In this post, Tom Ultican takes a close look at the takeover and privatization of the Indianapolis school district, funded by billionaires and managed by a well-funded group called The Mind Trust (which, of course, claims to be deeply concerned about “civil rights,” while stripping parents of color of their right to elect a school board that represents them). By Ultican’s reckoning, nearly 64% of the students in Indianapolis now attend privately managed schools.
He writes:
With the introduction of Innovation schools in 2015, Indianapolis Public Schools quickly became the second most privatized taxpayer supported schools system in America. It has zoomed past Detroit and Washington DC in the privatization sweepstakes to only trail the poster child for disaster capitalism, New Orleans. The right wing billionaire funded organization, The Mind Trust, has played a major role in this outcome.
He provides a handy list of the major funders of this betrayal of the public trust. Leading the charge is the Lilly Endowment, with a donation of $22.7 million, followed by the City Fund (Reed Hastings and John Arnold) at $18 million. And there are other familiar names, well known in the disruption industry.
Ultican traces the history of the disruption/privatization industry in Indianapolis and finds that its origins can be traced to the far-right extremists of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Koch brothers. You will not be surprised to learn that Teach for America and TNTP (the organization founded by Michelle Rhee) are integral to the privatization of Indianapolis’s schools. And Relay “Graduate School of Education” (the one with no real faculty or campuses or professors or researchers or library) is also in the mix.
Ultican reviews the sorry situation in Indianapolis, where disrupters have pulled the wool over the eyes of the public and the media with their dazzling sums of money, and he speculates about why billionaires are so devoted to undermining public schools and the teaching profession:
Why are billionaires spending so much to undermine professionalism in public education? It is probably not altruism. More likely, they want to reduce the biggest cost associated with education; teacher’s salaries. In the antebellum south, plantation owners preached anti-tax ideology because they owned the most and paid the most. Today’s billionaires aren’t much different. Most of them won’t put their children in public schools and really don’t value high quality public education. It seems the big motivation is to reduce tax burdens and simultaneously create new education industries.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Innovation Network Schools are public schools made possible by recent state laws that allow school districts to convert, open new, or restart existing schools into new, autonomous schools with their own 501(c)(3) boards. These schools are exempt from most district practices and have “full operational autonomy” under state law.
Innovation Network Schools combine the freedoms and flexibilities of successful autonomous schools, with the financial support and services of a district school. Further, Innovation Network Schools gain access to a school building at little or no cost. This groundbreaking opportunity gives exceptional school leaders and operators the ability to partner with Indianapolis’s largest district, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), to serve students by creating new schools or by restarting chronically underperforming schools.”
It’s just another way to increase funding for charter schools at the expense of the students in district schools. This way the charters get all the public school funding, plus the ed reform private funding, plus the preferences that states like Indiana afford to charter schools but not public schools.
I’d switch to a charter school too if I were in Indianapolis. It’s clear the state prefers the privatized schools so if you want a school supported by the state and elites in policy circles you should switch to a charter school.
They manipulated “the market” to preference the schools they prefer. The kids who still attend public schools? As we know, ed reformers pretend those kids don’t exist.
They rig all this policy to end with the ideological outcomes they prefer and they’re an echo chamber, so no one ed reform questions any of it. No dissenters permitted.
The wealthy always manipulate the market and information to forward their agenda. This is a perversion of the market which is supposed to operate on principles of supply and demand. The politicians increase demand by starving and abandoning public schools. Then, the wealthy, privatization cabal offers shiny new corporate schools in their place No wonder there are so many students in charter schools in Indiana.
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
These are challenging times, but this is an opportunity for local education leaders to unleash their creativity and ingenuity. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do to provide #EducationFreedom and economic opportunity for students of all ages.”
Translation: none of this public funding will go to existing public schools, but instead will be distributed exclusively to private providers who meet ed reform’s “free markets” ideological test. Distributed BY and TO echo chamber members. Public schools need not apply.
Once again, kids who attend public schools come dead last. No one in government works for them. Not fashionable or exciting enough, apparently. We can’t expect these genuises to lower themselves to actually offer some practical assistance to a public school. They all want to pretend they work for “start ups”.
I have no reason to repect the “Relay Graduate School of Education.” Even so, its programs have been accredited by two groups, and a third accreditor, CAPE, is doing an evaluation now, CAPE is inviting comments on Relay (on their terms).
Also Relay now has three “leaders” who have legitimate doctoral degrees.It also has one doctoral student who is so challenged that she does not know you cannout put Dr. in front of your name until you have COMPLETED your doctorate.That Relay permits this misrepresentation is another reason, on top of many, to question whether they should be accredited again. https://relay.edu/about-us/relay-leadership
Relay is smoke and mirrors designed to give people the illusion of legitimacy. In the world of education, Relay is “fake news.”
I am annoyed that the University of Pennsylvania actually offers a master’s degree in “educational entrepreneurship.” It is basically a degree for disruptors and carpetbaggers.
Rice University, Houston’s elite university, has offered a degree in education entrepreneurship for years
this is perhaps one of the most telling aspects attached to current “reform” goals: looking for those capable of implementing a very lucrative if short-lived disruption — over and over and over. The reformers have learned that money can be made with every new mandate, and mandates can be changed up on a whim.