Peter Greene assures is that Trump and DeVos are a disaster for education. We know that. No one could be worse. They want to blow up public schools. No question.
But he’s worried that Biden will bring back the staffers from the Obama era of high-stakes testing, charter love, and Commin Core. In particular, he’s worried about Carmel Martin, a perennial favorite of Democratic neoliberals.
My one encounter with Carmel occurred at a panel discussion at the progressive Economic Policy Association in D.C. about one of my books. I lacerated charters, vouchers, and high-stakes testing, as well as the continuity between NCLB and Race to the Top. Carmel vigorously defended all that I criticized.
Like Peter Greene, I’m worried that Obama-era education staffers will return to restore the failed ideas of NCLB and Duncan’s disastrous reign.
Trump must go, and we must keep up the pressure to insist that Biden produce a fresh vision for federal education policy that discards the failures of the past 20 years.
More of the same is unacceptable.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is very distressing. How is it that Biden can let this kind of worry fester without offering a clear assurance that he has learned something from the disasters caused by the mistakes the Obama Administration made or perpetuated? It is almost as distressing as the horrific move Biden just made by bringing in the mass murderer Michigan “Governor” Snyder as an “official” member of his campaign! This is the person who destroyed the lives of the entire city of Flint — under Obama’s watch!
I am hoping Kamala Harris will be a better vp than Biden was. She is much better informed about education issues. This morning the post dispatch had a front page article beyond belief to me. “Microschools offer alternatives to virtual learning. 6 white kids and 1 white teacher on page one. Same on page 4.
tuition is only 235 dollars…….per week. The kindergarten is open to anyone in the community. Maximum enrollment 20
students this year. “the 21st century version of the one room schoolhouse.”
For the 2020 school year, there are 272 public schools in St. Louis County, MO, serving 141,897 students.
I am not kidding when I say the Post Dispatch coverage of education is horribly inept, and has been for more than a decade.
Joe,
With 141,000 students, St. Louis County will need 7,000 microschools, right?
In the city of st. louis, there used to be 35,000 students in the public schools, now there are 20,000 but another 12,000 in charters…..with very little information regarding the ones ordered closed and others coming in to grab as many kids as they can. I am not sure if 1500 more microschools could be built….probably not, unless the 235 dollars a week looked like something the charters could find a way to—–educate 40 or 50 instead of ten with it.
Only 7050. What could be easier? And it will only cost a little more than $7000/yr/child!
speduktr…not sure about your math..anything goes in figuring out education costs….but 235 a week is an unusual amount for a parent to pay…maybe this is just the ultimate in choice…..however much you can pay, the better the education your child will get. The reporter was not real diligent in explaining the wonderfulness of it all. I guess it is just private schooling.
I think I got 7000 by dividing 141,000 by 20, the size of a micro pod. I may have misunderstood to what 20 was referring?
Joe spoke of microschools with an enrollment of 20 in St Louis
That’s the way I read it, which would mean they would need 7000+ microschools for those 141,000 students.
I have also noticed comments that Biden has made on public education have been “scrubbed” from youtube and other websites. Biden’s education platform still has plenty of worthy initiatives in it including lots more money for public schools. His updated platform is less specific about the amount of money that will be spent on public education. He is still mentioning that students in all zip codes will get a quality education. This comment sounds as though it is “reform” inspired. Likewise, the platform states that Biden will not support “for profit” charter schools. It is pathetic that we are still playing semantic games with Democrats. Those of us that that been following the demolition of public education know that all non-profit charter schools make lots of unaccountable cash. We do not know who is in Biden’s inner circle, but we do know that it likely to be those with lots of money.https://joebiden.com/education/
Carmel Candy
Carmel Candy
Might taste good
But NCLB
Never could
Nice. SomeDAM!
after the drone strikes, the most disappointing part of Obama administration policy was the
Arne Duncan led Department of Education.
As a teacher, I felt it as a betrayal
Agreed. Obama was a “bait and switch” for education. He started out with Linda Darling Hammond leading the transition team, but then he switched to Arne Duncan.
