Mercedes Schneider reviews an exhaustive report by Richard Phelps about the origins, policies, and practices of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
I approach this topic with caution because I was a founding board member of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute. I was a close friend of Checker Finn, until I broke ranks and turned against the conservative activism in which TBF is a prominent actor. I don’t say bad things about Checker or Mike Petrilli. But I don’t agree with them, I think they are doing immeasurable damage to public education, and I regret that they lack the ability to be self-critical or reflective. When I was on the board, I strongly opposed the decision to accept funding from the Gates Foundation. I said it would compromise TBF’s independence. I was right. I opposed the board’s decision to become a charter authorizer in Ohio, where TBF is technically located. I thought that a think tank should not be a charter authorizer. That was well before I took issue with the whole conservative package of standards, testing, accountability, and choice.
Read the entire Phelps’ report.
Phelps raises a serious issue of “donor intent” and whether it was honored. The TBF Funds were intended by their owner to be used strictly for charitable purposes, Phelps writes, never to benefit any individual nor to influence legislation. When I was a member of the board, I was unaware of these restrictions. Mrs. Thelma Fordham Pruett’s lawyer was Checker Finn’s father. He was chairman of the board of the TBF foundation. He decided that the funds—about $35 Million—were not restricted, and he turned them over to his son, who became CEO of the new foundation and used the funds to promote a highly political agenda of education reform. The Fordham Institute has led the way in advancing privatization by charters and vouchers in Ohio. Nationally, it was and is a leading voice in promoting the Common Core standards. Gates paid millions of dollars to TBF both to evaluate the Common Core and to advocate for it.
This is a very troubling report.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I’ve always assumed that TBF was a paid for arm of the Gates education philosophy. It’s frustrating that they are considered by the media as an unbiased arbiter of what is happening in education. Gates has slanted so much of the narrative on education with his money.
AN essential line: “Gates has slanted so much of the narrative on education with his money.”
The Arnold Foundation website lists Fordham as a recipient of money.
Posted at :https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Conflicts-of-Interest-Com-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charitable_Charter-Schools_Conflicts-Of-Interest_Core-Curricula-180920-756.html#comment711976
Below is my comment, which has embedded links to Diane’s published books and articles.
See my series here http://www.opednews.com/Series/PRIVITIZATION-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150925-546.html
where most of my links are from the blog of former asst Sec’y of Education Diane Ravitch, whose blog I read daily, because she is the voice of TRUTH, as behind the curtain our public education is being privatized at a relentless rate.
She predicted it way back when Bush instituted the No Child Left Behind act, an Orwellian name for a process that tests kids in order to label the schools failing and replace them with charters, rather than fund real ways to improve education.
DO NOT MISS: * The Trump Devos Demolition of American Education by Dr. Ravitch,
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.
Learn the truth from the writing of this brilliant educator, who is Politico’s choice for AMERICA’S 50 MOST IMPORTANT AMERICANS , and has been watching this destruction of this road to income equality & democracy –our public schools.
Read her: How Not to Fix Our Public Schools
Some might have been better than others, but think tanks have never been the unbiased scholarly organizations that they pretend to be.
Most of them are populated by failed academics and people who were not smart enough to get a university job to begin with.
Many of them are lobbying groups pretending to be scholars. They get the ear of the media by pretending to be scholars. It is sometimes a way to disseminate bias while appearing to be neutral.
Pretend scholars is right.
Kids would have these “pretend scholars” for lunch.
Is there a think tank which is doing an honorable job?
The corporate-funded Center for American Progress received $2 mil. from Gates. Fordham posted its 2013 tax forms at its site. The report showed an exchange of funds between CAP and Fordham.
” I don’t say bad things about Checker or Mike Petrilli. But I don’t agree with them, I think they are doing immeasurable damage to public education, and I regret that they lack the ability to be self-critical or reflective.”
Which of course is a pretty damaging opinion about these people. 🙂
Phelps’ chronology establishes a pattern. Prof. Figlio’s research paper foreword about vouchers (Northwestern University) which was written by Fordham, identified a pro-privatization finding in the paper that was absent from the research. Ohio media reported the finding as if it was in the paper, referencing interviews with Dayton, Ohio Fordham staff.
A former VP of education for the Laura and John Arnold Foundation is on the Board of Fordham. Currently, she is CEO of L.A.’s Magnolia Charter Schools which Fordham identifies as “public”. Prior to her tenure at Magnolia, Magnolia’s foreign employees included 97 teachers, most of them Turkish nationals. (Oct. 12, 2016).
I have heard that this person holds the seat on the TBF that I once held. The one seat reserved for a female.
