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Richard Kahlenberg: Defunding Public Unions Hurts Our Democracy

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2016 //
17

This week, the Supreme Court will hear a case called Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association. The plaintiffs represent teachers who not want to pay union dues. They say that the requirement to pay dues violates their free speech rights. Friedrichs is backed by political, financial, and ideological groups who hope to cripple the last bastion of organized labor. If the plaintiffs win, labor’s resources and political clout will be severely reduced. This case will be a milestone in the survival or destruction of public sector unions.

 

In the article linked above, Richard Kahlenberg argues that diminishing the power of public sector unions diminishes our democracy. In our society, money buys political influence and voice. If labor’s voice is stilled, only the rich will have political power. There will be no organized countervailing voice to prevent them from controlling everything.

 

Friedrichs is a teacher who objects to paying dues to the CTA. However, she is not required to pay for political activities, because of an earlier Supreme Court decision called Abood.

 

The current legal framework in which courts weigh cases such as Friedrichs is narrowly constrained, balancing the free speech rights of dissenting union members against the state’s interests in promoting stable labor relations with its public employees.
In the 1977 case of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court reached a sensible compromise that properly balanced these two sets of interests by splitting union dues into two categories: those that support political speech, and those that support bread–and-butter collective bargaining. Because the First Amendment’s free speech clause provides a right to not be compelled by the state to subsidize speech with which one disagrees, dissenting public employees cannot be required by the state to join a union, or to subsidize the union’s political and lobbying efforts to promote certain positions of public concern….

 

According to the counsel for Friedrichs, annual dues to the CTA amount to approximately $1,000 per teacher, of which nonmembers receive a refund of roughly $350 to $400 for expenses unrelated to collective bargaining. In other words, Friedrichs is happy to accept increases in wages and benefits the union negotiates hard to win, but does not want to pay the $600 to $650 per year that other members contribute in order to make those wage gains possible. Will she give back her raises, forgo health care benefits, give up the right to pursue grievances, and agree to teach larger classes that the union negotiated? The amicus brief of the American Federation of Teachers and the American Association of University Professors put it well: there is no “constitutional right to a free ride.”

 

Kahlenberg notes:

 

All unions—including, and perhaps especially, public sector unions—also contribute to one of the most important foundational interests of the state: democracy. And they do this in many different ways. Unions are critical civic organizations that serve as a check on government power. They are important players in promoting a strong middle class, upon which democracy depends. They serve as schools of democracy for workers. And teacher unions, in particular, help ensure that our educational system is sufficiently funded to teach children to become thoughtful and enlightened citizens in our self-governing democracy….

 

Strong unions helped build the middle class in America after the Great Depression, and continue to have a positive effect on ameliorating extreme inequalities of wealth. By bargaining for fair wages and benefits, unions in the public and private sector help foster broadly shared prosperity. Research finds, for example, that unions compress wage differences between management and labor. According to one study, “controlling for variation in human resource practices, unionized establishments have an average of 23.2 percentage point lower management-to-worker pay ratio relative to non-union workplaces.”

 

Kahlenberg documents that the decline in union membership parallels the decline in the middle class.  Extremes of wealth and poverty are not good for democracy.

 

This is an excellent overview of the potential damage that this Supreme Court decision might do to unions and to democracy. It occurs to me as I read it that the contentious battle over school choice, funded amply by billionaires, is intended to divert attention from crucial economic issues. Billionaires would have us believe that they are advancing the economic opportunities for black and Hispanic children even as they use their political clout to destroy the jobs and economic security of their families, as well as the economic prospects for the “scholars” in their charter schools.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Economy, Unions

Michael Massing: Why Doesn’t the Media Cover the 1%?

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2015 //
13

Michael Massing, former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, has a fabulous article in the current Néw York Review of Books about the media’s failure to cover the political activities of the 1%.

In the middle of the article, he goes into detail about the millions of dollars that billionaires and hedge fund managers have poured into charter schools and into the campaigns of politicians who support charter schools.

