Archives for category: Billionaires
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Reed Hastings Should Watch “Orange Is the New Black”

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2019 //
50

I don’t like Reed Hastings. I don’t like that he hates public schools and wants to turn every one of them over to a private corporation. I would never subscribe to Netflix, because it would put money into his overflowing bank account. He is a billionaire.

However I do not live alone and the other adult member of my family subscribed to Netflix despite my protestations.

Then she started watching shows with language I found very offensive. And then, much against my will, I became addicted to that show, called ”Orange is the New Black.” I warn you that the language and the visuals are XXX rated. No, XXXXXXX rated. I got hooked by the story and the characters. It is a story about women in prison, and there is quite a bit of graphic and prurient stuff. You are warned.

The one redeeming feature, having just finished the sixth season, is that the series demonstrates how repulsive, how corrupt, how disgusting privatization is.

Do you think Reed Hastings noticed that the private prison corporation that took over “Litchfield Prison” cut corners at every chance, cutting education programs, cutting the budget for food, hiring inexperienced and brutal guards (Prison Guards for America), subjecting the inmates to even worse indignities than when the government ran the prison? The private corporation cares only about profits, not the lives of the prisoners. The corporation’s budget-cutting caused a riot (that is exactly what has happened in privatized prisons).

The program is a powerful indictment of privatizing public services. I hope Reed Hastings watches his own hit series and learns about the inevitable human costs of privatization.

He is a smart man. He is a billionaire. But can he learn?

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

Los Angeles: Charter Billionaires Will Stay Out of Primary for Board Seat

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2019 //
16

There is an open seat on the Los Angeles school board, because convicted felon Ref Rodriguez stepped down. He was a darling of the charter billionaires, who spent lavishly to elect him. He founded a charter chain. The leading candidate for his seat is Jackie Goldberg, a dynamic and articulate voice for public schools, where she wasa teacher, then became a board member and a state legislator.

The charter lobby has decided not to endorse in the March primary, but will probably throw their weight and dollars into a runoff to beat Jackie, if there is one.

Jackie Goldberg needs to win a majority of the votes to avoid a runoff. She is uniquely qualified. Even with her vote, the billionaires will have a majority, but only by one vote, not two. And she has a powerful voice, which would change the tenor of the board and keep Austin Beutner on the hot seat.

Recent races for the Los Angeles Board of Education have been the most expensive school board contests in the nation’s history — and charter school supporters spent millions more than anyone else. But a key charter group announced Friday it will sit out a March special election to fill an empty and potentially pivotal seat.

The political arm of the California Charter Schools Assn. is not endorsing any of the 10 candidates for the seat left vacant in July, when Ref Rodriguez resigned after pleading guilty to one felony and three misdemeanors for campaign fundraising violations.

The hopefuls are vying to represent the oddly shaped District 5, which covers some neighborhoods north of downtown L.A. as well as the cities of southeast Los Angeles County. The Board of Education, currently with six members, is split on key issues, including how to interact with privately operated charter schools, which compete with district-operated schools for students.

A spokeswoman for the charter group spoke of the many strong options for the board seat.
“There are a number of highly qualified, inspiring candidates in this race,” said Brittany Chord Parmley of CCSA Advocates. “Given the diversity, strength and depth of the field, we have decided not to endorse. … This election is an opportunity for the entire community to engage in a dialogue about what it will take to provide an outstanding public education to all Los Angeles students.”
Close observers have described this race as especially tricky for the charter group. District 5’s boundaries were carved to elect a Latino. And in the previous election, charter backers had a strong Latino candidate in Rodriguez, the co-founder of a charter-school organization.

One obvious option, charter group executive Allison Greenwood Bajracharya, is not a Latina. Nor is Heather Repenning, a city commissioner backed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, another power player. Nor is Jackie Goldberg, the pick of the teachers union, which has been the second-biggest spender in board races and has called for halting the growth of charter schools.

