Apparently, Ed Deformers—themselves richly endowed with millions and millions from billionaires such as the Waltons, the Gates, Broad, Bloomberg, Koch, etc.—have descended to claiming that the Network for Public Education is funded by “Dark Money” and the big, bad teachers’ unions. Evidently they are troubled to have any dissent to their self-serving narrative that only privatization can “save” America’s children from the terrible public schools and teachers who have educated 90% of all Americans.
Mercedes Schneider performs a compare and contrast here, reviewing the tax filings of billionaire-funded “Education Post” with that of NPE. Of course, a fair comparison would have pitted NPE funding vs. not only “Education Post”, but also billionaire-funded The 74, The Center for Education Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, The City Fund, and the dozens of other front groups that have oodles of money but no members. (NPE has nearly 400,000 followers who pay no dues).
On one side is EdPost:
Started in 2014, Education Post is an ed-reform blog and the brainchild of California billionaire, Eli Broad. Right out of the starting gate, EdPost (actual nonprofit name, Results in Education Foundation) had $5.5M to play with in its first year.
EdPost’s first CEO, Peter Cunningham, was paid $1M for 2 1/2 years of blogging. Moreover, in his position as a founding member of EdPost’s board, Stewart was compensated a total of $422,925 for 40 hrs/wk across 30 months as “outreach and external affairs director.” (To dig into that EdPost history, click here and follow the links.)
Deutsch reviews NPE’s revenues and reports a cumulative total from 2016-2018 of: $659,300.
What a haul!
But oh, those salaries!
In 2016,
Diane Ravitch was president and was not compensated.
Carol Burris was executive director and is the only compensated person listed on the tax form; her total 2016 compensation was $41,108 (40 hrs/wk), most of which was spent working for NPE (33 hrs/wk), and the remainder, for NPE Action (7 hrs/wk).
(Point of fact: Burris actually works at least 60 hours per week.)
But wait! In 2018, Burris’s salary for her full-time job was $55,000 a year. What a scandal!
No one is in NPE for the money.
The most amazing fact about NPE is how much it has accomplished with one full-time staff member and minimal resources. See:
A state-by-state report on support for public schools;
Online learning: What Every Parent Should Know;
Billionaires hijacking public schools;
The real story in New Orleans;
School privatization toolkit,
The waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal Charter Schools Program (here and here).
Whoa! That’s a lot of bang for the buck. One full-time employee, two part-time employees (Darcie Cimarusti and Marla Kilfoyle) and all that productivity!
Is ”EdPost,” with all their millions, jealous of NPE?
Or just sore because they have lost the war of ideas, now that their boasts have flopped and Betsy DeVos is the face of their billionaire-funded “movement”?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
NPE is so fortunate to have Carol Burris. She is smart, a quality researcher and writer and a powerhouse. NPE’s efforts are paying off. There has been a major shift in the public’s perceptions of charter schools. Due to NPE and a few other low priced bloggers as well as the Red for Ed movement, the public today is much better informed on the issues surrounding public education. People are much more aware that the wealthy want to destroy public education, and interest in charter schools has plummeted.
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SOP for the Republi-Con — Criminals Projecting Their Crimes On The Innocent.
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So now the deformers are now attacking NPE.
Typical. The deformers show their true colors one more time.
Thank you, Mercedes Schneider.
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It’s nearly always about $—and I’m surely grateful to Diane, Carol, Mercedes et al. for their tremendous work.
If you’re listening, America, I don’t even make 1/10 of Cunninghams’s salary after 36 years as a teacher w/ a doctorate and adjunct work. The Deformers not only can’t understand or do what we do; they couldn’t last a month on our salaries. I dare them to try.
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“Ed reformers love to talk of public ed orgs being “funded by the teachers union,” as though The Union is some single, ultimate enemy, when the teachers union is largely funded by the teachers. But then, ed reformers see career teachers as the enemy, and they view teachers unions as the enemy united.”
This, of course, is an echo of what Bob Dole said in his acceptance speech for the republican nomination in 96. In Dole’s failed run for the presidency, he signaled that the republican party was compromised in its dedication to a few people with aa narrow agenda.
The party that freed the slaves then allowed them to be subsumed in Jim Crow laws by 1900. It was during that generation that progressive political leaders like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson made peace with white supremacy even though they preached democracy and participation in government. It seemed the only thing business republicans and progressive democrats agreed on was the inferiority of non-Europeans.
Fast forward to the Dole speech. Soon an agreement between Teddy Kennedy and Bush II began a 20 year period during which the only point of political agreement was that teacher were he cause of educational blight.
Thanks in no small part to NPE and This blog, that is now changing. Satyagraha (I bet I misspelled that) means “force of truth.”
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yesterday I did a taped interview with an NPR reporter from Florida. When I objected to the conflicts of interest of charter operators and their family members in the legislature, she replied that there were teachers in the legislature lobbying for public schools, as though making laws that produce a personal profit (deformers) is the same as lobbying for an investment in public schools that would raise the salaries of tens of thousands of teachers.
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False equivalency? Not is today’s political world. Could never be.
