On reflection, does he think that children and parents of color benefitted or were harmed when their local schools were taken over by corporate charter chains?
Howard Fuller is a smart man. I hope he speaks out and explains more about his decision to close BAEO. I welcome a submission to this blog.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Oh, good for him.
I think it’s even worse than that, though. I think the billionaires and politicians blame public schools for everything under the sun because they don’t want to talk about wages or skyrocketing income inequality gaps. I think it’s deliberate.
This is Larry Summers:
“He also rejected one explanation for rising inequality — that the workforce is inadequately educated — in favor of the more liberal economist’s argument that businesses simply aren’t creating enough jobs and that technology has allowed profits to accumulate in the hands of the top 1 percent. He reiterated that point of view yesterday, as well.
“There’s a view that I think was a plausible view to hold in 1995, which I would call ‘preserve my carried-interest tax break, the market’s great, yes, there are a lot of people left behind, we need to give them better education, I’m really involved in a charter school, it’s all going to be okay,'” Summers said. “That is not a credible response to the challenges of the American economy in 2015.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/10/larry-summers-has-become-one-of-organized-labors-biggest-advocates/?utm_term=.d6a060ade1ba
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Brilliant.
Jobs are disappearing due to automation and outsourcing.
Charters do not change that.
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Diane, I am an engineer. My brother-in-law is a robotics specialist. Automation creates jobs. see
https://fee.org/articles/automation-replaced-800-000-workers-then-it-created-35-million-new-jobs/
The current unemployment rate is at a 16 year low. see https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-gains-209000-jobs-in-july-unemployment-retouches-16-year-low-of-43-2017-08-04
Steam shovels put ditch-diggers out of work. Canals put horse-drawn wagons out of work. Railroads made canals obsolete. Passenger air travel made rail travel obsolete. Color TV made B/W television obsolete. High-Def TV made NTSC (analog) TV obsolete. and on and on. Each new technology makes old technology obsolete. Jobs are eliminated, and new jobs created. This is “creative destruction”. For an historian, you seem to have little knowledge of economic/technological history.
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Charles,
I am surprised that an engineer like you would be unaware that economists predict that automation will cause 47% of today’s jobs to disappear.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/06/jobs-risk-technology_n_6817236.html?utm_hp_ref=world
No one suggests that new jobs will replace them.
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One more thing. Robotics have eliminated the low-wage advantage derived from locating factories in India or China. Manufacturing jobs are returning to the USA, because of our nation’s pre-eminence in robotics and automation. I would rather buy a widget made by an American robot, than one made by a Chinese robot.
There is an old story. A corporation president was showing his robotized factory to a union president. The CEO said “How are you going to sell unionization to robots”. The union president said “How are you going to sell them your product?”
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Yes, FEE is such a reliable, completely unbiased source. “Through life-changing student seminars, free online courses, engaging classroom resources, and enlightening classic and contemporary online content, we teach young people the personal value of free markets, entrepreneurship, and strong character.”
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Charles seems deeply confused about the difference between technological evolution from discovery and those deliberately creating destruction, including job loss, for profit-making purposes.
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I am not confused about this topic. I readily admit, that the line is blurry, between technological discovery, and management decisions, such as you describe.
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Recently an infrastructure improvement on our US highway was completed. Rarely did I see more than ten people working on it at one time. It used to be that there were great multitudes of good paying jobs for those willing to work. I am not sure this is the case now. How can we have an economy based on machines that even replace computer programmers? Who will buy the goods produced? Will the robots that weld the cars together drive them to the lake and buy their girlfriend a coke?
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I find that article about 47% of jobs disappearing, to be interesting, but not necessarily prescient. Here is an alternate view:
https://www.wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/
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Why is anyone still listening to Summers?
His antiregulation free for all market policies were largely responsible for the economic crash of 07/08. Even Harvard lost billions of dollars from it’s endowment due to Summers’ investment “advice.”
