Tom Ultican reports on a billionaire-funded paper that makes the strange claim that the most progressive cities are the most inequitable. The “study,” he points out, was not peer-reviewed nor was it written by scholars with academic credentials. Its central thesis is that progressive cities are less able to educate students of color than conservative cities.
Since conservative cities spend less than progressive ones, is the underlying message that we should spend less on schools?
The paper is titled: “The Secret Shame: How America’s Most Progressive Cities Betray Their Commitment to Educational Opportunity for All.”
Was it produced by a right wing think tank? No, it came from the media website Education Post, which regularly touts school choice and critiques public schools.
As you will see, the methodology and the conclusions are strained, if not downright bizarre. as Ultican puts it, the paper is a polemic, a word salad, not a study.
The billionaires funding the organization called Brightbeam that produced this paper are Michael Bloomberg, the Waltons, Mark Zuckerberg, and Laurene Powell Jobs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
. . . was that Brightbeam, as in “bright beam”? . . . CBK
I love how they claim to be “nonpartisan” when literally all of their content is “liberals and labor unions are bad!”
I mean, come on. There’s nothing wrong with pushing a conservative political/ideological agenda, but stop denying that’s what you’re doing.
They espouse a politically conservative agenda. That’s fine UNLESS they deny they’re doing that- then it becomes deceptive.
Just be proud conservatives! Stop hiding it behind some alleged “education” focus.
I would say that it’s not so much conservative as it is authoritarian/oligarchical. The desire for the intrusion into and hostile takeover of Public Education by the tech sector is also a factor here, the bigger picture being well described by “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That only lasts until the enemy, in this case Public Education & unions, basically the power structures of ordinary people are neutralized. Zuckerberg and Jobs cannot be considered to be conservative in any ideological sense. Not all authoritarians are conservatives.
What about these people makes them liberal? A very surface appraisal says they give money for tax breaks and/or to make money in the long run. They may mouth concern for the less fortunate, but what support do they actually give that isn’t giving them a big payback? They also seem to have an unnatural penchant for testing their ideas out on the unwary frequently without the consent or understanding of those who are “benefiting” from their largess.
Jon,
I think “authoritarian/oligarchical” is ‘conservative (politically)’ by definition. It involves the promotion of a wealthy ‘superior class’, and usually includes supporting the right of their money (thus their power) to pass to their offspring.
Whereas one might not immediately call Mao ‘conservative’ (and he was authoritarian), Mao did not try to set up a ruling class based upon wealth and heredity. However, he’s a mixed bag.
According to the OED, Conservative (in politics) is the opposite of liberal, and liberal means tending toward democracy. Neither Zuckerberg nor the Waltons tend toward democracy. They want to maintain control.
Large American cities tend to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative and even plutocratic. The typical Manhattanite will dole out identity politics at the drop of a hat to protect all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life, but will clutch to their wallets if they are asked to pay higher property taxes on the million+ dollar apartments they own.
Ridiculous! “Liberal” and “progressive” until it comes to their bank accounts, fair taxation, and appropriate redistribution of wealth to pay for the public commons! That includes UPK!!!
Okay Robert, for those of us self-diagnosed with AIIDS* please tell us what the acronym UPK means. Thanks!
*AIIDS=Acronym Identification Impairment Disorder Syndrome. To be included in the DSM-X.
Thanks, Robert…
I think you hit upon something we need to consider. The terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ are rather fuzzy concepts. We need to agree upon their meaning in the context of the discussion if we use them.
UPK = Universal Pre-kindergarten
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The political distinction is not liberal vs. conservative.
It is democracy vs. oligarchy/theocracy.
But, corporate-owned media’s talking points will never shift to the reality.
in this case, “conservative” means only “open up public money to profiteering” — and this is what they endlessly try to hide
Nothing surprising here. The propagandists have plenty of money to hire shills. I wonder how the propagandists identified the most conservative/regressive cities. Why are billionaires funding this junk? I think they have an inflated view of their importance. You see this in Bill Gates enhanced schedule of TV appearances. I think the propaganda is designed to distract attention from their obscene wealth and aggrandize their concern for the rest.
Laura Yes, and the ‘figure in the carpet” is the political reality of the failure of capitalism; which can be revived, but not if such real-politic stays “more of the same, only louder,” as it seems with Gates.
