Rick Hess of the conservative American Enterprise Institute reflects on the tendency of foundations to act like lemmings, blindly following the lead of the largest foundation Gates), even if it means jumping off a cliff, harming public schools, destroying the careers of teachers, and hurting children.
He was moved to think about this by the recent RAND report about the complete failure of Gates’ funding of test-based accountability of teachers. Who, other than teachers and their unions, the American Statistical Association, AERA, and the National Academy of zeducation, said this was a terrible idea?no foundation stepped off the bandwagon, nor did the U.S. Department of Education.
Hess writes:
“Most foundation staff spend a lot of time talking to people they fund, people they might fund, or people trying to woo them. They spend every day talking about their vision and mission, how to refine it, and how to execute it, and they do this mostly with people who want their money. Given all that, it’s easy to wind up in a self-assured, mission-driven bubble. After enough of this, almost any unsolicited critique can seem misinformed, unfair, and as proof that the critic “just doesn’t get it.”
Since Rick’s organization relies on philanthropy (the DeVos family funds AEI), his willingness to offer a critical view is gratifying.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One reason why gett8ing your first grant increases the likelihood that you will get your next grant.
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AN ESSENTIAL truth.
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AEI, CATO, Heritage, Freedom Federation, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Works, Federalist Society, etc., ad infinitum. These right wing/libertarian so called “think tanks” are shills and propagandists for the billionaires and the giant corporations. Some of them claim to be non-partisan but even that’s baloney because 9 times out of 10 the GOPers flock to these septic tanks like flies to cow manure. I think that they allow for some dissenting opinions just to give the appearance of being fair and balanced (like Fox News); it’s just for show, a facade, a charade. They are propaganda mills for limited government, lower taxes, free market solutions, privatization of everything in sight, charter schools, school vouchers, home schooling and the destruction of the commons. Don’t even mention unions or you will be attacked and burned at the stake. These “think tanks” get paid big bucks to pump out the charter school/voucher message and they will do so as long as the money keeps flowing in from the billionaires.
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ALEC hands out legislation proposals that politicians can take back to their states to turn them into a libertarian dystopia designed by the Koch brothers.
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UnKochMyCampus.org has two new reports, “Advancing White Supremacy through Academic Strategy” and the “Federalist Society Takeover of the George Mason Public School of Law”. Both articles reflect excellent work from young people who care about their nation.
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Rick Hess makes me want to vomit…same with Petrilli.
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Their whole GOAL has been to promote and reward groupthink, as I wrote back in 2012. They have spent billions in this pursuit.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/06/technocratic_groupthink_inflat.html
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It seems like Rick Hess has been deviating slightly from toeing the “reform” line on this crap lately. Makes me think maybe his financial circumstances have changed so he feels like he can afford not to devote his entire life to kowtowing. Not that it would be my business, except that when a critical mass of these think-tank types devote their life to kowtowing to magical thinking and/or scams, it does harm to all of us, especially the most vulnerable among us.
Of course the main activity of education “reform” operations is keeping the funding coming. Everything they do is primarily in pursuit of that goal. Of course they may believe, or more likely pretend to believe, that they’re doing some good along the way, but basically, follow the money.
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Think tank papers are the work product of intellectual prostitutes. It is a far more dangerous type of prostitution for society than the type plied on street corners.
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Foundations have too much influence over public policy. They were not elected; their influence is purchased by the wealthy. Hess suggests that foundations need to be as accountable for their actions as they want teachers to be, but that’s still not good enough. Accountability lies in democracy. The donor class simply should not have outsized influence over public policy, whether they’re buying echo chambers or not. Billionaires need to stop trying to buy my class time. Period.
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Frederick Hess co-authored “Don’t Surrender the Academy”. His co-author was an external affairs manager of a Gates-funded organization. Hess’ recommendations were published in Philanthropy Roundtable and included the proposal that the rich should use their money to usurp authority for college curriculum. It was offered as an alternative to the reformers’ plot to “blow up” ed schools.
Hess and columnist, George Will, suffer from severely limited intellects which have rendered them incapable of projecting the outcomes of their oligarch-funded, destructive and misidentified “free market” dogma. Or, they are willfully blind in pursuit of money.
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Rick Hess, in “How Education Philanthropy Can Accidentally Promote Groupthink and Bandwagonism” knows perfectly well that foundations are enchanted with the idea they can and should have a “collective impact” on society. Not much in the well-organized philanthropic world is “accidental.” True, there are leaders of group-think. Gates is among them, but many more are collaborating to shape education policy for pre-school, public schools, higher education and educational policies well beyond the United States.