MSNBC had him on the other night as an education expert! Not good. I am real tired of education experts who skip the teaching step or inflate “teach for awhile” credentials. You could always tell the administrators who had spent a substantial amount of time in a classroom. That didn’t mean they automatically agreed with you, but they understood where you were coming from.
He and King are MSNBC’s go to education “experts.” Just like Bret Stephens for “balance.”
always an especially harsh betrayal since so many teachers voted for Pres. Obama twice, knowing what an amazing moment of historic change that was
The Obama education program was an utter disaster. And those who pushed it have, for the most part, learned absolutely nothing in the meantime.
More of the same is unacceptable. If a) Biden wins and b) he continues the standardized testing regime and the push for privatization, then there will have to be Red for Ed protests across the country, and the teachers’ unions will have to step up. They cannot stand idly by and watch public education trashed and invalid standardized testing, which is child abuse and destructive of curricular integrity, continue.
Agreed!
Education policy has been a disaster since GWB brought his test and punish philosophy from Texas and made it nationwide.
NCLB was a failure in Texas and a failure nationally.
Yet no one in Congress has a better idea. They prefer to keep inflicting failure on children and teachers.
A better idea: Doing nothing is better than continuing to harm.
America’s National TREASURES are being attacked and destroyed.
I consider our Public Schools to be among America’s treasures.
Those who want to take down our public schools via “BAD and PUNITIVE legislation” are just WRONG.
The problem for me is all of these reforms just translate to “testing” for public school students.
Ed reform has two planks- “choice” and “accountability”
What that means if you’re a student in a public school is they develop and mandate tests, and that’s all it means.
The “movement” all these people come out of is ridiculously narrow on public schools. It offers us nothing other than testing. It’s grim and punishing for public schools and public school students. It offers no benefits, not even “in exchange” for the testing. We just get the testing.
The Common Core started with all this fanfare but once again, just like every other “ed reform” that lands in public schools, it ended up being about a Common Core test.
I think this barren, joyless view of public schools comes out of the baked-in ideological bias against public schools in ed reform. I want people who actually value public schools and are enthusiastic about them. I don’t think the same ed reform echo chamber who have directed policy for the last 25 years are capable of viewing our schools in that way, because the “movements” only ideas are charters and vouchers and testing. Obviously charters and vouchers aren’t relevant to students in public schools, so that leaves testing.
It’s time to start holding the testing companies accountable for the scam they have been perpetrating. We need a truth and reconciliation committee to recover some of the billions they have bilked from taxpayers.
Do ed reformers legitimately believe they made good on the promises they relied on to launch their “movement”? Have they delivered what they promised to public school students? Because they didn’t just sell this as promoting charters and vouchers- they knew that wouldn’t be sufficient given that 90% of students attend public schools.
What they promised was they would improve public schools. Can they really say they’ve done that? Because I don’t think they have.
If it wasn’t about improving public schools then what was it about? If the answer is “promote charters and vouchers”, well, why not just say that? Then we could at least find our own people who have some interest in our students and schools.
The most depressing part of the article is the prediction that Democrats will ignore public schools completely, in order to limit differences with the rest of the ed reform echo chamber. They’ll focus on pre-k and college because supporting and investing in K-12 public schools is apparently an unacceptable position in ed reform.
For goodness sakes. They’re ashamed to say they support our schools and students. We’re so extremely unfashionable no one may even mention our schools and students exist, or risk expulsion from the club.
These are very different times than when Arne Duncan was made Sec. of Education. The article Peter Greene linked to presents Carmel not as a true believer in privatizing public education but as someone who executed the policies her boss wanted. Starting with Ted Kennedy through the Obama administration.
The centrist democrats aren’t pushing privatization anymore. The Republicans in power aim to privatize schools completely. The democrats are looking for solutions and many of them were misled by charter propaganda, but some so-called “conservative” democrats were not (like Tim Kaine and Ralph Northam in Virginia).