Backing a Latino in this district has mattered to United Teachers Los Angeles in the past, but after recent elections losses, union leaders think they have a winner in Goldberg, who has alliances within the Latino community. Goldberg previously served on the school board and the L.A. City Council as well as in the state Legislature. A wildcard for UTLA is the effect of a teachers strike planned for Jan. 10, which could work for or against the union’s endorsed candidate.

The ideal candidate in this race would be a Latina, according to some consultants.

Three Latinos in the race would be hard sells for charter supporters: School counselor Graciela Ortiz is active in UTLA. Cynthia Gonzalez works as a principal at a district-run school. Activist Rocio Rivas led protests calling for Rodriguez to resign.

The other Latino candidates are: Salvador “Chamba” Sanchez, a community college instructor; David Valdez, an L.A. County arts commissioner; Nestor Enrique Valencia, a Bell City Council member; and Ana Cubas, a community college instructor and former L.A. City Council aide who ran unsuccessfully for the council in 2013.

For the charter group, no one stood out.

Four of the Latino candidates banded together to urge UTLA and the charter group to endorse one or more Latinos.

“As the ‘Charter School vs. Public School’ debate rages on and political heavyweights attempt to bully their way into installing their own,” Cubas, Sanchez, Valencia and Gonzalez said in a joint statement, “this is a familiar scenario for the Latino candidates in this race. The district has long left its Latino students behind in academic achievement and access to public education.”

Other candidates, including a couple who dropped out of the race, originally endorsed the one-and-a-half-page statement, but disagreements developed among the group.

The charter group’s neutral stance may not carry over to a likely May runoff between the top two primary finishers, regardless of their ethnicity.

“It is naive to think this is a retreat or respite on their part,” said Juan Flecha, president of the union that represents school administrators. His union, which lacks big-money resources, has endorsed both Goldberg and Gonzalez.

Even in the primary, a pro-charter mega-donor could step in to fund a campaign. That could work better for charter supporters because the official charter group has the baggage of past ties to Rodriguez, said one political consultant, who requested anonymity because of connections to more than one candidate.

Another consultant, Mike Trujillo, who has worked mostly against UTLA-backed candidates, agreed: “It only takes some limited paperwork and a check to become a player in the primary.”

But it might make sense, he said, for the charter group to bide its time while teachers union president Alex Caputo-Pearl spends a lot on the teachers strike and on Goldberg in the primary.
“I suspect CCSA is gonna just get out of Alex’s way and let him spend away,” Trujillo said.

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

Leonie Haimson: Warning! The New York City Department of Education Is Infested with Broadies, TFA!

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
15

After hearing from a parent in Brooklyn that decisions at the New York City Department of Education were being made by Broadies and TFA, Leonie Haimson did some digging. The parent was right. The same people appointed by Joel Klein more than a decade ago are still closing schools, imposing the portfolio model, and opening charters. De Blasio appointed Carmen Farina to run the DOE. Farina was Deputy Chancellor to Klein and left in a a dispute. But apparently she saw no reason to clean house.

Leonie shows that it is not only Broadies and TFA, but the nefarious Education Pioneers, another billionaire-funded outfit the is running the show in New York City.

Wake up, Bill de Blasio! You inherited the status quo! When if ever will you clean house?

Categories Accountability, Bill de Blasio, Billionaires, Bloomberg, Michael, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York City, Portfolio District, Privatization, Walton Foundation

The Greedy, Selfish Billionaires Who Rig Taxes in Washington State

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2019 //
68

Hanna Brooks Olsen writes here about the billionaires of Washington State and their clever strategies to stay very rich whileappearing to be philanthropists.

They give to the poor. They give toworking people. They give to the homeless.

But they make sure that Washington State has the most regressive Taxes in the nation, which protects their fortunes.

Because when billionaires do anything for anyone else, it’s cause for celebration.

We see this a lot out here in Washington state, a place that is uncommonly kind to people with ample wealth. This is not hyperbole; a report released in October found that, once again, the Evergreen State has the country’s most regressive tax structure. The richest percentile of residents — those who earn more than half a million dollars annually — pay three percent of their income in annual state and local taxes. Meanwhile, those who earn under $24,000 per year — many of whom live below the poverty line — shell out 17.8 percent.

