The Walton Family Foundation gave a grant of nearly $1 million to St. Louis University, “To develop education policy.”
As is well established, the Waltons have certain goals: privatization of public schools and elimination of teachers unions.
There are legislative proposals currently for vouchers in the House and Senate.
Here come the Waltons, Missouri!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great! A million dollars to cheerlead vouchers.
I’m not sure begging billionaires to fund the research billionaires want to fund is a great plan, if what we’re looking for is a real debate on whether privatization should be the national education agenda.
“Vouchers- Great or Totally Awesome” isn’t my idea of a “debate”.
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Catholic Church leaders have a history of facilitating ripoffs of the poor
by colonialists along as they could take a rake off of the top.
Gates’ goal for charter schools, “…brands on a large scale.”
Reed Hastings, partnered in a charter school chain, called for an end to democratically elected school boards.
Z-berg, who also has an education scheme, has on his Facebook board, Andreesen, who said India was better off under colonialism.
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Here’s some studies I’d like to see:
“The effect of declining wages due to the Walton’s lobbying for low wages in low and middle income public schools”- I wonder if the Walton’s will fund that?
“The effect of opiod addiction in rural, low income schools” funded by the Sacklers.
Relying on 15 billionaires who have an ideological agenda and a profit motive to fund all our “research” may not be wise, unless “research” just means “support an echo chamber” – in which case we already have one.
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The echo chamber includes the pseudo “liberal” think tanks funded by billionaires.
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I’m sure they’ll be in touch with Rex Sinquefeld’s Show Me Institute.
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What else would a person expect? St. Louis University is Catholic, the same type of hypocrisy about social justice was on display when Catholic University of America took
millions from social Darwinists, Charles and David Koch.
Catholic boys like those wearing MAGA hats and intimidating the elderly Nathan Phillips, a war veteran and Native American while he practiced his faith, will enroll at St. Louis University.
Catholic universities want K-12 schools privatized so that taxpayers are forced to pay for the Catholic schools’ cherry picked students, students like those from Covington Catholic who were in D.C. this weekend at the pro-birth rally, who can be counted on to oppose social safety nets to provide assistance for poor who have been denied the right to make decisions about their own bodies.
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This is what we get after a generation of bishops obsessed with abortion at the expense of Catholic social justice. If it were up to me, every bishop not appointed by Francis would be sacked…or jailed for those who covered up all the sex abuse. We need more social. justice priests & bishops from the Berrigan brothers tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Berrigan
I don’t have much hope that there will be any ramifications to these boys, their parents and the school when they all pretty much all hold the same racist views.
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The test of a person’s ethical values is when he will turn down money and can cite a moral wrong that prevented him from taking it. If he’s flummoxed by the question he lacks a developed ethical framework for making decisions.
Investigative journalists ought to explore what Jesuit colleges would turn down.
Setting an example by trying to be like Christ, is obviously way down the list because the president’s bio’s are all amount bringing in money and what tangible things the money bought.
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On Jan. 22, UnKochMyCampus.org plans to introduce a model policy to prevent donors from eroding academic independence at universities.
Frederick Hess (AEI) in his paean to the rich, “Don’t Surrender the Academy”, recommended payoffs in lieu of the wealthy’s predilection to “…blow up” university schools that didn’t do what the rich wanted.
It’s beyond disgusting to have the richest 0.1% funding K-12 privatization at “Christian/Catholic” universities where the homeless and poorly dressed Christ would be unrecognized by his self-professed spokespersons.
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The linked article states that the Walton money is going to create something like Michigan State University’s EPIC center. Repeated requests to EPIC and MSU’s Education Dean to identify who paid for EPIC’s start-up have gone unanswered. Now that Pres. Engler has been forced out by the Board, maybe the Board will turn its attention to EPIC and charter schools. 80% of Michigan’s charter schools are for-profit and, they have been “brutal on Black families” (Detroit News).
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Yes about the non-disclosure of funding for EPIC. Most of the EPIC researchers are economists who love to produce working papers, many republished by the Brookings.
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From the SLU President’s bio ….”record-breaking …endowments and campus construction.”
Does it take a skill to put your hand out and let billionaires intent on destroying the common good drop silver coins into it?
