The Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation are joining forces to fund disruptive innovations. Both foundations are hostile to democratically governed public schools. Both have supported charter schools and vouchers.
Philanthropic groups associated with billionaire businessman and activist Charles Koch have announced two initiatives to deepen their involvement in K-12 education.
One initiative is Yes Every Kid, a group that intends to find common ground between groups that typically have disagreed vehemently over issues such as labor protections and school funding. It’s a social-welfare organization—a 501(c)4 in the language of the Internal Revenue Service—that will be able to take part in lobbying and political campaign work such as promoting ballot measures and committees. It will operate under the umbrella of Stand Together, a nonprofit group backed by Koch that promotes anti-poverty efforts.
The other initiative is an agreement between the Charles Koch Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation for each group to donate $5 million to what’s essentially a Silicon Valley-style incubator for education called 4.0 Schools. This group will use that $10 million donation, and another $5 million from other donors, to seed “500 new schools, programs and education tools across the country,” according to a statement from the Koch and Walton foundations. Among its activities, the Walton Family Foundation supports charter schools and private school choice programs. (The Walton Family Foundation provides grant support for coverage of parent-engagement issues, including charters and school choice, in Education Week.)
Charles Koch, along with his brother David, have long been associated with conservative political causes through groups such as Americans for Prosperity. And for some time, the Koch brothers have been some of the biggest antagonists for Democrats and liberal groups, including teachers’ unions. In January, the Koch donor network announced plans to get more involved in K-12 education. At that meeting of the Seminar Network, a Koch-backed organization, the group said it was interested in promoting personalized learning, improving schools, and working “alongside” teachers.
The billionaires are restless. They are worried. Nothing they have done or funded has succeeded. The Red4Ed movement has put them on the defensive. The backlash against charters has shocked them (the billionaire Waltons claim credit for launching one of every four charters in the nation). The all-charter New Orleans District, where half the schools were rated D or F by the state, is a disappointment. The Koch Network was walloped last year by parent and teacher activists in Arizona, who blocked voucher expansion.
All the billionaires have is money. Endless money. The Waltons increase their wealth by $4 million AN HOUR. so they are putting up about 2 and 1/2 hours of revenue for this new venture. They can’t be serious. They are just producing disruption, sowing chaos, creating jobs for their followers. Keep your eyes on them and Mr. Koch.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“This group will use that $10 million donation, and another $5 million from other donors, to seed “500 new schools, programs and education tools across the country,”
This is a laughably small amount of money to “seed new schools”
They only added it to get the IRS designation as a charitable org and lobby against public schools.
Good God. These people. They don’t even attempt to make this LOOK legit. They’re always convinced they’re the smartest people in the room.
Here’s an idea for public schools- don’t take the money. You will pay and pay and pay in return for that 10,000 dollars. Tell them thanks but no thanks. Exchanging 10,000 in charity for the loss of millions in tax revenue is such a bad deal no one in their right mind would take it. They think you are idiots. Don’t prove them right.
Remember how Race to the Top was a net loss for your public school? This will be worse because they’ll actually be lobbying AGAINST your school, while using your students as an experimental population. Please don’t fall for this again. Not a good deal.
Their money also buys them an immense amount of propaganda.
how the most dangerous game is played
“The group’s board members include some familiar faces from the K-12 world, including Kenneth Campbell, the executive director of IDEA charter schools’ arm in southern Louisiana; Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (who also writes a blog for Education Week); and Tom Vander Ark, the founder of Getting Smart, a learning design firm.”
See how broad and inclusive it is? It includes 100% market-driven ed reformers and excludes any representative from a public school.
They’re “reinventing education” without 1. public schools, 2. public school students and 3. public school families, so about 90% of the people who actually use public schools.
No wonder they all get along. They’re literally the same people who run every other ed reform initiative. It would be surprising if they disagreed, given that they all promote the exact same policies and priorities and they excluded anyone who might disagree.
