Archives for category: Billionaires
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The New York Times Magazine Interviews Melinda Gates

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2019 //
104

I wish that the New York Times were not behind a paywall. I wish you could read this article in full. It is an interview with Melinda Gates.

You would get a sense of a very rich and very privileged woman who doesn’t realize how out of touch she is with the lives of ordinary people.

The interviewer wants to know how she feels about her privilege, given the rise of tide of anger against elites and the super-rich.

Here are a few snippets:

One of the recurring criticisms of large-scale philanthropists is that they aren’t interested in any redress of the economic systems that create inequality. But in order to rectify inequalities, doesn’t a radical rethinking need to happen? Bill and I are both on the record saying that we believe in more progressive taxes. We believe in an estate tax. We don’t believe in enormous inherited wealth.  

There are certain places where Bill and I sit where that is not a popular idea. Bill will be the first person to tell you, and Warren Buffett will be the second, that they could not have done what they did without having grown up in the United States, benefiting from the United States education system, benefiting from the infrastructure that exists here to build a business. If they had grown up in — pick your favorite place — Senegal, they couldn’t have started their businesses. There’s no way. So they have benefited. But we do need to think about how we right some of these inequities. How do we open our networks of power for women and people of color? We have to think about our privilege. I have to think about my privilege every day.

Yet, they choose to live in the lowest-taxed state in the nation, where there is no income tax and no corporate tax. With all of Gates’ power and influence, he has not lobbied the Washington State legislature to pass a progressive income tax. The schools of Washington State have been underfunded for years, and it took a long-running court case to get the legislature to allocate more money to them. Meanwhile, Bill used his influence to fight for a charter school law, enabling about 3,500 students to attend charter schools in a state with a student enrollment of one million.  Warren Buffett and Bill Gates had very different experiences in “the United States education system.” Bill went to private school in Seattle, with small classes, lavish facilities, and experienced teachers; his own children attended the same elite private school. Warren Buffett went to public school in Omaha, sent his own children to public school in Omaha, and they sent their children to public school.

What’s a recent epiphany you’ve had about your privilege? That it’s not enough to read about it. You have to be in the community with people who don’t look like you. When I read about a shooting, maybe in the south side of Seattle, I’m not living the experience. Whereas if I have a friend who’s a person of color, they most likely are living that experience or know somebody who was part of that community. And so my youngest daughter and I — she has a lot of friends whom I’m meeting, and they’re of very mixed races, I love that — have this motto that we go by: Every single person who walks through our door should feel comfortable in our house, despite how large it is and that it has nice art. And, believe me, there are people who show up at my front door who are not that comfortable. So sometimes that means sitting down inside the front door with our dog — and I’m in my yoga pants, no makeup on — and petting the dog until they’re comfortable being there. And only if we’ve made them comfortable can we be in real community. I have to do more to break down those barriers. It is very hard for almost anybody to show up at my front door….

To get back to philanthropy: What about the notion that the foundation’s work on an issue like public education is inherently antidemocratic? You’ve spent money in that area in a way that maybe seems like it’s crowding out people’s actual wants in that area. What’s your counter to that criticism? Bill and I always go back to “What is philanthropy’s role?” It is to be catalytic. It’s to try and put new ideas forward and test them and see if they work. If you can convince government to scale up, that is how you have success. But philanthropic dollars are a tiny slice of the United States education budget. Even if we put a billion dollars in the State of California, that’s not going to do that much. So we experiment with things. (Including funding small-population schools, bonuses for high-performing teachers and supporting the development and implementation of the Common Core educational standards.)

 If we had been successful, David, you’d see a lot more charter schools. I’d love to see 20 percent charter schools in every state. But we haven’t been successful. I’d love to say we had outsize influence. We don’t.

Certainly you have more influence than, say, a group of parents. Not necessarily. I went and met with a group of three dozen parents in Memphis. We thought we had a good idea for them. They were having none of it. So we didn’t move forward. A group of parents, a group of teachers, they can have a very large influence.

Well, Melinda is wrong about the influence of the foundation and the Gates’. After all, they singlehandedly (or four-handedly) funded the Common Core standards and paid out millions to every organization they could think of advocate for them. More than anyone else, the Gates Foundation imposed the Common Core standards on the nation, and they flopped by any measure one could think of. All of their “experiments” on the American educational system have failed. But she is right that the charter movement has stalled. In some states where the Gates’ have been most active, only 3-5% of the students are in charter schools. Now that scandals appear daily in the charter industry, this investment is blowing up too. And as she said, “a group of parents, a group of teachers, they can have a very large influence.” Yup. Parents and teachers can beat big money. They can beat the Gates’ money and protect their public schools from being one of Bill & Melinda’s “experiments.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Jeff Bryant: Stop Federal Funding of Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2019 //
8

 

 

Jeff Bryant was co-author of the Report by the Network for Public Education’s on waste, fraud, and abuse in the $440 million federal Charter Schools Program. It is titled “Asleep At the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride.”