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I would like to know more about any voucher/choice proposals that are under consideration in the federal congress. With the current dem majority in the house of representatives, I doubt if any choice proposals will ever see the light of day (in this congress).
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Yes! Right, Charles.
Real Democrats support public schools, not profiteering, privatizing and grifters.
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I did an internet search, and I found no voucher/choice proposals currently under consideration (by the federal congress). Some dems support school choice, some do not. Most liberal elites send their children to exclusive private schools, and then mouth support for publicly-operated schools.
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Charles, the federal government hands out nearly $500 million a year to new and existing charters, even when they are flush with cash, even when they are supported by billionaires like the Waltons. No new legislation is needed. Just keep the money flowing even when there is no need, just greed
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long. The 2018 database for the Walton Foundation shows that it gave 94 grants to universities. One of the largest was to the “Arizona State University Foundation for A New American University, $3, 328, 470.” (More on the “A New American University” at the end of this post.)
By comparison the $1 million for St Louis University is not so much. The Press release did not disclose that Gary Ritter, Ph.D., new dean of the School of Education at St. Louis University was hired from his post in Arkansas where he was a “Professor of Education and Public Policy and holder of the (Walton) Endowed Chair in Education Policy in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.
Ritter was also the Director and Founder (in 2003) of the Office for Education Policy at the University of Arkansas. The goal of the Office “is to be a resource that aids state legislators, school board members, and other policymakers in thoughtful decision-making concerning K-12 education in the State of Arkansas.”
Ritter had been a faculty member at the University of Arkansas since 2000.” Other biographical information indicates that he has a Jesuit education and volunteered for Sacred Heart School in Camden, NJ. That background may explain Ritter’s migration to St. Louis University, a Catholic, Jesuit institution. Now the question is whether the report cards for schools in Missouri will be designed to favor parental choices of Catholic schools.
http://www.officeforeducationpolicy.org/gary-ritter-phd/
This press release refers to similar data-driven policy shops. In addition to The Office of Educational Policy (OPE) at the University of Arkansas, there is the Educational Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University, Houston Education Research Consortium at the University of Houston, and the Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA) at Stanford University.
These “data-driven” policy shops are intended to promote charter schools, choice, and more generally point to data-enhanced versions of what is wrong with public schools. Because the leader of the Office of Educational Policy at the University of Arkansas (OEP) has moved on to St. Louis University, only a few staff at OEP do policy work. The following OEA policy paper is a rehash of the read-by-grade-three issue, with no serious look at remedies other than more pressure to read by grade three. The fundamental issue, well documented even in this study, is poverty. http://www.officeforeducationpolicy.org/downloads/2018/10/third-grade-reading-policy-brief.pdf
A recent example of the potential importance of these policy shops comes from Politico’s use of Stanford’s CEPA’s data-base, dubbed SEDA (Stanford Education Data Archive) in combination with data from the Office of Civil Rights. The Politico report is titled “Miseducation.” That titl and some of the major charts and graphs show, in compelling detail, a nation marked by entrenched poverty and segregation. The report authors seem to blame schools for these and other conditions beyond their control.
The construction of the SEDA data-base was aided by grants from two federal agencies (National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences) but also with money from the Spencer Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Overdeck Family Foundation. They are self-annoited shapers of policies who think of “partners” and “collaborators” as schools and districts willing to do their bidding.
The Michigan State University Educational Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) is led by two economists. EPIC has a Charter School initiative and a program of “working papers” (not peer reviewed) examining teacher unions, for-profit charter schools, and school financing among other topics. I found no way to see how EPIC is funded. That opacity can hide a lot of mischief. Even so, Michigan State University is a darling of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the whole state seems to be a captive of initiatives from the Walton Foundation and Betsy DeVos. In 2015, the Gates Foundation awarded $6.8 million to Michigan State University’s TeachingWorks, making that program one of fiveGates-funded “Teacher Preparation Transformation Center.” Policy was not a matter of concern. The grant was part of an initiative to standardize teacher prep around a new test from Education Testing Service called NOTE, an avatar-based alternative to edPTA NOTE is intended to guarantee that new teachers “are safe to enter classrooms” also known as “classroom ready.”
