You probably thought that the rightwing Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which supports charters and vouchers but not public schools, was on the opposite side of the political aisle from the Center for American Progress, which is described by the New York Times and the Washington Post as “left-leaning” (which is inaccurate).
Well, they are on the same page in sponsoring a low-budget “moon shot for kids.”
- By August 1, 2019, submit a brief application through our online portal. We are seeking ideas that would help the U.S. achieve one of the following big goals (your choice):
- Cut in half the number of fourth graders reading “below basic”
- Double the number of eighth graders who can write an effective persuasive essay
- Shrink by 30 percent the average time a student spends in English-language-learner status
- Double the amount of high-quality feedback the average middle schooler receives on their academic work
- Ensure that every student receives high-quality college and career advising by ninth grade
- Double the number of students from low-income families and students of color who graduate from high school with remediation-free scores on the SAT, ACT, or similar exams
- Double the number of young women who major in STEM fields
The portal provides a place where, in no more than 500 words, you will sketch your idea for achieving one of those goals with the help of a public or private investment up to $1 billion.
- By September 10, 2019, the Fordham and CAP teams will select 10 finalists, who will each receive $1,000 and be asked to flesh out their ideas in greater detail (up to 2,500 words).
- In October or November, we’ll host a “Shark Tank” style competition in Washington, D.C., to submit the ideas to the scrutiny of a panel of judges, including educators and senior staff of large national foundations, who will pick a winner, and award a $10,000 grand prize.
This is not like the Laurene Powell Jobs competition where the prize was $10 million, but it is the same idea.
Reminds me of the Bush I program to “reinvent the schools,” called the New American Development Corporation, which offered cash for the best ideas. It all came to naught, but fortunately it was private money.
Thanks to Peter Greene, who gave me a tip on Twitter that there is no space between Fordham and CAP. Inside the Beltway, everyone is an ally.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Fordham/CAP’s “Shark Tank” approach to fixing what ails public education is wrong on so many fronts:
Cut in half the number of fourth graders reading “below basic?”
Double the number of eighth graders who can write an effective persuasive essay?
Double the amount of high-quality feedback the average middle schooler receives on their academic work?
Ensure that every student receives high-quality college and career advising by ninth grade?
Double the number of students from low-income families and students of color who graduate from high school with remediation-free scores on the SAT, ACT, or similar exams?
The answer to Questions 1 – 5?
Quit wasting public monies on parallel school systems and expensive, ineffective Ed Teach.
Fully fund public schools to ensure smaller class sizes and adequate support personnel (guidance counselors, social workers, nurses, etc). Make sure teachers and counselors have time to provide real feedback and counseling. “Personalized” learning is incapable of picking up the nuances of human communication.
Shrink by 30 percent the average time a student spends in English-language-learner status?
Answer: Are Fordham/CAP completely unaware of the research on the process of second language acquisition? Or are they just choosing to ignore the research in search of a cheap solution to process ELLs as if they are just another product to be delivered from behind the counter of a fast food restaurant.
Double the number of young women who major in STEM fields?
Answer: Laudable, but the continued dismissal of the humanities does not bode well for America’s future. The humanities are what propels the human imagination to move forward and to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. From a purely STEM perspective, one can justify the most horrendous experimentation on humans, animals and our planet. It is our foundation in the humanities that helps put the brakes on the worst of those impulses.
I guess I have one question: what teacher, seriously engaged in planning and delivering instruction, meetings, and all the various responsibilities involved in effective pedagogy, has time to engage in this nonsense?
And for a thousand bucks? I’d rather get a second job washing dishes.
A “moonshot” is a trendy business term that stands for the idea that one can get 10X the results rather than improvement over time (10%, multiplied) simply by shooting higher.
It (supposedly) comes from Apollo – the US space program. Of course the US space program was a huge public investment over 2 decades, so it’s not a great comparison.
Plutocrazy Makes $$$trange Bedfellow$$$
BEAUTIFULLY said, Jon!
Amen, Jon.
I think the deformers are binary thinkers … On vs. OFF.
Saw a TV thing…the STARS were moving, the MOON was not moving. People don’t even know basic science. Good grief, I was stunned at this misinformation for all to see and NOT QUESTION.
