Jennifer Berkshire and I interviewed Charles Siler about his inside knowledge of the privatization movement.
Jennifer is co-author of the important new book (with Jack Schneider) called A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door.
As you will learn in the interview, Charles was brought up in a conservative environment. He studied at George Mason University in the Koch-funded economics department (you can read about it in Nancy MacLean’s excellent book Democracy in Chains, which I reviewed in The New York Review of Books). He worked for the Goldwater Institute and lobbied for ALEC and other billionaire-funded privatization groups.
At some point, he realized he was on the wrong side, promoting ideas that would do harm, not good. He wanted to do good.
He said unequivocally that the goal of the privatizers is to destroy public education. They promote charter schools and vouchers to destroy public education.
He explains that school privatization is only one part of a much broader assault on the public sector. The end game is to privatize everything: police, firefighters, roads, parks, whatever is now public, and turn it into a for-profit enterprise. He predicted that as vouchers become universal, the funding of them will not increase. It might even diminish. Parents will have to dig into their pockets to pay for what used to be a public service, free of charge.
Charles is currently helping Save Our Schools Arizona.
A Little Bit Of History Repeated …
Thanks for posting the short video-
“cautious about ed reform being seen as conservative…cautious (the campaign for reform) is done quietly at the state level”
Every American deserves a garage full of scAmway stuff while he loses his shirt.
The Long Con …
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled Out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech
The libertarian right plays the long game. Their greatest victory was to dupe neoliberal Democrats into supporting their goals half-way (charters and high-stakes testing).
Center for American Progress, the leading Democratic think tank in D.C., opposes vouchers but supports charter schools. Once you agree that “school choice” is a remedy, it is a short step to vouchers and the destruction of public education by the people, for the people, of the people.
Gates’ part of the con was and is to hide the campaign’s conservative agenda and origin which he did with the help of Clinton, Obama and other Democratic politicians.
I watched this presentation the other day, and I was intrigued by the messaging discussion. The privatizers have been good at messaging. Their vast assets give them an advantage. Siler thought that messaging on the issue of equity is a too complicated message. We need something simple that will resonate with the public. My first idea was this: Every dollar in a charter school is a dollar out of a public school. Also: Privatization=Demolition (with a picture of a pile of bricks and public school written under it. We need something simple and catchy that still conveys the message. I think the public remains largely unaware of the impact that privatization has on public schools. Parents need to understand that charter/voucher expansion reduces the public school budget.
Can I share your comment with others?
Of course.
Well said!
I very much regret that I missed the interview. Is it recorded and available anywhere?
I think it is important to help people see that privatizers are not only dedicated to the destruction of public education and all other public services. They are intent on consolidation of power and the elimination of democracy. When everything is privatized, feudalism is the norm.
Here’s the link: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/diane-jennifer-and-charles/
Thank you! I put in the link and reposted.
Thank you!
retired Exactly that . . . the message is complicated; and the unelected Big They (Koch, Waltons, Gates, groups like ALEC, etc.) apparently either don’t understand what “democracy” means, or they hate it; and they have endless funds to donate to (bribe) Congress people to get their way.
They also have systematically badmouthed public schools, teachers, local control, and teachers’ unions for so long, many voters and parents, . . . who don’t know they are being snookered and by whom, . . . are not so enamored with public schools either.
The Public-to-Private Two-Step: (1) lure voters and parents into the short-term money trap then, once public schools are gone, (2) spring it.
Can you think of a better way to forge and secure the divisions between rich and poor, or any “us-not-them” thinking, like light but not dark skin, than to privatize the school system? CBK
As Siler pointed out, once public institutions are gone, it is difficult to get them back. He mentioned that Chile did a mass privatization of most public services including schools, pensions, transportation, etc. The quality of life for the working class has also declined despite continuing protests. Chile is not a model to emulate. Look at the long battle we have had here just to try to get a public option in our expensive health care system, and we still do not have one.
