I can’t tell you how angry this post made me. I felt outraged and frustrated. It is not just about privatization. It is about the purchase of an entire state by one family. How can anyone teach civics in Arkansas when one family owns everything?
This post will make your head spin. Public schools in communities of color are taken over by the state, and charter schools open. One high-powered chain. spreads it’s tentacles across the state, scooping up the best students. A rotating cast of characters plays musical chairs at the state board, the state education department, and superintendencies.
The schools targeted for closure and privatization are schools that enroll mostly children of color. Everyone feels powerless to stop the Walton train.
Behind it all: ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the Walton Family. The Walton Family owns everything and every body.
Schools? Education? An afterthought.
This saga reads like a gangster tale. The mob always wins.
I was contacted by a minister in Little Rock who asked, what can we do? My advice: civil disobedience. Mass protests. Marches. Demonstrations. Chain yourselves to the schoolhouse doors. Nothing else will work. The greatest enemy is complacency, apathy, hopelessness. Faced with the unlimited power of a family that owns the state government, it is easy to feel hopelessness. But resistance is the only path. The other way, the status quo, is servitude.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you live in a state that is captured by ed reformers FIRST you notice the nearly singular focus on promoting charters and vouchers. That’s the “first order effect”- people don’t generally object to this- after all, most people attend public schools, not charters or private schools, so they don’t object to their entire state government promoting privatized schools.
As they remain in power and the ed reform echo chamber becomes more and more insular you notice the second order effect- public schools are neglected. No one advocates FOR them, no one works to benefit them, they effectively disappear from “the debate”.
The second order effect is, in my opinion, the most damaging because it often goes unnoticed until years later. The public schools just quietly slide- stripped of funding and everything “extra” that makes school appealing for kids- they’re just diminished. They’re worse than when the echo chamber took over.
In my state that’s 90% of schools, and while ed reformers like to refer to schools as “buildings” they’re not just buildings- 90% of schools means 90% of kids.
It always amazes me how relentlessly NEGATIVE this “movement” is towards kids in existing public schools. They offer them, and us, public school families, absolutely nothing that is positive. Go look at the Trump Administration and try to find something positive for public school families. There is NOTHING. Our kids simply don’t exist in this world.
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This post connects the dots among the many headed hydra of privatization in Arkansas. The Waltons own the state so they invite the Koch Brothers and the Tyson family to offer “choice” in the state. Privatization is no longer about choice. It is now stealth capitalism that allows the rich and powerful imposing their will on everyone else. The wealthy can afford endless opportunities for manipulative “pay to play” schemes. Their ultimate goal is to destroy public schools by transferring the money into private hands. While it currently targets minority communities, this is just their primary target. These people will not stop until public education is a distant memory for everyone unless the people fight back.
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Arkansas” mistake is now America’s mistake.
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Good morning! I’m the author of this “rogues’ gallery” blog post! I have some follow-up information, and a question. The Haas Hall Academy charter school (our “number one” high school in Arkansas) rejects state and federal special education funding each year.
I don’t understand why an open-enrollment, public charter school would reject SPED funding. As I understand it, they are still required to follow the IDEA law, regardless of whether they accept the money, right? What good does it do them to reject SPED funding?
Does rejecting SPED funding get them out of a federal auditing requirement?
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Roaring Violin,
Thank you for writing this post. I can’t tell you how it depressed me, and it is well documented. I have been in touch with allies in Little Rock and they despair that democracy has been bought and destroyed by the Waltons and their minions.
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It’s interesting how many Arkansas lawmakers are on the boards of charter schools.
I’d like to see a comparison- how many lawmakers are on the board of a public school? How many lawmakers have any connection to a public school at all?
Who in the state legislature acts as an advocate for children who attend public schools?
We have a long list of charter advocates in this story. Where are the public school advocates?
Is that why public school students fare so poorly in states that are dominated by ed reformers?
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“How can anyone teach civics in Arkansas when one family owns everything?” When being a good citizen becomes: Shop at Walmart, get your food at Walmart, get your health care at Walmart, get your auto care at Walmart, get your education at Walmart — soon enough, go to church at Walmart…
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https://harvardpress.typepad.com/hup_publicity/2009/04/to-serve-god-and-walmart.html Not “soon enough.” It’s been going on this whole time, and getting stronger.
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the only response I can find is a sort of a strangled “AKKKKK”
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Thomas Jefferson was in Paris on November 13, 1787 when he shared his opinion on how to keep the tree of liberty alive and well.
That thinking is still true today.
This is an extract from that letter:
“… the people can not be all, & always, well informed. the part which is wrong [. . .] will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. we have had 13. states independant 11. years. there has been one rebellion. that comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. what country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? let them take arms. the remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. what signify a few lives lost in a century or two? the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. it is it’s natural manure.”
http://tjrs.monticello.org/letter/100
We know who the tyrants are! But who will step up in Alabama to accept the role of a patriot?
Being a patriot always comes with a risk. All we have to do is learn about the history of the nation’s Founding Fathers to know what the risk was to them if they lost — hanging and their families would have lost everything when King George’s troops confiscated all of their land and wealth.
And the history books written by the victorious British Empire would have labeled all of the U.S. Founding Fathers as traitors.
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This is Waltongate.
Somebody should draw a picture of the connections among the players but it may be easier to just list the few people who are not connected to the Waltons.
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