The report found that nearly $1 billion had been wasted in the past 25 years on charter schools that never opened or closed soon after opening.

Jeff summarized the report in this article, which has been widely reprinted in regional newspapers.

The article is a condensation of one that Jeff wrote in “The Progressive.”

“In California, the state with the most charter schools, between 2004 and 2014, 306 schools that received direct or indirect federal funding closed or never opened, 111 closed within a year, and 75 never opened at all — a 39 percent failure rate. The cost to taxpayers was more than $108 million.

“Of the charter schools in Michigan that received federal money, at least 27 never opened. Many more opened and quickly closed, and of the schools that managed to stay open, we found troubling results, including a grant recipient that received $110,000 in federal funds but is actually a Baptist Church.

“In Idaho, federal grants totaling more than $21.6 million included more than $2.3 million going to schools that never opened or closed after brief periods of service. A state commission imposed a range of academic sanctions on 13 of the 25 charter schools up for renewal in the state. Of those 13 schools, nine had received federal grants.

“At the root of these problems is the slipshod process used by the Department of Education to review charter school grant applications. We often found contradictions between the information provided by applicants and publicly available data. Numerous applications cherry-picked or massaged achievement and/or demographic data that reviewers never bothered to fact-check.”

Public money must be accompanied by public accountability. In the federal Charter Schools Program, $4 Billion has been handed out with no accountability. It’s just free money for entrepreneurs, for-profit management organizations, and grifters.

This program must be eliminated. Let the Waltons and the Koch brothers and John Arnold and Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates and other billionaires pay for their own hobby.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Fraud, Privatization

Bombshell Report About Copycat Legislation Written by ALEC but Adopted by Your State

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
30

Democracy is under attack, not only in D.C., but in the state capitols.

To understand just how serious this attack is, how insidious it is, how well-funded it is, please open the link.

This new USA Today/Arizona Republic/Center for Public Integrity in-depth investigation is a bombshell report on the thousands of “copy-and-paste bills” introduced and passed in state legislatures which purport to represent local interests but instead further a corporate or industry agenda. Among the goals: passing ESA Vouchers that siphon public funds from public education and redirect them to private, religious and home schooling.

ALEC and corporate America are churning out legislation that is introduced in your state under false pretenses as “reform.” Every one of these bills is meant to protect corporations and profiteers, whether in health care or any other industry.

You may have noticed a sudden mushrooming of voucher legislation in state after state. It was not written by your legislators. It was written by the rightwing corporate funded American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC.

Not only is ALEC funded by corporations, it is funded by the DeVos family and the Koch brothers.

Arizona SOS beat them last fall by fighting for a referendum on vouchers. ALEC and the Koch brothers lost 65-35. The corporate mobsters hate refunds. They prefer to buy legislators, which is easier and cheaper.

There is quite a lot of fascinating material about the hoaxing of the public.

Here is the education piece:

“For Susan Edwards, it seemed like a godsend when Arizona lawmakers introduced a bill to create a new kind of school voucher for students with disabilities.

“With the money – funded by dollars taken from a recipient’s local district school – the mother of two children on the autism spectrum could send her kids to a private school where they would receive specialized attention they wouldn’t get elsewhere.

“With a sympathetic group of students as the face of the legislation, Democrats and Republicans rallied behind the 2011 bill which borrowed language from the Goldwater Institute, ALEC, and American Federation for Children, the pro-school choice group founded by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

“Edwards’ opinion of the program, however, changed drastically as legislators later introduced bill after bill to give vouchers to more students, culminating in lawmakers approving them for all students.

“None of those bills, however, guaranteed Edwards’ sons and others with disabilities could keep their vouchers as more students were added. She didn’t know it at the time, but lawmakers were drawing their ideas from model  legislation.

“Edwards said  she realized in retrospect that students with disabilities were used as a Trojan horse to put on the legislative agenda a fringe idea that was part of a much bigger campaign. In the years that followed, 19 other states debated 93 nearly identical proposals based on model legislation. They became law in Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina and Tennessee.