Plutocrazy
Crazy as foxes
The oiligarchs are
Boxes and boxes
Of bullion in bars
Why would anyone think that Fordham and CAP would be on opposite pages? They’re flip sides of the same coin. Fordham and other rephormy outlets are just the education arms of the neoliberal thinky-tanks (h/t Peter Greene) like CAP.
And, for those confused, despite the word “liberal” in “neoliberal”, there is nothing “left-leaning” about neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is fundamental market economics – fundamental in the same way as fundamentalist Christianity – it’s a religion. In neoliberalism the Market is God. There is nothing else – no society, no public, no non-economic relationships of any kind. Everything and everyone is a commodity.
We have to understand that this is what we’re fighting on both sides of the aisle or else we’ll lose regardless of whether our next president is a vulgar, race-baiting Republican or a statesmanlike, “liberal” Democrat.
Agree, a statesman by definition, is Republican.
The Fordham Institute publicizes the fact that CAP is a “partner.” Other parteners include DEFR which has nothing to do with Democrats, also ALEC—the place where ready-to-used market-based legislation is written and collective bargaining is hard.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute calls its partners “first-rate organizations in pursuit of educational excellence.” Take a look at the website and see who/what the Fordham regards as “first rate.”
https://fordhaminstitute.org/partners
I have a database of all Center for American Progress donors, by year, downloaded from the website. I combined tahts with early lists of members of the American Progress Business Alliance from 2012-2013.
Of 515 donors to CAP, about 50% were multi-year contributors, including many “anonymous donors.” The Fordham Institute has a list of some of its donors. I am sure it is far from complete. In any case, I have identified the current funders of the Fordham Institute who are also among the funders in my CAP database.
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
JPMorgan Chase Foundation (CAP has JP Morgan Charitable Giving Fund)
Leona B. and Harry M. Helmsley Trust
Bernard Lee Schwartz Foundation (CAP has Bernard L. Schwartz as an individual)
The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
The Joyce Foundation
Walton Family Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
I have some examples of the actual amount of money CAP has received from donors. I retrieved some of this information by looking at the “grants awarded” websites of some major donors.
CAP only posts donations in five tiers, which nicely hides exact amounts but implies a measure of transparency. The top tier is $1,000,000 or more. The lowest tier is $5000 to $$49,999. Nineteen “anonymous” donors sent CAP $1,000,000 or more between 2014 and 2018.
Thanks Laura.
IMO, CAP ‘s agenda should have been suspect from the beginning when Podesta created it. John and his brother founded a bipartisan PR firm which had as its CEO in 2016 a person formerly with the Jeb Bush gubernatorial campaign.
We are seeking ideas that would help the U.S. achieve one of the following big goals (your choice):
Cut in half the number of think tank wankers like us reading “below basic”
Double the number of think tank wankers like us who can write an effective persuasive essay
Shrink by 30 percent the average time a think tank wanker spends in complete ignoramus status
Double the amount of high-quality feedback the average think tank wanker receives on their white papers
Ensure that every think tank wanker receives high-quality college and career advising by age 50 and preferably much earlier
Double the number of think tank wankers who are capable of saying something intelligent
Double the number of think tank wankers who actually know something about what they pontificate about
The blog provides a place where, in no more than 500 words, you will sketch your idea for achieving one of those goals.
Sorry, no money will be awarded, but you will get the satisfaction of knowing that you have plucked us (Those at CAP and Fordham) from the clutches of ignorance and helped us avoid a life of presstitution and propaganda .
Sincerely
The Center For American Progress in conjunction with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
A confederation of Wanker Institutes that the corporate-owned media assign political labels to. The intent is to deceive the public and provide cover for the politicians of the richest 0.1%.
The Neoliberal Master Plan
Wankerpedia
and Wanker War
With mainstream media
Keeping score
LMAO!
I want to submit the following response:
If you really want these things, stop interfering in education policy and let the teachers do their work with the expertise and experience that they have in the classroom. We would all be better off without foolish policy initiatives and grand ideas that make things either no better or worse. If you really want this, then go away.
It’s less than 500 words.
I want to submit the following response:
If you really want these things, stop interfering in education policy and let the teachers do their work with the expertise and experience that they have in the classroom. We would all be better off without foolish policy initiatives and grand ideas that make things either no better or worse. If you really want this, then go away.
