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New York: Will Democrats in State Senate Sell Out to Hedge Fund Billionaires?

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2020 //
11

The New York Daily News reports that lobbyists for billionaires who support charter schools had a cozy meeting with Democrats in the State Senate. 

Even though pro-public education progressives swept control of the State Senate away from the charter-crazy Republicans in the State Senate, the lobbyists know that money is still green, no matter who is in power.

Jeffrey Cook-McCormac, a lobbyist working under Dan Loeb, one of the state’s most prolific political bundlers and once a pariah among Dems for racist comments made about now-Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers), can be heard on the tape praising Democrats for not taking steps to scale back charters.

“I just want to say that I think a lot of people are breathing a sigh of relief on how you governed in your first few months in the majority,” Cook-McCormac told an audience that included Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris (D-Queens) as well as Sens. Brian Benjamin (D-Manhattan) and Jim Gaughran (D-Long Island)…

The comments came in the wake of a legislative session in which Dems, in control of both chambers for the first time in years, were bolstered by a slate of progressive members who are either openly wary of charters or the moneyed interests behind them….

Cook-McCormac’s presence at the Nov. 4 fundraiser at the swanky Midtown outpost Aquavit was especially surprising to some Dems considering his boss’ past comments about Stewart-Cousins.

In 2017, Loeb came under fire for a Facebook post saying that the Senate Democratic Leader had done “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”

Lawmakers, including Benjamin, staged protests outside of Success Academy charter schools at the time, calling for the billionaire founder of the Third Point hedge fund to be fired from his position as chairman of the board for the city’s largest charter-school operator. Loeb later apologized.

While Dems accepting cash from charter proponents isn’t new, some were stunned by the chumminess on display.

So, to be clear, billionaire Dan Loeb implies that State Senator Stewart-Cousins–now the majority leader– is worse than the Ku Klux Klan.

But that is no reason not to take Loeb’s money, right?

 
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, New York, Privatization

My Book Tour Dates for SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2020 //
27

This is the current (and evolving) list of my speaking engagements in connection with the publication of my new book: SLAYING GOLIATH: THE PASSIONATE RESISTANCE TO PRIVATIZATION AND THE FIGHT TO SAVE AMERICA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

I am trying not to wear myself out. Ten years ago, I hopped from city to city like a mountain goat.

But now I am 81 years old, and my knees are worn out. I have to pace myself.

Come out and say hello if you are in one of these cities.

SLAYING GOLIATH is a pro-public education, pro-teacher, pro-social justice, pro-common-good book. It is a book meant to give hope and encouragement to those who stand up to the billionaires and fight the status quo of choice and high-stakes testing. It contains inspiring stories of parents, students, teachers, and civil rights activists who took action against the powerful and won. At some of these events, the bookstore charges a modest fee to cover its expenses. Most are free.

Screen Shot 2020-01-11 at 10.07.57 PMScreen Shot 2020-01-11 at 10.08.06 PM

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Testing, Vouchers

Waltons and Broad Fund a “Grassroots Parents’” Group

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2020 //
13

If you believe that any genuine parent organization is funded by the Waltons, Eli Broad, and the City Fund (which was funded by the Reed Hastings, John Arnold, and other billionaires), please contact me at once, as I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I can sell you for a reasonable fee. Really! I’ll even print up a gen-u-wine bill of sale!

One of the leaders of the National Parents Union, Keri Rodrigues, runs the Massachusetts Parents Union, which was also bankrolled by the Waltons. Her group was one of the prominent voices demanding more charters in a state referendum in 2016, which was overwhelmingly defeated. The Waltons invested a few million in that referendum. Keri’s MPU reported revenues of $957,683 in 2018, half from the Waltons. Her salary at MPU, that grassroots parent group, is $172,500, according to Dark Money specialist Maurice Cunningham, a political science professor at U Mass. Just an average parent.

Many grassroots parents groups belong to the Network for Public Education. None of them have bank accounts with six figures or nearly seven figures. All are powered by volunteers.