Massing chides the media for its failure to follow the money.

It is great is to see the issues we are familiar with getting attention in a highly respected national publication.

Categories Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Media

A Debate: Joanne Barkan vs. The New Yorker: Should Billionaires Control Public Policy?

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2015 //
26

Joanne Barkan has written powerful articles in Dissent about the power wielded by billionaires to control and direct public education. (See here.)

 

Now she has written an article in The Guardian about the Zuckerbergs’ pledge to place 99% of their Facebook stock (value: about $45-46 billion) in a limited liability corporation, which they will use to influence public policy. Her article has the title “Wealthy Philanthropists Should Not Impose Their Idea of the Common Good on Us.”

 

She writes:

 

There’s a strong argument to be made that the private tax-exempt foundation doesn’t fit well in a functioning democracy. As the eminent US jurist Richard Posner wrote: “A perpetual charitable foundation, however, is a completely irresponsible institution, answerable to nobody. It competes neither in capital markets nor in product markets … and, unlike a hereditary monarch whom such a foundation otherwise resembles, it is subject to no political controls either.”

 

Although the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative isn’t a foundation and will pay taxes, nothing about their project changes the fundamental contradiction of mega philanthropy: the wealthy have the power to impose their personal visions of the common good on everyone else while calling it charity. In the tug-of-war between government by the people and social engineering by multibillionaire philanthropists, Chan and Zuckerberg pull on the side of the powerful social engineers.

 

However, in the New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes “In Defense of Philanthocapitalism,” a spirited defense of the Zuckerbergs, the Gates, and the other billionaires who are willing to try bold new approaches that government is too timid to try. So I assume he includes the Koch brothers, who use their wealth to reshape the economy to benefit the 1%, and Art Pope, who has used his wealth to hand the state of North Carolina over to the Tea Party, and the Waltons, who use their billions to stamp out unions and public schools.

 

He writes:

 

In an ideal world, big foundations might be superfluous. But in the real world they are vital, because they are adept at targeting problems that both the private sector and the government often neglect. The classic mission of nonprofits is investing in what economists call public goods—things that have benefits for everyone, even people who haven’t paid for them. Public health is a prime example: we would all benefit from the eradication of malaria and tuberculosis (diseases that Bill Gates’s foundation has spent billions fighting). But, since the benefits of public goods are widely enjoyed, it’s hard to get anyone in particular to foot the bill.

 

Ah, yes, what would we do without the Koch brothers, the Walton Family Foundation, and other billionaire foundations that do not believe in the public sector? What would educators do if they didn’t have the Gates Foundation to tell them how to evaluate teachers and how to turn public assets over the unaccountable charter schools and how to teach reading and mathematics? What would Los Angeles do if it didn’t have Eli Broad picking its superintendent and deciding to take control of half the children in the public schools and hand them over to privately managed charters and at the same time underwriting coverage of education in the Los Angeles Times? What would Philadelphia do if it didn’t have local foundations deciding to privatize its public schools? How many other cities have private foundations that have decided to lead the charge for school privatization? How many rightwing think tanks would shrivel and die without the support of the same billionaires and their foundations?

 

Who should shape the public good? The philanthrocapitalists or the public? Who holds the foundations accountable when they make a mistake? To whom are they accountable? No one. How can they preach accountability to everyone else but not for themselves?

 

Please read and comment.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Massachusetts: A Stunning Conflict of Interest

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2015 //
26

EduShyster was alerted by a confidential tip to the possibility that Jim Peyser, the State Secretary of  Education, remains a director of an organization that lobbies for more charter schools.

 

She checked public records and learned that Peyser is still listed as a director of “Families for Excellent Schools.” This is an organization of hedge fund managers, millionaires, and billionaires who lobby for privately managed charter schools.