It’s less than 500 words.
I read a lot of ed reformers and in my opinion they’re casting around for a way to remain relevant now that they’ve limited their “movement” to 1. promoting/funding charters and vouchers and 2. testing public school kids.
It’s a really grim agenda if you are a public school student or family. No upside. There’s nothing to “support”. Only the testing is relevant to kids in public schools, and the vast majority are in public schools, despite best efforts of ed reformers to get them to attend a charter or private school.
Yeah, Ed Deform is in the midst of a crisis. It’s BIG PLAN (testing, testing, and more testing) has UTTERLY FAILED, by its own measures. It hasn’t improved outcomes, and it hasn’t closed achievement gaps. People are getting wise to them. So, the Deformers need some new ideas for selling computers and keeping the river of green flowing from Gates to them.
“Shark” tank, btw, is spot on. Finally, the Deformers get something right. They are sharks, feeding upon teachers, parents, and kids.
cs: Its, of course
Aie yie yie
harshest reality in a nation still so very enamored with Gates, that great “philanthropist: The Deformers need new ideas for keeping the river of green flowing from Gates…
Step one for Fordham/CAP. Fix the online portal. I had an idea to submit and the portal was not working.
Step two, Be prepared for absurd proposals. I had conjured one. Here is the gist. The education experts at Fordham/CAP must offer a proof of concept for each of the accelerated outcomes they hope to see….on a budget of $1000…and data, data, data, data in support of the idea.
This farce is from the same mold as the screwed up version of reform in NCLB. Recall the target? Every student will demonstrate 100% proficiency on tests of ELA and Math. Set an impossible ” aspirational target” and ignore the consequences.
This proposal is cute, like shark tank presentations must be cute, entertaining for the audience and appealing to the investors. Next up, some staged competitions among proposals with Jerry Springer and bouncers on deck along with TV cameras and an audience primed to pick sides.
Be prepared for absurd proposals”
That’s actually a great idea.
Give them a taste of their own medicine and inundate them with thousands of utterly stupid ideas that make a mockery of their idiotic proposal.
On second thought, maybe that would be a bad idea.
They probably would not be able to tell which ideas were meant as mockery, given all the utterly ridiculous ideas these people propose in dead seriousness on a regular basis.
A plan the rich could use to eliminate the voice of the people and to deny them their government –
(1) A bipartisan lobby shop (Bipartisan Policy Center) where the clients pay for the legislation that serves their interests gets founded by the Board Chair of CAP.
(2) A bipartisan PR firm which critics describe as an influence peddler gets created by the founder of CAP.
(3) Media establishes CAP as the “liberal” voice.
fyi- In fall 2019, BPC began targeting higher ed. George Miller, a K-12 privatizer, heads the new initiative. Gates and Arnold sponsored a Sept. BPC session. Gates funds CAP.
Neera Tanden, CAP’s President, was heavily involved in the failed 2016 Democratic campaign for President. She’s still the go-to person for media seeking comment from “liberals”. She’s still a big player at the Democratic Party table. What’s the future for the left?
How many voters stayed home or voted for Jill Stein because Hillary’s campaign told the media, before the election, that she was a sure win?
“…because Hillary’s campaign told the media, before the election, that she was a sure win?”
Really, what is the point of saying such things when they are not true. While the media reported polling data that demonstrated that she was ahead of Trump in most states, that wasn’t the fault of “the campaign”.
In fact, every study has shown how Trump’s extraordinarily tiny win in some states was because of the successful efforts to strike Democratic voters off voting rolls and the successful efforts to keep African-American turnout very low using an expensive propaganda campaign aided with the personal data from Facebook that targeted those voters to convince them that HRC was no better than Trump.
I suspect most people who voted for Jill Stein did so because they decided that having Trump would not affect them that much — I’m guessing most were white and not Muslim and did not recognize their privileged position. I doubt many Stein voters were from the groups who were harmed most by Trump’s racism and xenophobia. But it is a fact that there were targeted ads to convince African-American voters that there was no difference between Trump and HRC to suppress the vote in addition to the blatant effort to simply strike them off the rolls make sure polling places were located in the most inconvenient locations.
