One of the nation’s leading corporate education reform groups— Families for Excellent Schools—has collapsed. It adopted a name to suggest that it spoke for poor black and Hispanic families, but the families it represented were wealthy financiers from Wall Street, Greenwich, Connecticut, the Walton Family, and the Eli Broad family.
This is the group that spent millions to run ads attacking Mayor deBlasio when he had the gall to challenge Eva Moskowitz’s demand for free space in public schools and the right to force the city to pay for any space she was required to rent. Eva had the support of the powerful financiers of FES and Governor Cuomo, and together they beat DeBlasio and taught him not to challenge Queen Eva.
FES expanded to Massachusetts and poured millions of “Dark Money” (undisclosed names) into the referendum battle to lift the cap on charter schools. After the election, the state investigated the millions in outside money that poured into the race, fined FES nearly half a million dollars for failing to identify its donors, and banned them from operating in the state for four years.
Then came the embarrassment this week when FES was compelled to fire its leader, Jeremiah Kittredge, for inappropriate sexual behavior with a non-employee. As Politico reported, Kittredge was one of the most prominent reform leaders in the nation. But he acted like a jerk, making stupid vulgar comments about a woman’s breasts at an education reform conference, the Philos retreat. Kittredge was one of Eva Moskowitz’s closest advisors.
Then today came this announcement:
**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE** FEBRUARY 5, 2018
New York, NY – Statement from Bryan Lawrence, Board Chair of Families for Excellent Schools:
“This is a sad day for everyone at Families for Excellent Schools. We are very proud of the work we’ve done to help thousands of families stand up for educational opportunity in their communities, and believe our vision of a world where every child has access to an excellent school has never been more important.
“Unfortunately, after a series of challenges over the past year and particularly given recent events, we have determined that the support necessary to keep the organization going is not there. We are beginning the process of winding down our work. I want to thank all those who have given their heart and soul to this organization since its inception; I know they will continue to advocate for the families and communities we serve.”
Mercedes Schneider wrote about the fall of this phony group here:
Politico explained the declining fortunes of FES this way (and hedged on whether FES was closing partially or completely):
The pro-charter group has seen its fortunes decline sharply over the last year. Its influence in New York has waned as de Blasio has largely declined to criticize charters and much of the local press turned its attention away from Families for Excellent Schools’ relentless schedule of rallies and press releases aimed at pressuring the mayor.
By 2016, the expensive rallies the group was best known for were no longer leading to policy wins at the city or state level, and the strategy was eventually abandoned.
And most crucially, the group suffered a disastrous political defeat in late 2016 from which it never fully recovered, sources say. After funnelling $20 million into a pro-charter ballot initiative in Massachusetts known as Question 2, the question was defeated at the polls by 25 points.
Several sources indicated its once-prolific fundraising became significantly more challenging in the aftermath of the Massachusetts loss.
So, the big rallies with the matching T-shirts were no longer impressing politicians. The money was drying up. The executive director was caught in an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.
Sad. The ed reform movement seems to be cracking up. Students First, gone. FES, gone. Who is next?
ADDENDUM:
Correction by a reader:
“Jeremiah Kittredge’s behavior was not just “an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.”
“Jeremiah Kittredge guy was a serial creep. Consensual or not, Jeremiah was basically f—ing his way through the Families for Excellent Schools headquarters:
“POLITICO: “Kittredge has been involved in multiple consensual sexual relationships with colleagues throughout his relatively brief career in education reform, including at least one employee who reported directly to him, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”
“That’s from here:
“Jeremiah picked the wrong year(s) to be engaging in this kind of Don-Draper-in-Mad-Men type carousing. (Mad Men took place in the early to mid 1960’s) Given the current MeToo/Times Up atmosphere, his behavior was / is monumentally anachronistic.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
They’re not gone. They are like cockroaches. You can try to kill them, but they have become immune to the poison and they run to the darkness only to appear elsewhere as another army to be defeated again….exhausting! These people will never be satisfied with how much money and control they have and we, as consumers, will continue to feed their enormous bank accounts. I don’t know how it will ever end?