But let’s begin in the US.
The Education Strategy Group has 36 members with 16 of these serving as the “steering group.” The Gates Foundation sent this group $1.2 million in 2018 to “engage state K12 and higher education leaders to implement policies and practices designed to close postsecondary readiness and attainment gaps.” This is an example philanthropic arrogance—the pretense of having superior expertise on “policies and practices” for K-12 and higher education and what should count as “readiness” for postsecondary education. The strategy group is part of a coordinated effort by the very rich to by-pass democratic governance of public institutions, including public education.
In 2016, the Gates Foundation also sent this “strategy” group $800,000 “to support state Every Student Succeeds Act plan development with meaningful engagement of the higher education community to validate high quality standards leading to college entrance without remediation.” Gates was intent of leveraging the collective power of the entire Education Strategy group in shaping state plans for ESSA…as if foundations were empowered to tell higher education how to “validate” standards for college entrance and manage state department of education plans for ESSA. Not so, the power is being grabbed as if an entitlement. (I have seen this power in action in Ohio where Ohio Philanthropy and a consultant claiming to represent the Gates Foundation intervened in shaping the ESSA plan, especially the twelve “stakeholder” meetings and online survey. Scandals in the charter school industry and related matters were off the table for discussion).
Grantmakers for Education (from the website http://www.edfunders.org) “set out to demonstrate the power of networks in affecting greater change. …With a diverse membership of nearly 300 organizations and 1,800 individuals, together, we extend the reach and expand the influence of education philanthropy.”
The programs at the website show how easily these members are drawn into hot topics in education, often fads introduced at conferences, by promoters say, of “makerspaces,” or the biggie (de) personalized learning. In 2016, the Gates foundation sent $800,000 to Grantmakers for Education to “fund the work plan to develop and launch the DevEd Initiative, as well as support the Post Secondary Access and Attainment Impact Group (PSA2). This is an effort to micro-manage middle-and high school course taking, in effect reducing studies in the arts and humanities. https://edfunders.org/engage/impact-groups/postsecondary-access-and-attainment
Philanthropy Roundtable. This is the “leading network of charitable donors working to strengthen our free society, uphold donor intent,… foster excellence in philanthropy, to protect philanthropic freedom, to assist donors in achieving their philanthropic intent, and to help donors advance liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility in America and abroad.” Notice the reference to “philanthropic freedom,” especially in the light of Republican efforts to keep names of donors secret. See the website for the Roundtable’s K-12 education programs and look at the speakers, venue, and costs of the annual meeting. https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/home/programs/k-12-education https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/home/events/2018-annual-meeting/2018-annual-meeting-registration
The Global Philanthropy Forum is organized to help members engage in the “strategic in the pursuit of international causes” through networking, conferences, and matchmaking services. Annual membership fees are arranged in tiers to accommodate individual donors, unstaffed family foundations and staffed foundations. Partner & Strategic Partners status is given to members who offer multi-year funding at $75,000+. Look at the members of the Advisory Council and Steering group https://philanthropyforum.org/conference/2018-gpf/ Among featured speakers on their “Education Issue” page are Laurene Powell Jobs interviewing one of her favorite entrepreneurs: Wendy Kopp.
The “Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society” is a non-profit dating to 2016. It began as a PR campaign designed to put a positive spin on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the face of increasing public and press disapproval of data mining and the use of algorithms to drive online behavior (e.g. Facebook’s profit-seeking from Russian operatives who interfered with our elections). The grandiose vision of artificial intelligence is betrayed by the overwhelming purpose of these companies: Profit seeking from the personal data of individuals. Here are some briefs from these companies offered (i kid you not) as promo for the new non-profit.
AMAZON has customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa.
APPLE sells iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple TV, has software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS with services via the App Store, Apple Music, Apple Pay, and iCloud.
DEEPMIND, based in London, acquired in 2014 by Google (part of Alphabet group) works on AI programs that can “learn to solve any complex problem without needing to be taught how.”
GOOGLE is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. Google products/platforms include Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome, and YouTube.
FACEBOOK. Facebook has AI Research (FAIR) and Applied Machine Learning.
IBM’S Watson is. .”.the most advanced AI computing platform available today, deployed in more than 45 countries and across 20 different industries.”