This makes it difficult for lawmakers to tackle the big problems; for over a decade, Washington has struggled to fund basic education and provide critical mental health care to those in need. Every year, elected officials head into session wondering how they’re going to pay for new roads and transportation upgrades when property taxes are maxed out.

But this structure is not an accident. It is by design, crafted and upheld by the people it benefits. Washington state is home to a tax structure that benefits the wealthy because, and not in spite of, the fact that Washington state is also home to the nation’s wealthiest men.

And yet, those same wealthy men — and everyone who carries water for them — will tell you that they are doing everything they can and that anything we receive from them, collectively, should be praised.

Washington is proud of its billionaire population, and many people work hard to retain them; after Amazon announced that it was seeking a second (or, now, a second and third) location, lawmakers penned op-eds decrying Seattle’s “anti-business” climate as the reason the online vending behemoth might want to explore other options and made substantial political offers to try to get them to keep growing at break-neck pace. After all, these billionaires give money. They’re philanthropists. We would be sunk without them.

And yet, the same men — men like Bezos and the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen — who receive awards and accolades for their community involvement, for their substantial role in Washington’s booming economy, are also the ones who have piled cash reserves while the state government starved. Washington needs this philanthropy precisely because the wealthy don’t pay taxes.
The bar for the behavior of billionaires feels precariously low.

If you know just one single thing about Paul Allen, it’s probably that he had a lot of money and that he gave away a lot of money. Throughout his life, he donated about $2 billion to charitable causes and organizations he founded. But he also spent a lot of money, mostly quietly, to keep his money.
According to MIT researchers, more than 46 percent of Americans die with less than $10,000 to their name.

Just a few weeks before his death, Allen made headlines for donating $100,000 to a political action committee designed to retain Republican control of the House. He also, in the last several years, made substantial donations to Republican candidates, the majority of whom have backed the Trump administration’s tax plan. And the year he made headlines for joining the “Giving Pledge” to donate 10 percent of his income, he also donated heartily to defeat an initiative that would have created an income tax in Washington. That initiative—to increase taxes on the rich—was led by another billionaire, the father of his one-time business partner, Bill Gates Sr.

It worked. The campaign was defeated, and, to this day, Washington state has no income tax, no capital gains tax, and gaping loopholes for things that rich people buy, like jet planes. The bulk of tax money in Washington comes from sales taxes, property taxes, and a business tax that is woefully regressive, particularly to small businesses.

As such, our billionaires keep getting richer. At his death, Allen was worth an estimated $26 billion — an astronomical amount in a nation where, according to MIT researchers, more than 46 percent of Americans die with less than $10,000 to their name, and most have less than $1,000 in savings. Allen owned two yachts, one of which cost $100 million.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Economy

How Are the Walton Billionaires Like Putin and the Russians?

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2018 //
23

All over the nation, Walton money is flowing into state and local elections to help candidates who will privatize public schools.

Now, as I reported previously, and as Mercedes Schneider writes about here, the Waltons are spreading their wings and buying “grassroots” support (doesn’t the purchase of support mean it is not grassroots?). As Mercedes puts it, just “sell the idea” and “leave the funding to us.”

But the Waltons are not merely funding advocates and research and media. They are actively intervening and interfering into the democratic process (as Putin did in 2016 in our presidential election), sinking the hopes of home-grown candidates who can’t match their funding. Putin did it by stealth and social media, the Waltons do their dirty work in the open, using the sheer force of money.

The Waltons as a family are hereby enrolled on this blog’s Wall of Shame, for their persistent attack on democracy and the electoral process, which should be determined by the voters, uninfluenced by billionaires from out of state.

They are meddling with elections in hopes of electing state and local school boards, mayors, governors, and members of Congress who will share their dream of opening more charter schools and eliminating teachers’ unions. They have poured millions into charter referenda in Massachusetts and Washington State, as well as statewide elections in California.

The latest example: Chicago, where none of the Waltons live.