New Orleans is an apt place for the big launch of NPU. It is the first (and thus far the only) school district that has eliminated all public schools and the teachers’ union. According to the latest reports, 49% of its highly segregated schools received a D or an F from the state. The selection of NOLA suggests the goal of this faux “parent union”: the elimination of public schools.

Here is an announcement of the organizing event of the new Walton-funded NPU:

 

NPU is launching on the streets of New Orleans (1/16-/18) with delegates from all 50 states with parents of color, low-income parents, special needs parents, single moms and dads, grandparents, formerly incarcerated parents, and parents in recovery. Led by Alma Marquez and Keri Rodrigues, National Parents Union co-founders, Ilyasah Shabazz, Community Organizer and daughter of Malcolm X and Sharif El Mekki, Black Male Educators for Social Justice. 

 

Keri is an education activist (and a Democrat) who is launching a new organization, the National Parents Union, which will heed the call to organize otherwise independent and uncoordinated parent organizing efforts into a national voice and movement to ensure teacher unions no longer have a stranglehold on the education system in America. She’s a former labor activist who plans to use the tactics that make unions so powerful and apply them to this movement led by parents.

 

MEDIA ADVISORY 
FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY

Contact: NPU@mercuryllc.com 

 

THE REVOLUTION IS COMING… NATIONAL PARENTS UNION TO OFFICIALLY LAUNCH AT PARENT POWER 2020 IN NEW ORLEANS 

Kick-off summit will bring parent activists and organizations to New Orleans to define a national K-12 agenda and make education equity a reality for all children 

 

New Orleans, LA – The National Parents Union (NPU), an intersectional, parent-led organization, will hold its inaugural summit in New Orleans to advance education reform and define a new K-12 national agenda. 

Parent Power 2020 (January 16-18) will bring over 100 delegates and organizations from all 50 states for a series of skills-building workshops, campaign clinics and activations designed to provide parents with the tools and infrastructure to effect change in their own communities and exert greater influence on the national conservation around education reform.  Parent Power 2020 will feature several notable speakers, including keynotes from journalist and activist Felipe Luciano, and author and activistIlyasah Shabazz, the daughter of the late Malcom X. 

The summit will also include a Jazz Funeral through the French Quarter in New Orleans on January 17, to officially bury the status quo that has been plaguing education in America for decades and commemorate the dawn of a new day in our schools.

The convening will conclude with a vote and ratification of NPU’s Statement of Values that lays out the goals and objectives of parent activists ahead of the 2020 Presidential election. At the conclusion of the summit, delegates will vote in a straw poll assessing the education proposals and policies of the 2020 Presidential Candidates. 

 

Parent Power 2020 is open to press. Please contact Dan Bank npu@mercuryllc.com to register for credentials.    

 

Click here to learn more about NPU’s mission. 

                          

WHO: 

Featured speakers at Parent Power 2020 will include: 

·        Alma Marquez and Keri Rodrigues, National Parents Union co-founders

·        Ilyasah Shabazz, Community Organizer and daughter of Malcolm X

·        Antonio Villaraigosa, Former Mayor of Los Angeles 

·        Felipe Luciano, The Young Lords 

·        Colleen Cook, National Coalition for Public School Options 

·        Gerard Robinson, Center for Advancing Opportunity  

·        Sharif El Mekki, Black Male Educators for Social Justice 

 

WHEN: 

Parent Power 2020

January 16 –January 18, 2020

 

Jazz Funeral 

Friday, January 17

6:30pm-7:00pm local time

Additional details will be provided 

 

WHERE:

Parent Power 2020 will be held in New Orleans. The exact location will be shared during the registration process. 