 

“The Secretary of Education, Jim Peyser sets education policy for the state and also votes on said policy. And as a director for the charter school advocacy group Families for Excellent Schools, and its 501 (c) (4) lobbying arm, Peyser is seeking to influence the very state policy that he is then voting upon. In other words, he is lobbying himself.As the Secretary of Education, Jim Peyser sets education policy for the state and also votes on said policy. And as a director for the charter school advocacy group Families for Excellent Schools, and its 501 (c) (4) lobbying arm, Peyser is seeking to influence the very state policy that he is then voting upon. In other words, he is lobbying himself….

 

 

“But wait, there’s more
“If it sounds like our Secretary of Education has his hands full, both lobbying and being lobbied, consider that Father Peyser wears yet another cap these days. He is also the defendant in a class-action lawsuit vs. the state’s charter cap, defending the very cap that he is working feverishly, whilst wearing one of his other caps, to lift. The obvious question: how does he do it all? Followed by: what size hat does Peyser wear? Followed by: doesn’t Massachusetts have some kind, ANY kind of, conflict of interest law? Alas, I’m informed that its nearly as toothless as our public records law.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Massachusetts

BREAKING NEWS! Bombshell Report on Dark Money Behind School Privatization in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
35

Massachusetts Jobs with Justice released a well-documented report on the dark money behind a shadowy group called “Families for Excellent Schools.” FES is leading the campaign for more charter schools in Massachusetts. Of course, FES flies under a fake flag, because the “families” are not representing the families of Boston or the families that need excellent schools. FES is a gross deception. They are representing hedge fund managers and other wealthy individuals. Their idea of “excellent schools” is Exeter, Andover, Deerfield Academy, Groton, Sidwell Friends, and other elite schools that their own children attend. But these are not the excellent schools they want for the children of Massachusetts; they prefer no-excuses schools, where discipline and uniformity produces higher test scores. In the battle between Eva Moskowitz and Mayor de Blasio over the expansion of the charter sector, FES came up with nearly $10 million to beat the mayor. That’s not the kind of money that one gathers in needy communities, but it is the kind of money one collects with a few phone calls to Wall Street movers and shakers.

 

The JwJ report tears the veil away from FES, revealing where the money comes from. Up until now, it had pretended to be just another grassroots group working for “excellent” schools, and not a hedge fund-front group pushing privatization.

 

The report also revealed that one of the directors of FES is James Peyser, the Massachusetts State Superintendent of Education. This was another shocker. Why should the public official responsible for the maintenance and improvement of public schools serve on the board of an organization dedicated to privatizing public schools. Peyser holds the same position as Horace Mann. He should be embarrassed and the people of Massachusetts should be outraged.

 

Just bear in mind that the push for privatization is occurring in the state that is far and away the best performing state school system in the United States. The expansion of the charter sector will undermine public education and divide communities. FES should be ashamed. Why don’t they take their millions and open health clinics for poor children?

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization

John Thompson: A Closer Look at the “Success” in D.C. That Wasn’t

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2015 //
8

John Thompson knows that reformers point to the District of Columbia as one of their examples of success. After all, the district has been controlled by Teach for America alumnae Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson since 2007. They own whatever successes and not-successes that occurred over the past eight years. The centerpiece of their claims of success is NAEP scores, which are up.

 

In this post, Thompson identifies the flaws in the narrative of success. Thompson lauds John Merrow for critiquing the narrative of a district he once held up as an exemplar of successful reform. Merrow asked, in his post, why anyone was celebrating Kaya Henderson’s five-year anniversary in the wake of the disastrous scores on the Common Core PARCC tests, which showed a district where academic performance was dismal.

 

Thompson reviews the NAEP scores, using Rick Hess’s data.

 

Hess cites overall gains in NAEP growth under Rhee and Henderson, but those same NAEP studies actually support the common sense conclusion that the numbers reflect gentrification. Hess’s charts show that from 2005 to 2013, the percentage of D.C. students who are low-income dropped from 66% to 61.6%. (In my world, a 61.6% low-income urban school seems danged-near rich.) Per student spending increased by 40% during that time. (The new spending, alone, comes close to the total per student spending in my 90% low-income system.)