With major financial help from the billionaire heirs of the Arkansas-based Walmart fortune, the PACs related to the Illinois Network of Charter Schools are aiming to become a political force in the upcoming Chicago mayoral and aldermanic campaigns.

The children and grandchildren of Helen and Sam Walton, founders of the Walton Family Foundation and Walmart, are donors to the nonprofit Illinois Network of Charter Schools and its two allied political action committees, either from the family foundation or individual contributions, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis revealed…

Members of the Walton family, one of the wealthiest in the U.S., are active nationally in bankrolling pro-charter organizations, causes and candidates supporting school choice.

Chicago is home to 122 charter schools with about 60,000 students, Broy said.

The publicly funded, privately operated charter school movement in Chicago may be at a crossroads, fighting to not lose political ground and retain enrollments in a period of slowing growth.

A charter school champion, the anti-public union Gov. Bruce Rauner lost his re-election bid; another supporter, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, is stepping down, and the race to replace him is wide open, with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union backing Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Let us celebrate every time a Walton-funded candidate loses, because democracy should not be for sale to the highest bidder.

Categories Billionaires, Chicago, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Goliath Responds: I Am Not Goliath!

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2018 //
32

On December 23, I posted an email exchange I had with Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, in which we disagreed about who was the Goliath and who was the David in the field of education.

Mike objected to my characterization of the billionaire-supported “Reform” movement as the Goliaths of American education, the behemoths making war on public schools. He insisted that his side–those supporting charter schools and vouchers–are the true Davids, and those who oppose them are the true Goliaths because we have the AFT and the NEA on our side.

I pointed out to him that the assets of the two big unions are not in the same league as the supporters of school choice, like the Waltons (at least $160 billion) and a long list of other multibillionaires, who avidly fund school choice, along with the U.S. Department of Education, which has shoveled billions into charter schools since 1994 (and will spend nearly $500 million on charters this year alone). You can’t be supported by billionaires, multiple foundations, the U.S. Department of Education, and call yourself the “David” of education.

My clincher, I thought, was to point out the Reformers’ absence from a Twitter campaign on #GivingTuesday sponsored by a website called #Benevity, which offered $10 for every retweet of its message (#BeTheGood) to the charity of your choice. Look at which groups were asking for $10 retweets. The Network for Public Education urged its followers to retweet the message so that we could be designated to receive $10 per tweet. We figured if we got 100 retweets, we could pull in $1,000. That amount of money means a lot to NPE. It means nothing, zero, nada, zilch to the well-funded “Reform” organizations. It means nothing to organization supported by the Waltons, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, etc.

I wrote:

On #GivingTuesday, I didn’t see a single Reformer group putting out a request for $10. Not one. Not TFA. Not Educators4Excellence. Not Stand for Children. Certainly not the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which is sitting on tens of millions of dollars and gets huge grants from a long list of foundations.

No, they get gifts of hundreds of thousands and millions from foundations like Walton, Gates, Arnold, Broad, and about 50 other foundations who like to do whatever the big boys and girls do.

Ahem. We proudly claim the title of David to your Goliath. We know how that turned out.

I was surprised to get a response from Mike Petrilli.

He wrote a series of emails to demonstrate that several Reform organizations asked for money on #GivingTuesday. He must have skipped over what I wrote, because not a single one of them asked their followers to retweet #Benevity’s message and get $10 for each retweet. As I wrote, “Not one.” Not one of them cares about a gift of $10. That is not even a rounding error in their budgets.

So here are the Reformer groups that Petrilli sent me to prove that they asked for donations on #GivingTuesday and their annual revenues as of 2016, the last date the figures are available on their public tax reports (thanks to Darcie Cimarusti of the NPE staff for collecting the 990 information).