The pollsters reported that they received essential data from the campaigns.
Did the Dem establishment tell voters Hillary might lose? Or, was that Michael Moore who made and aired a film telling people to vote for Hillary, warning the campaign about how they could lose?
It was widely acknowledged that Hillary’s campaign made the conjecture that Republicans would cross over. No doubt they were encouraged by the speech of the egomaniacal Bloomberg at the Democratic convention.
Was the Clinton campaign’s message, “You’ll lose the Supreme Court judge appts” or, was that the Republican message? (sarcasm)
Smaller classes. We should all submit such earthbound proposals. Maybe CAP would get the idea.
I like this. If I can get the link to work, I will send in that idea.
Amen
Walmart seems to be doing something similar. I don’t know if you checked this out, but last year they began a college program for $1 per month or something like that, but it was online. I just found this which seems to add to it.
https://www.kctv5.com/news/walmart-to-offer-free-college-sat-and-act-prep-for/article_2e1e4faf-5df4-511a-bf7b-9a4171c347f0.html
It looks like a scam to me, especially after reading what you write about K-12. I could probably educate myself just as well with online research without signing up for one of these courses or giving anyone brownie points for educating me.
Stink Tank Sharks and Whores and, University Sharks and Harlots –
two ideas for expansion of the Shark Tank franchise- “How low will they go?”
1st show- Staff of various think tanks are assigned to represent the political left or right. They, then select among competitive, high dollar, proposals from shady characters, foreign despots, and traditionally opposite groups e.g. ALEC submits a proposal to the left and Sierra Club to the right. The prize is think tank funding, 50% of which is income to the tank’s staff who are represented on the panel.
2nd show-The show starts with university administrators and professors stating the schools and/or departments’ missions. Then, shady oligarchs, industry groups, etc. offer grant money, with the panel members getting a big cut or gaining in a specified manner.
The show would be mesmerizing.
Here’s my idea, Fordham, and I don’t need 2,000 words for it.
Why don’t you and all the other astroturf Ed Deform operations go to hell?
And take your invalid, curriculum-and-pedagogy-narrowing high stakes standardized tests, your puerile “standards,” your school and teacher grading, and your charters and vouchers with you.
Couldn’t agree with you more.
I don’t know what to make of this. First, this doesn’t seem restricted to charters or vouchers, so not necessarily against public education. Second, this seems absurdly small awards for any actual investment. Is there to be some kind of follow up?
It’s against public education in the underlying assumptions of the whole contest. First, that education needs to be wholesale reformed, and second that any schmuck with an internet connection can have good ideas for doing so – better than those entrenched teachers who have been doing it, anyway.
A low budget moon shot.
That’s OK, Diane. In Ed Deform, you can call a pea shooter a moon shot. All that matters is that you have extravagant claims for it.
Add that to your dictionary of Reformish.
I worked in the public schools of Oakland, CA, for 24 years, 18 of them as a middle school teacher of science and Math. I have witnessed firsthand the destructive effect of previous philanthropic efforts in education. There must be a radical change in approach.
The key to successful investment in this arena is leveraging a relatively small amount of money to create a ripple effect that delivers further deeper investment — and not just of funds, but of public trust and engagement.
A coalition of philanthropists would heed the convincing evidence from Anand Giridharadas that their prior efforts have had the effect of suppressing investment and engagement in common public schools. They would reverse course, and instead of seeking to undermine public schools under control of democratically elected school boards, create a campaign to support such schools. They would create a process to empower a democratically elected leadership team composed of students, teachers and parents.
The project would work to:
1. Support efforts to reduce income inequality, since there is a direct connection between educational and economic well-being.
2. Overturn Citizen’s United, since this absurd notion has allowed for legalized bribery.
3. Recognize the destructive effects of high stakes tests and work to end them at all levels.
4. Reaffirm the value of racial and economic desegregation, so all children have equal access to high quality schools, and the chance to learn together.
5. Significantly reduce class sizes across the nation, setting a cap of 20 on grades k to 3, and 25 on grades 4 to 12. This would allow for genuine personalization of education.
6. Make “virtual schools” ineligible for public funds.
7. Minimize screen time and eliminate farcical descriptions of this as “personalization.”
8. Create democratically elected teams of teachers, parents and students to participate in decision-making at every level of the education system.