That revival, should it ever come about, is capitalists and people of power recognizing and fostering the right-relationship of that power with the source of their and everyone else’s well-being (good government . . . not owned by small-minded capitalists . . ., the public good, community, “all boats,” etc.) which is not the present state or definition of “capitalism.”
But then we are also seeing, de facto, the exposure of the fake idea that wealth and intelligence are equivalent. CBK
Ah, Catherine..
When will we ever learn? When will we eeevverr learn?
Daedalus I could actually hear the music as I read your note. CBK
I am tired of billionaires that distort and manipulate in order to forward their self-serving agenda. We should not get hung up on the liberal versus conservative argument. As Robert Reich has said, “It is the billionaires against everybody else.” Billionaires generally do not have the interests of democracy as a guiding principle. They will create propaganda to make their case which is usually the domination of working folks.
“What if?
What if false were true?
What if night were day?
What if billionaires knew
About the things they say?
I sometimes think income inequality in the United States has CREATED incompetent public officials.
We’re not promoting on merit anymore. Just look at the Trump Administration. Everyone who works there are second and third generation wealthy people.
We’ve gotten rid of the system that allowed people to move up, so now we get these mediocre privileged people who never had to work for anything in positions of power. Income inequality perpetuates itself. They hire and promote only the people who were already powerful. It isn’t vibrant anymore- we see all this nepotism and self-dealing because we shut out the competition.
Education Post IS pretty much a right-wing think tank. (Note that “think tank” is a propaganda term obscuring that all such operations are propaganda operations.)
(Even the ones I agree with, though there aren’t many of those, since it takes billionaires to fund think tanks, and my interests aren’t aligned with those of billionaires.)
I refer to them as “Stink Tanks” due to the nature of what comes out of them.
Think tank. n. A place where thinking tanks
In education, as elsewhere, the media are increasingly owned by or controlled (via villainthropic contributions) by a few oligarchs. If you listen to education reporting on NPR, for example, you will hear, almost exclusively, the Deformer/Disrupter line. Why? Well, look at where the big bucks in donations come from.
NPR gets Walton money
And Gates money and Bloomberg money and Koch money, and on and on the list goes.
NPR is disgraceful. I listen to WBAI instead and have dropped NPR like a cracked bowling ball . . .
“Bloomberg-owned firm bids to takeover Biden’s campaign”- wants control of Party’s data and infrastructure. (The Intercept 4-10-2020)
Bloomberg, the self-described God
I’ve read a lot of the writings and Twitter postings of Chris “Citizen” Stewart, one of guys behind this study. One recurring motif I’ve read is Stewart’s weird fixation on, and repeated references to “aging” unionized teachers. When talking about unionized teachers in traditional public schools, Stewart repeatedly refers them “aging,” and doing so as a negative.
What’s up with that? I mean he’s African-American, so perhaps he should be a little more sensitive to such age-ism, or the stereotyping of a certain group — in this case, older people — when he’s from a ethic group that historically has suffered so from stereotyping. (substitute “aging” in favor of whatever racist adjective you can think of … “shiftless,” no-account”, “lazy,” etc., and you see my point.)
Furthermore, in Stewart’s estimation, what qualifies a teacher to be “aging” A teacher over 50? Over 40? Over 30? And so what if some teachers are older? Don’t teachers get better with experience?
The obvious answer to this questions is that younger teachers are weaker, less knowledgable, and less likely to be pro-union, and thus less likely to fight privatization of our public school system, while those “aging” teachers are more knowledgable, and more likely to fight privatization of schools, while Stewart’s being paid a mid-six-figure salary to promote school privatization.
Jack Sounds like a classic case of broad-brushing an entire group with the singular identity-paint of its worst-case interpretation and expression. CBK
Stewart is a paid actor following a script. He gives his own style to it, for sure! When people are paid to play advocate, their sincerity is entirely discredited — it’s safe to assume that they’d follow the opposite script if they were paid better. So pay him no mind.
“…younger teachers are weaker, less knowledgable, and less likely to be pro-union,…” Yeah, but they’re more fun! (snark alert)
Stewart is a Fellow of the Gates-funded Pahara (2019)- no additional information is required to understand his motivation.
I immediately turned to fact checking. Here are the results of my fact check study.
First, I wanted to find a list of alleged conservative cities.
Politico published this piece in 2014: “A Tour of America’s Most Conservative Cities.”