Biden isn’t a true believer in charters and Jill Biden seems to know a bit about education. I don’t see Biden making Common Core and high stakes testing his agenda. Why would he when no one likes it anymore?
Biden will appoint a Secretary of Education who is significantly to the left of DeVos or whoever Trump picks to replace her. That Sec. of Education will be far more supportive of public schools than DeVos.
And Bernie Sanders still sits on the committee that has to approve nominations for Secretary of Education and grill nominees, yes?
If so, I expect him to carefully grill Biden’s nominee and refuse to vote for any nominee who doesn’t go on record supporting public schools and opposing for-profit charters and vouchers.
With Trump as president, public education is completely powerless. Trump specializes in punishing anyone who doesn’t obey what he wants. He threatens funding to public schools that don’t fully reopen and is even now threatening money for cleaning NYC public schools.
“The article Peter Greene linked to presents Carmel not as a true believer in privatizing public education but as someone who executed the policies her boss wanted.” I don’t know which of the many links you’re referring to, but I certainly find nothing good in any of them. This is a person who helped shape NCLB, has been a stumper for CCSS & school choice. The best Greene can say about her is she’s a ‘collaborator’ who’s willing to change positions. “Someone who executed the policies her boss wanted” sounds like a recommendation for an admin asst, not Biden’s chief ed policy consultant.
“These are very different times than when Arne Duncan was made Sec. of Education.”
Sez who? Let’s remember who replaced Duncan in Obama’s last 2 yrs: John King. 2015: bipartisan passage of ESSA which supposedly undercut the power of Secy of Ed, returning it to states, but retained Sec’y of Ed review/ approval of state accountability systems, i.e., stds w/aligned hi-stakes assessments – & retained annual 3rd-8thgr + 1 hisch yr of state stdzd testing. The only thing that’s changed since then is Trump/ DeVos’ pushing the envelope to include vouchers, the natural extension of Bush-/ Obama-era fed support of charter schools.
I’m not sure where you’re getting “the centrist democrats aren’t pushing privatization anymore.” Charters are privatization, but who says centrist Dems even get that? Biden’s already given away his ignorance/ neoliberalist ed stance on charters by touting “no for-profit charters.” About the only thing that might enlighten him is a renewed push by NAACP et al civil rights groups for moratorium on all charters, being as he’s counting on the black vote.
The only thing I like about Biden’s ed platform so far is his promise to increase funding to public schools. And I’m pretty sure he’s not a fan of voucher schools/ public $ for truly-private schools. But I have no faith that he understands that charters do not function as public schools. I did also like his picking up on the unpopularity of “overtesting” in one campaign speech, but I think we will have to push him hard on that for him to champion a change in the ESSA law.
But of course I agree that Biden is a HUGE PLUS over Trump on any issue including this one. I just think we should picture his win as placing us back to square 1 ed-wise [circa 2016], w/a lot of activism reqd to move forward.
I totally agree with this.
But 2015 was 5 years ago — even Bernie Sanders was voting for those things — he voted for the Senate version and then abstained on the vote for the final conference bill along with two right wingers, Rubio and Cruz. The only actual nay votes were right win Republicans.
This is a complicated issue, as the two Democrats who have done the most to prevent the wholesale takeover of public education are probably the so-called “conservative” democrats who governed Virginia, Tim Kaine and Ralph Northam, while Bernie Sanders was endorsing and fighting very hard for the pro-charter DFER politician of the month whose victory would have turned Virginia into the next NY and California, with the ed reformers completely empowered. That would have been a complete and utter disaster for public schools in Virginia, so progressive politicians haven’t exactly stood up for public education when it mattered — just a lot of lip service while they refused to fight for the candidates (like Cynthia Nixon) who would have stood up for public education and then in other races endorsed the DFER candidates!