By the way, when Texas deregulated its energy market, consumers were enticed by the claim that “choice” would cost consumers less. Sound familiar? What actually happened is that nobody maintained the grid, and consumers have paid $28 billion more for energy. Privatization often costs more for a worse service. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/540271-texass-deregulated-electricity-market-raised-cost-to-consumers-by-28
My brother in Texas chose the electric service with the cheapest rate, only 9 cents per kilowatt hour. During and after the blackout, the price soared to $9 per kilowatt hour.
He expects to see a bill for the past month in the thousands.
When companies compete to provide the cheapest service, none of them has an incentive to upgrade its equipment. Texas was warned a decade ago that its electric lines were at risk of failure because of lack of insulation. No one wanted to pay the cost of protection for an event that might or might not happen.
The free market at its worst.
My daughter escaped the Texas freeze by moving to El Paso where the western grid services it. I had weatherized my Houston property. Even with covers on outside pipes, one outside pipe burst . This was a minor problem compared to what a lot of home owners faced including multiple bursting pipes inside the home.
retired teacher When I visited my sister in Oklahoma, on freezing nights, she had the habit of leaving the faucet on just to drip, and collected the water in pans, which kept the pipes from freezing. Unless I am missing something, just a thought to perhaps pass on? CBK
CBK, for 25 years I lived in an old house on Long Island in New York. The house was built in 1895. Some of the water pipes were on outside walls, which is a very bad mistake. On several occasions, our pipes froze and we unfroze them with a hair dryer. Then we started putting our faucets on lowest floor on a slow drip. One dripping cold water, the other dripping hot water. No more frozen pipes. Yes, this works. But the hot water pipes will freeze too if they are not on a slow drip.
Diane I can understand how people in Texas, where the freeze is not so regular as in Oklahoma, have missed that “local wisdom.” CBK
retired teacher Yes, and at the ground level, privation of all-things-public is an abandonment of principle over person, . . . a single person, or a family (like Trump’s family), and/or broader small/or-large group affiliation like, for instance, “white power,” or other-racial or whatever bias du jour, or corporations, or religious ideologies.
A recognition of the dangers of tribal orders (bloodlines/families/kingships/religious orders) is written-in to the founding documents, including the Constitution (for instance, Section 1, Article 9, The First Amendment, but also at other junctures).
The migration from public to privatization/oligarchic control, whether personal, familial, corporate, or religious, is in fact a regression from principle-ordered political culture, to quasi-tribal ordered political “culture.”
Unlike Linda’s suggestions in her notes, I am NOT saying religious orders have NO PLACE in democratic political cultures and in the families that constitute the foundations of them.
On the contrary. Freedom of religious expression is a vibrant part of our culture and rightly a part of our political heritage, both formal and informal. It’s that, as Jefferson knew so well, the collapse of principle-powered political institutions into any one or group of religious ideologies (including education) is an invitation to religious exceptionalism and even war, and anathema to a vibrant democratic culture.
If I have mistaken Linda’s intention above, let her say so here. CBK
Diane,
What your brother did is similar to those who chose “cheap” health insurance in the pre-Obamacare days.
It wouldn’t surprise me if your brother would have remained perfectly happy if there wasn’t a crisis. Just like the people who chose the “cheap” health insurance were very happy if they never had more than an easy to treat with antibiotics illness and instead got a serious illness that required very expensive treatment that wasn’t covered.
It’s hard to convince people that public goods are about providing absolutely necessary services to people when the cost of providing those services ranges from very cheap, to less expensive than average, to average, to expensive, to very, very expensive.
The problem with privatizing these services is multifold, as any non-corrupt economist can tell explain. Consumers don’t understand the fine points, and in the majority of cases, they don’t have to. And during the times when they are affected, if they are part of the privileged group (i.e. white) their bad choices are often bailed out anyway by the very same government they attack.
If this was car insurance, I bet people would understand it better! Would people choose the cheapest insurance to find that it came with an asterisk so that any accident or repair or medical costs beyond $1,000 will never be covered? Although perhaps not.