“Every single, little  expansion, if you look at who’s behind it, it is the people that want to get that door kicked open for private religious education,” Edwards said. ”All we (families with disabled students) are was the way for them to crack open the door.”

“Riches, Goldwater’s CEO, said starting the Empowerment Scholarship Account voucher program with a small group of students and expanding it was the best approach.

“When you are talking about a big idea, a new idea, usually the best way of approaching it is to wade into it and demonstrate it can work on a smaller level and then grow it from there,” Riches said.

“The groups behind Arizona’s move toward universal vouchers, however, were shown in indisputable terms that the public opposed their ideas.

“On Election Day 2018, Arizona voters rejected universal vouchers by a 65-35 margin.

“It was only the most recent example of model legislation that didn’t reflect the will of voters, USA TODAY/Arizona Republic found.

“Model-legislation factories have increasingly proposed what are known as “preemption” bills. These laws, in effect, allow state legislators to dictate to city councils and county governing boards what they can and cannot do within their jurisdiction—including preventing them from raising the minimum wage, banning plastic grocery bags, and destroying guns.  

“USA TODAY’s algorithm found more than 100 such bills had been introduced on an expanding array of topics.

“Kansas stopped local efforts to require restaurants to list calories on their menus.

“Arizona and New Hampshire prevented local regulations on home rentals. Airbnb has lobbied against home-sharing restrictions, often with the Goldwater Institute’s assistance.

“One model pushed by ALEC and the Goldwater Institute prohibits local jurisdictions from creating occupational licensing requirements. It reflects conservatives’ and libertarians’ belief that job licensing stifles competition and hurts the economy, and should only be required when it involves health and safety.”

At least 20 states have enacted voucher legislation, most using the ALEC model. Only Arizona held a referendum, which SOS Arizona fought for and handily defeated despite being outspent by the Koch and DeVos forces.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Dark Money, Democracy, Hoax, Vouchers

Inside Philanthropy: Charters Lose Their Luster in the Philanthropic World

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2019 //
31

 

Caitlin Reilly of “Inside Philanthropy” writes that philanthropies no longer see charter schools as the means to transform American education. Although a few have doggedly doubled down on their commitment to charters, there seems to be a broad shift underway. Reilly calls it an “inflection point,” a point where change is undeniable.

She writes:

“Though charter schools have acquired a powerful ally on the national level in the form of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, local backlash and scaling challenges have led to questions about the future of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

“Philanthropic enthusiasm for the charter movement is at a similar inflection point. For now, support for charters seems to be holding. However, the schools have had trouble reaching scale and have yet to catalyze the system-wide transformation many backers hoped for.

“Some of the field’s champions take that as a sign of the work left to do. Those foundations are doubling down on their support for the schools.

“Other funders, including former stalwart backers of charters, see the failure of this model to scale and spread as a reason to pause and consider their future investments. Those foundations tend to see charter schools as an important part of the education landscape, but not as a means to transform the system.

“Meanwhile, major new donors arriving on the education scene from the business world haven’t gravitated to charters in the same way that many such philanthropists did a decade ago. While these schools remain a growing sector within K-12, drawing political support and philanthropic dollars, the momentum around charters among funders has palpably slowed in recent years.”

The bottom line is that charters have become politically toxic, and its hard to paint them as “progressive” when Betsy DeVos is their most potent champion and striking teachers demand a moratorium on them. What’s “progressive” about schools that are highly segregated, overwhelmingly non-union, and have a record of excluding the neediest children?

It’s no accident that the foundation most deeply invested in creating new charters is the archconservative, anti-union Walton Family Foundation, which claims credit for opening 2,000 charters, more than one of every four in the nation. Why is this family, whose net worth exceeds $150 billion, devoted to charters? Charters kill unions. That works for Walmart.

We learn here that Eli Broad seems to losing his once-passionate commitment to charters. Eli  Broad!

“There does seem to be a faction of the charter movement that is stepping back to consider what comes next, and are open to charters playing a smaller role in future efforts.

“One of those people is Andy Stern, a board member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and board chair of the Broad Center.

Stern started out as an unlikely ally of the charter movement. He is the president emeritus of the Service Employees International Union, which grew by 1.2 million workers under his leadership. Given the antagonism many felt charter schools held toward unions, some were surprised by Stern’s decision to get involved with Eli Broad, an early and ardent supporter of the charter movement.

“Stern didn’t see charter schools as antithetical to his work on behalf of workers and unions, though.

“I got involved in charters because of the members’ of my union’s kids,” he said. “To me, giving janitors’ kids a chance to get the best education possible was everything they wanted from coming to this country. In Los Angeles, where we started, that was not their experience.”