I’m not that impressed with Bernie or Biden giving lip service to issues. I don’t care who their advisors are in the campaign because we all know that the campaign advisors aren’t the ones who have any power — it is the ones who are appointed to jobs and what they do. (I don’t believe either Arne Duncan nor Betsy DeVos had positions in the Obama/Trump campaigns as “education advisors”). Northam and Kaine proved themselves as friends of public education through their actions, regardless of their politics. I hope Biden does the same but if he ends up supporting anti-public school measures, then I do expect that Bernie Sanders and other progressives use their powerful positions to fight for public schools.
I disagree. While it’s true that the elected officials make the decisions, they cover many issues and their staff are better informed and crucial. The choice of Secretary of Education is crucial. In the Senate and House, staff are key deciders.
It’s hard to make this case these days, when the charter industry has become about 98% dominated by profit making charters, but I know because I’ve worked in them both: there ARE public, non-profit charters set up for curricular and not profit making reasons. One was formed to continue with a bilingual education program when California outlawed bilingual education, and the other was set up to create a curriculum focussed on using the arts in every subject. Both kept the teachers’ and classified workers’ unions, the bus and payroll services, and the substitute teacher management system. There are no outside operators. This was the original purpose of the charter law in California, and has done good things for education in these and a few other cases.
The corporate charter chains are ambitious and growing rapidly. They are led by corporate vultures. Even when they are nominally “nonprofit,” they pay outrageous salaries to their non-educator administrators.
Peter says: It’s not encouraging. The concern about Biden has always been that he will be one more neo-liberal corporate Democrat who favors charters, testocracy, and privatization of public schools. That’s Martin’s whole history. Her presence on his team is not a good sign.”
If Biden is only against “for-profit” charter schools, he and his advisors are making a small and meaningless distinction about charters.
The whole point of charters, of every flavor, is to undermine public schools, open and close schools like any commercial franchise, use test scores in reading and math as if irrefutably the proper way to judge “school quality,” secure big money from the Paycheck Protection Program as shown by their applications “as small businesses,” and more. They are well financed by billionaires and still want to be subsidized by public dollars. The have established university programs and special media outlets to offer propaganda about the merit of charter schools over public schools. They even have funds to build or lease their own schools.
Anyone who uses the “for profit charters” term is either completely ignorant of them OR–the more likely scenario–blowing smoke. Ofc, what charters do is get a per pupil allocation from the state, spend as little of this as possible on facilities and supplies and texts and teachers and students, and funnel as much of that money as possible into perks and salaries for the charter management. Oh, yes. After we paid for my $600 K a year salary and my cars and my trips and those of my wife and my golfing buddies and my mistress and my wife, there was nothing left over. We’re NONPROFIT!
“After we paid for my $600 K a year salary and my cars and my trips and those of my wife and my golfing buddies and my mistress and my wife, there was nothing left over.”
Yes, indeed. Polygamist charter operators can double dip.
And polygamists with a mistress can triple dip.
On the other hand, Jerry Falwell, jr, likes to watch the pool boy take a dip.
LOL. Yes.
But let’s all remember that if Don the Con, he who have us Trump University, has four more years, he has promised to make “choice” the rule across the land. He, Melania, and all of his adult children spoke about this at the recent Repugnican Convention and Trump Fascist Lovefest 2020.
I understand the fear and worry that Biden will continue neoliberal policies, but an OpEd published by Foreign Policy Magazine reports, “Biden is Getting Ready to Bury Neoliberalism”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/27/biden-is-getting-ready-to-bury-neoliberalism/
The Florida Squeeze agrees and says, “Hey Progressives – Joe Biden isn’t The NeoLiberal You Claim He is!”
https://thefloridasqueeze.com/2019/06/08/hey-progressives-joe-biden-isnt-the-neoliberal-you-claim-he-is/
VOX says, “Progressives don’t love Joe Biden, but they’re learning to love his agenda”
https://www.vox.com/21322478/joe-biden-overton-window-bidenism
Thank you, Lloyd. Interesting articles.
