Cory Booker has a long and well-documented record of disparaging public schools and enthusiastically supporting charters, even vouchers. Now, he says he will dedicate himself to public schools and stop privatization, as if he had not been one of the leading cheerleaders for both charters and vouchers for the past two decades.
Valerie Strauss wrote here about his deep ties over the years to Betsy DeVos.
Booker began his advocacy for vouchers twenty years ago.
“In 1999, Booker was a member of the Municipal Council of Newark and worked with conservatives to form an organization that sought to create a voucher program and bring charter schools to New Jersey.”
He helped Dick and Betsy DeVos try to sell vouchers in Michigan in 2000. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful. As Jennifer Berkshire pointed out in her article about Booker’s help for the DeVos voucher campaign, the DeVos family spent millions, but the people of Michigan rejected vouchers by a vote of 69-31%.
When Booker ran for mayor of Newark in 2001, the DeVos family contributed $1,000 to his campaign. Cheapskates.
Veteran journalist Dale Russakoff wrote a book called The Prize about Cory Booker’s alliance with Republican Governor Chris Christie and their determination to turn Newark into the “New Orleans of the North” by privatizing as many public schools as possible. Booker was a favorite of Wall Street and philanthrocapitalists, and he and Christie persuaded Mark Zuckerberg to put up $100 million to spur privatization in Newark.
Regular readers of this blog have read the many posts by blogger Jersey Jazzman (Mark Weber) about the statistical legerdemain that Newark charters play, the cream-skimming they do to get the students they want and exclude those that might pull down their test scores..
If you open the link at NPE Action, you will see that Booker’s campaigns have drawn the campaign funding of the usual billionaires and Wall Street hedge funders who have done their best to undermine public education.
Booker was feted by rightwing think tanks like the Manhattan Institute and named a “champion of charters” by the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools in 2017.
But his support for vouchers was not long, long ago.
In 2012, he endorsed Governor Chris Christie’s voucher proposal.
In 2016, he addressed Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children to express his support for their mission of replacing public schools with charters and vouchers.
Due to his contempt for one of our most important public, democratic institutions, I cannot support Cory Booker.
If he is the Democratic candidate, which seems unlikely, I will hold my nose and vote for him, because any Democrat is better than Trump. Even Cory Booker.
I absolutely agree! I will vote for anyone over Trump, even if it’s Cory Booker, the scourge of public education. It’s a low bar for sure, but too much is riding on this election.
I am a witness to Booker’s anti public school policies in Newark.
Diane, if you’re not careful and keep crossing off candidates (first Pete, now Booker), you’re going to end up accidentally endorsing a primary candidate. 😉
I like Steve Bullock.
I live in CT were NJ is always on my radar. I will not support Sen. Booker either. America will not vote for another Black male so close to Obama & Diane & I agree he has been too close to privatizes of public schools. Too many candidates so so have to go ASAP
What the heck does the color of his skin have to do with his ability to lead this country?! I will not vote for him in the primary either, but his skin color has nothing to do with my decision.
These are useful exercises in judgment. I hope that the horse-race mindset around the Presidential candidates does not distract Democrats from making informed decisions and voter activitism on behalf of state and local offices.
Mitch McConnel, for example, has entirely too much power. Democrates must take the Senate and at minimum keep the House.
Our local school baord has a TFA running for office, and a new charter school with an unannounced authorizer, a cookie cutter manager in Chicago, and a “remodeled” facility once used by a construction company. This came to light several weeks ago, with no background on how it happened. I hope that they fail to get enough students to open.
I’m not voting for Cory Booker, ever, for anything. My standards are low enough that I’d vote for any other Democrat against Trump, but there’s a limit.
I agree. There are a very small number of people on earth I could never bring myself to vote for and Booker is one of them.
I think I’d have to write in Mickey Mouse if it came down to Booker vs Trump. Let’s hope that Cory gets weeded out soon!
The stay home on Election Day Democrats: Cory Booker, Antonio Villaraigosa, Michael Bloomberg, and Rahm Emanuel. The Never Squad.
Though Mickey meets the natural born US citizen requirement for the Presidency (being fathered by Walt Disney) and the age requirement (being 90 years old), I believe he would fail the “Us resident for at least 14 years” requirement, having resided in TV land all of his life.
But im not a lawyer.
Maybe FLERP would know.
Or maybe FLERP! would know
Besides, some claim Mickey was actually born in Kenya and to be quite honest, I have never seen his birth certificate.
And even if he was born in Disney, isn’t that actually a sovereign nation?
Pinocchio claims Mickey is a citizen but, like someone else we know, you can’t believe a word he says.
This story is more recent than 2016—in 2018
Earlier this year, after noticing that someone with a Senate email was looking at my LinkedIn page, I received an invitation from Sen. Cory Booker’s press secretary to talk about new research showing enormous progress in Newark schools, which he attributed to reforms implemented when Booker was mayor. I gathered up copies of the studies and drafted a few questions for a short January interview with a busy senator.
Rather than a quick question-and-answer session, the senator talked for nearly 90 minutes about his high-profile efforts to turn around Newark’s failing schools with a $100 million grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and its spectacular rollout on Oprah Winfrey’s TV show. He spoke about why he decided to tackle education reform and the difficult politics around reforming urban schools.
Frustrated by the negative coverage of the city that came out of Dale Russakoff’s 2015 book The Prize, he said Newark’s rising English and math test scores in grades 3-8, a shrinking achievement gap, and improved graduation rates — up nearly 20 percentage points since 2010 — prove that Newark’s reform efforts were very much a success.
He said he hoped these studies would help turn around the persistent negative narrative.
https://www.the74million.org/article/exclusive-senator-cory-booker-speaks-out-about-newark-school-reform/
Here is a 2019 article about Booker’s school choice problem
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/cory-booker-has-a-school-choice-problem.html
Many people in politics excuse some of their past views by saying, they needed to express them in order to get into office, but once in office, they will do the right thing. They don’t realize that they simply come off as liars at best, but more like mass-manipulators.
I don’t think that I can hold my nose, but I don’t see him becoming the nominee. He and Christie hurt many public school students!
Yes, Diane. Same reason i don’t support him. Never have since his days as Newark mayor. Support for public education is a litmus test for me and Corey fails! Miserably.