This is a significant departure from previous philanthropic efforts in education. But given that prior work has been so devastating to our schools, it is time for such a correction.
I have an idea that will definitely win.
Open a chain of schools subsidized with millions of dollars that only teaches students who will do well on state tests. Warn parents of students that they must do all that you ask, and if their kid isn’t performing academically, blame the parent and flunk their kid as many times as necessary until the parent pulls them from the school.
Announce that you have solved the problems because your schools teach all students who walk in the door and turns them all into high performing scholars. Remember, the Fordham Institute doesn’t care whether anything you say is true as long as you are supported by the same rich billionaires who keep their high salaries coming.
NYC public school parent. That’s a good one because IT’S EXACTLY WHAT ED DEFORM IS CURRENTLY ENCOURAGING!!!! So, no need for anyone at Fordham to do ANY fresh thinking or any learning, at all, about anything from students, parents, and teachers! Great job!!! Bill, cut NYC public school parent a check.
OK, scratch the previous one. Here’s my entry:
Here’s my entry
Let me speak, for a moment, from a 50,000-Foot-Perspective. While Six Sigma DMAIC and DMADV deployment has certainly Bootstrapped the Operational Efficiencies of Today’s Schools of Tomorrow, you can’t just throw a New Paradigm Over the Wall and expect people to Drink from the Firehose. A school is more than infrastructure and architecture and tests, as all-important as the last of these is. That’s the Low-Hanging Fruit. Maybe this is what Porras and Collins call a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal, but I say Best-of-Breed is the only way to go. You’ve got to Implement Cascaded Key Performance Indictors—KPIs—to ensure Stakeholder Buy-in and Alignment and Accountability, not only Along the Verticals but Along the Horizontals as well because what we’re after, here, I’m sure you will agree, is the creation of a COE—a Center of Excellence employing Best Practices from the business arena. And what do I mean by Best Practices? Why, Scorecarding, of course—that goes without saying—but also De-Siloing, which, as I’m sure you know, is the whole point of Cross-Functional QFD, uh, Quality Functional Deployment, not to mention Matrix Management.
And those KPIs—those keys to Alignment—have to be Dashboarded Real-Time and not just floated up into the Adminisphere whenever some Prairie-Dogging teacher gets some good news on the state test results and wants the boss to Bobblehead her merit pay. And that’s the Value Proposition of my plan, and that of my organization, Security-Heightened Information Technologies: we act as Change Agents, not only Architecting the Roadmaps and the Enterprise-Enablers, the Communications Plans and Transformation Plans, but also Facilitating and Fast Tracking the Action Items over the Event Horizon. That’s our Value Add, and if it’s not the school’s Core Competency, and of course it isn’t, that’s the whole point, right, of Privatization? of letting school personnel stick to the business of test preparation and putting real businesspeople in charge of running the things? If it’s not their Core Competency, it is ours, and, that’s what we Bring to the Table.
I know what you’re thinking: of course, there are always Diminishing Returns on any Hype Curve, but getting the Analytics right isn’t just another education fad—it’s the Real Deal, it’s what you have to do in Today’s Competitive International Environment, with its Discontinuities and Black Swans. We’ve Ridden the Experience Curve on this one. We’ve done the Knowledge Capture and have the Thought Leaders and the Bandwidth to Knock This Out of the Park—to create a Blue Ocean, if you will. In short, we serve as your Envisioneers. We begin with Capturing Asks, not only the Voice of the Teacher and Student and Parent (LMAO) but, importantly, the Voice of the Primary Stakeholders—the leaders of the US Computer and Testing Industries, in order to Validate the ACTUAL Requirements, and then we Baseline and Benchmark; Map the As Is and To Be; do the Want/Got, the Trending, and the Gap Analyses; establish the Risk Management Parameters with a Failure Means and Modes Analysis. But we don’t stop there, with Shelfware. We actually do the Knowledge Transfer, the Mindshare and Cross-Fertilization, if you will, making sure that the Implementation Teams in state departments and the federal government have the Face Time with our PMPs and SMEs to Source it all properly and Queue up the Pipeline so you end up with a Plug-and-Play, Turnkey Solution, for that’s what went wrong with the Common Core and testing, right? Am I right? Let me hear it—AM I RIGHT? It was all so brilliant but just wasn’t implemented properly. And I can Leverage my organization’s Strategic Relationships all along the Value Chain to add further value, with only a modest Incremental appropriation from Gates and the Waltons and Zuckerberg, both to Increase Throughput and Reduce Cycle Time from design to Go Live. And to make sure this is not just some sort of Fire Drill, we Health Check the whole process through the final Toll Gate with our Proprietary Activity-Based Costing.