As a society, we still bail out the majority of people who make bad choices so that private companies can profit. Parents who choose charters that don’t want to teach their kid aren’t told “you chose the charter and the charter must either teach you or use their own funds to pay for your child’s private tuition at a school that will teach them.” Public hospitals go bankrupt taking care of the sickest non-insured patients.
If there are enough white people who have extraordinary high utility bills in Texas — high enough to bankrupt them or near bankrupt them – I will be surprised if they don’t get a bailout. If they are disadvantaged non-white Texans, they will be told that they are responsible.
Republicans are about socialism and bailouts and safety nets for the privileged and dog eat dog capitalism for the rest.
@ retired teacher 11:36 am: Re: Chile, it’s important to recognize that, unlike us, they have been struggling toward democracy for 150 yrs or more—perhaps briefly had it under Allende, but US put an end to that (via CIA) in order to protect our assets there. The privatization was under dictator Pinochet (with guidance from Friedman et al Chicago Boys, as regards education)—imposed top-down. We have to ask ourselves to what degree our own privatization of public goods has been accomplished “top-down,” though under the aegis of ‘democracy,’ and what that says about the health of democracy here. My sense is that democracy has been greatly undermined by policies since ’79 [dereg of financial sector married with incentives to offshore mfg & profits], which created spiraling inequality & a super-class of mega-wealthy enabled thro $ alone to dictate govtl policy in their favor. Chile may not be “the model to follow,” but we have followed it nonetheless within a govtl structure which has, unlike the blatantly totalitarian Pinochet model, managed to accomplish a great degree of privatization while posing as a democracy.
The DeVos video posted by Jon Awbrey (near the top of the thread) doesn’t show Dick DeVos promoting conservative religion but, it is the riptide that threatens American democracy.
The conservative religious SCOTUS judges exempted America’s 3rd largest employer from civil rights employment law in its schools.
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) quoted the Bible on the House floor, “A woman must not wear a men’s clothing nor a man wear women’s clothing”, in his opposition to a law that demands equal rights for LGBTQ people. The Family Research Council site (3-1-2021), “Nadler (Democrat) on God…”, quotes Steube. The article provides example of the GOP politicization of religion and the lengths to which conservative religions will go in undermining Democrats.
At Politico, the man most recently arrested in D.C. was identified, with the citation of his former work, “researcher for the Family Research Council”. His more recent employment was as a Trump appointee in the government.
Trump’s 1776 Commission was the subject of an NCR on-line article (2-4-2021), “We must reject the white racist God of the 1776 Report”. An organization that Philanthropy Roundtable describes as having a similar name and mission has members that include reps from AEI (Frederick Hess’ employer) and the Hoover Institute. Other members are from 3 private universities including one which is religious.
The challenge is how to communicate the danger. Unfortunately, most people’s eyes glaze over at the mention of Economics. But it is important to understand the big picture – public education has been a target because it is such a large pot of money. There is nothing about ed reform that is built to last. Like the hedge funds that back it, it is intended to strip out the assets and leave the bloody carcass at the curb. Stiglitz’s “People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent” gives a good overview of the problems with unbridled greed.
You are absolutely correct about using the schools to sow division. Consider the now-defunct EdBuild, which focused on providing data about school funding inequities. It cloaked itself in the mantle of social justice but its CEO joyously described the school district bankruptcy end game it supported: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6AGxBcv2yU. Do people understand that they don’t just want to monopolize education? They want to shed any pension liabilities while they are at it. It’s classic “burn the village”.
The privatizers have started with education because as Charles Koch once said, “It is the low-hanging fruit.” People organize and fight when the target is Social Security. That affects everyone. But the privatizers can pick off districts and state legislatures with rosy depictions of “reform” that will undermine public education, produce no improvements for children, bust unions, and put money in the pockets of privatizers, not the schools. They start with urban districts, claiming that DeVos and Koch and other billionaires want to “save black and brown children.” What a pitch! The Democrats are easily fooled, but less so as time passes and the end game comes into sight.