What’s the “debate” here? Between people who espouse a gradual transition to privatized systems and people who espouse a New Orleans-style complete eradication of public schools? Which part of that has any relevancy to students in the unfashionable public sector schools, other than how it may harm them?
They play musical chairs, with money on every chair.
“And for some time, the Koch brothers have been some of the biggest antagonists for Democrats and liberal groups, including teachers’ unions”
This string of words from the Ed Week article is representative of the increasing tendancy to argue with labels within a news format. I reject that approach. It would be better to characterize their efforts factually, demonstrating something concrete rather than getting out of a discussion with a label.
There is nothing that the Waltons or Koch family do that is considered “innovative.” They both represent regressive, reactionary policies. There is nothing innovative about suppressing democracy, segregating and destroying the common good. We need to protect our young people from being repeatedly used as lab rats for the 1%. It is a myth that all technology is innovative. In fact, the CAI of today is little more than electronic worksheets. This is so 19th century and not innovative in any way.
“Working ‘alongside’ teachers”?
I teach, and I’ll pass, thank you.
You don’t want to work “alongside” Charles Koch and Alice Walton?
They want to help you teach.
LONG. I looked at the 4.pt0 website. https://www.4pt0.org
This organization has headquarters in New Orleans in a space big enough to rent out to other groups. 4.pt0 is a basically an “incubator and accelerator” for launching projects proposed by entrepreneurs in education. The general scheme for nurturing and supporting startups is now widely available in so-called innovation cities.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation sent $2,664,319 to 4.0 schools between 2012 and 2015 “to support entrepreneurs responding to school needs through innovation in product design and development.”
The choice of New Orleans as a headquarters for innovation in education is weirdly right. The imagined miracle of education in New Orleans did not happen with charter schools, but there are plenty of diehards ready to support Koch-funded miracle seeking.
The 4.pt0 project is managed by ten Staff in New Orleans. Their LinkedIn profiles show that none have teaching experience. One person serves on the board of two charter schools, another was a college campus minister.
Of the eight-member Board of Directors for 4.pt0 almost all have ties to charter schools, or Teach for America, and charter school proliferation in New Orleans, New York City, or Washington DC.
The highest profile directors are Frederick M. Hess – Resident Scholar and Director of Policy Studies at The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) since 2002. Hess has edited twenty books on education, most of these published by AEI. He is author of nine books critical of public schools and a former high school social studies teacher in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Add Tom Vander Ark – Partner at Learn Capital (venture fund) and both Founder and CEO of Getting Smart, a commercial promoter of “innovation” in education including 4.pt0 as a client. Vander Ark was the first Executive Director of Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. For five years, he was a public school superintendent in the state of Washington and the first hire in that district from the business world, with no background in education. He had been a private sector executive in retail, energy and technology.
Add Aaron Walker – Founder and CEO of Camelback Ventures, a venture capital firm that provides funds and coaching for “investment ready” education ventures especially for communities of color. He joined Teach for America, worked for two years teaching 9th grade and served one year as a Teach for America legal affairs intern. He appears to have worked as a lawyer for four education ventures, each for about one year. More at http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2018/12/venture-capital-and-fake-teaching.html
The 4.pt0 website invites applicants for two fellowship programs.
“Essentials Fellows get coaching from entrepreneurs, up to a $1K grant, and a community of peers pushing them to run their first test (e.g., Saturday event). By the end of Essentials, fellows will have feedback from users and the skills needed to continue refining their idea.”
Tiny Fellows (don’t laugh) have qualified for a program of extended tests “that serve ten or more users for a week to a semester (e.g., after school program or summer camp). Fellows keep their day jobs and receive up to a $10K grant from 4.0. After Tiny, the most promising alumni are connected with downstream partners who help take their ideas to scale as new schools, nonprofits or companies.”
Downstream refers to Stage Three of this incubator. It is said to include “access to 1,000 change makers.” Webinars and the FAQ tabs provide more information and convey requirements for “entrepreneurial success.”