 

About National Parents Union:

The National Parents Union is a network of parent organizations and grassroots activists across the country committed to improving the quality of life for children and families in the United States. NPU unites these organizations behind a common set of principles that put children and families at the center of education politics and policy. With delegates representing each of the 50 states, NPU disrupts the traditional role of parent voice in policy spaces and develops a new narrative that is inclusive of families from a wide variety of intersectional perspectives.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Walton Foundation

Massachusetts: A Parent Thanks a State Official Who Exposed Dark Money

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2020 //
18

One of the very exciting episodes in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH describes the struggle in Massachusetts  surrounding a 2016 referendum to expand the number of charter schools in the state. The referendum was called Question 2. Yes on 2 received funding from billionaires (the Waltons and Bloomberg), DFER (hedge fund managers), and out-of-state groups whose donors were unknown. The last group is called “Dark Money” because it hides the names of the donors.

On February 26, I will be at the First UU Church in Cambridge at an event sponsored by Citizens for Public Schools, joined in conversation with two of the prominent figures in that campaign, Barbara Madeloni (who was president of the Massachusetts Teachers Union) and Maurice Cunningham (a professor of political science at the U of Mass whose blogs reported on Dark Money in the campaign),

The groups that fought Question 2 were teachers’ unions, civil rights groups, and local school boards.

The referendum was overwhelmingly defeated.

After the election, the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance investigated the funding of the campaigns. It found that one of the funders of the “Yes on 2” side was a Dark Money front based in New York City. It required the group to disclose the names of its donors and fined the group nearly $500,000, which cleaned out its bank account. Not long after, the Dark Money Group (which had also stacked the deck in New York State without being exposed) collapsed and closed its doors.

Recently, the director of this state office retired, and parents thanked him for upholding the integrity of state elections.

This letter to the editor by a parent activist appeared in the Boston Globe.

 

“Watchdogs have state’s outgoing campaign finance chief to thank
 

What a pleasure to read Matt Stout’s folksy portrait of Michael Sullivan, who retired last month as director of the Office of Campaign and Political Finance (“A career spent helping people ‘do things right,’ ” Business, Dec. 25). I met Sullivan at a “hackathon” sponsored by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. The center needed volunteers to test computer software. We got pizza, and a little orientation from the state’s campaign finance chief, who trained neophytes to navigate Office of Campaign and Political Finance databases.

Behind the scenes, Sullivan’s staff investigated an unusual pattern of financial transactions. They discovered that Families for Excellent Schools – Advocacy Inc. of New York illegally solicited, received, and funneled funds to the Great Schools Massachusetts ballot question committee to influence the 2016 Massachusetts election and increase charter school market share. Sullivan skillfully negotiated a six-figure fine.

Thanks to Sullivan, citizens can comb campaign finance data for evidence of expenditures that reveal fake-news media events. Remember those rallies with people wearing blue T-shirts demanding “Great Schools Now”? It turns out Great Schools Massachusetts paid for the T-shirts and had people show up at events to give the illusion of massive dissatisfaction with our public schools.

If only I had a “Great Schools Now” campaign T-shirt, I would give it to Sullivan in gratitude for providing me a political education I never received in school.

Peggy A. Wiesenberg

Boston

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization, Scandal

Mike Bloomberg Announces Centerpiece of His Education Agenda: Charter Schools Galore!

By dianeravitch
January 7, 2020 //
25

It was a curious fact that when billionaire Michael Bloomberg was mayor of New York City for 12 years, he had complete control of the public schools yet did not have any fresh ideas about how to improve them.

This should not be surprising, because he was never an educator. He hired another non-educator–Joel Klein–to be his chancellor. The two of them relied heavily on McKinsey and other consultants to guide them. They hired lots of MBAs to staff top  positions. They hoped to adopt a corporate style of organization, which made sense because they had low regard for actual educators.

He adopted every aspect of No Child Left Behind: high-stakes testing, closing schools, firing teachers and principals. He loved opening small schools, and when they failed, he reopened them with a new name so they could start over.

New York City was a faithful replication of NCLB, with punishments and rewards leading the way.

His main idea was to hand schools over to private charter operators, assuming that they would have better ideas about how to run schools than he did.

Some of the charter operators made a point of excluding low-performing students, which artificially boosted their test scores.