I fully expect Biden/Harris to pick up where Obama/Duncan/King left off. That way I won’t be surprised should the ticket win and pleasantly surprised if my assumption is wrong. But again–broken record here–elections are not ends. Should they win, then our task as public education advocates begins the moment the victory is verified. No time for celebration or taking a breath. It means lobbying hard for the Sec. of Education position, pledging support if it is good, pledging undying opposition until real reforms are made if it is bad. That is why it’s called the political Process, writ large.
And an aside to Peter’s excellent observations. Are you sure her first name isn’t Camel, as in “nose under the tent?”
I don’t know which direction Biden will go with education, but whatever he does will be one million times better than Trump and DeVos.
Agree. If Biden wins, we’ll still have a chance to save the country. Otherwise, we won’t and Bob and I will be fitted for leg irons and muzzles.
“ NCLB (No Camel Left Behind)”
The Bushy camel head
Was poking in the tent
And look at where that led
To Arne’s government
And now we have the butt*
Of camel in the tent
We’re really in a rut
With stinky camel scent
*Betsy
👏👏👏🤣
bravo!
I would not be surprised if the Biden administration reverts to supporting Obama’s education policies.
His aides and inner circle are already backpedaling on some of the proposals Biden has made, such as postal banking, He has added the architect of Obama’s harsh immigration policies to his team. Former Senator Ted Kaufman is already messaging, via the Wall Street Journal, that austerity rity will be the rule, because #45 he’s left a huge Deficit.
Biden has already promised his donors that nothing will change. Our country is on fire, literally and metaphorically, and this is the hand we are dealt.
BTW, Let’s not forget that Joe’s brother Frank made a handsome amount of bank in the charter school sector
Whatever. I am COMPLETELY OK with starting over at circa-2016 policies and pushing legislators to move forward from there. Aren’t you? The alternative doesn’t bear considering.
Ditto.
I would not be surprised if Eleanor preferred Trump.
(7-7-2020) Sol Stern, who is credited with “starting the current debate” over school choice in NYC, explains in, Democracy a Journal of Ideas, the reasons he left the publication, City Journal, after 22 years. He was blocked in 2017 by his employer from writing about Trump and Steve Bannon. The people he holds responsible for his departure from CJ are Paul Singer, who critics label a vulture capitalist, and Rebekah Mercer, Bannon’s benefactor.
Stern identifies the frosty reception he received for an article he wrote that seemingly reversed his earlier canonization of school choice, as the beginning of his fracture with CJ. Stern posted, for the 2020 Democracy article, a 2009 photo of himself and the superintendent of NY archdiocesan schools. Writing about the success of Catholic schools, an example used to support school choice, propelled Stern’s career. His exposure of school choice failure, it appears, triggered the descent of his career with CJ, the Manhattan institute’s flagship publication (linked to Charles Koch).
It’s amazing how little mental capacity supposed intellectuals like Stern, Greenspan and David Brooks have for envisioning the logical outcomes of the propaganda they spew.
Useful idiots.
Stern says the Mercers gave Trump’s campaign $15,000,000, Singer gave Trump’s inauguration, $1,000,000. UnAmerican.
Linda, many years ago, I was allied with Sol Stern as critics of the Bloomberg corporate-style reforms. We shared dinners in each other’s homes. When I turned against school choice and high-stakes testing, Sol wrote a vicious piece attacking me. I no longer care what he writes. He actually knows very little about education but never feared to express strong opinions.
In my first year of teaching, I took the 9 month pay option instead of the 12 month one. I was too young and stupid to understand budgeting and figured out poverty pretty quickly. So when the summer rolled around, I got a job selling new and used cars and I was terrible at it. One day, the used car manager, a gruff, lovably decent car sales veteran, took me on a walk to explain the game. “You know what’s so hard about this job? Every sonnovabitch who comes through that door knows more about your job than we do.” I remember that advice better than any I’ve received in my life. I found the same thing to be true when I worked as a teacher, politics and in public policy, all of which fit under the umbrella of “He actually knows very little about education but never feared to express strong opinions.”
My insight from what he wrote- Stern has no soul. Reportedly, the NYT wrote that Stern opposed the teaching of social justice in public schools.