MICROSOFT says, “More than any other technology that has preceded it, AI has the potential to extend human capabilities, empowering us all to achieve more.”
To the complete surprise of these corporate founders, many “partners” showed up in no time, including other tech companies as well as non-profits, think tanks, and social benefit programs. The founders were clueless about the potential significance of the organization. Non-profit status dates from 2018, and they are still looking for a COO in July 2018. The activities of the Partnership on AI are funded by membership dues paid by its for-profit partners and contributions and grants from non-profit organizations and foundations.
Logos of the current partners are displayed at the website. The larger question is whether these mega-corporate promoters of systems of artificial intelligence, now organized as a non-profit, should be trusted to solve “humanity’s most pressing challenges” identified as education, climate change, food, health and wellbeing, transportation, and inequality. I think not.https://www.partnershiponai.org/partners/ (not to be confused with the 2013 AI for Good Foundation).
The Foundation Center, dating from 1956, is the go-to-source of information about philanthropy. It is supported by about 550 foundations. The Center provides resources, training, and data to promote this sector, and it is adding information about international philanthropies. See this for one example of the information it circulates about education. http://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/education-sector-needs-work-on-diversity-equity-study-finds?_ga=2.94302941.1736605671.1532284918-1989739296.1408236551
There are more organized efforts to enhance the power of “philanthropies” working in education—and far from the trope of being charities. There is nothing charitable in the efforts to organize very rich people for collective impact, and in our era, with significant bashing of public governance of public institutions, especially public education. This sector of society has contributed to what Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg aptly dubbed GERM– the Global Education Reform Movement. There is nothing accidental about it.
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There’s likely a close alignment between the POV’s of Arizona Republican Rep. Paul Mosley, an ALEC legislator, and people referenced in Laura’s comment.
Mosley promotes the idea that education should be a privilege. Laws that mandate compulsory education should be repealed. He’s been charged with aggressively promoting legislation that would personally benefit him. He claims he is above the law- that he has legislative immunity when he drives at excessive speeds that violate the law. He thinks a woman’s place is in the home. Mosley’s donors relish his destructive agenda, an agenda at the center of the Republican Party.
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Actually the belief that lemmings all run off the cliff is a myth perpetrated by someone who believed that they did. He ran a whole bunch of them off a cliff to their deaths and filmed it. He was sure he was just helping out nature. So this makes lemmings even more accurate as an image. Reformers always knew better.
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Rick…
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Having read his article, it strikes me that Hess is just experiencing the joy of dealing with people who have had economic success. I have known many people who have had such luck with their ideas. Some are generous and humble. Others are not so much. All give off a perfume of confidence born of success. This makes me think of an old man that used to walk the roads in Bedford County here where I grew up.
Billy Alexander was a tall, thin man who lived alone back up in the hills above Bell Buckle, where I grew up. He loved natural history and discussions of philosophy. One of his favorite conversation companions was a druggist who had been a Primitive Baptist, a group that often emphasizes the Calvinistic notion of pre-destination, which attributes the saving of the human soul to an all-powerful God. A departed friend of mine was privy to some of their conversations, and quoted this druggist as saying that “if a rock became conscious after someone had thrown it into the air, it would perceive that it had caused its own flight.” This deterministic view of mankind was foreign to my friend, and probably more foreign to the people who are alive today. It reminds me of the people who have enough money to start a foundation.
It strikes me, upon reading Hess’ piece, that the people who start the foundations often consider themselves the cause of their own wealth. It would be dreadfully hard on a person to think that they just got lucky. They are rocks, cast into the air by an expanding economic system at an opportune time. They owe more to the economic structure of the country and the world than anyone. But who can admit that he just got lucky? It must take a huge ego to compete in the economic world. The wealthy, often generational wealthy, must find the reality of want to be as difficult to understand as a complex physics relationship.
So some of them start foundation work to solve the dissonance that must come with great wealth. Others probably see it as a method to control where their dollars go to other people given that they have so many of them that other people are naturally going to try to scrub them on their own bodies like dogs rolling in scents. All are filled with the hubris that comes with great success, poison to humanity. How difficult it is for the wealthy to enter the kingdom.
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Late to the party, but once again I must insert the words villainthropies & villainthropists.
WHAT “philanthropies” & “philanthropists?” These/they are no such things/creatures.
Having just seen the fascinating (but very under-publicized film “Shock & Awe”), I would refer to them as our very own WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction–& not just MATH Destruction).
Destroying public education is massive destruction.
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