Some closed their enrollments in the fourth grade, so they would not have to take in new students after that point.

Some kicked out kids who were in need of special services.

Bloomberg’s favorite charter chain was Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy, which used all of these tricks to get astonishingly high test scores.

Bloomberg was obsessed with data and test scores. He even adopted Jeb Bush’s policy of letter grades for schools (which his successor Bill DeBlasio abolished).

The New York City charter industry practiced all the tricks of raising test scores by manipulating the student population.

In addition, the charter sector mastered the ability to organize mass rallies, flooding legislative halls with students and parents, pleading for more funding for new charters (which they could not attend since they were already enrolled in charters).

So pleased was Bloomberg with his charter policy that it is now the centerpiece of his national education agenda.

He doesn’t care about the nearly 90% of kids who are enrolled in public schools.

He believes in privatization.

If elected, he could retain Betsy DeVos as his Secretary of Education and maintain continuity with Trump’s education agenda.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), New York City, Privatization, Testing

Jan Resseger: Eli Broad and the $100 Million He Paid to Re-Brand His Faux-Leadership Center

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2020 //
16

Jan Resseger reviews the story of Eli Broad and his leadership program, whose graduates have brought top-down management ideas and disruption wherever they go.

To keep the program alive, despite its long history of failure, Broad gave Yale University $100 million.

The Broad Leadership Institute is accredited (I have repeatedly called in unaccredited, but a reader pointed out to me that it was accredited in 2015). The fact that it is accredited is surprising, since I can’t find any evidence on the website of a faculty, a library, or any of the regular trappings of a genuine postgraduate program. Its accreditation is as bizarre as that of Relay “Graduate School of Education,” which has no one on its “faculty” with an earned doctorate (not yet, anyway), no library, no courses in the history or sociology or economics of education, no studies in child or adolescent psychology, no scholars or researchers.

Resseger writes:

The editors of PR Watch at the Center for Media and Democracy explain the curriculum of Broad’s Superintendent’s Academy and Urban Residency Program: “The Broad training curriculum for education minimizes subject areas like core education (10% of curriculum time). Instead it emphasizes ‘reform priorities’ (40%), ‘reform accelerators’ (30%), and systems-level management (nearly 20%). Training includes time with think tanks, businesses, and charter network administrators. Training does not prioritize classroom teachers, public school principals, or people knowledgeable about delivery of public education.”

LA Times education reporter, Howard Blume covered Eli Broad’s recent $100 million gift to Yale and the pending move of the Broad Center from California to New Haven: “The Broad Center, which has attracted praise and suspicion for its training of school district leaders, will move from Los Angeles to Yale University, along with a $100-million gift provided by founder Eli Broad… The donation is the largest ever for the Yale School of Management (SOM) and will help fund a master’s program for public education leaders and advanced leadership training for top school system executives—efforts that had been undertaken by the center in Los Angeles…. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation has been the primary funder of the Broad Center, and in most years is the only one according to the center. The foundation has contributed $143.5 million to the center since 2001. The Broad Center’s budget for 2019 is $15 million.”

The Broad Center is a vanity projects, in most years wholly funded by one man. Now his vanity project will come with a Yale diploma.

Resseger reviews her clippings. It is one story after another of failure.

The song in “Fiddler on the Roof” says “When You’re Rich, They Think You Really Know.” Broad has demonstrated that he knows nothing about how to reform or fix schools. But because he is really rich, a billionaire, he can buy respectability for his failed management training program.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Failure

John Thompson: Why Is Tulsa in Crisis?

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2020 //
11

John Thompson is a historian and a retired teacher, who blogs often, here and on other blogs. He has keen insight into what’s happening in Oklahoma.

He writes:

Since 2015, the Tulsa Public Schools have cut $22 million from its budget, even dipping into its reserve fund to balance the books. Now it must cut another $20 million.