The fellow is simply trying to reinvent himself after causing untold damage to millions of people.
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I think dissenters are worthwhile, no matter where they come from.
Ed reform actually reminds me of the financial market deregulation in the 1990’s. Same lock-step marching off a cliff, same over-promising.
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The problem with giving people like Sumner’s a platform is that it is very likely that he has only changed his “presentation”, not his tune.
These free market people don’t ever really change.
Summers even wants us to believe that his previous views (eg, back in 1995) were “plausible.” That it was somehow just the facts that changed — and that presumably made him change his views.
That’s just BS.
There is no value in his opinions, which is ALL that they are: opinions and ideologically based ones at that.
Sorry to be so blunt about this fellow, but people like Sumner’s do HUGE damage to our society and not only take no responsibility for their actions but act as if they should still be taken seriously.
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Incidentally, read about the role that Larry Summers played in silencing Brooksley Born, who warned in the late 90’s (ten years before the financial meltdown) that unregulated derivatives were a major threat to the economy.
Or watch the Frontline
http://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-the-warning/
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More on Larry Summers’ “brilliance”
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/09/12232/failing-fed-reporters-guide-paper-trail-surrounding-larry-summers
The fellow is so arrogant that he still won’t admit that Born was right.
A Dunning Kruger candidate if ever there was one.
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What makes me feel I have very little in common with ed reformers is how they partition children off from the broader community. This just isn’t how I understand the world.
It isn’t “children” and then “adults”, like two warring interest groups or political factions. They’re all people in a particular place. There’s no way to carve out “the children” in a given community like they’re attempting to do. Children are part of the whole. I find it REALLY odd as a parent because families don’t even work like that let alone schools.
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From Borsuk’s article:
“And there was the election of President Donald Trump. Fuller has worked in the past with conservative politicians, organizations and funders because they supported things he supported. He met with George W. Bush when Bush was elected president.
“But Fuller said he would not meet now with Trump and has no involvement with Betsy DeVos, the current secretary of education and a former ally in promoting school choice.
“He called Trump ‘despicable’ and said, ‘This man and what he’s done is qualitatively different than anything else I’ve seen.’
“Not to take a stand is to co-sign on the injustice,’ he said.”
Funny how education of African American Fullers of the world shows up as shortsightedness. Is the hand-to-the-hot-stove lesson so deeply learned that it takes a Trump or a DeVos for Fuller to see consequences?
Yes, hopefully he will come here and explain himself.
And good riddance to BAEO. Maybe its demise will help get a BAEO kind of person off Atlanta Board of Education, today, as today is vote day.
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Fuller seems like a representative of the British Monarchy who wished the subjects burning down his residence would just revert back to loving the Queen.
But the “grift” has been transferred to his wife who just happens to be named Deborah McGriff.
She is presently a managing partner at New Schools Venture Fund. Her compensation in 2015 acc to NSVF Form 990 was $280k.
Hard to feel any sympathy for Mr MCgrift.
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If ed reformers were really “agnostic” wouldn’t we see one of these groups doing something for any existing public school, anywhere?
It really defies common sense to believe they just happen to omit advocacy and support of ALL public schools by some kind of accident.
They do nothing for public schools, so one has to believe all public schools suck in order to believe they’re “agnostics”. That is, of course, not true so something else is going on here, and it’s a political agenda.
I would respect them more if they simply admitted this because it’s glaringly obvious to anyone outside the echo chamber observing WHAT THEY DO, not what they say.
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Here’s something Betsy DeVos won’t tell you and you won’t see mentioned in ed reform:
http://10thperiod.blogspot.com/2017/11/ecot-enrollment-down-20-percent-charter.html
Charter enrollment in Ohio is down for the 4th consecutive year.
They did real damage to “the cause” in this state. No one believes the slogans and hype anymore and that will happen in other states too- Ohio was one of the first adopters of these schemes. We’re disenchanted first because we started this first. Michigan and Pennsylvania will be next.
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