Stern worked for a conservative mouthpiece for 22 years which enabled Trump’s election in 2020. Stern’s career thwarted a progressive society.
NYC public school parent, I am surprised that a community of educators would resort to thinly veiled ad hominem attacks when facts are presented that do not conform to one’s worldview. Don’t we encourage our students to examine things critically? Or is only groupthink allowed for the next 51 days?
Better to put Mr. Biden on notice now, while we still have some leverage. David Sirota explains it here: https://sirota.substack.com/p/corporate-dems-want-you-to-shut-up
I can almost guarantee that most of our leverage, like fairy dust, will disappear on November 4th.
I can guarantee — not “almost” guarantee — that ALL of our leverage will disappear on November 4th if Trump wins. But that seems to be what you want. I always challenge people like you to say something truthful that is at least as negative about what Trump will do if he wins, to check if you are just trolling by turning legitimate criticism and questions rightly posed by Diane Ravitch and Peter Goodman into false scare mongering about how awful the future will be if Biden wins.
Funny, you never do that with Trump, even though there is a lot more evidence of what he plans to do – turn every public school in a place where every child pledges allegiance to Christianity and Trump, under threat of being executed, along with their families, if they don’t. I’m just posting that “truth” because I know you believe it is very important to warn American voters about Trump now – to put pressure on Trump – in the hopes that Trump won’t do what he intends and systematically execute all women and children who don’t pledge allegiance to Trump/Christianity in school if Trump wins. Make sure to spread the word, Eleanor, in the hopes that if more people put pressure on Trump not to systematically execute all women and children before the election, that maybe Trump won’t kill as many innocent Americans if he wins. After all, you keep saying that after Trump wins, we will have no leverage to prevent Trump from killing in cold blood all the women and children Trump wants to kill. So you must spread the word everywhere about what Trump plans to do right now, when you still have “leverage” to prevent Trump from murdering innocent Americans. At least, you seem to believe that people who support Trump would really want to spread the word about his murderous and evil intentions before the election so they could “put pressure” on Trump not to do all the evil and murderous intentions they want voters to know that Trump has!
Eleanor spends a lot of time “warning” of how awful Biden is guaranteed to be as president, UNLESS we all spread the word that Biden is a blatant liar who does what his corporate masters order him to do. In other forums with moderate voters, the “Eleanor” would be posting exaggerated attacks on Biden to scaremonger about Biden wanting to take away all private property and making America the next Communist dictatorship, based on supposed “promises” Biden made to Bernie and AOC. And that “Eleanor” would claim that informing Americans about how Biden plans to turn America into a communist country because Bernie Sanders tells him what to do is something that we all need to repeat in order to “pressure” Biden not to destroy all private property like that “Eleanor” says he plans to do.
Of course, if you aren’t scared — if you are happy — about what Trump has done in the last 4 years, it would make sense for an “Eleanor” to scare people on both the left and right with different “warnings” that those “Eleanors” insist must be spread throughout the land and treated like fact, right before the election.
Are you voting for Biden, Eleanor? Are you more scared of Biden than Trump?
Eleanor,
I desperately want to see a new day in education. I have written extensively about the failure of corporate ed reform–high-stakes testing, punitive discipline for students and teachers, privately managed charters, public funding of religious schools, standardization, etc.
I don’t know what Biden will do in education. I hope he will keep his campaign promises and vastly increase funding for the neediest students. I hope he will appoint a real educator (not TFA!) to oversee the ED Department.
But even if he doesn’t, I want him to oust the liar-con man-grifter and his family from the White House. We can’t afford four more years of chaos, hatred, racism, xenophobia, and lies. The damage to the environment, the Federal courts, our foreign alliances, civil rights, public schools, and everything that requires honor, dignity, brains, and conscience will be irreparable.
Beautifully said, Diane!
Joe’s brother, Frank, is heavily involved in for-profit charter schools. He owns and runs a chain called, “Mavericks”.