Given the huge support for the TPS by local and national edu-philanthropists, patrons should ask why it faces such a crisis, even after the state has started to restore funding. Despite the assistance of the outcome-driven Billionaires Boys Club, the TPS has lost 5,000 students, especially to the suburbs and online charters. But that raises the question of why Chief for Change Superintendent Deborah Gist and her staff of Broad Academy administrators have produced such awful outcomes.

https://www.gkff.org/what-we-do/parent-engagement-early-education/prek-12-education/

After a series of community meeting, Gist recommended school closures designed to save $2 to 3 million. Gist also seeks $3 million in saving by increasing class sizes. Then, Gist proposed $13 to 14 million in cuts to district office administrators.

It’s great that most of the burden will be carried by the central office. But that raises the question why the district has such a well-funded administration.

Even though the Oklahoma press wouldn’t dare ask what the corporate reform-subsidized administration has accomplished, Tulsans should ask why the district in near the nation’s bottom in student performance from 3rd to 8th grades. Why does it have more emergency certified and inexperienced teachers than other districts after being awarded Gates Foundation “teacher quality” grants?

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/tulsa-public-schools-patrons-weigh-in-on-million-budget-cut/article_fecdcb9d-f914-578c-913a-433ecb90d7b7.html

Participants in the recent community engagement process “were most willing to make budget reductions related to student transportation and bell times, teacher leadership opportunities, building utilization and district office services.” Perhaps as a repudiation of the Gates Foundation’s experiment, cutting teacher coaches was the recommendation that received the most votes. Tulsans were most protective of teacher pay, class sizes, and social-emotional learning and behavioral supports.

The fear is that closures and increased class sizes will result in more patrons leaving the district. Community participants also expressed concerns that closures will lead to more charter schools. The Tulsa World’s report on community meetings noted the worries of a parent, Wanda Coggburn:

Many shared Coggburn’s suspicion of a charter school taking over Jones or the other targeted elementary school buildings. But Gist said the needs of the six TPS-sponsored charter schools did not factor into the recommendation to close the schools.

The World also reported the fears of parents with disabilities. The parents of a child who has cerebral palsy and a developmental delay that causes behavioral issues say he was moved from a special education to a general education class against their wishes, and “they worry that adding more students would hinder his progress even further.”

Betty Casey of TulsaKids also describes the protests of parents whose deaf children attend Wright Elementary, which the superintendent wants to close. She talked with a mom who said of Wright:

She fears that it will be given to Collegiate Hall Academy, a charter school which currently shares space with Marshall Elementary. She wants her child to continue at Wright, not a charter school. She pointed out that Marshall has two gyms and a swimming pool currently not being used that could be put to use by public school students. Why not close College Bound Academy and put those students in Wright and Marshall? Closing a small charter school without a building would be much less disruptive.

https://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/education/tulsa-s-jones-elementary-school-was-closed-once-before-and/article_2a08579f-2236-5bb8-b2a5-feb9db156682.html
https://www.tulsakids.com/where-does-tps-find-20-million/

Why would patrons have such fears? Maybe it’s because Gist responded to a question about a closed building saying “she’s confident the growing TPS-sponsored charter schools are interested in the potential space and are closely watching this process.”

I previously said that the traditional press hasn’t dared to investigate the results of corporate reform in Tulsa. However, Ms. Casey’s TulsaKids is a parents’ magazine that asks the questions that journalists have ducked. She recently wrote:

Why is it that when public schools are starved, and resources are stretched to the breaking point, that TPS is supporting a parallel school system of charters that drain more resources from the public schools? … The savings in closing schools is a drop in the bucket, but once the school is closed, it’s very difficult to go backward. Didn’t the superintendent say she was going to try to draw families back to TPS? Where will those returning families put their children? If Wright becomes a College Bound Charter, the families who wish to remain at a neighborhood school will have only one “choice” of a charter school.