“Now, Stern’s enthusiasm for the schools is waning, and it sounds like Broad’s may be, as well.

“So I would say Eli [Broad], absent any of the recent strikes and activities, has been rethinking what he wants to do in education, as he has been thinking about what he wants to do in the arts and science, as well,” Stern said. “As he thinks about his age and what he wants to see happen in a transition, I’d say there is a natural rethinking and reprioritizing going on.”

Reilly did not speak to any critics of charter schools, other than Randi Weingarten, whose union operates a charter school in New York City. She did not speak to Carol Burris or me or Jeff Bryant or Peter Greene or Anthony Cody or Leonie Haimson or Julian Vasquez Heilig or Mercedes Schneider or Tom Ultican or any of the many others who have warned about the rise of charters and the danger they present to public education.

Nor did she examine the many scandals that have brought down the repute of charters, like UNO in Chicago or ECOT in Ohio.

The good news is that many philanthropists are disenchanted with school choice.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Philanthropy, Privatization, Walton Foundation

California: The Charter Law is Broken and Adversaries Don’t Agree on How to Fix It

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2019 //
32

 

 

This is part 3 of the Los Angeles Times’ series about charter school dysfunction in California, written by Anna Phillips. 

Phillips traces many of the problems, especially lack of oversight, to state law.

She explains that the billionaires who fund the rapid expansion of charter schools have squared off against the powerful California Teachers Association, andthe two never agree.

The resultis That a badly flawed lawremains in place.

Phillips quotes several charter school advocates who want to eliminate the role of local school boardsin authorizing charter schools and transfer that power to a single state charter board.

What the advocates never mention is that the school boards have been rendered toothless by the law, which allows charters to appeal their rejection at the local level to the county board. If the county board rejects them, they can appeal to the state board, which has been extremely friendly to charters due to appointments by Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown, both very charter-friendly.

Phillips quotes one charter advocate who points to New York as a model. New York hastwo charter authorizing Boards: the State Board of Regents and the SUNY Charter Institute. Neither supervises the charters they authorize. The SUNY committee consists of appointees of Governor Cuomo, who loves charters and receives big campaign contributions from the charter billionaires and Wall Street charter lobby. When billionaire Merryl Tisch was chair of the Board of Regents, it too was an ally of charters. She is now on the SUNY board. Even now, the Regents continue to endorse charter expansion,despite local objections.

The Network for Public Education, which is not funded by teachers unions, believes that charters should be authorized ONLY by local school districts to meet their needs, not because an entrepreneur wants a school of his own or because a corporate chain sees a chance to grow.

The irony is that the charter billionaires seem already to have captured Governor Gavin Newsom, even though they supported another candidate. Newsom promised charter reform, and he signed a bill requiring accountability and transparency and forbidding conflicts of interest and nepotism. But he may have shackled the charter reform agenda by appointing charter allies to a majority of places on the new state task force to recommend changes to the charter law. Phillips ends her article by mentioning the task force but fails to mention that charter allies were given seven of 11 seats, surely by Newsom.

So this otherwise great series ends for me on a disappointing note. It is far easier for billionaires to capture a single state board or two state boards than to deal with hundreds of local school districts. There is a limit to the number of elections and seats they can buy, even with their deep pockets. One thing has become clear about “Reformers.” They don’t like democracy. They like mayoral control and state control. Local school boards get in their way.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Billionaire Charter Founder Michael Steinhardt Accused of Sexual Harassment

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2019 //
29

 

 

Billionaire Michael Steinhardt, founder of a charter school chain called “Hebrew Language Academies,” was accused by multiple women of sexual harassment. 

A story in the New York Times began:

“Sheila Katz was a young executive at Hillel International, the Jewish college outreach organization, when she was sent to visit the philanthropist Michael H. Steinhardt, a New York billionaire. He had once been a major donor, and her goal was to persuade him to increase his support. But in their first encounter, he asked her repeatedly if she wanted to have sex with him, she said.

“Deborah Mohile Goldberg worked for Birthright Israel, a nonprofit co-founded by Mr. Steinhardt, when he asked her if she and a female colleague would like to join him in a threesome, she said.

“Natalie Goldfein, who was an officer at a small nonprofit that Mr. Steinhardt had helped establish, said he suggested in a meeting that they have babies together.

“Mr. Steinhardt, 78, a retired hedge fund founder, is among an elite cadre of donors who bankroll some of the country’s most prestigious Jewish nonprofits. His foundations have given at least $127 million to charitable causes since 2003, public filings show.