This isn’t an indictment of Joe (as Mercedes says in this article)…but it does tell us something about how far the movement was encouraged, politically (from local through to federal mandate), to spread over the past two decades:
https://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2019/04/28/frank-biden-his-for-profit-charter-chain-mavericks-in-education-and-more/
Sad state of affairs that the one constant here is to depose Trump and his crew (the crew is just as important). It’s like; “Well…at least Joe’s not going to separate little children from their parents and put them into cages”.
Sick sh$t.
Fact is, though, that Biden would restore good relations with our allies. If nothing else; this is huge. Although I don’t agree with what his past track record shows; I do like him.
My hope is that awareness has been so increased through the blatant incompetency and disregard of the DeVos agenda, that people will become more vigilant and willing to shut out at least part of the propaganda campaign that will certainly continue long after the election. Public awareness, involvement, and resistance are key.
But it’s not all about Joe. Regardless of his stated, implied, or possible intentions.
Governor Cuomo’s got Gates, Bloomberg, and Schmidt in his stable; working to “re-imagine” those antiquated/unnecessary brick and mortar public schools. And more. Make NYC into a digital test city. He received a severe backlash when he unveiled the concept back in May, so we haven’t heard much about it, since…but you can be sure that they haven’t just gone away.
It’s a multi-pronged attack on public schools and teachers’ unions. Charters (profit and non-profit), Vouchers, “Personalized Learning” (aka: “Computer Centered Learning”), Common Core (it is still lurking and ready to re-emerge). Two decades and counting is a testament to the durability/strength of our unions and schools…but also a stark, every day reminder of the resolve, organization, and power/money of the reform/privatization movement.
Mercedes article was great and very comprehensive.
But her story was about how a sketchy charter chain got Frank Biden to get on board and profit (assumingly quite handsomely) by doing real estate deals with them.
I did not get the impression from Mercedes’ article that Frank Biden “owns and runs a chain” — in fact he seemed to be involved in that one chain more of a figurehead – clearly the Biden name helped – and he was removed when his usefulness was over. Or Biden left years ago when he couldn’t figure out how to make more money. It seemed to be a single charter chain – Mavericks.
I actually was misled before reading Mercedes’ article because I thought Biden’s brother was heavily involved with a lot of charters, and maybe there is more, but it seemed like some businessmen who ran a single charter chain – Mavericks – got the idiot Biden brother to join up and rewarded him by letting him do real estate deals (as Biden’s real work seemed to be in real estate) and then Frank Biden left when his usefulness to the charter chain was over.
Has Frank Biden been involved with other charters too? Has he been associated with any charters since 2016? I assumed, from hearing how Biden’s brother “ran charters”, that he was a big charter CEO, but Mercedes’ article makes it clear that he was simply the guy whose face some corrupt charter company used (no doubt in exchange for Frank getting lots of money in real estate deals) who would try to get legitimacy for their charter. And when Frank’s usefulness was over, he left, years ago. I certainly don’t think Frank Biden “owned” the charter and “ran it”, which implies that Frank was in charge. Frank was a hired guy who profited as long as his name was useful and then was dumped (or left).
Frank Biden reminds me of Tony Rodham. It must be hard to be the younger sibling of a successful person when you, yourself don’t seem to have many strengths at all, including strength of character. I think Reagan’s brother was like that, too. They all saw no problem in profiting from their siblings’ success because they lacked any character or ethical compass and were likely so insecure that they believed they could not make it on their own.
Thanks for the clarification, NYC. Important and duly noted.
^^Add Neil Bush to that list!
^^^ I just read a Washingon Post article from 2003 on Neil Bush and it mentioned so many other errant presidential brothers (how come sisters seem to be more immune? )
Sam Houston Johnson
Donald Nixon
Billy Carter
And how could I forgot Roger Clinton!
Here’s one of the big ways to make money in the charter biz: You purchase a building. Then you lease it to the school you started (a separate legal entity) at an inflated rate–at some multiple of your mortgage costs. In this way, you use taxpayer dollars to build equity.
Nice little scam, huh?