What exquisite timing! The teachers in Oakland went out on strike to demand a decent living wage and to protest the destruction of their schools by privatizers, and guess who is planning to come to town?
On May 8-9, the NewSchools Venture Fund will hold its annual summit in Oakland, California, to review its plans for additional privatization of public schools.
The summit is sponsored by the usual suspects: The Walton Family Foundation (anti-union, anti-public schools, pro-privatization), The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (ditto), The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (selling computers and depersonalized learning), and The Carnegie Foundation of New York (once a friend to public schools, but no longer).
Make plans to be in Oakland to send your greetings to the Robber Barons of our day.
Who knows? Maybe Betsy DeVos will be their keynote speaker.
They are planning to disrupt your public schools, destroy your unions, and continue marauding where they are uninvited and unwelcome.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why don’t these folks pour money into resources and services for ALL schools?
They really don’t want to or don’t know how to give back. This kind of giving back is always about taking over or crapping in a bucket full of good milk.
and not just ruining the milk, but then saying that the world desperately needs a Big Money controlled “new” kind of milk
They can’t get tax credits that recycle money back to their foundations. that’s why. Tax credits take money out of the tax base we pay into that pay for our public schools. Also, ICE is looking to create a low wage, service sector, “lawful” workforce.
Sewing up the market for $$$$$. When will people realize that these people don’t care and are just deceivers and their goal is to privatize all public schools for what they see and an ENDLESS LINE of profits for themselves. Once in place, hard to get rid of.
Plus, they want kids and others to think that that SCREEN is reality, when it isn’t.
Wonder what behavioral psychologists they hired?
Is this FOR REAL? It’s OUTRAGEOUS.
Proposed bill would reduce school funding based on reading readiness performance
An Arkansas legislator has introduced a bill that would reduce National School Lunch state categorical funding for a school if the “overall reading readiness is below a certain percentage.”
https://www.thv11.com/article/news/education/proposed-bill-would-reduce-school-funding-based-on-reading-readiness-performance/91-476f333d-f637-4024-aa61-94aebbc0e968?utm_medium=email&utm_source=dlcc&utm_content=4&utm_campaign=em030319_s1_b1_1a&source=em030319_s1_b1_1a&refcode=em030319_s1_b1_1a
That’s the cruelty of the ruling class. Kids go hungry because the wealthy want them to. But, the rich set up a system that creates the pretense that school personnel are at fault.
Online preschool (UPSTART) is also connected with NewSchools Venture Fund. https://www.waterford.org/news/waterford-selected-newschools-ignite-early-learning-challenge/
Thanks for the link. I see that a Trustee at Waterford is Ann Chistensen PRESIDENT, CHRISTENSEN INSTITUTE promoter of “disruptive innovation” as if a virtue. None of the Waterford staff are experienced in education, except for a retread from Pearson. The Waterford is marketing products but it is “non-profit” with a strong presence in Utah. In fact, this online program appears to be competing with the Utah “pay for success” preschool program. I also notice that there were 15 winners of the “early learning” challenge from the NewSchools Venture Fund.
The summit (love how this word conveys their self-importance –we are at the top, the most important) will be held at the Oakland Marriott Civic Center/Convention Center.
Planning? They’re already doing it…this is just an attempt at another nail in the privatization coffin…
I hope that Oakland teachers and parents greet them warmly.
We Oakland teachers have had some good practice at how to march, rally and shut down meetings and will be ready!
Communities should reject all of their market based meddling. New Schools Venture Fund is made up of financial pirates that will sack the public schools and transfer public funds to their own pockets resulting in depleted public schools. They will not improve the community one iota. Their goal is to extract value from the local community by destroying a key public asset, public schools.
Consider the meaning of “venture fund.” These people are toying with the lives of the students in Oakland through a capitalist experiment, mostly likely cheap, ineffective cyber instruction. This is not how quality education functions. Education is investment in the lives of students to build a better life for students and improve the community as a whole.
Defend your public schools against venture capitalists. They seek to profit from poor students by offering a separate and unequal school experience for mostly minority students.
“These people are toying with the lives of the students in Oakland through a capitalist experiment, mostly likely cheap, ineffective cyber instruction. This is not how quality education functions.”
Very well-said.
“Move fast and break things” applies especially to breaking democracy and rights of working people. Destruction is the corporate motto nowadays. That’s alright, the corporate titans have a new enemy, a formerly sleeping giant woke: teachers unions. We have the numbers. We are the people.
The founder of Gates-funded New School Venture Fund stated the goal of charters, “….brands on a large scale.” Gates and Z-berg are investors in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box.
Look at all the ed tech product they’re selling to public schools:
https://www.newschools.org/our-ventures/tools-services/
They don’t support public schools, but they’re more than happy to sell us billions of dollars worth of ed tech product.
Stop buying. There are thousands of vendors. If you must purchase ed tech (and I don’t know why you would) at least find a vendor who doesn’t oppose public schools.
We are already planning our “invitations” to the event! They will regret their choice of Oakland as a meeting place!
Can’t wait to see what the plan is. Let’s show them how we take care of business in Oakland…
It’s all about how you spin it. And the more money you have, the better the spin.
Look at all the media stars, celebrities, and role models who have been exposed over the decades. It’s the same thing with this privatization movement. They have so much money to spend to make themselves look not only good, but BETTER. And then they take it steps further by proclaiming themselves as an absolute necessity for change.
These guys are going to stick around until their profit margin is no longer to their liking. Thar’s money in them thar hills. Until something is done to create stronger public awareness of what’s really happening in education, this erosion of our public schools will continue. We need to get our public officials off the gravy train. California looks like it’s starting to do yust that.