Sara Roos, the blogger known the Red Queen in L.A., is an intrepid investigator, following the money. She has learned inevitably that the charter school lobby is very rich and spends lavishly to buy politicians’ favor.
In this post, she scratches the surface of the charter lobby’s complex political-financial machinations. Given the known gaps that are not included in this excellent report (e.g., the funding for Marshall Tuck in his race against Tony Thurmond), the actual spending by the charter lobby may be five to ten times what she writes here.
”The Charter industry lobby has expended a total of $91.4 million dollars in California between 11/18/08 and 12/31/18, according to political financial information stored online by the Secretary of State through “Cal-Access”…
”What is so confusing is the multi-stage process by which the California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) lobby dispenses its largesse. There is a direct process and a derivative one. Over this time period CCSA has opened 25 distinct “Recipient Committees”, entities raising contributions from others, nine of which have been subsequently terminated. These 25 Committees have operated under 54 different names. Some of this multiplicity is reasonable because the lobbying effort is state-wide and different Committees will make expenditures to different local issues and candidates. But some of it is a succession of evolving names associated with a specific Committee. Sure, it all traces back to the same ideological pot of gold so while the zeitgeist shifts, the named Committee can just get a slight upgrade in verbiage since the spigot is unchanged. But it feels shifty in intention too, as if the Committee-As-Palimpsest were a deliberate effort to overwrite and obscure the group’s underlying, persistent and singular, special interest.”
The names of the organizations paid by the lobbyists is deliberately meant to fool voters into thinking that the lobby represents teachers, students, public schools, even the downtrodden, when it is actually a front for billionaires.
“Parent Teacher Alliance,” “Families and Educators for Public Education,” “Students for Educational Reform,” “L.A. Parents, Teachers, and Students for Great Public Schools,” are just a few of the deceptive shells advancing the cause of privatizing public schools.
Roos writes:
“The pattern of marketing hype is plain as can be: “Teachers and Parents”, “Excellent Public Schools”, “Great Public Education”, “Public Charter Schools Now”. A bot could mix and match phrases but credibility or accountability is harder to design.”
Roos includes a list of the candidates to whom the charter lobby has given large sums, as well as those it spent big to defeat.
As she notes, her list is far from comprehensive. For example, it shows an expenditure of only $1,050,000 for Marshall Tuck by the charter lobby, when the actual amount spent on his campaign for State Superintendent of Public Instruction was about $30 million.
The best news is that the massive spending of the charter lobby is no guarantee of victory.
“While undeniably the charter lobby is comprised of far more IECs than this limited set which display the “Charter Schools Association” label, something approaching the 40%-50% mark of charter lobby expenditures may have catastrophically failed in influencing anyone of late. It’s encouraging to recognize the discouragement of dark money and dark forces. Civil Justice is served when resources are distributed fairly and equitably. There is no true way to describe jerry-rigged redistributions as anything but a favoritism scheme for the anointed. And there is no way that spending ungodly sums on persuasion and trickery is in the best interests of anyone but those with something to hide.”
Off-topic, Diane. Sorry. Utah has Questar now giving its standardized testing. Look how “well” its’ working! https://www.ksl.com/article/46541786/rise-testing-resumes-but-state-student-record-malfunction-stalls-science-testing-in-davis-district
And you know they’re making a profit on that $91 million somehow. Just more evidence that the idea that charters can be cheaper than public schools is ludicrous.
These tests are more surveillance capitalism:
https://www.thenation.com/article/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-book-review/
Is Amazon’s Alexa spying on you?
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/may/31/ro-khanna/your-amazon-alexa-spying-you/
I put nothing past “Surveillance of Everything.” Are we really safer?
We have entered a NOT so BRAVE NEW World.
Beware … your TV set, too. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/your-smart-tv-watching-you-watching-tv-consumer-reports-finds-n845456
excellent book title NOT SO BRAVE NEW WORLD
Yvonne,
Are your state employees of SETDA promoting “Future Ready” (my state’s employees said they were involved)? Future Ready has a pledge for school superintendents to sign. AWrenchintheGears.com posted a series of questions about Future Ready that uncovers the implications to privacy issues.
