This article was published in the Detroit Free Press on a day when not many people were paying attention, December 25, 2018, but it should have been national news.
The Waltons, heirs to the anti-union Walmart empire, have been investing in black organizations to spread their views about charter schools.
The fact that the NAACP and Black Lives Matter have stood up to the bully billionaire behemoth and demanded a moratorium on charters is astounding and a great credit to their integrity.
It begins:
Amid fierce debate over whether charter schools are good for black students, the heirs to the Walmart company fortune have been working to make inroads with advocates and influential leaders in the black community.
The Walton family, as one of the leading supporters of America’s charter school movement, is spreading its financial support to prominent and like-minded black leaders, from grassroots groups focused on education to mainstream national organizations such as the United Negro College Fund and Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, according to an Associated Press analysis of tax filings and nonprofit grants data.
Here is the most astonishingly hypocritical statement in the article:
“Those closest to the challenge often have the best solution,” Marc Sternberg, who leads the Walton Family Foundation’s education efforts, said in a prepared statement.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Ed reformers seem to me to be wildly exaggerating the difference between what white people think about charters and what black people think about charters.
“This opposition has apparently had an effect on public opinion: in 2017 we reported a hefty 13-percentage-point drop in support for the formation of charter schools. However, a partial recovery of 5 percentage points has occurred over the course of the past year, allowing charters to regain a plurality approval rate of 44% in the halls of public opinion, with just 35% of the general public opposed. (Remaining respondents say they neither support nor oppose charters.) Among teachers, however, support for charter schools has fallen from 40% to 33%. White respondents (42%) are nearly as supportive as black (46%) and Hispanic (49%) ones, but the charter recovery is concentrated among Republicans; approval for charters among GOP voters has climbed from 47% to 57%. As a result, the charter debate has become increasingly polarized across party lines, with only 36% of Democrats now supporting their formation.”
If white is 42 and black is 46 that’s just not that big a difference. If I were an ed reformer I might expect black support to be much higher because they flooded urban areas with charters, so one would think that would be their base of support. 46% just isn’t very high, and it isn’t that different than 42%. If the schools are as great as they all say they are, one would think they could crack 50%.
I continue to wonder why these people are considered as “data driven”. It all feels like marketing and political campaigning to me. Every time I look into one of their claims it falls apart. I’m not looking at all of the claims, but this is a pattern.
https://www.educationnext.org/public-support-climbs-teacher-pay-school-expenditures-charter-schools-universal-vouchers-2018-ednext-poll/
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Now that ed reform has vastly expanded vouchers using the completely dishonest pitch that vouchers mean parents may choose any private school, the stories begin to come out about how private schools may pick and choose students.
They didn’t know this when they sold it all over the country? Come on. Of course they did.
They didn’t know religious schools could exclude gay students and teachers? This is news to them? They thought no one would ever figure it out?
In fact, “publicly funded” does NOT mean “public”, which paid education experts should be expected to know. They omitted that part from the sales pitch.
Florida and many many other states are now publicly funding schools that exclude certain teachers and students based upon whether they are gay or not. They all knew this would happen. They just didn’t bother to raise it with the public.
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The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done the same basic thing, with huge investments in the United Negro College Fund and others. But this investment is not limited to payments for African Maerican “grassroots” initiatives. It has encompassed payments to Latinix organizations, Asian-American groups, and the National PTA among others.
The billionaires want to buy their way into a complete takeover of public assets, including public schools.
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Trump is using Mike Pence to lead a Hispanics for Trump. It shows how out of touch the Republican party is.
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“The billionaires want to buy their way into a complete takeover of public assets, including public schools.”
You should read the following post from “Wrench in the Gears.” It is a deeply disturbing article about how billionaires are using impact investing to monetize any and all human services. It describes human misery as the new investment trend among hedge funds. This certainly seems to be true at the border as private companies are paid $750 dollars a day to house children in squalid conditions. https://wrenchinthegears.com/
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takeover of public assets with 1) endless mandate for purchase of billionaire product and 2) growing control over the creation of a worker-drone mentality
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“Most people in this state had no idea that Florida’s voucher program — funded with $1 billion of tax dollars and corporate tax credits — funnels money to schools with blatant discrimination policies.
I didn’t. Not until I started looking around … and found examples everywhere.
At a Brevard County school that received more than $700,000 in state funding last year, being gay is the only sin the school finds worthy of expulsion under its “ethics” policy.”
Go back and look at the ed reform celebration in Florida when they increased funding to the private schools they prefer over public schools.
See if you can find a SINGLE ed reformer who bothered to mention this little detail to the public:
“Most people in this state had no idea that Florida’s voucher program — funded with $1 billion of tax dollars and corporate tax credits — funnels money to schools with blatant discrimination policies.
I didn’t. Not until I started looking around … and found examples everywhere.
At a Brevard County school that received more than $700,000 in state funding last year, being gay is the only sin the school finds worthy of expulsion under its “ethics” policy.”
The US Department of Education is selling DeVos giant voucher program every single day. As a federal agency, do they have a duty to tell the whole story to the public? If not, why am I paying them? They can collect a salary from the Waltons. If they’re a wholly owned subsidiary of this “movement” I shouldn’t have to pay them.
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/scott-maxwell-commentary/os-op-rosen-resorts-anti-gay-voucher-schools-florida-scott-maxwell-20190625-3sd3g3zrjrbt7jpxyojzrqhklm-story.html
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” neeratanden Pres. of CAP noted that charters educate just 6% public school students & suggested they have been oversold. “Charters have not proven to be the one thing you do to improve public schools across America,” she said.”
It’s nice they’re finally admitting the obvious, but shouldn’t they issue an apology for ever believing this?
Maybe next they can come up with one positive and worthwhile policy or program that is actually relevant and valuable to the 90% of kids in the schools they disfavor. Not just question charters and vouchers- not just a negative- add some value to any public school, anywhere.
And it can’t be a test. Has to be something other than a test. They have 5000 orgs and hundreds of millions of dollars and numerous university departments. Surely they can come up with something.
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This is it, “Andre Perry, an education policy expert at the Brookings Institution, said the Walton foundation’s reliance on black faces to makes its case for charters suggests that they’re exploiting black people for a ‘white agenda.’”
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“Those closest to the challenge often have the best solution,”
Until “those closest to the challenge” disagree with the Waltons and their paid for puppets.
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It is up at OpEd News https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/How-Walton-Money-Influence-in-General_News-Anti-union_Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch-190627-525.html#comment737505
with this comment which has links to the posts here at the Ravitch blog.
it is about the money and the marketing of schools.
Read how the Waltons finance parent groups.
Read about The Deluge of Cash Flowing Into the Charter School Industry
Read and learn How Charter School Chains Make a Profit
… and the charter schools have no accountabilityy and are often failures. The Tennessee Achievement School District was as complete and total failure. $100 million down the drain, which came from Race to the Top funding. AND one of billionaire Reed Hastings’ investments– The Aspire charter chain in Memphis– is in trouble and debating its future.
Bill and Melinda Gates have spent billions to drive their agenda on education and other issues. Now, they have created a lobbying group to push even more.
read Jan Resseger: Reporting on the State of Privatization of Our Public Schools, Part 3
Folks, There is no quick fix for school performance when large numbers of children are struggling with poverty, hunger, and housing insecurity.
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