“But for more than two decades, that generosity has come at a price. Six women said in interviews with The New York Times and ProPublica, and one said in a lawsuit, that Mr. Steinhardt asked them to have sex with him, or made sexual requests of them, while they were relying on or seeking his support. He also regularly made comments to women about their bodies and their fertility, according to the seven women and 16 other people who said they were present when Mr. Steinhardt made such comments.

“Institutions in the Jewish world have long known about his behavior, and they have looked the other way,” said Ms. Katz, 35, a vice president at Hillel International. “No one was surprised when I shared that this happened.”

“Mr. Steinhardt declined to be interviewed for this article. In a statement, he said he regretted that he had made comments in professional settings through the years “that were boorish, disrespectful, and just plain dumb.” Those comments, he said, were always meant humorously.”

Steinhardt insisted he was joking. The women who spoke up did not get the humor.

Is there something about billionaires that makes them believe they are irresistible and invincible?

Steinhardt’s Hebrew language charter schools are part of a growing chain that operates in several cities. Its students are ethnically diverse but classes are taught in English and Hebrew. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $5 million to the chain, though it was never in need of external funding.

Michael Steinhardt’s daughter Sara Berman is chair of the chain’s board.

Since Hebrew is a spoken language only in Israel, it is not clear what the value of Hebrew is to Black and Hispanic students.

Steinhardt endowed the New York University School of Education, which bears his name, as well as the conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the SteinhardtGallery at the Metropoitan Museum of Art.

Steinhardt made his fortune as a hedge fund manager. He overcame inauspicious origins. According to Wikipedia, Steinhardt’s father Sol was a compulsive gambler and a notorious “fence” for stolen jewelry. He hung out with “underworld crime bosses Meyer Lansky, Vincent Alo (aka “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo), and Albert Anastasia (he was out gambling with Anastasia the night before he was killed). Sol, aka “Red McGee,” was later convicted on charges of buying and selling stolen jewelry and sentenced to five to ten years in prison.”

A gambler and criminal in one generation produces a successful hedge fund manager in the next. Hmmm. Food for thought.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization

Do You Want an Out-of-State Billionaire to Put Money into Your Local School Board Election?

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2019 //
43

 

Three political scientists have written a book about billionaires putting money into local school board elections. Typically, the wealthy are not writing checks for their own school board elections, but even if they were, they are able to swamp the spending of others.

 

The book is titled Outside Money in School Board Elections: The Nationalization of Education Politics. It was published by Harvard University Press. The authors are Jeffrey R. Henig of Teachers College, Columbia University, Rebecca Jacobsen of Michigan State University, and Sarah Reckhow of Michigan State University.

 

They examine the role of outside money in five districts: Denver; Indianapolis; New Orleans; Bridgeport; and Los Angeles.

 

On this blog, we have frequently noted this kind of activity in many districts. People like Michael Bloomberg, the Waltons, the DeVos Family, Reed Hastings, the Koch brothers, and Eli Broad, and groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Stand for Children (carrying money on behalf of wealthy donors) have intervened in local school board elections, always in favor of charters, vouchers, and high-stakes testing. The Network for Public Education Action Fund examined the intervention of wealthy elites in several districts in its report called “Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools.”

 

Here is where the NPEA report and the Henig book disagree. NPEA believes that the intervention of billionaires into local school board elections is fundamentally anti-democratic because it undermines the ability of local citizens to make their own choices. NPEA knows that the goal of the billionaires is to privatize public schools via charters and vouchers. Our view is that those who spend vast sums of money distort democracy and are trying to impose their views by the power of their wealth to buy advertising, staff, mailings, posters, and everything else involved in a political campaigns. When local people can no longer afford to compete for a seat on the local school board, democracy suffers.

 

Henig, et al. do not agree with NPEA. Their view is that the expenditure of large amounts of money by outsiders is neither good nor bad. It might be bad because the money drowns out local voices. But it might be good because it brings more media attention to the school board races.

 

They are agnostic. Looked at from their point of view, it really doesn’t matter if Michael Bloomberg and Alice Walton put a few millions into your local school board race and overwhelm your neighbors Mr. Smith or Ms. Jones, who can raise only $10,000 or $25,000.

 

They conclude: “The consequences of outside money are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Outside money can bring greater attention to elections that have, for far too long, been largely ignored by local media. Increased attention, however, can be skewed in favor of those with the most financial backing, leaving voters with little information about many candidates on election day. Similarly, increased media attention usually includes more information on policy issues, potentially educating voters about key issues facing their local schools; however, this increased attention is not evenly distributed across all issues.” And increased funding may produce increased voter turnout. “But our findings suggest it would be false—or at least premature—to conclude that the consequences of outside money are uniformly and decidedly good or bad.” (pp. 175-176).