Casey further explains:

I’m glad that Superintendent Gist has vowed to interview all the families leaving TPS. But, it seems a little late to wonder why people are leaving as they walk out the door. Why not work to create public schools that families love right now? …

Maybe it’s time to look at the “reforms” being implemented by the superintendent, and prior to that, Dr. Ballard’s acceptance of Gate’s Foundation money (MAP testing), and admit that those changes aren’t working for our kids, and families are leaving as a result.

https://www.tulsakids.com/where-does-tps-find-20-million/

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Oklahoma, Privatization, Tulsa

Angie Sullivan Tells Every Nevada Legislator to Read SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
9

Angie Sullivan teaches in a Title 1 elementary school in Carson County, Nevada. She teaches the children who were left behind.

She sent this post to every legislator in Nevada:

A small group of vocal teachers, parents, and activists have been publicly concerned about national public school privatization for two decades.  
 
Diane Ravitch is the leader of that pack.  
 
Her new book is coming out soon.  
 
Her last books included characters who are national culprits in destroying American Public Schools.  Some have come from my state of Nevada.  
 
Reform was meant to change a system of education that needed to change.  Still needs change. Admittedly we need to improve.  No one argues against that.  Teachers have always been willing to improve.  
 
This reform was not ever meant to improve.  
 
Change came.   The wrong kind.  
 
Big bad horrific and public school destroying change came.   
 
It was bad change bought by corporations who do not love children, will not love children, and seek money even if harm comes to children. 
 
Wrecking ball.  
 
National level well funded and crushing. 
 
Reformers will not use the data – they supposedly worshipped – to admit – they were wrong. 
 
Devastatingly wrong. 
 
Wrong in ways that were really destructive over two generations.   Destroying the central fabric of America – attacking our local public schools.  Kids were warehoused in experiments.  Kids without teachers.   Kids hooked up to innovations that made money but did not educated.  
Billions spent on reforms:  disruption, return on investment, testing, take over, turnaround, triggering, attacking teachers, standardization, score chasing has barely moved American Students on the NAEP Assessments.  
 
The data is back. 
Business reformers failed.   Return on investment was zero.  
 
Reform has been successful at systematically privatizing huge amounts of education cash.  It has segregated.  It has devastated.  It has destroyed public school communities.  And disenfranchised students are further behind than ever before. 
 
The teachers were crushed and millions left. 
 
This expensive business-type reform did not improve education.  
 
Unfortunately, the folks driving reform were not teachers – nor were they interested in authentic education.   Billionaires who were successful in business took over.  They bought the top levels of government and spread cash from the top down.  Both parties.   Anyone with power.   And policy makers and leadership sold out hard. Money taken from public schools to be spent on scams and fads. 
Billions wasted.   
 
Money and people who chase dollars should never be in charge of education policy.  Neoliberals and corporations who hide from liability will never create the synergy, caring, and community building that teachers can do in a school building. 
 
Now the billionaires know – public school teachers will fight.  Activists will engage.  Those who love children will activate. 
 
Take that Goliath.
 
A band of loud people who care – will fight with any small stone we can find. 
We are not scared – because we are right.  
 
Time for policy makers and leadership to buy a book.  
 
O God hear the words of my mouth – hold us in Your Hand because we are small against those seeking to harm kids.  
 
The Teacher,
Angie Sullivan. 

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Nevada, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Jennifer Berkshire: The Democratic Candidates and Their School Choice Problem

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2020 //
24

Jennifer Berkshire writes in The Nation about the quandary of Democratic candidates. For years, charter schools had bipartisan support. Clinton and Obama both supported charter schools, and joined with Republicans to expand the federal Charter Schools Program, which is now the single biggest source of funding for charter schools at $440 million annually (the second biggest source is the Walton Family Foundation).

Then came the Trump administration and Betsy DeVos, with their full-throated advocacy for school choice, including vouchers. In red states like Ohio, voucher programs are exploding, and Democrats are pushing back against school choice. They are also pushing back against charter schools, as we saw in Kentucky and Virginia, where pro-public education governors were elected.

Meanwhile, the current crop of Democratic candidates are weaving and bobbing. Sanders and Warren have come out against charter schools and privatization. Other candidates are trying to thread the needle, not fully rejecting charter schools, but opposing “for-profit” charter schools (which are legal only in Arizona, but are found in almost every state with charters that are managed by for-profit EMO managers).

