This is one of the most important posts you will read today, this week, this month. If you want to understand the hoax of so-called “education reform,” read this post. Share it with your friends. Tweet it. Put it in Facebook. It rips the veil away from the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Thomas Ultican has found the beating heart of the Disruption movement, the organization where plans are hatched and funded to destroy public schools. He tells the story of the NewSchools Venture Fund, where very wealthy people collaborate to undermine and privatize one of our most essential democratic institutions: our public schools.
He begins this important post:
The New Schools Venture Fund (NSVF) is the Swiss army knife of public school privatization. It promotes education technology development, bankrolls charter school creation, develops charter management organizations and sponsors school leadership training groups. Since its founding in 1998, a small group of people with extraordinary wealth have been munificent in their support. NSVF is a significant asset in the billionaire funded drive to end democratically run public schools and replace them with privatized corporate structures.
Read this remarkable account that ties together the masters of the universe, who have decided to rearrange the lives of lesser mortals, that is, people who lack their vast wealth and political connections.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Public schools have been the victim of interloping billionaires for decades. As Ultican notes, despite the efforts to continuously undermine public education, 90% of students still attend them. The public does not see privatization as a benefit to their children.
With the rise of “Black Lives Matter” and a global pandemic, this is the perfect opportunity to push for investment in public education and community schools. Our country does not need more divisive schools. It needs schools that can bring diverse people together. This is a guiding principle of most public schools. Integration is a useful tool to fight racism. Public schools are a much needed public asset that pays off economically and socially. Private charter schools often target poor minority students. Privatization enhances segregation when it places mostly black students in separate and unequal schools. Public schools are for all of us learning and playing together.
“Real, authentic public education is hard; we deal with struggling students every day as expected, standard educational practice. We don’t find a way to reject them because they are ‘struggling.”
We can no longer afford to support two or three school systems, all funded with public dollars.
That won’t stop the DeVos charter-voucher lobby from demanding more.
As you have taught us so well, the concept of “disruption” has no place children’s education. And one minor snark, Swiss army knives are incredibly useful and valuable. I suggest “the Rube Goldberg machines of public school privatization.” Only selfish rubes would create and/or fall for the destruction Tom describes so well.
Tom has made a huge contribution with this post. He has made excellent charts and good use of Lil Sis to show the power players and some of the flows of money. His narrative is compelling. If you have not visited the website of the New Schools Venture Fund, do so. There you can see all of the logos and disruptions money can buy.
Yes: every time we get direct knowledge about where the money goes, we know more about who is in the game.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The New Schools venture Fund is were powerful and wealthy people work together to destroy our public schools to boost their wealth and increase their power over us and our children.
And NONE of the schools that those billionaires send their children to are run in the manner that they demand for public school kids — especially African American and Latinx public school kids.
This is how nearly the entire education reporting establishment has been co-opted by these billionaires and their paid shills and propaganda efforts. All they had to do was ask one question:
“Why aren’t you trying to “reform” public schools so that they look like the elite private schools that you send your own children to?”
The media doesn’t ask any uncomfortable questions of anyone who is powerful and not progressive. Instead, they accept every word as if it is brilliant.
It is the way they treated William Barr for years Only now, after Barr actually demonstrated to the media what the rest of us saw for years, are they stopping their bending over backwards to legitimize every word out of Barr’s mouth, and even then it is just less often than they used to.
But they haven’t done this with charters or ed reform.
Why aren’t those reformers trying to “reform” public schools so that they look like the elite private schools that those reformers send their own children to?
When their own children go to private schools that embrace replacing teachers with technology and forcing kids into large class sizes of 35 and 40 and use no excuses, then they can demand that other people’s children do so.
They are motivated by pure profit, greed, and like Trump would rather mislead and lie than deal with any inconvenient truth that gets in the way of their goal.
it’s nup here https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Do-Not-Miss-his–The-NewS-in-General_News-Diane-Ravitch_Disruption_Education_Education-Funding-200612-797.html#comment766323
and I added a link to NEPC Interview of the Month: Frank Adamson on Privatization Internationally https://dianeravitch.net/2020/05/24/nepc-interview-of-the-month-frank-adamson-on-privatization-internationally/
I listened to the interview…It is wonderful.