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I would just ask ed reformers why it’s okay to have tens of orgs devoted to promoting charters and vouchers and advocating on behalf of those students, but not okay to have orgs devoted to advocating on behalf of students in public schools.
Ed reformers don’t do any advocacy or work to benefit public school students. You can read far and wide in ed reform without encountering students in public schools at all- most of the ed reform sites include an obligatory throw away paragraph at the end “also students in district schools”.
I don’t blame them for advocating on behalf of their schools and students. Why do they blame public school advocates for doing the same? Why am I ordered to accept that I get NO committed advocates? They get passionate charter and voucher advocates who spend 100% of their time doing that and public school students are the unfashionable afterthought? It’s nonsense.
They’re lousy advocates for our kids because they oppose the continued existence of our schools. I think public school students deserve effective committed advocates for the schools they attend. I should not have to apologize for that, any more than they apologize for the 24/7 charter-voucher cheerleading.
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Go to Betsy DeVos’ speeches right now and look for ANY positive mention of a public school or public school student.
It’s outrageous that 90% of the kids in this country attend a public school and the federal agency that is supposedly working on “public education” either pretends they don’t exist or portrays them all as low performing drug addicted thugs.
It’s not fair to them. It’s also NOT TRUE.
I don’t want an “agnostic”. I want the same kind of passionate, committed advocacy ed reformers lavish on charter and private schools. Our schools and kids are not their control group to be used in their experiments. They’re valuable in their own right.
Public school advocates appeared on the scene to respond to the fact that no one was doing it. That’s the fault of ed reformers.
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Speaking of Bitsy Devos, she is supposedly coming to Jeff City (capital of the Show Me State) on Monday to a Federalist Society gathering on school choice. Got my ticket and am gearing up to go see all the Show Me State head honcho Rethuglicans blabber on about school choice.
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So some guy on Twitter said “dark money” was coming in from “the one percent” to support public schools? I do not think he knows what dark money is. I do not think he knows who the one percent are. I took a glance at his feed, and he apparently thinks that the nation’s teachers are all together a wing of the KKK. He’s confused.
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Diane, Carol, Mercedes
Bless you.
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Last year in Ohio ed reformers accomplished two things- they did a huge voucher expansion and they set up a special fund for still more money for charter schools.
This year we are still obsessing on vouchers in this state, to the exclusion of all other productive work, due to the blowback on their huge voucher expansion.
When do the 90% of kids in this state who attend public schools get a lick of work out of the people they’re paying in state government? Who works for them?
It’s ridiculous. The whole freaking state apparatus is captured by this lobby. The provide absolutely no positive benefit to any public school student in the state, and it never ends. If we’re not lavishing attention and funding on charters we’re lavishing attention and funding on vouchers. No one is much interested in the unfashionable “public school sector”, apparently. Not disruptive and sexy enough for these geniuses.
How is this fair to public school students? That none of the adults in Columbus can be bothered with their schools? How does it even make sense?
They’re not “public education” advocates. They’re charter and voucher advocates and it is past time for them to admit that.
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Captured. YES.
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So we’ll have charter and voucher advocates in ed reform, and public school advocates who are not in ed reform.
I allow them to lobby for their schools. Why won’t they allow us to lobby for ours?
They’re sure as heck not doing it. Seems like someone should. 20 years with lousy or no advocates takes a toll. Enough.
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Interesting that the Walton-funded “National Parents Union” chose to have its inaugural meeting in New Orleans, where there is not a single public school left open.
And they even marched to celebrate what they hope will be the “death” of the “status quo,” meaning public schools.
Of course, as I argue in my new book, the Disrupters funded by Walton, Gates, DeVos, Koch, etc. ARE the status quo. They control the federal government and the state governments.
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Here’s how the US Department of Education describes public schools and public school students:
“Like everywhere else in the country, Florida’s families were fed up with failure. Sick of the status quo. And they demanded better.
Doing better began with introducing education freedom. Public charter schools, tax-credit scholarship programs, education savings accounts, vouchers. Students in Florida have more mechanisms for education freedom than anywhere else in the country. More keys to unlock opportunities. More ways to learn and grow.”
Failures. Our students. All of them.
This is pure politics and it’s ridiculous. Whatever their ideological beliefs about public entities and labor unions they should not be permitted to smear every public school and public school student in the country. It’s simply not fair to them and it’s also not true.
If you’re looking around your public school and wondering why none of this ed reform “advocacy” ever trickles down to your local public school all you have to do is read the celebrity reformers. Your kids are excluded. They attend the schools these folks hope to eradicate. They’re the collateral damage of the ideological campaign.
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“Failures”- Yet, the workers who were trained in public schools create enough GDP to both cover the financial sector’s 2% drag on the economy and, to grow the U.S. economy.
Colonialists like Gates, Walton heirs, and Charles Koch plot for an authoritarian culture where workers have no dignity.
The verbiage is guise.
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I sent in my annual donation to NPE about a month ago. May I presume to urge everyone to do the same?
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Thanks, Diane. But I could not do it without my side-kicks, Darcie and Marla who work part-time for so little. They are the best!! And thank you always for your guidance and hard work too!!
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