 

According to Hess’s chart, the percentage of the D.C. students who are black dropped by 1/8th from 2005 to 2013, and the percentage of students with disabilities dropped by 1/7th. And, the 2015 NAEP excluded as many as 44% of D.C.’s English Language Learners. The conservative reformer RiShawn Biddle calls that exclusion “massive and unacceptable test-cheating.”

 

Even so, as Merrow reminds us, the performance gap between low-income and more affluent students has grown even wider; for instance, from 2002 to 2015, the 8th grade reading performance gap grew from 17 to 48 points.

 

Before Rhee/Henderson, the growth in D.C. test scores was spread much more widely. Because I believe that 8th grade reading is the most important NAEP metric in terms of evaluating school performance, I will cite some of those metrics in support of Merrow. From 1998 to 2002, black 8th grade reading scores increased from an average of 233 to 238. By 2015, they were down to 236. From 1998 to 2002, average 8th grade reading scores for low-income students increased from 229 to 233. In 2015, they remained at 233.

 

Thompson says it is sad that the elites now re-engineering public education are utterly disconnected from the lives and realities of the children who attend those schools or the people who teach in them. They need a reality check, or maybe a course in sociocultural sensitivity training so that they stop stepping on the faces of children and adults whose lives they know nothing about.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Common Core, District of Columbia, Education Reform, NAEP, Testing

Leonie Haimson: Did Mark Zuckerberg Make Another Mistake?

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2015 //
19

Leonie Haimson, parent activist who fights for smaller class size and student privacy, has strong reservations about Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s decision to devote a considerable share of their vast fortune to “personalized learning.” She wonders whether he is making a mistake that has even larger consequences than the $100 million he squandered in Newark, led along by Mayor (now Senator) Cory Booker and Governor Chris Christie.

 

Haimson points out that some leading corporations in the technology industry have been data mining students and invading their privacy. That’s bad enough. But a recent OECD study concluded that the students who use computers the most in the classroom have the lowest scores, even when demography is taken into account. Zuckerberg has already funded a chain of for-profit private schools that rely heavily on computer instruction. But the history of such schools is unimpressive.

 

This is not a research-based approach to improving education, she writes. Some studies show that computer-based instruction actually widens achievement gaps.

 

The truth is there are NO good studies that show that online or blended instruction helps kids learn, and the whole notion of “personalized” learning is a misnomer, as what it usually signifies is depersonalized machine-based learning. All software can do is ask a series of multiple choice questions and then wait for the right or the wrong answer. It cannot read an essay or give feedback on how to improve an argument, or help extricate a child from a knotty math problem. It cannot encourage students to confront all the various angles in a controversy, as happens through debate and discussion with teachers and classmates. In fact, learning through computers reduces contextualization and conceptualization to stale pre-determined ideas, the opposite of the creative and critical thinking that we are supposed to be aiming for in the 21st century.

 

One thing is sure: Zuckerberg’s initiative will be good for the industry. Not so clear that it will be good for students.

 

 

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Technology, Computers

The Weekly Standard is No Longer Owned by Rupert Murdoch: It Is Worse Than That

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2015 //
8

In a post about Campbell Brown’s quest to find someone to take her seriously, I said that the article appears in The Weekly Standard, and  I erroneously said that the magazine is owned by Rupert Murdoch. I was wrong. In 2009, Murdoch sold the magazine to fellow billionaire Philip Anschutz.

 

Anschutz made his billions in many industries, including railroads, sports teams, oil and gas, and movie theaters. He is a big player in fracking. So far, just your run-of-the-mill billionaire.

 

His political views are far, far right. He supports the Discovery Institute, which favors “intelligent design,” not evolution. He underwrote anti-gay initiatives in Colorado and California. He was a producer of the anti/union, anti-public education “Waiting for Superman.” He funds anti-environment causes. He funded “Won’t Back Down,” a paean to charters and the Parent Trigger, a box-office flop.