Lisa M,
It will end, I promise you.
Reform as currently practiced has failed everywhere.
The game is up.
Dead man walking.
SDP, give me some metaphors for an empty shell
Cockroaches might become immune to poison but all you have to do is sprinkle some boric acid powder in areas where cockroaches travel and then they carry that powder back to their nest and over time it kills many more.
For those human cockroaches, the ballot box becomes their boric acid powder. And there is no way for a cockroach to become immune from this acid.
Boric Acid is the best natural cockroach killer — just like the ballot box can kill off the kleptocrats.
http://goodgeek.info/2012/06/17/boric-acid-the-best-natural-cockroach-killer/
Jeremiah was a bulldog who lost his place in the ever fading charter school scab crap. This guy has written his final chapter in the education reform movement as who would even dare to hire this creep now – Jeremiah Kiddredge or whatever his name is – is now in the history books as a man who tried but let his little head out think the big head.
“After funnelling $20 million into a pro-charter ballot initiative in Massachusetts known as Question 2, the question was defeated at the polls by 25 points.”
……..
I LOVE reading good news! Let those scum who wish to spend their millions on destroying kids lives finally learn that they are loosing big time.
This is a real turnaround:
“Husted, a former House speaker, was considered one of the legislature’s biggest champions of charter schools and authored a major rewrite of the charter law in early 2003.
Husted also played a key role in ending the Legislative Office of Education Oversight, which wrote reports on education topics. One of its last reports, released shortly before the office was killed off in a budget bill in mid-2005, said online schools spend nearly 40 percent less and many of their students were not taking required proficiency and achievement tests.
“I have not been involved with this issue in more than a decade,” Husted said.”
http://www.dispatch.com/news/20180204/will-ecot-scandal-return-ohio-democrats-to-power
GOP lawmakers in Ohio are running away from charters. That has never happened before. They’re now close to being politically toxic in Ohio.
DeVos better stay out of Ohio for a while. I’m not sure ed reformers can run away from ed reform in this state with the biggest national privatization cheerleader taking center stage.
Eva’s smart, politically. She probably realizes the slash and burn ed reform political/marketing tactics are no longer effective and a lower profile for privatization is best.
I’m not holding my breath. She is a narcissistic megalomaniac. Her messianic attitude will continue to be ever present in their press materials. However, I am happy to know they won’t be advertising ad nauseum on NYC tv channels, particularly during the time when my children are watching tv.
Another charter cheerleader bites the dust and won’t be missed. Families for Excellent Schools never represented families. They represented hedge funds and billionaires. There never has been an abundance of families marching for more charter schools. In the beginning some parents were supportive because they believed their child would get a better opportunity that few actually got. The tide is turning against privatization, and the devilish duo of Trump and DeVos has resulted in more people rejecting their plans to undermine public education. It’s about time!
One clarification:
Jeremiah Kittredge’s behavior was not just “an embarrassing moment of monumental grossness.”
Jeremiah Kittredge guy was a serial creep. Consensual or not, Jeremiah was basically f—ing his way through the Families for Excellent Schools headquarters:
POLITICO: “Kittredge has been involved in multiple consensual sexual relationships with colleagues throughout his relatively brief career in education reform, including at least one employee who reported directly to him, according to five sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”
That’s from here:
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2018/02/02/charter-champions-firing-came-after-sexual-harassment-allegations-233549
Jeremiah picked the wrong year(s) to be engaging in this kind of Don-Draper-in-Mad-Men type carousing. (Mad Men took place in the early to mid 1960’s) Given the current MeToo/Times Up atmosphere, his behavior was / is monumentally anachronistic.
