Cory Booker has long been an ally of the corporate reformers.
Booker was hooked up with BAEO and the Bradley Foundation around Milwaukee vouchers as far back as 2001. Has he changed his mind? Does he still support vouchers? If so, he will give Trump a run for his money among the evangelicals who are the primary beneficiaries of vouchers.
https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/fruit-poisoned-tree-hard-rights-plan-capture-newark-nj
And here is a contemporary defense of Booker in “The Atlantic,” where we learn more about his deep ties to DFER and education “reform.” Why do liberals hate Booker? So what if Wall Street loves him and he loves them back? So what if he and Chris Christie are best buddies? So what if he loves Privatizing public schools?
If you should ever have the chance, please ask Senator Booker if he still supports vouchers. Ask him if he has any ideas to help the 85% of America’s kids who attend public schools, not charters or voucher schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Corey Booker is a good example to teach people that we should always judge elected officials by their actions and not what they say or what they look like.
We should be color blind when we decide who to support. Fact checks their voting history, find out who their largest financial supporters are, and ignore their flyers and interviews and TV ads.
Good advice!
Applies to all candidates, especially those posing as progressives now.
We sure get a lot of dizz balls running for potus.
Booker is just another USER.
If Booker supports democracy, he should support strong, transparent, accountable, local public schools. Public schools are democracy in action. Booker supports “options” for quality educational opportunities. Has he bothered to read the research on charters and vouchers? Has he bothered to understand that the more options there are for charters and vouchers, the fewer options there are for public school students? Booker has done very well from his public school education. Why not offer a quality public school with quality options for all students? Quality public schools are a community investment. Charters and vouchers are a disinvestment in the local community that enriches corporations at the cost of local democratic control.
“Ask him if he has any ideas to help the 85% of America’s kids who attend public schools, not charters or voucher schools.”
Sure he does. One can find the ed reform education agenda at any of their sites, lobbying groups or academic conventions.
This is it:
choice
accountability
How that plays out in the real world is public schools students get tests, and that’s all they get.
They delivered the tests, didn’t they? Public school students are tested constantly, and even more so when they plunk them in front of screens and call it “personalized learning”.
Okay then. They’re done with the public school part. They delivered on their one and only idea for public schools.
When I mentioned accountability in the above post, I was not talking about student testing. I was talking about the public schools being subjected to public scrutiny. Any taxpayer can look at the school budget. Any taxpayer can ask questions. Independent auditors ensure that the district is being a responsible steward of public funds. There are no such safeguards when public money drops into corporate accounts. That is why waste, fraud and embezzling are widespread in privatization.
There’s something delightfully ironic about Democrats abandoning labor unions and then when labor unions are abolished Democrats find themselves unable to get elected.
I don’t think they want to govern. They refuse to back their own supporters. They absolutely loathe the people who vote who vote for them- treat them with utter contempt.
It’s the strangest political strategy I’ve ever seen. They don’t lift a finger for the people who put them in office and then wonder why they lose so much.
Which genius Democratic strategist told them the public loathes public schools? Who told them we hate labor unions? People get paid for that advice?
Booker is an example of all that’s wrong with today’s Democratic Party whose arrogance and despotism is responsible for today’s undermining of public schools and for the current federal Administration.
Exactly, Scisne. Not to be trusted…ever. Once a sellout, always a sellout.
https://www.google.com/amp/observer.com/2003/12/power-punk-mark-gerson/amp/
Exactly. Corey Booker’s actions speak much louder than his faux populist words. He’s followed right-wing money for years and there is no indication he’ll change.
Glen Ford is a journalist who has followed Booker from his earliest rise into politics. Booker, like Trump, will do anything, say anything & take money from anyone to serve his own ambition.
This is Ford on Booker in 2012. It’s worth watching & spreading:
Another link to Marc Gerson is charter advocate Dmitri Mehlhorn. He is a former employee of the firm Gerson founded, the Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG). Mehlhorn got an entry on Diane’s blog several years ago, when he Twitter-flamed a DC parent. Following his time at GLG, Mehlhorn ran Michelle Rhee’s Student’s First organization in DC. It promptly folded under his watch. He is also a known acquaintance of LA Mayor Eric Garcetti. Cami Anderson is also a known acquaintance of Democratic operatives.
Booker makes himself sound like a Progressive, which makes me feel manipulated. His handle on subcontractors conflicts with my experience working for them, because despite being middle men and dividing up funds, the companies with the subcontracts that I’ve worked for actually paid me a decent salary asa teacher and they also saw themselves as employers who had to follow labor laws, so they did so and they also paid employer contributions to payroll taxes. Too bad he made no mention of all the people who are hired as independent contractors that have no labor law protections at all and who have to pay both employee and employer contributions to payroll taxes.
The Brookings Institution says it “is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Our mission is to conduct in-depth research that leads to new ideas for solving problems facing society at the local, national and global level.”
That means think-tank. So how have they managed to keep the .edu website moniker, which is supposed to be just for schools?? It’s all very misleading…
Yes, I am amused when think tanks stress their non-profit status. “We’re not making any money off of our propaganda efforts.”
The WP ranks Booker 5 among the top 15 Democratic presidential candidates for 2020…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/07/06/the-top-15-democratic-presidential-candidates-for-2020-ranked-3/