Laurie McGowan and all While we’re at it, here’s a recent Koch U-Tube interview which also will be on BookTV/C-SPAN:
The online responses to this interview are classic. CBK
Excellent points- Laurie McGowan
I’m not dismissing a goal of “killing two (or more) birds with one stone.”
Targeting Black people’s assets in particular may have provided added incentive. Public employment has a recent history of less discrimination against people of color. The minority community is disproportionately affected by public job and pension losses.
James Buchanan, Milton Friedman. The two Right Wing Nobel economists who provided the intellectual cover for inequality, discrimination as liberty, crony capitalism, imperial capitalism, and QANON. Koch, Buchanan, Friedman…..the privatization triumvirate. They are within striking distance of destroying democracy. AOC, Jamaal Bowman, Stacey Abrams, and all their compatriots…they are today’s freedom fighters.
The names you mentioned sent your comment into moderation!
Buchanan, I think, was the trigger!
The economist or the president? Either way, much the same. Here’s a gem from Rep. John Sherman about the president–who was slavery’s best friend among Northern political figures–that seems to fit (or should) many of the right wingers: “The Constitution provided against every possible vacancy in the office of the President, but did not provide for utter imbecility.”
A couple of his obituaries fit as well. From the Cincinnati Daily Gazette: “Imbecility–to use no harsher term–was enthroned at the White House.”
And the Chicago Tribune: “He never had a guiding principle…This desolate old man has gone to his grave. No son or daughter is doomed to acknowledge ancestry from him.”
Although, in tepid defense, one of his quotes should be used in the against trials of the January 6 terrorists: “The framers of the national government never intended to implant in its bosoms the seeds of its own destruction, no were they guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution.”
GregB “The framers of the national government never intended to implant in its bosoms the seeds of its own destruction, nor were they guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution.”
The conditional answers that question: “. . . IF you can keep it.”
As a purely practical matter, those who live in democracies are ever to live in the tensions and questions of the relationship between freedom and power. That is, we live in-between the powers embedded in our (a) customs, protocols, statues, institutions, and laws, AND in our (b) interior life with its developmental potentials and failures . . . of intelligence, conscience, and a general maturity . . the kind that ENABLES us to live well in a democracy . . . with others.
Again, practically speaking, as (a) diminishes, (b) must become more powerful to hold the order together. On the other hand, as (b) diminishes, (a) must develop well . . . again, to hold the order together.
Understood in this way, and though human intelligence and its education have been a part of human living for eons, over time, education and its creative core, as we know it, has emerged as ESSENTIAL to the maintenance of a vibrant democratic culture.
The framers left us just that . . . the framework. But they couldn’t leave us with the certainty of maintaining that framework . . . that WOULD be “absurd,” on principle. The power has to flow from the higher human developmental patterns that are already ensconced in our cultural habits, in our Constitution, laws, and public institutions, and then towards the taking-up of human maturity . . . for the whole thing to work.
What we are experiencing now with Trump and his base, and followers in Congress, despite their on-paper credentials (I’m sorry to say this but I think it’s true) the freedom of the immature, and of the politically ignorant (picture that guy sitting at Pelosi’s desk, as example). CBK
good old USA exceptionalism: “free to be politically ignorant”
CBK, very provocative. There’s a certain mathematical appeal, but I’m not sure it bears close examination. One could also imagine that if (a) is dominant/ overweening, there’s little room for (b) to flourish. And if (a)is weak, it’s a power void: (b) does not rise to compensate: baser elements rise.
bethree5 Yes, if I understand your objection correctly, I would say that I am speaking of a general framework and its dynamic . . . as generalized, it allows for any of the details and imbalances to emerge. The fundamental point is that, in concrete reality, it’s on those involved and in power, including in a democracy, each of is, to maintain the potential ordered and balanced dynamic, or not. CBK
‘ceidie ” . . . good old USA exceptionalism: “free to be politically ignorant.’”