HERA, The Houston Education Research Consortium, is housed at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. HERA is intended to guide “equity-minded” policy in ten Houston-area school districts. Data-driven policy formation is funded by the Houston Endowment, Kinder Foundation, Spencer Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett Foundation, Wallace Foundation, Chan/Zuckerberg Foundation, and H-E-B, a Texas/Mexico supermarket chain owned by billionaire Charles Butts. It is unclear why H-E-B, the corporation, is a funder instead of Charles Butts’ philanthropies. See for example https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2017/02/17/heb-leaders-education-foundation-to-build-44-acre.html
All of these policy shops are well-funded. They also promote data-driven decisions, as if to say judgments about the data might be self-evident and compelling. I think not. These policy shops circumvent opportunities for transparency in policy formation by suppressing and bypassing ideas from citizens, elected school boards, and independent scholars/researchers among others.
If you are being overwhelmed by claims that everything good and wonderful is “data-driven,” and minding “big data” is essential in education, please consider this wisdom and the book from which it came.
“We are more susceptible than we may think to the “dictatorship of data”—that is, letting the data govern us in ways that may do as much harm as good. The threat is that we will let ourselves be mindlessly bound by the output of our analyses even when we have reasonable grounds for suspecting something is amiss. Or that we will attribute a degree of truth to data which it does not deserve. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger & Kenneth Cukier. (2013). Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 166.
If you want to know more about the Walton’s $3.3 million enthusiasm for Arizona State’s, A New American University, you can read the book promotion for that project. You may prefer this detailed and thoughtful review of the book . https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/new-new-american-university
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As usual, Laura, your summaries are invaluable. An addition to the list, Tulane’s ERA, a shop run by Douglas Harris and funded by Enron’s John Arnold, who is a former hedge funder and current destroyer of public pensions.
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At what point does the Jesuits’ St Louis operation cross the line, warranting re-labeling from university to think tank with students?
The Post Dispatch reported in Sept. about faculty complaints that Board member Rex Sinquefield was given rights to hire professors when he gave $50,000,000 to the operation. Based on the preponderance of corporate execs on the Board, the St. Louis/Sinquefield institute esteems profit taking. My personal favorites, the ethically beleaguered Wells Fargo and the Isle of Capri Casinos.
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Rex Sinquefeld is a self-made billionaire who grew up in an orphanage.
Sadly he believes everyone else should and can do what he did.
He is opposed to taxes and to government.
He despises public schools.
No free lunch, no hand outs.
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“what he did’? The financial sector drags down GDP by an estimated 2%.
If more people became obscenely wealthy from Wall Street, the USA would become Haiti more quickly than it is.
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Due to those complaints, it was made very clear to Sinquefield that he will not be allowed to appoint faculty. (Instead, he gets to choose the administrative appointee to head the Sinquefield Center for Applied Economic Research. Distinction/difference? Remains to be seen.) Those complaints also prompted formation of a faculty committee to recommend specific policy on donor influence. What policy will actually be put into place? Remains to be seen.
SLU’s Educational Policy Institute is the brain-child of the new Education dean, Gary Ritter, and it was established prior to getting the Walton gift. What will the Educational Policy Institute propose for Missouri’s legislature? Again, remains to be seen.
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If Ritter is funded by Walton, I feel safe predicting that he will recommend school choice.
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Did SLU’s President Pestello leave the University of Dayton (Catholic-Marianist) at about the time the school’s community began to raise serious objection to acceptance of Koch money? To my knowledge, the University of Dayton hasn’t gone on the record to announce its opposition to funding from social Darwinists but, I think leadership may have taken a principled stand on the issue.
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It’s a down payment to rebrand Missouri as Misery.
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The Sinquefield/Jesuit Institute aka St. Louis University, recipient of of $50,000,000 from Rex Sinquefield and $1 mil. from discount retailing heirs, the Waltons, who have wealth equivalent to 40% of Americans combined was not the school choice for the 3 Sinquefield children, Randy, Katie and Luke. They attended the University of Missouri, a university created by the sacrifice of citizens who wanted middle class and poor children to have a quality alternative to expensive, legacy admission colleges. When Randy, Katie and Luke inherit their billions it would be great if they paid back the money that citizens chipped in to give them educations.
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Middle class and poor kids grow up and contribute to GDP (as long as they don’t select employment on Wall Street).
Is it old fashioned to think that when rich people self-appoint to decide the best education for other people’s kids, like Mr. and Mrs. Sinquefield have, that their own kids….
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