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools
Annual revenues: $9,582,733

Education Reform Now (nonprofit arm of Democrats for Education Reform, the hedge fund managers’ group)
Annual revenues: $12,379,392

GreatSchools.Org
Annual revenues: $10,774,696

Center for Education Reform (loves all choices, except for public schools)
Annual Revenues: $4,090,687

Rocketship Education:
Total annual revenues: $82,957,671
Net income: $6,761,892
(There are separate reports for local and state Rocketships, like Rocketship DC and Rocketship Wisconsin)

Expect More Arizona
Annual revenues: $3,729,325

Bricolage (the new charter school that will replace the last public school in New Orleans)
Since the school has not opened yet, there are no tax forms, but it is supported by the Walton Family Foundation, NewSchools Venture Fund, New Schools for New Orleans, and the Arnold Foundation.

Washington State Charter Schools. No 990 forms yet, but the charter schools in Washington State were funded entirely by Bill Gates and a small group of billionaires, including Alice Walton, Nick Hanauer, Alice Walton, the parents of Jeff Bezos, and a few others with very deep pockets.

Why in the world would any of these organizations ask you to retweet a message that would win $10 for them?

Ahem. The Reform and privatization industry is a hobby of the billionaires. It is not a “movement.” Its purpose is to destroy public education and eliminate unions. It is a substitute for funding public schools, which 85% of American children choose.

If the money dried up, the entire edifice of privatization would shrivel and blow away.

Meanwhile, the Network for Public Education, whose annual revenues are not in the same league with the Reformers, would be delighted to receive your gift of $5, $10, $20, $50, $100. If 100 people give $10 each, that’s $1,000. That means a lot to us. Unlike the Reformer groups mentioned above, we don’t have office space. We have a Post Office Box. Not a penny of your donation will be wasted on exorbitant salaries or lavish facilities. We have no facilities! We have 1.5 staff members, and none of them is paid a six-figure salary. We are a lean, keen organization. Every dollar you give will support our work to protect, support, and improve public schools.

Make the Network for Public Education your charity of choice this year. We need the money. Don’t be fooled. We are the Davids of education. And you know how that turned out!

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Hoax, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund

The Dark and Terrible World of a Billionaire Equity Investor

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2018 //
17

This article in The New Yorker is a long read. It will introduce you to a subject about which you are probably unfamiliar. It describes the world of Paul Singer, a billionaire investor. He is relevant to this blog because he is not only a billionaire but he gives generously to charter schools and Republican causes. Charter schools are the favorite hobby of hedge fund managers, equity investors, and Wall Street. These groups make large campaign contributions to influential politicians. They are underwriting the destruction of public education. They don’t know much about education, but they know markets. It is important for you to understand their thinking.

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

Los Angeles: Network for Public Education Action Fund Endorses Jackie Goldberg for School Board

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2018 //
4

The Network for Public Education Action Fund is delighted to endorse Jackie Goldberg for election to the Los Angeles Unified School District School Board.

Jackie is the ideal candidate to replace convicted felon and charter school founder Ref Rodriguez.

She has experience, knowledge, integrity, and wisdom.

The Network for Public Education Action has endorsed Jackie Goldberg for the District 5 seat on the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

Jackie has a long history as a public servant with a passionate voice in defense of public education. She previously served on the LAUSD board from 1983 to 1991, and the Los Angeles City Council from 1993-2000. She went on to serve in the California State Assembly from 2000-2006, where she chaired the Assembly Education Committee for several years.

With her decades of experience, Jackie has concluded that “the billionaires have stacked the deck against district public schools.” The 2017 LAUSD school board election was the most expensive in history, with almost $10,000,000 in outside spending coming from pro-charter groups.

By winning this election Jackie hopes to prevent a 4 to 7 majority controlled by the board members elected with pro-charter money.

Jackie has remained active with grassroots activism as a founding member of TEAch (Transparency, Equity, and Accountability for Charters), a group dedicated to increasing public accountability within the charter sector. She has also remained active as a community watchdog of the LAUSD board, delivering powerful public comment at meetings.