The website has brief descriptions of over 100 projects in various stages of development. From a brief analysis of these projects and their descriptions, I judge that the entrepreneurs were trying for “marketable ideas” within only one or two of these emphases:
–content for study, especially STEM/STEAM;
–methods or modes of teaching/learning with “student directed learning” favored;
–objectives focused on college success and literacy;
–student groups, with a preference for early childhood and special education and
–values to be honored, many signaled by DEI, standing for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
As of October 20, 2019 less than half of the proposals had the required written statements of “problems and solutions” for next-stage funding.
4.pt0 is setting up a Measurement and Evaluation Collaborative called a “founder-researcher partnership” with a Researcher-in-Residence and five visiting scholars who will receive a stipend for working with Tiny Fellows in New Orleans. The M&E collaborative will also hire 4.0 Alumni as research assistants. They will work with the Researcher-in-Residence on a peer review process for pop-up and pilot plans among other jobs.
This measurement collaborative will be led by Kirsten Lee Hill, a for-hire (free-lance) researcher with a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Education. Many of her peer-reviewed articles deal with school turnarounds. She is also co-director of the Bill and Melinda Gates-funded “Research on Curricular Alignment Partnerships,” all focused on the getting teachers into compliance with the Common Core. These partnership funds go to Gates-funded projects and groups: EdReports.org, ($15 million), Student Achievement Partners ($10 million) and Achieve ($1 million for a recent review of science lessons). https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2019/01/07/gates-giving-millions-to-train-teachers-on.html
I also looked at the Koch network’s “Yes. Every Kid” website. It is very thin on content. You can sign up for a newsletter. But there is a related website https://bigthink.com/yes-every-kid/. The BigThink website is best described as a content aggregator and marketplace for Koch-friendly ideas, many presented as videos, podcasts, and newsletters with a premium option “for hot new ideas, for people on the go.” This initiative “aims to rethink education from the ground up by connecting innovators in a shared mission to conquer ‘one size fits all’ education reform.”
Here are some edited briefs about a few videos.
1.”Self-directed learning: How ‘unschoolers’ control their education. The factory model of education is outdated, so what’s next? ….Our access to technology allows learning to happen beyond the conventional classroom. Unschooling serves as a reinvention of education that invites students to indulge in their natural curiosity on their individual path to knowledge. A full transcript is available.”
“Why top-down reform won’t save the education system. Countless top-down reforms haven’t improved the US education system: Can community-based education make a difference? “Community-based education reform creates coalitions of stakeholders to support lifelong learning. Though barriers exist, such reform could synthesize the best of top-down and bottom-up reform.”
3.” If America’s education system is outdated, how can we evolve? Specialization in education is just one way of optimizing the system for the future. Derrell Bradford of 50CAN points out that, while education reform in the past has done some great things for many students in America, there is a definite need to evolve.”
There is much more about the lobbying function of YesEvery Kid if you search for it. For example, I discovered that YesEvery Kid and Americans for Prosperity filed a brief on September 18, 2019 asking the US Supreme Court to address this question:
Does it violate the Religion Clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution to invalidate a generally available and religiously neutral student-aid program (tax credits in Montana) simply because the program affords students the choice of attending religious schools? https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1195/116183/20190918121723025_No.%2018-1195tsacAmericansForProsperityAndYesEveryKid.pdf
In addition, I found a July 2019 push survey of use in shaping a “messaging” campaign. This survey offers has results from 592 Registered Voters in Indiana asking generally if Governor Holcomb and the state legislature is doing a good job followed by a serious of questions to estimate political support for public school policies (e.g., standardized tests) as well as levels of support for vouchers, education savings accounts, Indiana’s School Scholarship Tax Credit Program, open enrollment, and charter schools. https://mk0yeseverykidsr4a6r.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Indiana-Education-Survey_Interview-Schedule.pdf
Evident in these not-so-new Koch/Walton ventures is a longstanding and still standing relationship with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and nothing much of value beyond hype. 2019,
Amazing blog!!
Thanks for this info