 

The authors speculate about how this outside money might affect teaching and learning. “For teachers, we suspect that the influx of outside money could bring national and state debates about teacher accountability to their classroom door. Teachers might feel additional pressure to focus on areas that appear on standardized tests, as accountability pressure is ramped up by local school boards that focus more heavily on this issue. The hot glare of outside money in school board elections could mean that board members, regardless of affiliation, focus more time and energy on this policy issue, leaving teachers bearing the brunt of these expectations. For those worried about teacher recruitment and retention in local districts, such a focus might make their jobs even more challenging, as new teachers perceive these environments as hostile workplaces. For those who believe teacher accountability policies increase the quality of teachers, drawing attention to this issue through outside funding might be seen as a chance to improve overall performance.”

 

In short, you can expect that if the money people prevail, high-stakes testing will assume even greater importance; the district will have trouble recruiting and retaining teachers, who are likely to see the district as a hostile workplace. You might also anticipate more closings of public schools and more openings of privately managed charter schools. These are not insignificant consequences.

Surely, you might think the authors would see these outcomes as problematic. But they prefer not to take a position. Is it too much to expect three political scientists who study the role of money in politics to look closely at the research about whether test-based accountability improves teaching? Shouldn’t they show that they are aware of the 2014 statement of the American Statistical Association that test-based accountability for individual teachers is invalid? Shouldn’t they give some thought to the consequences of replacing public schools with private management?

 

They prefer to be agnostic. Maybe ramping up the pressure on testing might be a good thing, maybe it might be a bad thing. Maybe letting the billionaires buy control of your district might be a bad thing, but then again maybe not.

 

Needless to say, I think the authors are wrong. It is okay for billionaires to buy up your local school district if it brings more media attention? I don’t think so. It is okay to stamp out local democracy if it brings more people to the polls and makes them more aware of the issues? I don’t think so.

 

If billionaires want to give money to underwrite hospitals, libraries, health clinics, or local schools, with no strings attached, then let them give.

 

But if they give money so as to take control of local decision-making, that strikes me as a blow against democracy. How can political scientists be agnostic? What am I missing?

 

The larger question, it seems to me, is completely ignored: the need for campaign finance reform in all elections.

 

I suggest that the authors of this book read Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World. Or Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money. Their indifference to the dangers of allowing plutocrats to buy elections is frankly shocking. I don’t understand their agnosticism. I assume they don’t care because they are not bothered by what the billionaires want to do. But maybe I’m wrong and they just don’t want to take a stand in defense of democratic decision making.

Categories Billionaires, Politics

Arkansas: Who’s Who in the Charter Movement (Hint: Everyone Is Owned by the Waltons)

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2019 //
11

I can’t tell you how angry this post made me. I felt outraged and frustrated. It is not just about privatization. It is about the purchase of an entire state by one family. How can anyone teach civics in Arkansas when one family owns everything?

This post will make your head spin. Public schools in communities of color are taken over by the state, and charter schools open. One high-powered chain. spreads it’s tentacles across the state, scooping up the best students. A rotating cast of characters plays musical chairs at the state board, the state education department, and superintendencies.

The schools targeted for closure and privatization are schools that enroll mostly children of color. Everyone feels powerless to stop the Walton train.

Behind it all: ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the Walton Family. The Walton Family owns everything and every body.

Schools? Education? An afterthought.

This saga reads like a gangster tale. The mob always wins.

I was contacted by a minister in Little Rock who asked, what can we do? My advice: civil disobedience. Mass protests. Marches. Demonstrations. Chain yourselves to the schoolhouse doors. Nothing else will work. The greatest enemy is complacency, apathy, hopelessness. Faced with the unlimited power of a family that owns the state government, it is easy to feel hopelessness. But resistance is the only path. The other way, the status quo, is servitude.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, ALEC, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Walton Foundation

The Sacklers, Opioids, and Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2019 //
2

 

We know a few things about the Sackler family. Their family fortune is vast, about $14 billion. Their fortune was derived primarily from the sale of highly addictive opioids. More than 200,000 people have died due to opioid addiction. The Sackler nameis emblazoned on museums, libraries, and universities. Curiously, Jonathan Sackler has been a major finder of charter schools in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and other states. He has been a major founder of the no-excuses chain called Achievement First.

