Jonathan Burdick, a history teacher in Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter about a new group called “Free to Teach,” which encourages teachers to abandon their union and form an “independent” union.
He can be found @JonathanBurdick on Twitter. In case you are not on Twitter and can’t find the thread, Jonathan writes that the group’s ads are sponsored by an Oklahoma-based organization called “Americans for Fair Treatment.” Here we go down the rabbit hole of right-wing groups. That group shares the same registered address in Oklahoma with “The Fairness Center,” which sued the teachers’ union in Philadelphia and lost. The Fairness Center shares offices in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with the Commonwealth Foundation. The Commonwealth Foundation is funded by DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. These organizations are part of a massive network of right-wing groups called the State Policy Network. These organizations have donated HUNDREDS OF MILLION OF DOLLARS to extreme right causes: many anti-union and pro-educational privatization. These organizations are funded by billionaires including the Koch Brothers and Richard and Helen DeVos—the parents-in-law of Betsy DeVos. They also fund the Mackinac Center in Michigan, a favorite cause of Betsy DeVos, which works to crush unions and workers’ rights. Jonathan Burdick points out that Peter Greene wrote about “Free to Teach” and its connections to the right-wing oligarchs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
State Policy Network is part of the bandwagon to destroy public pensions. Who, also, criticized public pensions?- Koch brother, Bill Gates.
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Isn’t Walton money used to support Honors College at U of AR and Crystal Bridges Museum?
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The Crystal Bridges Museum is Walton funded. So is the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The new Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, James Lynn Woodworth, has a Ph. D. from that department and was working for CREDO when Trump appointed him.Woodworth’s term began in January and runs for six years. Woodworth will be in charge of appointing and then consulting with a new “Postsecondary Student Data System Advisory Committee.” Gates has established his own committee, likely in the hope members he has selected will migrate to the one formed by Woodworth. I surmise that Democrats will have little influence over the NCES data collection activities. Woodworth has expressed an interest in getting a better measure of poverty than eligibility for free or reduced price lunches.
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State citizens who sacrificed to create the University of Arkansa as a quality alternative to legacy admission private colleges have lost their school to the Waltons who provide comparatively little support. Research coming from the University of Arkansas is now questioned because of the taint of Walton money.
Six Walton heirs have wealth equivalent to 40% of Americans combined. Instead of buying art, Alice should pay Walmart workers more so that Americans don’t have to chip in to cover their medical care and food stamps.
Waltons talk about education choice. How much retailing choice do communities have after Walmart moves in?
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Sandra, Walton money funds the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. The Crystal Bridges Art Museum is Walton Funded. The new Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, James Lynn Woodworth, has a Ph.D from the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He was working for CREDO — Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University at the time Trump appointed him (January 2019). CREDO is set up to produce research that favors charter schools.
Woodworth’s term is for six years. Among other responsibilities Woodworth is likely to be in charge of appointing and then consulting with a new “Postsecondary Student Data System Advisory Committee.”
Here is the rub. Woodworth and Woodworth’s boss, Mark Schneider, (also a Trump appointee) are known to think of higher education only in terms of economic payoff. Moreover, Mark Schneider has already been enlisted as a member of Bill Gates’ ”Postsecondary Value Commission” whose charge is “to define the (economic) value of postsecondary education in the US.” This 30-member Gates selected commission knows perfectly well that it will be tweaking recommendations and data points already in use by NCES or easy to get. The Commission’s work will be completed in June 2020.
The efforts of the Commission will produce rankings of best return on investment (ROI) for various degrees and credentials. It is not rocket science to guess who Bill Gates will promote his hand-picked members of his ”Postsecondary Value Commission” as members of the NCES Commission aided by his new lobby shop.
Coincidently, Senator Elizabeth Warren is a co-sponsor of S.800, which also makes ROI the major criterion for federal dollars flowing to postsecondary programs. S.800, is designed to position the ECONOMIC value of a degree or credential as the primary criterion for public funding of postsecondary education extending even to graduate degrees. As of July 27, S 800 bill has 12 Democrats and 11 Republicans from 20 states as co-sponsors, including Elizabeth Warren as an original co-sponsor and recently Amy Klobuchar.
S 800 will produce incentives for state universities and community colleges to cut programs that fail to produce graduates with above average economic payoffs immediately following graduation, at a five-year mark after graduating, and possibly at other intervals. This is just one feature of this bill. The bill is advertised as if addresses the student loan problem. It does not. It is designed to produce data on programs that offer the “best band for the buck.”
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Thanks for the info. about Warren.
It’s illuminating that Gates has no interest in a commission for evaluation of the financial sector’s contribution to GDP. It’s estimated that Wall Street drags down GDP by 2%.
It’s ironic that Oprah loves Gates. She talks about an inner core of values. Gates’ authentic self is money.
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Sandra Stotsky is a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, Department of Education Reform, where she had an endowed chair. The Waltons endowed that department.
https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/sandra-stotsky
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Koch’s Heartland? Paint me surprised.
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Does Elizabeth Warren not realize that with this bill, she is contributing to the death of the Humanities, and the other fields of study that ultimately advance societies with their contributions?
Another reason to support Bernie Sanders.
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“Sandra Stotsky is a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, Department of Education Reform”
Department of Education Reform?
Do they also have a Department of Physics Reform?
They should.
Lord knows Einstein’s relativity was a Commie plot to make everyone believe everything is relative, including morality.
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Here in central PA we have been flooded with a mailing. Our union cluster and locals are getting the word out on what it is on Facebook. The good news is there has not been a flood of people in my conservative area leaving the union with the SCOTUS ruling!