How can we get state boards and departments of education to understand ” the whole conservative package of standards, testing, accountability, and choice” as anti-liberal?
They understand. They have incentives to buy into the ruse constructed to justify pocketing Gates, Arnold, Broad and Walton money. The ruse takes from communities and middle class and poor kids with the aim to enrich the tech industry. The goal of Gates’ New Schools Venture Fund was published in 2003 in Philanthropy Roundtable…to produce brands on a large scale. (Kim Smith interview)
If the money dried up, the politicians and their appointees would “understand”. For example, Dr. Ravitch informed us that the wife of Secretary of Education, John King, was employed by a Gates-funded organization. As a 2nd example, Democratic mayors in Ohio co-hosted a Gates-sponsored event that listed two speakers, Chetty’s co-author and a Gates’ Impatient Optimist. I presume the mayors liked status and visibility which Gates’ money provided. When the mayors were called out on the speaker choice, rather than seeking information that would lead them to cancel the event, they defended the choice. As a 3rd example, elected judges who render decisions favorable to public schools, will be targeted for defeat in reelections. Gates and his Microsoft co-founder spent more than $1/2 mil. to defeat Washington state judges who didn’t do what they wanted.
If the money dried up, reform would die.
They don’t see what they are doing as anti-liberal. Brookline SC certainly doesn’t. Not does SBoE.
Harvard is perceived as liberal. It has been in the forefront of the privatization and corporatization movement. Check the cv of Prof. Roland Fryer. It shows a $1 mil. Gates’ grant. The Deutsch 29 blog quotes Fryer as saying that testing everyday was right for kids in certain neighborhoods. IMO, that is the opposite of liberal.
Harvard University received large sums from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation which are listed at the Foundation site.
Other than a few, small circulation, education reporting sites e.g. NPE,
Nonpartisan Education Review, Deutsch 29, Tultican.com, and independent writers like Peter Greene, all of the news sources claiming to be independent get Gates funding.
In Philanthropy Roundtable, the authors of “Don’t Surrender the Academy” (one of them an external affairs manager of a Gates-funded organization) quoted reformers as saying they’ve got to “blow up the ed schools”. The alternative suggested was to introduce money within universities to get what was wanted.
The education landscape would be vastly different if villainthropists shut off the pipeline.
To be clear, the sites you mentioned–Tom Ultican, Mercedes Schneider, NPE, Peter Greene, me, Steven Singer, etc. –do NOT get Gates funding.
Rejection of Gates and Arnold funding is a profound statement of integrity.
In contrast, when people and organizations presume that they are good, while taking money from the venture “philanthropists” who undermine democracy, they become either oxymorons or, people who fail in ethical self-reflection.
Dr. Ravitch and the others I listed with NPE exemplify integrity and are good and principled.
I don’t know Gates et al and certainly have not accepted money from Gates et al to write all the critiques of Common Core I have written in 6 years. Nor have I been given a penny by any of the state legislatures or school boards I testified against CC for. The question remains: How to disentangle states from Common Core’s octopus-like tentacles? So far, I am not aware of any way to do it except through a legislative bill or an initiative petition. Sandra
“In contrast, when people and organizations presume that they are good, while taking money from the venture “philanthropists” who undermine democracy, they become either oxymorons or, people who fail in ethical self-reflection.”
At universities, now they say, this is the 21st century way for research: profs should bring in as much money as they can from external sources. The source means private individuals (philanthropists), foundations, and corporations. The less distinguished a university, the more likely that its profs will turn to private donors, corrupting their research.
What can parents and state legislatures do to start to remove this octopus’s tentacles from public education?
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At universities, parents and students should do two things
1) Find out exactly how tuition and fees are spent by the university. (In my experience, students have no idea; they just accept the status quo of increasing tuition and fees much faster than inflation. Why do we have that extra fee for business courses?)
2) Demand that all contract between the university and private individuals, corporations are transparently posted with all details: money amount, who signed the contracts, possible conflict of interests.
I think, in K12 you can do something similar: find out all the details about state and schoolboard contracts with charter operators, testing companies, tech companies, etc.
How does that begin to get rid of Common Core’s K-12 standards?
Sandra,
Thanks for the efforts you have made in behalf of middle class and poor students.
If growth in American GDP mattered to the Hoover Institute’s men like Hanushek and Finn and to tech tyrants like Gates, they could address the financial sector’s estimated 2% drag on the economy.
In Ohio, legislation mandating testing by computer was passed. Ohio is run by the Koch’s ALEC. So, deformers finding ways to get their agendas enacted in state capitols is in every corner of their radar.
How does one get Gates and wife to stop thinking they know what they’re doing in education?