FIRST SENTENCE: “Big towns are known for being Democratic strongholds—in 2012, President Obama carried all four of Texas’ largest cities despite losing the state by almost 16 points.” …
These were the only conservative cities listed by Politico:
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, population 600k
Colorado Springs, Colorado, population 430k
Aurora, Colorado, population 340k
Anchorage, Alaska, population 300k
Fresno, California, population 500k
Then there is the conclusion starting with: “Truth be told, there aren’t many conservative big cities left in the United States. …
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/09/americas-most-conservative-cities-111082
NEXT: “Most & Least Educated Cities in America”
There were 150 cities on the list from this study. I then searched the list for the few conservative cities in the US (listed by Politico).
“To identify the most and least educated cities in America, WalletHub compared the 150 most populated U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, across two key dimensions, including “Educational Attainment” and “Quality of Education & Attainment Gap.”
Oklahoma City was ranked #84
Colorado Springs was ranked #12
Aurora was ranked #16
Anchorage was ranked #47
Fresno was ranked #141
The previous rankings were based on the overall combined score of Educational Attainment + Quality of Education & Attampiment Gap”.
Now, let’s focus on the separate individual score for just “Quality of Education and Attainment Gap”.
Oklahoma City was ranked #67
Colorado Springs was ranked #31
Aurora was ranked #81
Anchorage was ranked #77
Fresno was ranked #44
Not ONE conservative city made the top TEN list. Click the next link to discover the top TEN,
https://wallethub.com/edu/e/most-and-least-educated-cities/6656/#main-findings
“The research, data collection, and analysis was performed by Patrick J. Wolf, Ph.D., and James Paul at the University of Arkansas.”
The University of Arkansas sold its academic independence to the Walton Family Foundation. This is ideology pretending to be research.
There are 197 references to achievement gaps and all gaps are limited to reports on test scores in math and ELA, as usual.
The definitions of conservative and progressive come from a political science paper dated 2014. From the abstract of the paper, the full paper has little bearing on how schools are governed.
The narrative in the glossy report is also dated. It begins with high praise for the economic boom and wonders of large scale construction projects as signs of “progress.” That kind of progress has been stopped dead by COVID-19.
“University of Arkansas Professor Advocate for Catholic Education (Patrick Wolf)” – the subtitle is from an article in Arkansas Catholic, 9-26-2017, “A Catholic You Want to Know”, “..active in pro-life issues…” The article includes the following quote attributed to Wolf, ” Catholic schools are instruments of God’s grace.”
Jefferson- “In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own.”
All and in response to Linda’s post:
Jefferson read history in its original languages, was well aware of the relationship between religious and political power in the history of cultures and nation-states, and wrote his political documents to reflect that knowledge and struggle for power. In particular, Linda’s Jefferson quote reflects that knowledge and suggests WHY we have such clarity of division of religious and political power written into Constitution, as well as freedom of religion.
That said, that was then and this is now. As before on this list, Linda speaks about a powerful faction of the Catholic Church which is just that, however: a faction.
However, I happen to know of MANY priests and parishioners in the Catholic Church (as with Protestant churches/and parishioners) who are NOT the totalitarian power-mongers that Jefferson was so well-aware of in history; who have benefited from and, from the cradle, have been brought up in a democracy and so (perhaps unlike in Jefferson’s time) WHO FULLY UNDERSTAND the significance of secular-democratic government to everyone, and especially to the freedoms that religion itself is provided via the Constitution.
We live in the AFTERGLOW of Jefferson’s time and influence.
To Linda: While I support critique of any extreme faction in religious and other institutions in this country, and especially with centralized power, as is the case with the present Catholic Church, as in other posts here, I take issue AGAIN with the Catholic-bashing tone and one-sided omissions-approach that Linda CONSTANTLY makes on this site.
Apparently, Linda knows very little or NOTHING about the dynamism and dialogue of what’s actually going on in the Church. And your obvious zealotry soils any truth your arguments may hold. It’s called: Shooting yourself in the foot. Fire away. CBK
Chapman’s research makes reference to Wolf.
Response paragraph (10:19) is limited to prior published content from Arkansas Catholic and Jefferson- no editorial comment was added.
Wolf’s co-author, not surprisingly, has a bio showing his prior work for the Commonwealth Foundation (Pa.). The spin tank allegedly has links to the Koch’s SPN.
The daughter of a former Pennsylvania Democratic Governor runs the tank. With neoliberal friends like them, the 99% don’t need enemies. The tank also has links to former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell.
When we see the conservative religious, one degree separate from social Darwinists, and, they are white, men, the future of America is made evident.