This is the first article I have seen that tries to track the Sackler ties to the charter industry.  

“An examination of 990 donor tax forms draws a wider picture of how Sackler largely came to underwrite many pro-charter entities over several years.

“Sackler made donations to charter schools and charter groups dating back to at least 2003, including a $50,000 unrestricted gift specifically to New Haven charter school Amistad Academy, which received $365,000 from the foundation in 2004 and $20,000 in 2005. The foundation also donated to the Arizona-based Alliance for School Choice in 2004 and 2008, and donated $250,000 to pro-charter organization ConnCAN in 2004 before its official launch, for which he is listed as an interlocking directorate.

“According to forms filed by the Bouncer Foundation, which is Sackler’s foundation, Impact for Education, a New Haven-based “philanthropic advisory practice,” received nearly $100,000 from the foundation for offering “philanthropic advice” in 2013.

“The year “2013 was the heyday for charters and charter expansion,” said Wendy Lecker, a senior attorney at the Education Law Center and a contributing columnist to Hearst Connecticut Media.

“Two years prior, New Haven-based Amistad Academy charter school co-founder Stefan Pryor was named commissioner of the state Department of Education. Also, around that time, then-Gov. Dannel P. Malloy publicly stood with charter school advocates, Lecker said.

“(Sackler’s) fingerprints are all over the charter movement, particularly in our neck of the woods, and that’s another stain on the charter movement,” Lecker said. “The most vulnerable are in their schools, and for the charter industry to take this money when they’re claiming to help these kids is pretty questionable.”

“The foundation’s yearly reimbursement for Impact for Education’s annual philanthropic advice increased to $130,454 in 2014 and, after a payment of $90,000 in 2015, was reported to be $470,000 in 2016 and $262,500 in 2017, the most recent year available on searchable public databases.

“Impact for Education engages forward-thinking philanthropists to catalyze systemic change in public education,” the practice says on its website.

“Impact for Education’s president and founder, Alex Johnston, also co-founded the pro-charter advocacy group Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, or ConnCAN, with Sackler in 2005. Johnston served as executive director, while Sackler sat as chairman of the board.

“According to his biography on Impact for Education’s website, Johnston also is a board member of FaithACTS for Education in Bridgeport, a registered nonprofit coalition of religious education advocates that received $700,000 from the Bouncer Foundation between 2015 and 2017. The group’s founder, the Rev. William McCullough, told the Connecticut Post that the group believes in school choice.

“Neither Johnston, a former member of the New Haven Board of Education, nor Impact for Education returned a request for comment.

“In 2009, the Bouncer Foundation had begun making gifts to Yale University that would ultimately culminate in a $3 million endowment for the Richard Sackler and Jonathan Sackler Professorship, but other donations effectively ceased until 2011, when the foundation gave $100,000 to Students for Education Reform and $5,000 to the conservative Alliance for School Choice. After an austere 2012, the foundation donated to eight groups affiliated with charter schools, including ConnCAN and its subsequently founded national counterpart 50CAN, Students for Education Reform, New Haven’s Booker T. Washington Academy, the Northeast Charter Schools Network. In 2013, Achievement First, the charter network co-founded by Dacia Toll, and which operates Amistad Academy, was named a recipient of a donation….

“In 2013, Achievement First, which runs 35 other schools in three states, received $151,571 from the Bouncer Foundation. The contribution was increased to $250,000 in 2014 and 2015 and was more than doubled in 2016, when the network received $600,000 from the foundation. By 2017, the foundation’s gift to Achievement First was $350,000.

“For 2013, 990 forms show Achievement First reported $29,253,402 in contributions and $40,396,539 in revenue, so contributions were about 72.4 percent of revenue. In the most recent year for which data is available, Achievement First reported for 2017 about $22 million in contributions and grants, of $46 million in revenue.

“For the entirety of the Bouncer Foundation donations, Sackler sat on Achievement First’s Board of Directors.”

Wendy Lecker gave a good explanation of the appeal of charter schools to the Uber-rich like Sackler.

“The Education Law Center’s Lecker said wealthy donors receive tax incentives for donating to charter schools, so a number of wealthy charter donors are seeking financial advantages. However, she believes there’s also a basis in undermining public services.

“The whole privatizing of public education is an effort of the uber-wealthy to tamp down the expectations of what people should want in the public sphere,” she said. “A smaller public sphere in terms of public education and local democracy means people have less of an expectation of what they can get from the public.”

