A coalition of organizations in St. Louis combined to promote a new vision of education. Even the superintendent of schools added his name.
But when the school board realized that the “new vision” was funded by Opportunity Trust, a pro-charter outfit, they insisted on a moratorium.
Once again, an astroturf group was planning to hasten the pace of privatization. The city currently has 18,000 students in its public schools, and 12,000 in charter schools. The charter industry is never satisfied. It always wants more.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Once addicted to wealth and/or power, there is no limit to the corruption of the greedy. Traitor Trump’s life is the perfect example of how wealth and power corrupts.
More evidence that there should be a limit on wealth acquisition for an individual and it should be severe, no more than $10 million in gross wealth including what’s held in foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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“The city currently has 18,000 students in its public schools, and 12,000 in charter schools.”
Just another broken promise. The original ed reform claim was public schools would be supported ALONG WITH charter schools and private school vouchers. It was “plus/and!” Everybody wins! There was no risk or tradeoffs at all- 100% upside, guaranteed.
Then they dropped all the support for public schools. Now they lobby for cuts in public school funding and additional funding for charters and vouchers.
Over a decade they went from supposedly benefitting public schools, to doing no work at all for public schools, to actively harming public schools.
It would be better if this “movement” would finally just admit the intent is to phase out public schools and replace them all with private contractors. It’s blatantly obvious to anyone outside their echo chamber that’s what they’re doing.
Look not at what they say but what they do. Review the ed reform initiatives and lobbying in your state legislature and ask yourself what (if any) of the work they do benefits students who attend public schools. Other than standardized testing mandates and various gimmicky, ever- changing measurement schemes you’ll find nothing.
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I forgot to list the other “benefit” to public school students the ed reform movement is very, very good at- they’re great at selling public schools ed tech. The ed tech product marketing and promotion to public schools is really something.
I keep hoping public schools will start to see it for what it is- marketing products- but they still seem to plow millions into whatever products these people promote.
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Here’s an echo chamber article celebrating the ed reform lobbying successes on vouchers:
“With 18 states enacting seven new educational choice programs and expanding 21 existing ones, 2021 has rightly been declared a “breakthrough year” for school choice. In the wake of all this progress, the one question we at EdChoice are most frequently asked is: how many students are newly eligible to receive a voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or K–12 education savings account?”
Compare this outright cheerleading and promotion of private school vouchers – 100% positive- to anything they produce about any public school anywhere.
It’s all like this. Not only is there no criticism of ANY charter/voucher initiative, ever, there’s not even a recognition that there could ever BE any criticism.
Your state could pass a law next week closing every public school and privatizing them all by executive fiat and there wouldn’t be a word of dissent in the echo chamber. Utterly and completely captured.
https://www.educationnext.org/how-big-was-the-year-of-educational-choice/
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Local communities are catching on to the charter expansion hustle. Fortunately, for St. Louis they have an informed board of education that can defend community public schools. Many complicit governors like DeSantis are developing plans to work around and neutralize local school boards. All school boards should be suspicious of outside organizations that are interested in the public schools, and as in St. Louis, they should follow the money. If it leads back to billionaires and right wing groups, defend your public schools that are your public asset. Such groups are parasites that want your public dollars that they will transfer out of the local community.
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I mean I’m not an education expert but it seems to me that if the ed reform “movement” are passing laws expanding vouchers all over the country there would be some actual analysis of the actual laws within ed reform.
Nope. All the voucher laws are absolutely perfect and will be a tremendous success, always, no matter what the law actually says or does. If it’s a voucher and the funding goes to a private entity – really any private entity because they make no distinction at all -it gets the stamp of approval. No further inquiry or discussion is required.
We’re having a criminal trial right now locally where some completely unqualified individual opened a school for autistic students which she funded with Ohio’s voucher program. She’s charged with stealing from the school but reading the coverage any normal person would wonder “why did the state hand this person hundreds of thousands of public dollars and do no oversight at all in the first place?” The theft is really not the issue here. The issue is anyone can open a “school” in Ohio and receive public funding. The only reason she got caught was a former employee blew the whistle. No one was inspecting that school, reviewing the accounts, doing any due diligence at all.
We’re LUCKY it was just financial fraud. It was a school for children with disabilities. The complete lack of oversight could have ended in tragedy. Are they planning on regulating all these new voucher schools from Columbus? That’s ludicrous.
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No matter how much the evidence clashes with the
bamboozle, serving the bamboozle continues.
A system established by wealth and power, for
wealth and power, and of wealth and power, is
conflated as by/for/of those NOT of wealth/power,
the demos.
Of all the explanations bobbing about in the thick
fetid swamp of hubris, such as that which posits
that the whole crisis is the result of the “Bubbas”
seems to be absurd. As absurd as pretending the
institutional mechanisms established by power,
were established to hobble themselves.
The evidence clearly suggests no matter who loses
the electoral throne contest, money always wins.
It’s always been the system, uninterupted by the
seat warmers of electoral or appointed thrones.
YES Look not at what they say but what they do.
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Are people really so mired in the past as to still call privatization “reform”?
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the hardest question
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Yes!
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The current Mayor Tishaura Jones had been a Missouri State representative from 2009-2013. She was involved with charter school legislation favored by Rex Sinquefeld back then. This is just a temporary setback in her efforts opposing St. Louis Public Schools. Her bill HB1228 in 2012 was opposed by the local 420 of the AFT.
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LinkedIn identifies Jesse Dixon as an Opportunity Trust partner. Harvard Graduate School of Education and Fordham University are listed in the education section. Fordham U. is described at its site as a Jesuit school.
At the Zoom Info. site, Jesse Dixon is described as an Opportunity Trust Partner. Her work experience lists, “Educational programming at East St. Louis Catholic High School”. (The LinkedIn work history info. does not cite a similar position.)
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The bio’s of the Board and “team” at Opportunity Trust are as expected. Six of the 7 team members matured at prestigious private universities as did three of the Board members (one boasts of his schooling at John Burroughs, a $30,000+ tuition school).
Two board members are from the financial sector. The COO of Opportunity Trust is also from the financial sector. She launched new products for credit card companies.
There appears to be just 1 woman on the board, no bio linked for her nor, for Board member, Bishop of Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist.
Two of the team came up the TFA route. Both appear to be white.
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Correction- pronoun, “his”, for Opportunity Trust partner, associated with Aspen.
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