Hedge fund managers decided in 2005 that the best way to advance the charter school idea was to create a faux organization called Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), then to funnel campaign cash to Democratic candidates who promised to support charter schools. This worked for a time. Senator Barack Obama spoke at the inaugural meeting of DFER at a penthouse in Manhattan filled with Wall Street types. When Obama was elected, DFER recommended Arne Duncan to be Secretary of Education, and Obama picked him over the highly qualified Linda Darling-Hammond, who had been his spokesperson during the campaign.
But some Democrats realized that DFER was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Democratic Party of California passed a resolution demanding that DFER drop the D because it was a front for corporate interests. The Democratic party of Colorado also passed a resolution denouncing DFER.
In 2016, DFER supported a referendum in Massachusetts to expand the number of charter schools, in company with the Waltons and big Republican donors. The charter campaign went down to a crashing defeat, after charters were denounced by the state Democratic Party and almost every school district committee in the state. The only demographic that supported the expansion of charters was members of the Republican Party.
Today, the loudest champion of charter schools is Betsy DeVos. The biggest allies of the charter movement are Republican governors and legislatures.
Sensing the change in the air, recognizing that charter schools now belong to ALEC and DeVos, almost every Democratic candidate for President has steered clear of charter schools. Bernie Sanders endorsed the NAACP call for a moratorium on new charters.
But wait! DFER has commissioned a poll to demonstrate that Democrats actually favor charters!
Peter Greene says the poll is baloney. He explains it here. His advice: Ignore it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s up. https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Why-You-Can-Ignore-That-Ho-in-General_News-Education_Peter-Greene-191011-950.html
Wit this comment The big money is pushing to end public education.
Beware! Powerful Koch Network Starts New Group to Fight Public Schools . Koch and his network of wealthy donors have created a new Astroturf organization called “Yes Every Kid” to promote school choice and take public money away from public schools.
Forget about Ukraine and nail down Biden about where he stands with these people. If his connection to Obama is worth using….let him own the whole thing.
I watched the CNN Town Hall on LBGTQ equality last night. Biden announced his support for marriage equality while Obama was still supporting the marriage was between a man and a woman. The media made a big issue about it as though Biden would be in trouble. When Obama met with Biden, he gave Biden a kiss on the cheek. Obama was glad Biden broke the ice because he secretly felt the same.
Politicians have their own polls and the presidential candidates spend all day, every day campaigning. I think they probably have a better handle on what voters are telling them than a DC lobbying group does.
The proof of what Democratic candidates are hearing on ed reform is reflected in their refusal to defend it publicly, and that’s been going on for a while. It predated DeVos.
They really could have had charters and vouchers without attacking and harming public schools, but they chose to go all in on privatization. They created this backlash and they never saw it coming. They were all shocked when the teachers strikes spread. Public school teachers in West Virginia had to shut down every school in the state before anyone listened to them. That’s an indictment of their political leaders, who have no earthly idea what is going on with their people. Apparently.
Nailed it!
“have no earthly idea of what is going on with their people.” SADDEST truth.
I read Chiara’s comment. I agree. Thanks, Chiara
The DFERS are so WRONG. It’s about $$$$$$ and who controls whom. Makes me ILL. And guess who suffers? Answer: Our young, public education, public school teachers, and ultimately democracy and America.
Most Politicians and Lobbyists “work for themselves and their perks and power”…first.
Most of the hedge fund managers are not the most honest people. Why would anyone believe their slanted poll?
To all those critics that have alleged that the Democratic Party has a long history of not supporting public schools, you were WRONG! Some Democrats guilty and some were not. Barack Obama was one of the guilty Democrats, and as we have seen with Trump, a president, no matter who it is, has a lot of weight to throw around (both figuratively and literally when it comes to Trump since Obama was slender).
I want those critics to admit they were wrong to slander the entire Democratic Paty instead of the few in power that were guilty like Obama.
“But some Democrats realized that DFER was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The Democratic Party of California passed a resolution demanding that DFER drop the D because it was a front for corporate interests. The Democratic party of Colorado also passed a resolution denouncing DFER. …
“In 2016, DFER supported a referendum in Massachusetts to expand the number of charter schools … The charter campaign went down to a crashing defeat, after charters were denounced by the state Democratic Party and almost every school district committee in the state.”
Ironically, some of the Democrats that didn’t embrace the DFERs were supposedly those corrupt “corporate” Democrats, and some of the ones that were big DFER Dems and were very pro-charter are supposedly “progressives” who Bernie Sanders himself campaigned for (against one of those pro-public school conservative Dems).
Democrats, unlike Republicans, are complex and the same candidates can support some very progressive issues when it comes to public education and more conservative issues when it comes to foreign policy or something else. And vice versa. And too many of those complicated candidates get defeated by Republicans who are bad on every single issue because they supposedly aren’t as corrupt as all Democrats with any association with (insert organization name for maximum hatred).
Democrats are like the Humpty Dumpty that fell off the wall and couldn’t be put back together again. Every piece of the broken shell is different because of all the different factions that refuse to work together for a common goal since no common goal exists.
Republicans, on the other hand, are one big corrupt blog that looks the same, talks the same, and even walks like one of those military parades in China or Russia where every right boot hits the pavement at the same time before the left boot comes down … at the same time an instant later. I think that means they will make really good racist fascists.
“This is not a ‘what do people actually think’ survey, but a ‘what version of our message is most likely to sell’ survey.” My suggestion to Dem candidates: work from the PDK poll. The 2019 poll doesn’t speak precisely to this point (other than the usual hi grades parents give to their local schsys), but the 2018 has a section on “reform vs alternatives,” essentially described as tweaking what we’ve got vs starting over from scratch/ favoring alternatives. There’s a chart showing the polled have long expressed [almost 4-1] preference for the former.
I think it would be very interesting for pro-public education folks to commission their own poll to ask:
Which kind of public school “choice” do you prefer:
A choice public school offering a special program for students who choose it, that is overseen by the local school board and part of the system, and parents and students have rights and cannot be mistreated and teachers must meet the same qualifications as any public school?
A privately run charter school taking money from the public school budget that can pick and choose who they want to teach and is overseen by corporate outsiders and not the community, where students and parents can be treated in the manner that those corporate outsiders want, and any college grad can be trained to be a teacher in a few weeks?
Hillary Clinton spoke at a South Carolina town hall in late 2015 and said “I want parents to be able to exercise choice within the public school system — not outside of it — but within it because I am still a firm believer that the public school system is one of the real pillars of our democracy and it is a path for opportunity.” She was in the middle of crowd of parents who supposedly loved charters, but when she pointed out the problems with charters and explained that choice should be within the system, she got rousing applause. In fact, the crowd was so approving of her comments that Roland Martin, the DFER Democrat who was the host, could not change the subject fast enough (and he was looking very uncomfortable and kept looking off camera as if someone was saying “change the subject, NOW!”)
Clearly, this “poll” was created by a PR firm to get the result that DFER wanted. And equally clearly, US News and World Report didn’t bother to smell check its source.
Here’s a poll question for you: Which would you prefer, having your parents, children, grandchildren, other relatives, and friends all die of hemorrhagic fever or having Donald Trump win the 2020 election?
My polling at the Citgo gas station in Plant City, Florida, with this question, indicates that 82 percent of Americans support the reelection of Donald Trump. Take that Fox News Polls! Who knows, perhaps US News and World Report will run the story!
And Donald, have one of your mob lawyers send me a check.
Polls mean anything that the pollsters want them to mean.
A recent poll widely quoted by MSNBC, NPR and other Sanders haters supposedly showed that Sanders is unelectable.
Of course, these organizations completely ignore the fact that Sanders has received donations from over 1 million people. Most don’t even report that because it puts the lie to their BS polls.
Polls are highly inaccurate even when they are not biased by design, which they are much of the time.