Yes . . . a good analogy is driving on our roadways. We like to think that everyone driving is licensed and (in our interior lives) we are all well-meaning about stopping at stop signs and being careful and respectful. But we all had to learn to drive in the first place (analogy: learn to live in a democracy); and most accept the customs and laws that govern driving.
So that, we don’t let little kids jump in a car and drive on the highway, and we know that teenage drivers are questionable at best (immature and inexperienced). And when someone is driving drunk, we report it, etc., etc., etc.
Living in a democracy is analogous: Freedom to drive lives in us with the tensional shift of power from the outer laws to inner self-mastery aka mature adulthood. It’s in our interior lives that we take it upon ourselves to regard the rules and laws OR where (some, sliding away from mature thinking, for want of a better phrase) are too afraid to break the law for the threat of prosecution. In either case, our freedoms (for instance, to drive) depend on living by those terms. Otherwise, the more our freedoms are abused (by the ignorant among us) the fewer freedoms we can have, of the general intelligent order is to prevail.
Commonly, when accepted norms are broken, or if someone blows up a bridge, for instance, then we know “that won’t work.” CBK
“He predicted that as vouchers become universal, the funding of them will not increase. It might even diminish. Parents will have to dig into their pockets to pay for what used to be a public service, free of charge.”
100% agree. One can see the outline in all the current voucher expansion plans- the goal is to issue a low value voucher for each child to spend on educational products. Could be a school, but doesn’t have to be. They’ll hand you a voucher and a list of private contractors.
There’s a side benefit too- it will be a new lending industry. There will be student loans for K-12 education. The voucher will be capped at 5k to 7k and parents will borrow the rest.
The current privatization goals of ed reformers FAR exceed what people like Barry Goldwater proposed. They are much, much further Right than him. There won’t be any “public” left at all in public education.
I think the public will deeply, deeply regret throwing out public education. It will be considered one of the biggest errors the United States has ever made and it will be irreversible. Once they get rid of public schools you are never, ever getting them back. There will be a huge group of private contractors lobbying to keep the public sector out, just like we see with health care.
You’ll be begging the US Senate for a “public option” in K-12 schooling and you won’t get it, just like we didn’t get it in the health care bill.
This is my understanding of how Chile’s [Pinochet’s] Friedman/ Chicago Boys-designed ‘choice’ [privatization] ed system evolved. After 40 yrs of it, people were demonstrating in the streets for 3 yrs straight for a return to fully tax-supported public education, because middle/ working-class families could no longer afford the fees assessed on top of minimal tax support to keep the charters/ vouchers afloat. It was the key issue in regime change to a president who promised reform. [Don’t know whether hat is panning out.]
What I find amusing about ed reform is how the public has been REPEATEDLY assured these folks aren’t bent on privatizing, but everything they do advances privatization.
The MOMENT charters went in they all started lobbying for vouchers. The moment vouchers go in they all start lobbying to expand them. Literally everything people warned would happen has happened.
Ed reform is, in fact, an anti-public school movement and it is, in fact, grounded entirely in Right wing economic theory. It’s also VEHEMENTLY anti-organized labor.
Exactly right. And it’s worse than anti-organized labor. Even when this pogrom started, 40% of the states were already right-to-work, sans teachers unions. At this point, teachers unions have been undermined in additional states. [And private sector unions have gone from 20% in 1980 to 6.3% today.] It is pure & simply anti tax-supported public goods, including everything from infrastructure to jails. Ed is just one piece of the libertarians’ relentless effort at its destruction. They were once an extremist fringe, but industry/ govt came fully onboard as mfg sector declined thro the ’70’s, seeing the reduction of American public goods transactionally, thro a biz lens: cutting overhead to the bone so as to compete with low-QOL nations.
Ed reform was sold in Ohio like this- they told the public “accept charters or you’ll get vouchers and we’ll stop supporting your public schools!”
So the public accepted charters. And ed reformers immediately lobbied for and got massive voucher bills and gutted public school funding.