And if the cost is an issue, let me remind you of the projected ROI in terms of future worker productivity and earnings—for that’s what students are, correct? Future workers? I mean, if the numbers are big at the top of the page, they’re a whole lot bigger at the bottom, and remember that, in the long run, Quality Is Free and pays for itself. And to sweeten the kitty, if this is done properly, we Demass and Delayer some of those Horizontals I was talking about earlier, so the teacher workforce can be dramatically reduced via Personalization, and everybody goes home happy. So, the question comes down to whether you need to Run This up the Flagpole or whether you would like to confer the award on me and my organization right now, along with a fat contract from Gates and Walton and ZuckieChan. I will understand, of course, if you’d like to Take that part of the discussion Offline.
Rest assured, that like everyone at Fordham and CAP, I am completely Coin Operated.
Now, that, folks, is what REAL Disruption looks like. Fordham: I’m waiting for my check.
OK, Fordham, I know I exceeded the 500-word limit, but I won’t charge you any extra for the overflow. Please note that this effluvia is in honor and emulation of that with which you have inundated public forums on education over the past decades. And here’s the beauty of this: Security-Heightened Information Technologies (my consultancy) has a LOT more where that came from.
Classic reformish
You should certainly get funded
The” Hype curve”.
Ha ha ha.
But if you don’t, you can always turn that in as a proposal to Wendy Kopp’s former professor at Princeton — the one who thought TFA was the greatest thing since No Child Left Behind.
And I’m sure TFA will hire you if you contact them. They love anyone who can speak the lingo.
Make sure, SomeDAM, to pick up a copy of my new book, Driving Data for Deform Dollars: How You Too Can Become a Well-Remunerated Thinktank EduPundit in Your Spare Time.
Might I suggest a slight change?
Driving Miss Data
When Data was driven —
Along for the ride —
She never was given
A chance to decide
I was once numerated, but I’d like to be renumerated.
Redenominated too, if possible.
Anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated.
I’d like to multiply the number of edu-meddlers by 0.
Running a contest tells me that the think-tank well has run dry.
Their list of goals indicates just how clueless they are.
They’re stuck on the misguided notion that schools can fix generational poverty and dependence, family dysfunction, cognitive disabilities, mental illness, institutional racism, and economic hopelessness.
What are their plans to “fix” Detroit and Milwaukee, which have ample choice?
It shouldn’t be about fixing problems; instead it should be about increasing opportunities and experiences. Just the opposite of the narrow and constrained approach they thought would work. Now that the standards-based. test-and-punish reform. once (preposterously) touted as the “civil rights movement of the 21st century”, is a proven failure, the reform crowd is running contests. One thousand dollars is chickenfeed for anyone who can turn a miracle.
Rage: Love your math.
It’s the time-dis-honored Phony Consultancy process. Pay big bucks for mass quantities of largely loony ideas and you can always cobble together enough suggestions to justify any hidden agenda you please.
Does the donor class get tax write-offs for the Moon Shot cr_p?
Should we presume TFA’ers and, unimaginative, unqualified Gates’ Impatient Optimists/Opportunists will be making the selection of winners?
Or, will it be a Gates’ financed professor from an ed school like harvard’s?
I thought Gates’ investment in schools-in-a-box already covered the territory with its plan, 20% ROI for investors and, doubled class sizes.
Hoover’s Chester Finn is associated with the Moon Shot project, according to Education Next. CAP implies in its announcement that Eric and Wendy Schmidt are funding the project. Google’s Eric Schmidt allegedly had the think tank that he funds, New America, fire a research team who warned that tech industry firms have too much power. New America’s recently appointed CEO is a school privatizer, a Broadie.