“Lecker said she believes a number of philanthropists believe they are doing a good thing, but the fact that some, like Sackler, “are so aggressively involved, and have been since the beginning, means they have to know what goes on in charter schools and what impact they have on funding for public schools.”

“Advocates for district schools such as Joyner and Lecker see charter schools as a movement to undermine teacher unions and hand governmental control of education to charter management companies and moneyed interests.”

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Connecticut, Education Industry, Privatization, Rhode Island

Los Angeles: More About the Billionaire Boys Club, Who Are Adrift and Forlorn

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2019 //
11

I have been posting a lot about the race for the empty seat on the LAUSD school board because it is the second largest district in the nation, the largest with an elected board, and the Billionaire Boys Club has been trying to buy control of it. Eli Broad wants half the students in LAUSD in charter schools, and “only” 20%  are now in charters. The BBC thought they won control when they put Ref Rodriguez, a charter operator, on the board, and he was elected president of the board. But then he was convicted of money laundering and had to resign (but not until he voted to select financier Austin Beutner as superintendent).

Now, all their plans are in disarray because progressive firebrand Jackie Goldberg is on the cusp of winning Ref’s old seat, which she held many years ago. She is smart, tough, knowledgeable, experienced. She was a teacher, a member of the City Council, and a member of the State Assembly (and chair of the Education Committee). In the special election of March 5, she won 48% of the vote, and the next runners up got 13%  each. The LA Times declined to endorse Jackie, saying she was too “ideological,” and instead endorsed a candidate who received 9% of the vote.

Poor billionaires! All that money spent and so little to show for it!

Here is the latest report on campaign funding from Howard Blume of the LA Times.

 

Philanthropist Eli Broad inserted himself into a pivotal Los Angeles school board race at the last second this week, making the largest individual donation to any candidate.

Broad’s $100,000 didn’t go directly to a candidate for the open District 5 seat, but to a union running its own campaign on behalf of Heather Repenning. Such independent campaigns have no donation limits.

The election day contribution went to a political action committee run by Local 99 of Service Employees International, which represents school district employees. Broad has frequently opposed unions politically.

Local 99’s ideological alliances have sometimes shifted. It has typically supported board members running for reelection regardless of who else supports them.

Repenning’s campaign is currently on hold as more than 4,700 ballots still are being counted. She is just behind Graciela Ortiz, in a virtual tie, for the second spot in a May 14 runoff for the office; after the initial vote count on Tuesday, only 53 votes separated them. Only one of them will make it to the ballot to face Jackie Goldberg, who far outpaced all other candidates.

In Tuesday’s vote, Repenning and Ortiz finished about 35 percentage points behind Goldberg, who nearly won a majority of votes, which would have eliminated the need for a runoff.

Repenning was the best-funded candidate because of Local 99, which represents cafeteria workers, bus drivers, building and grounds workers, teaching assistants and unarmed campus security aides.

The former public works commissioner is a highly qualified candidate that the union, Broad and others can agree on, said Max Arias, the union’s executive director.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti also endorsed Repenning.

In all, Local 99 spent about $1 million on behalf of Repenning, the largest amount for any candidate. United Teachers Los Angeles was the next largest contributor, spending more than $660,000 on behalf of Goldberg.

Repenning has tried to position herself as a centrist, close neither to charter backers nor union interests.

Charter schools are privately operated and compete with district-run schools for students. Most are nonunion. Local 99 represents workers at only two of the more than 200 charters in the district, according to the union. But children of union members attend both charter and traditional schools.

In past elections, Broad has been a major donor to candidates endorsed by charter school advocates — who typically are opposed by candidates backed by the teachers union. Charter supporters did not coalesce around a single candidate in this election cycle.

Another major pro-charter donor, Manhattan Beach businessman Bill Bloomfield, gave $5,000 to a Local 99 PAC. He also gave $1,200 directly to the campaign of Allison Bajracharya, a charter school executive also on the ballot. Bajracharya, who finished fifth, attracted direct donations from many charter supporters. A group associated with charter backers, Students for Education Reform Action Network, spent nearly $139,000 on her behalf.

Because Broad is a high-profile figure and a major donor, his contributions tend to get noticed. And it’s not the first time that his donation has arrived too late to be part of the news cycle before voting takes place.

Both Broad and Bloomfield have made much larger donations in the past. In the final stretch of the 2017 L.A. Board of Education campaigns, Broad gave nearly $1.9 million to California Charter Schools Assn. Advocates, a political action committee that was spending heavily in the race. Bloomfield contributed $2.275 million, the vast majority of it late in that campaign.

Categories Billionaires
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »