Upon his death recently, Eli Broad received many laudatory obituaries, describing his philanthropic contributions to the arts and medical research. He even built an art museum in Los Angeles, named for himself. Modesty was not one of his virtues.
Less noted was his determination to disrupt and destroy public education. Not only did he launch an ambitious plan to privatize 50% of the public schools in Los Angeles, but his Broad Superintendents Academy “trained” scores of aspiring superintendents in his philosophy, which meant top-down, tough management and a willingness to close schools with low test scores and replace them with charter schools, no matter how much the schools were loved by students, teachers, parents, and the local community. Anyone could apply to his Academy regardless of previous job experience or lack of education experience.
I was invited to meet Eli Broad at his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue in New York City about ten years ago. He explained to me that he didn’t know anything about education but knew management. Lack of management skills, he said, was the biggest problem in education.
I have yet to see any evidence that Broad leaders were more successful than those educators who rose through the ranks, and many examples of Broad leaders who failed. Nonetheless, Broad used his money and influence to put his people into important urban districts, even paying for staff to surround them and supplements to their salary.
He was one of the leading figures in the national effort to discredit and stigmatize public education, setting it up for privatization.
Los Angeles-based Capital & Main published the following article about Broad’s contempt for public schools, including the one he attended in Detroit.
Editor’s Note: Although most of Los Angeles’ news media praised the cultural largess and civic drive of Eli Broad after the businessman-philanthropist died April 30, many in the city and elsewhere will recall his obsessive promotion of charter schools with less charity. In 2019 longtime Broad critic Diane Ravitch accused him of being “aggressive in using his money and policy agenda to destabilize and disrupt public education.”
Around the same time, Capital & Main’s Bill Raden described the billionaire’s Broad Academy as training future public school superintendents “in the blunt art of disrupting communities, undermining school boards and alienating teachers through top-down district privatization techniques.”
From our archives we present a 2015 appraisal by veteran Los Angeles journalist Marc Haefele, originally titled “Eli Broad and the End of Public Education as We Know It.”
If there were still any doubt about Eli Broad’s desire to gut traditional public education, it has been erased by his much-discussed “Great Public Schools Now” initiative, a draft of which L.A. Times reporter Howard Blume obtained last month.
Broad’s 44-page proposal outlines plans to replace half of LAUSD’s existing public schools with charter schools. “Such an effort will gather resources, help high-quality charters access facilities, develop a reliable pipeline of leadership and teaching talent, and replicate their success,” states the document. “If executed with fidelity, this plan will ensure that no Los Angeles student remains trapped in a low-performing school.”
According to the proposal, Broad wants to create 260 new “high-quality charter schools, generate 130,000 high-quality charter seats and reach 50 percent charter market share.”
(Actually, LAUSD has 151,000 kids in charters now: 281,000 out of 633,000 LAUSD students is 43 percent. This isn’t the only imprecision in the proposal.)
The estimated cost of this LAUSD transformation would be nearly half-a-billion dollars.
By his own account, Broad is the fourth-richest resident of Los Angeles, with $7 billion in wealth. So he could easily finance this proposal out of pocket and still pay his property taxes in Brentwood.
But that’s not the plan.
Instead, Broad is shaking the can to his fellow foundationeers and squillionaires. The Gates Foundation of Seattle has already given $29 million for charter schools, while the Walmart-backed Walton Foundation of Bentonville, Ark. has invested over $65 million.
Broad says he’s “creating a more supportive policy environment for charters.” He hopes that virtually overturning the LAUSD in Los Angeles will set a revolutionary example that will enable charter schools to sweep the nation. The private sector would partially regain the control of public education that it lost in the 19th century, whose market-driven schools were excoriated by Charles Dickens.
But modern charter schools are a lot better, right? Some studies show a marked improvement in charters’ performance compared to traditional public schools in areas like reading and math. Others, however, suggest that the average results are about the same.
LAUSD already has more charters than any other U.S. school district. But supply-side institutions are risky. According to a new report by the Center for Media and Democracy, 2,500 have failed between 2001 and 2013 — 43 in Los Angeles alone — stranding their students and teachers and sinking many millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. Charter teachers, lacking union support, appear to burn out faster.
According to his autobiography, “The Art of Being Unreasonable,” Broad blames school problems on administration (his signature educational achievement is the Broad Superintendent Academy, whose graduates include recently ousted LAUSD super John Deasy), with little attention to the actual rubber-meets-the road matter of better teaching. Like most charterites, Broad seems to feel that working under a tough superintendent without a union or tenure brings out the best in young teachers.
According to the bio, Broad resented attending Detroit’s Central High. “My high school teachers made it very clear that they found my constant questions annoying,” he recalls. It’s interesting that he doesn’t credit Central for any of his ample college success, not to mention his unparalleled business career.
He hasn’t always felt this hostility, though. In 2000, he persuaded former Colorado Governor Roy Romer to apply for LAUSD superintendent, the initial step in the steady if slow revival of the agency derided as “LA Mummified.” Romer and his board championed a $3.3 billion bond measure that studded the landscape with over 20 new LAUSD schools; Broad gave $200,000 toward its passage.
In 2007, he cofounded Strong American Schools, a lobby for better schooling that reportedly eschewed “controversial’’ topics like vouchers and charter schools. But soon his Strong American Schools partner Bill Gates was rooting for charters and Broad followed. Yet, as recently as his 2012 autobiography, he didn’t find conventional public education hopeless.
Now, at 82, Broad’s ambition apparently is to do away with public education as we know it.
“Part of it is ideological commitment to the deregulation notion, and part of it is practical – teacher unions are the last, biggest unions, and taking them down will create much more room for a broader deregulation of the economy and public sector,” said United Teachers Los Angeles chief Alex Caputo Pearl.
Ultimately, it should be about the students. My late friend, LAUSD teacher Alan Kaplan, struggled for over 30 years to teach “left behind” children to think and aspire, rather than just pass standardized tests. I wonder how long Al and others like him would last under a tenure-free, test-focused, supply-side charter school system.
Copyright 2021 Capital & Main
Eli Broad needs psychological therapy.
Since he’s dead, I don’t think counseling would help. 🙂
He needs” psychicillogical help” (aka, seance therapy)
Ed reformers moving into workplace training and labor and employment policy really worries me.
It’s the same people and the same billionaire foundations, and they now want to direct vocational education. Can we please not have the anti-labor and Right wing ed reform “movement” design workplace training for 17 year olds?
We really want the Walton heirs and their employees in ed reform setting up deals between employers and 17 year olds?
The Waltons and Broads and Gates and Kochs are now going to run workplace training for high school students? We’re all going to pretend these billionaires are directing public policy out of the goodness of their hearts?
https://www.educationnext.org/from-the-college-credentialist-prejudice-to-opportunity-pluralism/
Can we possibly have someone who ISN’T employed by one of five billionaires weigh in?
“Authentic Partnerships. Employers, industry groups, and other institutions must collaborate for programs to succeed. Written agreements can help to define who is responsible for what and to formalize a management and governance structure—a civic partnership—between partners.”
You’ll notice what’s missing in the ed reform plans- the students and the employees. They’re never mentioned.
Would a vocational training plan that included labor unions or student/worker protections make it past the Walton vetting process? Of course not. The Walton heirs aren’t paying people for that.
GREAT line: “Can we possibly have someone who ISN’T employed by one of five billionaires weigh in?”
When you are an entrepreneur full of hubris, you see everything as a business opportunity. If it is a pubic service, you use your wealth to remake the service to reflect your vision. The oligarchs like Broad and Gates have been meddling in public schools as though schools are their own private tinker toys. Politicians on the payroll clear a path so billionaires can insert their agendas into public policies. Louis Brandeis once said, ” We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” We have to stop the billionaires from inflicting an updated Dickensian vision on our young people in which they are monetized and stare at screens all day so the wealthy can collect on their so-called education.
I want to see if I can post comments
“These policies are not unique to Broad. They’ve been promoted nation-wide by both the Bush and Obama administrations. In fact, Broad is close to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “With the election of President Barack Obama and his appointment of Arne Duncan . . . the stars have finally aligned,” the Broad Foundation wrote in its 2009-10 annual report, explaining that the Obama-Duncan agenda “echoes” Broad’s.”
Echo. Chamber. “Aligned” is certainly the right word. They’re all identical.
Has there been a better billionaire investment of the last 20 years than when they purchased the public education policy of the United States?
Has there been a single real and critical analysis by the ed reform echo chamber of any of these billionaire initiatives? Isn’t that odd? The “ideas” are 100% great and 100% successful? Wow. That’s some track record.
A combination of neoliberal and libertarian ideals along with having more than 640 billionaires is a toxic brew to democracy.
I wasn’t aware that Eli Broad was dead. Thanks for sharing the news.
I’m sorry, Diane, but the old white dudes of your generation have been a real pain in the arse. I’m not sorry to see any of them go – Adelson, Koch et al. Sad to say there are younger white male arses lining up to take their place, but these old dudes like Broad, Adelson, and Koch were a special breed of malicious evil. The world is a better place without people like them. Their money may remain, but without the person behind it the money on its own will not have the same effect.
Unfortunately Eli Broad cm “trained” (indoctrinated) hundreds of would-be urban school leaders in his top down management style. Until they realize they work for parents and communities and learn to listen, the spirit of Eli survives.
Right, and his educational “leadership” program was handed over to Yale, so now has Ivy League cachet. Bad news.
Geezus, who knew, it’s Citizen Kane all over again. Only this time, it’s not about Rosebud but about education. All this Sturm und Drang because Eli Kane, oh excuse me, Eli Broad had a bad experience in high school.
Correction, supposed bad experience or perceived bad experience by Eli.
In a David Letterman interview, Obama said his mother taught him at home rather than send her brilliant boy to the unworthy public schools. Obama qualified for a scholarship at a fancy private school,, and he never attended public schools. His assumption was that public schools were mediocre, even though Michelle attended the same Ivy League schools with her public high school diploma.