My conclusion, Gates funds SETDA in behalf of public employees who are titled as the governance of the organization. It, in turn, is partnered with private sector ed tech firms. The SETDA site identifies a privacy statement that they developed. The amount of involvement among the various vested interests groups in writing the statement and what it covers is critical for parents and students in public schools to know.
It is up at OEN
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/California-Charter-Lobby-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Funding-190430-689.html
with a comment which has this lin: A Layman’s Guide to the Destroy Public Education Movement: https://tultican.com/2018/09/09/a-laymans-guide-to-the-destroy-public-education-movement/
$91 million is an incredible amount of money. It is seed money in order to steal billions from public school coffers. The objective is to transfer public money to private corporations, a shady business that fleeces the poor and working class while potentially sending billions to the already wealthy. It is all about stealing a valuable public asset.
That 91-million dollar was an investment, seed money. In the private sector, a startup almost always has investors and those investors expect a return on their investment.
This investment has already turned into billion in profits for the venture capitalists and/or billionaires that invested in a venture designed to steal from the public and enrich the already wealthy or create new wealth.
The new wealth crop will be a small one that will add a few more greedy kleptocrats to the list of millionaires and billionaires while destroying the public’s schools to do it.
These investors don’t care how much damage they cause. They are only interested in the return on their investment. I think they are all psychopaths with the MAOA gene, the same psycho gene That Donald Trump inherited from his father.
Before the Child Labor Laws of the early 1930s, similar investors paid poor parents to buy their seven-year-old children to work as indentured slaves in coal mines, factories, and houses of prostitution. These children worked 16 hours days, six and a half days a week in dangerous conditions and if damaged were cast aside to be replaced by another child slave. Poverty in the U.S. back then was as high as 50-percent so there were plenty of desperate parents willing to sell one or more of their children so they could eat and survive another year or two.
Billionaires seeking ROI lack foresight. Greed gets in the way of thought. They invested in degrading and even ruining the lives of millions of people, hoping there wouldn’t be a backlash. They called resistance “pushback”, thinking they could just push harder.
And then there were teachers strikes.
This is off topic but one that shows teachers in Indiana are hanging on by a thread. It could break since salaries are SO bad. I could NOT have worked two jobs to survive. I sent this, with comments, to Senator Niemeyer [R-IN] the stone head, and Representative Chyung [D-IN].
There is a U-tube video inside this article. I posted it separately.
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This Indianapolis teacher works a second job until 2 a.m. But he doesn’t want to leave the classroom
BY STEPHANIE WANG, SAM PARK – 19 HOURS AGO
Harshman Middle School teacher Jack Hesser wakes up at 5 a.m. to get ready for school. He makes copies, sets up his classroom, and greets his students.
But his day doesn’t end when the lessons are over, when the students get on the bus, or even after he makes phone calls home to tell parents about their children’s accomplishments and challenges.
His day ends at 2 a.m., after a shift at his part-time job at a downtown Indianapolis restaurant.
The restaurant had to give Hesser the night off so he could tell his story last month about how he makes ends meet at “What Teachers Make,” a story slam on teacher pay co-hosted by Chalkbeat and Teachers Lounge Indy at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.
Here’s an excerpt of Hesser’s story:
If I was a full-time server at that same restaurant, I’d make $18,000 more a year than I do as a teacher. I don’t say that to freak out my principal or my fellow educators. I love teaching.
But sometimes, when my car breaks down again, or my freezer broke, and I’m working doubles on Sunday knowing that when I leave the restaurant at 10:30 p.m., or 11 p.m., or later, that I’m going to be back at school in a few hours, I wonder why…
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2019/04/30/this-indianapolis-teacher-works-a-second-job-until-2-a-m-but-he-doesnt-want-to-leave-the-classroom/?utm_source=email_button
YouTube video What Teachers Make: Jack Hesser, Harshman Magnet Middle School teacher
What Teachers Make: Jack Hesser, Harshman Magnet Middle School teacher
Some people get very rich from education, but they are not teachers. Watch for the next meeting of Arizona State University-Global Silicon Valley (ASU/GSV), and you will see hundreds or more than a thousand edupreneurs. Or the meeting of NewSchools Venture Fund in Oakland. Millions floating in the air.