Valerie Strauss writes here about an important new book about the Koch Empire and its desire to eliminate and privatize public schools. The book is “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” by Christopher Leonard.

Strauss writes:

Early this year, the Koch network committed to starting an effort to transform public education. What would that look like?

The author of a new book on the billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother, David, says it would amount to the destruction of public education as we know it.

The Koch network is the influential assemblage of groups funded by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch and more than 600 wealthy individuals who share his pro-business, anti-regulation view of economics and positions on social policy, such as climate change denial.

The focus on K-12 education follows long involvement by the Koch brothers in higher education. As leaders of a conservative movement that believes U.S. higher education is controlled by liberals who indoctrinate young people, they spent as much as an estimated $100 million on programs at hundreds of colleges and universities that support their views…

In June, two Koch-related education initiatives were announced. One is a group called “Yes Every Kid,” which, its creators say, will bring together partisans in the education labor and funding debates to try to find solutions. The other is a project called 4.0 that commits the Charles Koch Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation to pledge $5 million each — along with $5 million from other donors — to support, according to a statement, “600 education entrepreneurs in incubating, testing and launching innovative approaches to education.” (The Walton foundation has long supported charter schools and other parts of the school choice movement.)

one thing is certain: the efforts of the Koch Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation are not doing it “for the kids.” By now, it a fact that kids in charters do not outperform their peers in public schools, and kidsin voucher schools get worse scores than their peers in public schools.

What do the billionaires want? Lower taxes. No unions. Powerless teachers. A free market where government has no role, and families compete for resources. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, just like the economy. What we know about the market is that it produces a few winners and many losers. It does not produce equal educational opportunity.