Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently for the Stamford (Connecticut) Advocate and is a regular contributor to the Hearst Connecticut Media Group.
Recently she wrote about Yale’s agreement to adopt Eli Broad’s school-wrecking “Broad Institute” in return for a donation of $100 million. The Broad Institute is a vanity project by a billionaire who readily admits he knows nothing about education but enjoys disrupting school districts because he can.
Lecker writes:
Wendy Lecker: Putting a price tag on public schools
When it comes to using one’s fortune to influence American policy, billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch stand out.
The Kochs have spent a fortune pushing American politics and policy to the right. Their secretive organization, Americans for Prosperity, is a major player in anti-labor activities, such as Wisconsin’s slashing of union rights, and fighting minimum wage increases nationwide. The Kochs poured money into the American Legislative Exchange Council (“ALEC”) a stealth lobby organization that writes bills that advance Koch industries’ interests specifically and the Koch’s extreme free market ideology in general, and then gets legislators all over the country to introduce them.
They have also donated millions of dollars to establish research centers at universities to push their brand of unregulated capitalism. They impose conditions and performance obligations on the donations, interfere in hiring decisions, and make curriculum and programming decisions. The Kochs often demand pre-approval of any public statements and include anti-transparency provisions in donor agreements. This research is then cited as the scholarly basis for Congressional decisions favoring the Kochs’ interests. The Kochs are proud of their integrated strategy to build a pipeline of influence. The president of the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation boasted that “(n)o one else has this infrastructure.”
Eli Broad, a billionaire who made his fortune through real estate and insurance, seeks to build a Koch-style infrastructure to push his education reform ideology. Broad recently announced that, with a $100 million donation, he is bringing his Broad Center to Yale’s School of Management (“SOM”).
The Broad Center trains school district leaders and those who seek to influence education policy. The center emphasizes applying business principles to running school districts and de-emphasizes education. In seeking candidates, the Broad Center prioritizes “a strong and direct alignment with specific (Broad Center) reform priorities” — which include school privatization and weakening labor protections. The Center openly aims to reshape American public education according to Broad’s ideology.
Eli Broad is a major player in some of the most aggressive — and controversial- education reform policies in America. Like the Kochs, Broad employs an integrated strategy of influence. For example, he bankrolled the education reform slate in the Los Angeles 2018 school board election. His star beneficiary, charter operator Ref Rodriguez, later resigned from the board and pled guilty to felony election fraud conspiracy. Broad also poured millions into Broad alumnus and charter operator Marshall Tuck’s 2018 unsuccessful campaign for California State Superintendent.
Broad used his money and influence to push the Education Achievement Authority (EAA) to run Detroit’s public schools. He provided significant funding and even summoned Broad alumnus and then Kansas City superintendent, John Covington, to be its first chancellor. Covington had wreaked havoc on Kansas City, firing hundreds of teachers and replacing them with inexperienced Teach for America members, and imposing other disruptive reforms. After his chaotic departure, Kansas City’s school district lost its accreditation. It then abandoned Covington’s reforms to regain its footing.
Covington left the EAA abruptly after charges of questionable spending, and the Broad Center hired him. The EAA was a devastating failure, plagued by financial mismanagement and abysmal academic failures.
A succession of Broad alumni ran Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District, which was also plagued by financial mismanagement and poor student achievement — worse than in schools under local district control.
Broad alumni were forced out of Seattle and Los Angeles amid financial impropriety, and Barbara Byrd Bennett, a Broad executive coach, is in federal prison after pleading guilty to a bribery scandal in which she engaged while head of Chicago Public Schools.
These scandals reflect poorly on Broad’s emphasis on applying business practices to school districts.
Much like the Koch’s foray into higher education, Broad’s move to SOM seems like an effort to profit from Yale’s name and perhaps sanitize the questionable track record of Broad alumni. Since Yale has no school of education — unlike other universities in New Haven — Broad’s interest is not to bolster any knowledge of how children can learn successfully.