Jackie will be up against an avalanche of money in this election. The board and staff of NPE Action urge you to vote for Jackie Goldberg in the primary election on March 5, 2019. It will be up to us to show that people power can triumph over the billionaire’s agenda for LAUSD.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Los Angeles, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund

Danielle Holly: Billionaires are Undermining Democracy By Their “Investments” in Education

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2018 //
24

Danielle Holly writes in the NonProfit Quarterly that billionaires who put their philanthropic dollars into education are benefiting themselves, not children. How do they benefit? Their donations put them in control of what is supposed to be a democratic institution. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and dozens of other “philanthropists” have decided on the basis of their whims that schools need the change that their money buys or imposes.

Perhaps Holly would not be so blunt, but that is what her article says.

Two philosophical challenges have arisen with the nature of these investments. The first, which NPQ has discussed at length, is that it limits democratic control over the nation’s public education system. In effect, education philanthropy puts education program design in a few hands who are, by definition, outsiders, and often less expert and less informed than those who are doing the work. In the case of CZI, which was established as a limited liability corporation instead of a philanthropic foundation, there are also related issues of transparency.

“Philanthropy is the least democratic institution on earth,” says Professor David Nasaw, a historian who has researched Carnegie’s philanthropic focus on education. “It’s rich men deciding what to do.”

She puts Andrew Carnegie’s gift of free public libraries on the same plane as the gifts of Gates, Zuckerberg, and Bezos, but I disagree. Carnegie did not tell any library he funded what books to buy nor did he tell patrons what books to read. Carnegie’s gift of public libraries were good charity that did not detract from democracy. By contrast, our billionaires today have invested heavily in privatization of public schools, which is a direct attack on democracy. They buy compliance with large gifts. When they can’t buy compliance, they buy local and state school board election. That should be illegal. They should be prosecuted for attacking democracy. Their in-the-daylight efforts to buy control of state and local school boards should be seen as akin to the Russian efforts to manipulate the 2016 elections. Both illegitimate.

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

Los Angeles: UTLA Endorses Jackie Goldberg for School Board

By dianeravitch
December 13, 2018 //
1

Los Angeles is ground zero for the privatization and DPE Movement (DPE=Destroy Public Education). The billionaires have pumped millions of dollars into races for the local school board. Last year, they knocked out Steve Zimmer, president of the board, with the most expensive local school board race in American history. Their small majority selected a businessman, Austin Beutner, as superintendent of schools despite his lack of any education experience. A key board member, Ref Rodriguez, Charter School founder, voted for Beutner, then left the board after he was convicted of campaign finance violations.

The race for his open seat will be held this spring. The UTLA just endorsed the extraordinarily experienced and articulate Jackie Goldberg. Jackie, if elected, will be a powerful voice for sound education policy.

UTLA endorses Jackie Goldberg for LAUSD School Board

The UTLA House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly tonight to endorse Jackie Goldberg in the special election for the District 5 seat on the Los Angeles Unified School Board.

Goldberg’s resume stacks up like no other: She was a classroom teacher for 17 years before serving on the LAUSD School Board, on the LA City Council, and in the California State Assembly, where she chaired the Education Committee.

Goldberg has been an unapologetic voice for the role of LAUSD as an essential civic institution in our city—a voice that’s urgently needed as the board considers Superintendent Austin Beutner’s plan to break LAUSD into 32 networks. This so-called portfolio reform has been tried in many cities, where it has ignited parent anger, increased school closings, deepened segregation and disparities between schools, and brought no proven benefit in student learning.

“We look forward to Jackie bringing her special brand of passion and integrity to the School Board and for the people of District 5 to once again have a voice on the board,” UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl said. “Jackie understands that our schools don’t need failed privatization schemes but instead need investment in lower class sizes; more nurses, counselors, and librarians; and other fundamental student needs.”

Ref Rodriguez stepped down from the District 5 seat in July after pleading guilty to a felony conspiracy charge and a series of misdemeanors for money laundering during his 2015 election campaign. For nearly a year, Rodriguez ignored calls from the community to step down, staying in place until he could be the deciding vote in the controversial hiring of non-educator Beutner.

The election to fill the open seat will be held March 5, 2019, with a runoff if needed on May 14.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Los Angeles
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