They have reneged on every single promise and assurance they made in my state. They haven’t lived up to a single promise they made when they were marketing “ed reform”. Not one. They flim flammed us. We got charters and we got vouchers and we got nothing whatsoever for public school students.
They’re doing it again with the standardized testing and Covid. They’re not going to come thru with any support for public schools when we test. They never come thru. We’ll all obediently test every public school student and public school students will get nothing in return, except another round of public school bashing.
Some blog readers and Diane may be familiar with the reputation of an economist, now at Brown University, who was nominated for Undersecretary of Education in Raegan’s administration, “born again Christian”, Glenn Loury. He is a part of the 1776 Unites group described in Philanthropy Roundtable’s article, “The 1776 Commission: A Brief Guide for the Perplexed”. The P-H article describes 1776 Unites in the context of “…K-12 curriculum intended to counter that of the 1619 Project…”
Loury’s career history is one of rising rapidly in Ivy League academia.
Linda If you look at anyone’s history, you will find some sort of religious influence there, both bad and good, all the way back to the cave writings. So what else is new? CBK
Addendum to my note to Linda, from “The Commonweal”: All of the “here” links can be found at the link below the quotations. CBK
This week at Commonweal, we’re highlighting Sarah Ruden on the idolization of texts. Biblical idolatry has manifested itself painfully through millennia of struggles for freedom of conscience and participatory governance, but it’s really only the United States that is still suffering from it. The Bible, as a mere rallying cry, figures alongside the Constitution in the outpourings of white power, Christian nationalist, QAnon, and militia organizations. Ruden writes, ‘There is no contradiction between the preciousness of the Bible or the Constitution and their limitations…. Precisely because they are not God, they need us to make sure they remain what they were meant to be.’ Read all of ‘When Texts Become Idols” here, and check out a free discussion guide for this article here.*
Next, Massimo Faggioli discusses the rocky reception of Vatican II’s teachings, particularly in the United States. The alliance of conservative American Catholicism with Trumpism says something about its reception, but broader systemic phenomena in the last few years have exposed fault lines on the liberal-progressive side as well. Faggioli writes, ‘The range of positions regarding Francis and Vatican II in the United States helps us understand how the council’s documents may not be able to serve the Church today—and perhaps what can be done to improve the reception and application of those documents.’ Read the whole piece here.
Then, Burke Nixon reflects on his family’s experience of Texas’s debilitating snowstorm and resulting power outages. When people were in need, neighbors helped to thaw pipes, share water and electricity, make food, entertain children, and comfort each other. Nixon writes, ‘It’s one thing to think or talk about loving thy neighbor, as I’m prone to do. It’s another thing to do what…so many other people did on our street and throughout the state: jump into action and do what you can to help.’ Read the whole piece here.
Nicole-Ann Lobo reviews The White Tiger, a film that turns a hard gaze on India’s unforgiving social stratification and what it takes to break through it. The main character Balram could be any of the hundreds of millions of people left behind in India’s globalized economy. Ordinary people trying to climb the ladder face two major obstacles: caste and the intergenerational lock on wealth and status the rich possess. Lobo writes that the film advances ‘the uncomfortable truth that in desperate circumstances, morality might be a luxury available only to the wealthy.’ Read all of ‘Eat or Get Eaten’ here.
And finally, the editors have gathered a collection of Lenten reflections and poems to offer spiritual guidance during this period of national and theological mourning. Every Sunday this Lent, we’re featuring new reflections from Claudia Avila Cosnahan. You can read the latest reflection here, and explore the whole collection here.
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/when-texts-become-idols?utm_source=Main+Reader+List&utm_campaign=64b7076416-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_03_16_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_407bf353a2-64b7076416-92562883
Linda My addendum note went into moderation. CBK
Diane,
How do I access your interview with Charles Siler?
Thanks,
Judy Casey Colorado
>
Judy, I have been known in the past to forget to paste in the link. I did it again!
Sorry.