In an effort to discern how much of the Koch playbook Broad is employing at Yale, I asked SOM about Broad’s involvement in the governance, curriculum, programming and hiring at SOM’s new center. After first indicating they would run these questions by SOM’s dean, SOM now fails to respond, despite my request for follow-up. Apparently, SOM’s Broad Center is adopting the Koch’s lack of transparency.
It is disturbing that a major university is helping enlarge the Broad pipeline, which has funneled scandal and upheaval across American public schools.
Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.
I was lucky enough to go to a private school in my hometown for my high school experience. Not that my public school was a bad place, far from it. Still, I received a classical education at Webb, a private school that is 150 years old this year. Like a college, it depends to a large extent on the contributions of wealthy alumni. One thing I experienced was that some wealthy alumni are carrying around a load of hubris. This is not always true. Most of these folks are wonderful, and that is why I got to go there virtually free of charge. Some, however, seem all about themselves. Some folks are just like that. I know people who have very little in life who still act as though they have the answers to all the questions of life, especially where the financial sector is concerned. Folks with money can carry off this bluff with a lot more success due to the tendency in our society to ascribe wisdom to wealth.
Anyhow, I found myself with a friend and former classmate of mine in Aspen, CO in 1978 visiting an alum who would often fly into the regional airport in his private plane and ride his scooter to the Alumni celebrations, which had the effect of showing his fellow students that he was wealthy enough to have a private plane. My friend’s father was involved in raising money for the school and had given his son the job of making contact with this man.
This guy proceeded to explain to us how much the school was suffering from the intellectual poverty caused by none of the students being asked to perform at the high level he experienced back in his day. He essentially told us that we had received no education, and that the school needed to return to some fabled day when all the graduates were Rhodes Scholars and began companies like Exxon (some did both of these things before he was born). He finally asked for a response.
I told him that I could not speak about his experience, but that my father had graduated from the same school before he had been there. I explained that my father had a reading problem, had made it through on main force, and had spent his life as a farmer in Bell Buckle being a good influence on the community. Perhaps, I said, he was not a wealty man or successful in the eyes of the larger scheme of things, but he had been honest and diligent in his pursuit of contributing to the community. The school still does that, I pointed out, and such is a good education.
The man stopped for a second. “You made a very good case,” he said. Then we went on to another subject. I felt pretty good about what I told him, and I still hold that how you contribute to the community is the only reflection on education that has meaning.
Broad is just another wealthy man with hubris. Kings and Queens of Europe were filled with this during the age of European ascendancy. Now wealth has produced an aristocracy in our own society. I have heard tales of company parties wherein the employees stand and applaud when the owner of the business comes into the room. We witness the Gates-Koch Effect, wherein the individual forgets that his bones will lie under the sod with all of us before the blink of an eye where time is concerned. Because their treasure on earth is so great, they perceive themselves in an inflated societal role. They would do well to read the parable of the rich man and Lazrus
Someday, I hope to see wealthy people act like so many I have known, humble and attentive to their communities. There are a lot of good wealthy people. They should speak up.
Correction:
“The Kochs have spent a fortune pushing American politics and policy to the REGRESSIVE REACTIONARY XTIAN FUNDIE right.
Hey. Here’s an idea. Why not replace all our university departments with ones sponsored by oligarchs? This would be certain to encourage academic freedom and the scholarly critique and competition among ideas within the Academy so essential to Democracy. So, we could have. . . .
The Koch School of Economics
The Laurene Powell Jobs Computer Science School
The Eli Broad and Bill Gates School of Education Deform and Privatization
The Sackler/DeVos/Trump School of Business
The Elizabeth Holmes College of Biological Sciences
The Martin Shkreli College of Pharmacy
The Vladimir Putin School of Foreign Relations
The Rupert Murdoch School of Journalism
The Jeffrey Epstein Modeling School and Talent Agency
To ensure that these adhere to free market principles, they could be operated as for-profit charters within our universities, returning the initial investments back to the founders, or their heirs, over time.
Frederick Hess advised your suggestion in an article co-written with the manager of a Gates-funded ed organization, posted at Philanthropy Roundtable,”Don’t Surrender the Academy”.