Add Rex Sinquefield to the infamy list, alongside Eli Broad.
Devin Thomas O’Shea wrote, “Libertarian Rex, How ‘the King’ of St. Louis was defeated -for now- and how you too can topple your local hometown billionaire”. O’Shea was interviewed on 4-26-21 by St. Louis public radio reporter, Evie Hemphill. O’Shea got an internship at Sinquefield-funded Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri, “he knew little of the organization’s privatization commitments”.
Nine years before O’Shea wrote his Current Affairs essay about Sinquefield, Rex found himself having to apologize for saying the KKK was linked to the creation of public schools. The guy he quoted, a former judge, advocated for vouchers when he wrote the satire/musing/dark humor that was misconstrued by Rex. To clarify for the judge and Rex, privatization was first proposed by racist Georgia Gov. Talmadge to avoid court ordered integration.
Children’s Education Alliance of Missouri webpage- Seven members on the Board, one of whom appears to be a person of color. The staff of 5 appears to include one person of color, an outreach associate.
One board member completed his masters in Catholic School Leadership from St. Louis University. He is working toward his doctorate in the program. Another board member is Pres. of Lutheran Hour Ministries Foundation.
First I heard that Eli Broad was dead. Why doesn’t good news spread as fast as bad news?
Eli Broad was the perfect example of Lord Acton’s quote. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Eli Broad’s philanthropy was the wrapping paper he used to hide the corruption he spread. Bill Gates does the same thing.
Goliath was strong in 2014 when I protested against Eli Broad’s work to destroy public education at the opening of his ominous looking museum in downtown Los Angeles. The Broad contemporary art museum offers free general admission. You can — don’t — go there and see what the Washington Post called “high-end trash” for free. You cannot own the art. The art belongs to the Broad family. You can look at it. Isn’t that nice for you? It’s almost as if Broad gave you something, but he didn’t. Okay, so purchasing 2.2 billion dollars worth of artwork is, it turns out, a soundly stable financial investment, especially when the Broads keep the art in a tax exempt museum. And they are happy to keep the art they acquired in a tax exempt museum because, as The New Yorker explained years ago, Eli Broad didn’t really get art. He rushed past great works, merely glancing at them long enough to catalogue them in his mind. He didn’t buy them so he could look at them. He just found a way to get the government to subsidize his collection of wealth. Also there were charter schools. Same thing.
That is called philanthropy. That is called philanthropy? That is what they call it, apparently.
Sad to see Broad go? Nope. Still slaying Goliath? Yep.
Thanks for this great, sarcastic comment.
Journalists and writers and educators need to start using the definition of “philanthropy” properly instead of giving it a new definition:
The current improper definition of “philanthropy” as used incorrectly by the NYT and other supposedly august institutions means “having your name plastered across buildings and demanding that you be lauded as generous in return for making a donation that a charitable organization or non-profit will use according to what the donor whose name is plastered all over the building demands of that charity.”
Philanthropy is properly defined as an act or gift made for humanitarian purposes.
Giving because you get your name on a building and good PR and can order the non-profit to pretend they are charitable when they do whatever you demand them to do is not “philanthropy”.
If Eli Broad was a philanthropist, there would not be PR testaments to his “charity” which he bought for himself with a small portion of his vast wealth.
Bill and Melinda Gates are not philanthropists. Their giving is entirely dependent on getting their name linked with a good cause or having a charity do their bidding and claim it is a charitable endeavor instead of what the donor has demanded in exchange for the donation.
I suspect the real philanthropist is Warren Buffett. I have looked to see if his name is linked to buildings or other things and I couldn’t find it.
And I suspect there are many other philanthropists whose names we don’t know because they are actually philanthropists and not rich people who are spending money to get their name plastered on buildings.
There is no reason that Eli Broad could not have funded an art museum in LA with the name “the LA Metropolitan Museum of Art”. In fact, LA has LACMA, the LA County Museum of Art, which got government money AND lots of donations by rich people.
Agreed. The donor who wants to immortalize his name is not a philanthropist. When the story broke about the Sackler family’s connection to the opioid crisis, which killed more than 200,000 people and made the Sackler billionaires, their name was removed from many cultural institutions they had endowed. The Talmud says that the highest form of charity occurs when the giver doesn’t know who received his money and the recipient doesn’t know who was his benefactor. No self-aggrandizement allowed. Broad put his name on his museum and his failed leadership training program. Gates pays media handsomely to ensure that his generosity and wisdom are acknowledged. Bloomberg plasters his name everywhere, even on the double-screened financial computer that made his fortune. It’s called “the Bloomberg.”
Bloombergs and icebergs
Both are disasters hidden beneath the surface.
Above all else, Bill Gates is going to be remembered for vaccine colonialism
He is self destructing before our eyes.
https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-the-world-loses-under-bill-gates-vaccine-colonialism/
Yep!