 

When I make mistakes, I own up to them. For me, that’s the best policy.

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization

Dean Skelos, Indicted Politician, Talks to Son Adam about His Lunch Plans

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2015 //
9

Reader “”Rratto” asked if I could  post the tapes of the Dean Skelos conversation with his son Adam, wherein he mentions that he has plans to see Campbell Brown and some billionaires. Blogger Perdido Street School posted the tape in question. Many others have also posted it. Google works.

 

Dean Skelos was the powerful leader of the New York State Senate. He is a Republican from Long Island. He resigned after he and his son were indicted for financial misdeeds.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires

Shocker! Howard Blume, L.A. Times: Secret PAC Funded Pro-Charter Candidates with $2.3 Million

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2015 //
32

Howard Blume of the Los Angeles Times reports that a secret PAC assembled $2.3 million and funneled it to the political arm of the California Charter Schools Association, which used it to finance the campaigns of three pro-charter school candidates in the recent school board election. Two of the three won their seats, including Ref Rodriguez, who founded and runs a chain of charter schools. The names of the donors were not revealed until the election was over.

 

Those contributions — from philanthropist Eli Broad, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune, former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and others — were made prior to the May 19 election to California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, a political action committee in Sacramento. That group then forwarded campaign funds to a local affiliated committee.

 

The Los Angeles-based PAC was required by campaign laws only to identify the state charter group as the source of the funding, not the individual donors.

 

As a result, the donors remained anonymous in Los Angeles campaign filings. In September, the state charter group filed a required state report listing all its contributors.

 

While the practice appears to be within the law, state campaign regulators said they are concerned about how the contributions remained unreported for so long.

 

A spokesman for the Charter Association said it turns to outside backers because it would otherwise be outspent by the teachers union. In fact, the CCSA spent $2.7 million, compared to the union’s $1.6 million. So, follow the logic: funding provided from the salaries of teachers is comparable to funding from billionaires like the Waltons, Broad, and Bloomberg.

It’s sad that billionaires have no way to make their voices heard. So they feel compelled to try to buy the school board because they know more than the teachers who work there.

 

 

Among the charter donors not disclosed in L.A. filings was Bloomberg, who gave $350,000 in 2015. Bloomberg already had contributed $250,000 in 2014, an amount that was disclosed prior to the election because the funds arrived before the end of 2014.

 

Other donors from 2015 who were disclosed after the election included:

 

• Gap clothing co-founder Doris Fisher ($750,000). The longtime charter supporter also gave $550,000 in 2014.

 

• Wal-Mart Corp. heirs Carrie W. Penner ($150,000) and Jim Walton ($225,000). The two also gave a combined $620,000 in 2014.

 

• Grower Barbara Grimm ($500,000), owner of one of California’s largest farming operations, who started a charter school near Bakersfield. Grimm also gave $586,400 in 2014.

 

• Emerson Collective ($150,000), a corporation under the control of Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, which supports charitable and political causes.

 

• Investor John H. Scully ($100,000). He and his wife also gave $400,000 in 2014.

 

• Philanthropist Eli Broad ($50,000). He also gave $305,000 to the state charter PAC in 2014.

 

 

The issue of so-called “dark money” has touched Broad and the Fisher family before. In the 2012 election, the Fishers gave $9 million and Broad, $1 million, to groups that concealed the sources of these donations. The money was used to oppose a tax increase to fund education and in support of a ballot measure to limit union participation in political campaigns. The tax increase passed, the anti-union measure failed and the dark money maneuvering led to fines for some of the participants, although not the donors.

 

As in this year’s elections, the mega-donors have not always carried the day. In the 2013 elections, candidates backed by wealthy donors lost two of three contests, including one in which incumbent Steve Zimmer prevailed. He used the identity of the donors as an effective counterpunch to their resources.

 

“They’re truly funded by and accountable to the 1%,” Zimmer said of the charter advocacy group.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Politics, Privatization
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