It is a fascinating interview:
Here’s the link: https://networkforpubliceducation.org/diane-jennifer-and-charles/
The Ivy League schools promoting the ed reform agenda are all in to destroy Main Street for the benefit of Wall Street, Charles Koch, Bill Gates and Walton heirs.
There is something to that, especially The Broad Institute and Harvard Educational Leadership grad program.
Gosh.. The conversation here is so interesting. I am so tired of watching the nonsense on tv, Cuomo and what the did or didn’t do. A Congress filled with people who do not care about the people of this nation. ( don’ they know that people are going to remember how they killed bills they needed. 8 hours t read a bill.
And endless talk about the investigation into the people in Congress whose phone calls with insurrectionists might be scrutinized… and endless talk about Joe Manchin.
But privatizing libraries, transportation, health care, and education, what were once part of our public infrastructure, there will be no safety net at all left for the non-rich, soon.
How can anyone conceive of a republic that will function for all, under those conditions?
Stay safe,
-Shira
Shira,
Listen to the interview to understand the motivations of the privatizers.
I’d prefer a transcript if there is one?
I don’t think there will be a transcript.
Shira,
Your statement succinctly and clearly describes the threat.
Thanks for adding the comment.
When nothing is public, everything will be on a strict “pay to play” basis. CBK
Thank you, Linda, for your post and for your response.
In Service, via Critical Thinking ed.,
-Shira
Buzzfeed and other media report David Brooks resigned from the Aspen Institute where he received a salary (public unaware). Brooks’ problem is one of perceived
conflict of interest. Brooks’ morality fits perfectly at Aspen, an organization that promotes plutocracy-driven ed reform. Gates’ Pahara is associated with Aspen.
A better resignation or departure for Brooks would have been from the NYT. The specifics of the current drama relate to the Walton Family Foundation/Facebook (Weave Project).
I have never forgiven David Brooks, dating back a decade. I was invited to Aspen to debate Wendy Kopp. The audience was overwhelmingly on her side, being members of the richest, most powerful elites. Wendy didn’t actually say much, other than to say over and over that TFA had proven that charter schools with her inexperienced teachers could overcome poverty. Her examples were New Orleans, DC, and NYC. I had facts to prove her wrong, but she had her story and she stuck to it. The audience, including Brooks, loved it. At a different Aspen event the next day, I spoke about the fallacy of believing that charters were miracle schools and said, as I do, that we had to improve the lives of families and communities. Brooks spoke to me afterwards, very amiably. When he returned to NYC, he wrote a column excoriating for the mistaken idea that poverty couldn’t be cured by schools. The Times allowed me to write a response. His views were perfectly aligned with those of Kopp, and he believed that schools alone could solve the growing economic inequality in our society. I concluded he was a weasel.
One of the reasons I admire you is that you go into the belly of the beast and come out unscathed.
I’ve written it before but thanks again for fighting every day. Given your talents you could have become the well-paid voice of the oligarchs. (That opportunity in the hands of Fordham and Jeanne Allen plays out in a widening gap between size of pay and quality of work product, IMO). Instead, you chose to model what it means to value and champion both democracy and the common good.
No person better explains to the public the effect of Walton heirs and Bill Gates’ loathing of American principles and their loathing of the citizens of the country than you.
If there comes a great and just reckoning, your enemies will be vanquished.
Aww, Linda. Thank you. I gotta do what I do as long as I can do it. I’m very fortunate to have enough money to live the life I want without needing to sell my voice to the oligarchs.
The oligarchs’ mouthpieces sell out their fellow citizens for pennies on the dollar. I don’t think your sense of right and wrong would permit you to harm your neighbors, not those who live in your city nor those living thousands of miles away, and especially not the vulnerable.
Diane, you mentioned that we should all advocate for a Public Education Caucus in Congress. Can you give some advice on how to make that happen? Whom should we contact? How can we marshal resources to influence this action?
I am also intrigued with the concept of identifying those who destroy (our schools) as anarchists. If culture eats strategy for lunch, this might be our coup de grace!