Berkshire begins:

When seven of the Democratic presidential candidates descended on Pittsburgh recently for a day-long forum on public education, one of Pennsylvania’s unlikeliest new political stars was on hand to greet them. Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks, a black single mom from North Philly, won an at-large seat on the Philadelphia City Council this fall, stunning the political establishment. At the heart of Brooks’s insurgent campaign was her resistance to Philadelphia’s two-decade-long experiment with school privatization, including the explosion of charter schools and the mass closure of neighborhood schools. “If we as community members don’t commit to this public institution that we fought so hard for generations ago, we’re going to lose control of it,” says Brooks.

Her message resonated with Philly’s voters, and thrilled the audience of teachers and activists who were on hand in Pittsburgh to hear a long list of presidential hopefuls weigh in on the future of the country’s schools. But just outside of the convention center, on a rain-slicked plaza, the resistance to the Democrats’ leftward swing on education was on vivid display. Over 100 charter school parents, part of the same school choice network that disrupted an Elizabeth Warren campaign event last month, came armed with a message of their own: Black Democrats support charter schools.

Welcome to the Democrats’ school choice wars. For the last three decades, charter schools have attracted bipartisan love, amassing an unlikely—and unwieldy—amalgam of supporters along the way: GOP free marketeers, civil rights advocates, ‘third way’ Democrats, and hedge fund billionaires. But in an era of fierce political partisanship, that coalition is now unraveling.

Progressive Democrats recognize that charters are a step towards vouchers and are fully a part of the DeVos crusade to eliminate public schools. We will watch to see what happens to the other candidates.

And we will also watch as DeVos hands out yet another $440 million to corporate charter chains, charter advocacy organizations, and even to states that don’t want the money (see New Hampshire and Michigan, both of which said they did not want more money for charter schools).

We now know that the core constituency for charters and vouchers are Wall Street financiers, hedge fund managers, billionaires, libertarians, right-wingers, ALEC, and the far-right. Where do Democrats fit into this coalition?

 

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Trump, Unions, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Harold Meyerson: Bloomberg as “the Manchurian Candidate”

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2020 //
10

Harold Meyerson adds a few reasons to believe that Michael Bloomberg is not the right candidate to beat Trump:

ON TAP Today from the American Prospect

January 2, 2020

Meyerson on TAP

Bloomberg: The Manchurian Candidate. If there’s anyone out there who believes Michael Bloomberg would be a strong candidate to unseat Donald Trump, a very well-documented story in today’s Washington Post should tank any such delusions. Some of the particular weaknesses that Post reporter Michael Kranish documents have been in plain view for some time, while others are getting their first exposure, but no one has assembled them into a coherent narrative comparable to Kranish’s.

In case you didn’t know, Bloomberg is up to his neck in business relations with China and the Chinese government. His company has had offices in Beijing for the past 25 years and has made a tidy sum selling its computers and financial information to the nation’s multitude of capitalists and to its Leninist-capitalist government. Two years ago, the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Bond Index elected to include Chinese government bonds in its listings, enabling Western investors to fund the Chinese government’s myriad endeavors. Kranish reports that financial experts believe that $150 billion in such investments will flow to China in the next couple of years.

 

Also in 2018, Bloomberg initiated the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, his very own Asian-oriented Davos, which held its meeting that year in Singapore, and its 2019 confab in Beijing.

 

Not surprisingly, seldom is heard a discouraging word from Bloomberg about the Chinese government. One searches in vain for his criticisms of the government’s mass incarceration of the Uighurs or its threats to Hong Kong. On the contrary, he told a television audience that Chinese President Xi Jinping “is not a dictator.”

In short, Bloomberg is the man who opened the door to major American investments in the Chinese government. Can I see the hands of those who think this will help him if (as, happily, will not happen) he’s the designated Democrat to take on Trump? ~ HAROLD MEYERSON
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael
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