Gates and Zuckerberg are investors in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box. The product’s anticipated return is 20%. Money is likely a powerful incentive for someone who critics claim was a business predator and whose defining characteristic is described as competitiveness. Gates claims to be a venture philanthropist which would explain how, after decades of “giving”, he has never fallen one rung on the richest men lists.
Gates is similar to the Koch Bros. but, he has better PR. IMO, the Democratic Party establishment white-washed Gates. The Center for American Progress, a corporate funded organization founded by Hillary’s campaign manager, recommended states authorize charter schools. And CAP, recommended raising funds to replace cuts in education funding since 2008, not through taxes but instead, by getting revenue from selling advertising on buses (March 2018). Bill Gates lives in the state with the most regressive tax system in the nation. In the state of Washington, the poor pay a rate up to 7 times the rate that Gates pays.
Maybe someone could create a re-education camp for failed Reformers, like Bill & Melinda Gates.
John Arnold, Mark Zuckerberg, Reed Hastings, Michael Bloomberg, the Walton family, on and on.
Make the tuition very high, and the camp would have cachet.
Hanushek received an award for scholarship from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Paint me surprised. His posted cv doesn’t have a “grants” section.
Wikipedia lists Hanushek as married to the Director of Stanford’s CREDO (Margaret Macke Raymond).
CREDO receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
I hadn’t known that CREDO was funded by the Waltons. Thanks for the information. Sandra
CREDO also got money from the Fisher Fund. Tultican.com has a layman’s guide to the “destroy public education movement” that is a few pages in length. I’ve sent the summary to some decision makers.
With the Tultican mailing, I included the Business Insider June article describing the Rand study that found Gates’ $1 bil. in spending has been a failure.
I read the article and find the complexities exposed by it to be fascinating, as it portrays an organization I have opposed from the moment I discovered its existence by looking into who Checker Finn might be and finding him on a Hoover Institute site where he constantly published articles concerning fear of the professionalization of teachers, this from an authoritarian fool, as I found him to be, who wanted education to be by authoritarians and for the purpose of insuring that neither teachers or their students would have the rights and sensibilities to properly challenge his authority or those who were his friends, for example, members of the Bush administration who were trying every which way to keep the American public from knowing what it was doing or why (torturing people, for example) such as Cheney and Rumsfeld. At the time I despised Diane Ravitch, with good reason, I still think, because of the way she bolstered their cause by signing onto the team. I am still somewhat cautious in trusting Dr. Ravitch for her’s was not but an affiliation with the wrong people but people she of whom she had to know their motives, motives that were absolutely disgusting and who actions were so incredibly ugly as to cause me to think that the United States was beyond redemption. That said, I have been on the wrong side of the Common Core debate according to this article. The whole of the argument against the CCSS is based upon who is affiliated with the Core and, as is often the case in debates regarding the Core, with no reference to what the Core documents say, what they call for or why it is that they are being condemned as bad goals for students of a democratic society. I have sent many people specific Core examples and asked them to tell me what it is that is wrong with them and I, truthfully, have not had a single response to my request for explanation. i have tried to determine what it is about the Core that has so rattled people–amongst them teachers and teachers organizations and some scholars like Diane Ravitch and, too, off to the right conservative groups and individuals. What I have come to believe is that this is nothing of an alliance. Of course it is not. The conservatives, a good number of them of the religious right, do not want schools to cause students to think for themselves and possibly, probably with a good education, come to challenge the ridiculous and impossible “truths” they are taught by their parents and their preachers. As for the teachers and their associations, I think the problem with the CCSS is that, considering what they know and the ways they have been TRAINED to teach, the Core is an existential threat because it focuses so much on the development of thinking abilities when most who have been in education for any amount of time are ready only to teach a static content that an educator does not have to think much about to teach. It is teaching of a kind that allows for some success in classrooms far to large to allow for real and meaningful conversation between thinking people and, while some teachers complain about this situation, some only because of the work load it places upon them, it makes absolutely impossible the kind of interaction between people that powers the development of critical thinking ability. The school curriculum that most teachers teach IS an authoritarian one and it does far too little to help individuals find the power of their individual minds, a mindfulness if allowed for, or, god forbid, encouraged would make it necessary for teachers to be responsive educators rather than conduits for the predigested garbage that is the stuff of most textbooks. I ask here to have my analysis challenged because that would begin a needed conversation concerning the nature of education as it now, as it would be if a common core curriculum was to be implemented to serve the goals stated in the CCSS and as it might be if the real focus of those involved in the educational decision making process focused first on what was best for students and, by doing so created a means for evaluating both students and teachers based on criteria other than easy to teach and easy to assess.