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may union support be a big issue on the spring debate stages
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Diane Just another lying doublespeak term: FREE to Teach, just like parental CHOICE–they use the language-of-the-good like sheep’s clothing, to hide their anti-teacher, anti-public education wolf’s agenda, trying to manipulate teachers into abandoning their unions, and parents to abandon their children’s public school.
Who writes this stuff? and what would THEIR teachers and parents think of them? not to mention any other honest person in the universe? CBK
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Catherine and I came to the same conclusion…the constant twisting of truth is pure Orwellian doublespeak.
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Susan Lee Schwartz The writers of such sophistic junk: I wonder if they know just how slimy they’ve become. CBK
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“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength;” and libertarians/right wingers will not be satisfied until unions are erased from the US for all eternity. As if we don’t already have enough anti union measures (Taft-Hartley, the Janus decision, right-to-work for less states), the overall unionization rate is about 10% and anti-union propaganda is rife in the media, especially the right wing media. The union haters engage in all these deceptive practices, shams, scams and hoaxes against unions. Walmart and Amazon don’t even allow a mention of unions in their workforces. The GOP is based on anti-unionism and the destruction of unions; too many Democrats pay lip service to unions but do absolutely nothing to foster or support unions. Bernie is a big union supporter in word and deed. Libertarians/right wingers hate democracy and unions, we must be on constant alert to all their constantly morphing dirty tricks and ruses.
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Peter Greene has done a superb job of describing the Cincinnati suburban district where teacher unions have been dropped. I once had student teachers in the high school. The competition for jobs is that district is always stiff. Check out the Zillow listings for visual examples of homes in Indian Hill https://www.zillow.com/the-village-of-indian-hill-oh/ see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Hill,_Ohio
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Larry Summers, the Harvard Pres. who had the least tenure of any President since the Civil War, and who was/is friends with Jeffrey Epstein and with the architect of Russian privatization (a costly gambit for Harvard which settled a related lawsuit for $22 mil) is of course, a distinguished senior fellow at Gates-Funded CAP.
Here’s how smart Larry is, he said, “The change from inconceivable to inevitable can be surprisingly rapid.” In 1995, he was involved in charter schools and he was loathed by labor unions. Now, Larry, similar to all CAP neo-liberals, scratches his head pondering why America descended into fascism.
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I have gotten an ad on Facebook to quit my union almost every single day this month. I was going to block them, but the replies from local teachers have been so entertaining, with suggestions as to what this group can do with their ads, have kept me from blocking them. The replies are overwhelmingly pro-union, eloquent, and often hilarious. But I don’t underestimate their power.
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Yes, see that ad all the time. I always leave a few choice words in a comment.
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Melissa Walsh It seems they forget who they are dealing with–not the mentality of Trump followers, but teachers who, in most cases, got an education. CBK
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Trump followers are Fox viewers. The primary characteristic of the group is they are gullible.They buy into a message ASAP if it’s against equal rights and, when they are protecting their entitlement.
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It’s an old trick that was perfected in the Deep South. Persuade poor whites to vote for you by appealing to racism, to fears that the Other wants to take what little you have, while the Plutocrats steal from everyone and escape the rage of poor whites and blacks alike.
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“Free to Teach”
Free and Choice are becoming cusswords.
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This study leads to the wrong conclusion because TFA offers no continuity for the school in using people not fully trained for the job. This is what the Right Wing wants!
https://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=21717
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yes
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Confirmation for schoolgal’s point comes from the Koch-affiliated Manhattan Institute.
“Catholic Schools and Truth Decay”, 7-3-2018, by Max Eden.
Eden acknowledges that he understands a parent in New Orleans is in “despair” because the teachers who lived down the street have been replaced with twenty something dilettante TFA’ers who resort to suspensions because they don’t have the skills to understand their students. Eden heard a black parent say the above and express that charter schools are the latest iteration of of structural racism perpetuated by a new generation of oppressors.
I presume the conclusion appeals to Eden and the Koch’s or that they relish in it, because the Koch’s have increased their push for more charter schools.
No one has reason to expect Bill Gates is different than the Koch’s, do they?
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In fact this study is about regular public schools which concludes that TFA is the answer to the teacher shortage.
I only pray that no Ivy League student applies. They did in huge numbers when the job market in finance, marketing, law, etc. weren’t hiring. They were promised student loan payoffs and a job from some of the top Wall Street firms and free housing while teaching.
Yet what are public school teachers offered? Nothing to do with easing financial burdens like better pay, healthcare, loan forgiveness, respect!
I have been seeing a big push by TC, Teachers’ College, Columbia U towards using test scores to evaluate, charters, and any topic pushed by Reformers since 2000. Makes me wonder how these studies are conducted and what agenda this organization really wants. I can tell you it’s not a friend of working teachers!
I wonder if Diane or Carol have been following the TCRecord and if they have studies to debunk this nonsense!
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TC at Columbia is like the University of Arkansas. In These Times wrote about the links between the head of the college and Pearson. Ugly. At least one of the professors got big funding from the Waltons/Arnold. That same faculty member was on the Broad Prize board.
UnKochMyCampus.org has a new initiative planned, “Academic Capture Warning System”.
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Thanks. I knew the bulk of these studies and conclusions made very little sense. Anyone can create a study to prove a hypothesis. How about a real study!
Every conclusion is either anti teacher anti union or anti public school!
A few years ago they defended using test scores for evaluations!
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