This is wonderful news indeed. For years I’ve written about this disgusting group of entitled “reformers” masquerading as a grassroots organization, but to no avail.
Who’s next? How about National School Choice Week and its charlatan leader, Andrew Campanella? Or Dems for Ed Reform? Or the entire cast and crew of ALEC? So many hopes!
The fact that this organization that for years pretended to represent FAMILIES can close on the whim of a few billionaire white guys should be a lesson to the media which has treated the press releases of this organization as if they represent the will of tens of thousands of parents and not a few “I want low-taxes so I’m pro-privatization” billionaires.
What is especially reprehensible is that Families for Excellent Schools led the attacks against Mayor de Blasio when he was working on a plan to reduce suspensions.
The Mayor was talking about ending out of school suspensions for Kindergarten, first and second graders. He did not say that those children couldn’t be removed from the classroom and have their issues addressed. But he also didn’t believe the solution was to refuse to allow a 5 year old to attend school and force him to stay home.
But Families for Excellent Schools would have you believe that the “tens of thousands of parents” they represent were demanding that large numbers of 5 year olds be suspended because simply having those violent 5 year olds in the same building was a huge danger.
And the media reported on these Families for Excellent Schools press releases as if there was huge parent support behind them. As if these FES press releases weren’t the whim of the few billionaire funders and written to cover the fact that one news organization noticed some of Eva Moskowitz’ charters were giving out suspensions to its poor non-white kindergarten at a rate that suggested the school had more interest in getting rid of some of the kids than educating them. We were supposed to believe that it was the parents themselves demanding high suspension rates for their supposedly highly likely to be violent 5 year old children.
Now we know that the organization had NO parent support whatsoever except the parents whose arms were twisted by Eva Moskowitz when she shut down schools and bused kids and parents to Family for Excellent Schools’ rallies.
If the billionaires are tired of funding it, it closes. I guess all those families stopped mattering to the billionaires?
Although it will be interesting to see if we stop hearing from “Tim” who posted here often, as if he was actually employed by one of those organizations.
“This is a sad day for everyone* at Families for Excellent Schools.”
*The one person left is very sad.
The “staff organizers” are out of jobs. I suspect many of them are charter parents. They have paid jobs “organizing” other parents to show up at the lesser rallies that Eva Moskowitz doesn’t close schools and bus families to but that the media dutifully covers as if it was news and a sign of huge numbers of parents who support Families for Excellent Schools policies.
I wonder if those “staff organizers” are treated in the manner that the children on the got to go list get. “Sorry, your presence is no longer useful to us and now you must leave.”
sad day for everyone but a great day for the kids of NYC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can’t believe they’re just going to abandon all the families!
lol! The “tens of thousand” (or is it hundreds of thousands?) of families they care so much about will just have to wait for a new billionaire who wants to use them to undermine public schools and lobby for larger class sizes, smaller public school budgets, and demand that 20X more kindergarten children get suspended (but not the white and middle class ones).
FLERP!,
Remember Jeremiah Kittredge was about to go work directly for Eva Moskowitz as his “soft landing”. I’m sure that if this had not gotten out that he would be there now and Moskowitz would have expressed complete ignorance of any wrongdoing.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, an energized, amply staffed, high-profile Walton-funded operation called Innovate Public Schools has been taking up the privatization-under-the-guise-of-the-new-civil-rights-movement cause, so those worrying that their sector is withering away have new hope. There seem to be endless funds for Astroturf (fake grassroots) operations that do policy/lobbying/propaganda in education. If only there were endless funds for education itself.
Good riddance to bad rubbish….
Families for excellent billionaires who want to destroy public education and act like sexual gang busters with the staff at FFES!!!! lol…wow payback is a bich…
Here in Boston, UMass Professor Maurice Cunningham has done a bang-up job of exposing the dark mony shenanigans of FES, and its apparent permutations of avatars as it seeks to assume alternative identities. Worth a read:
http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/author/mcunningham/