Archives for category: Billionaires
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Gerald Coles: Billionaires Want Poor Children’s Brains to Work Better

By dianeravitch
June 7, 2018 //
71

Education psychologist Gerald Coles reports that Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg plan to fund neurological research to find out why poor children’s brains aren’t working well enough to produce higher test scores.

Coles writes:

“Why are many poor children not learning and succeeding in school? For billionaire Bill Gates, who funded the start-up of the failed Common Core Curriculum Standards, and has been bankrolling the failing charter schools movement, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, it’s time to look for another answer, this one at the neurological level. Poor children’s malfunctioning brains, particularly their brains’ “executive functioning”–that is, the brain’s working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control–must be the reason why their academic performance isn’t better.

“Proposing to fund research on the issue, the billionaires reason that not only can executive malfunctioning cause substantial classroom learning problems and school failure, it also can adversely affect socio-economic status, physical health, drug problems, and criminal convictions in adulthood. Consequently, if teachers of poor students know how to improve executive function, their students will do well academically and reap future “real-world benefits.” For Gates, who is always looking for “the next big thing,” this can be it in education.

“Most people looking at this reasoning would likely think, “If executive functioning is poorer in poor children, why not eliminate the apparent cause of the deficiency, i.e., poverty?” Not so for the billionaires. For them, the “adverse life situations” of poor students are the can’t-be-changed-givens. Neither can instructional conditions that cost more money provide an answer. For example, considerable research on small class size teaching has demonstrated its substantially positive academic benefits, especially for poor children, from grammar school through high school and college. Gates claims to know about this instructional reform, but money-minded as he is, he insists these findings amount to nothing more than a “belief” whose worst impact has been to drive “school budget increases for more than 50 years.”

“Cash–rather, the lack of it–that’s the issue: “You can’t fund reforms without money and there is no more money,” he insists. Of course, nowhere in Gates’ rebuke of excessive school spending does he mention corporate tax dodging of state income taxes, which robs schools of billions of dollars. Microsoft, for example, in which Gates continues to play a prominent role as “founder and technology advisor” on the company’s Board of Directors would provide almost $29.6 billion in taxes that could fund schools were its billions stashed offshore repatriated.

“In a detailed example of Microsoft’s calculated tax scheming and dodging that would provide material for a good classroom geography lesson, Seattle Times reporter, Matt Day, outlined one of the transcontinental routes taken by a dollar spent for a Microsoft product in Seattle. Immediately after the purchase, the dollar takes a short trip to Microsoft’s company headquarters in nearby Redmond, Washington, after which it moves to a Microsoft sales subsidiary in Nevada. Following a brief rest, the dollar breathlessly zigzags from one offshore tax haven to another, finally arriving in sunny Bermuda where it joins $108 billion of Microsoft’s other dollars. Zuckerberg’s Facebook has similarly kept its earnings away from U.S. school budgets.”

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Poverty

Billionaires’ Cash Could Not Save Pro-Charter Candidate in CA Gov Race

By dianeravitch
June 6, 2018 //
12

A letter from a friend in the Bay Area about the California Gubernatorial primary, won handily by Gavin Newsom, with Republican John Cox coming in second.


In the California governor’s primary, pro-“reform” Democratic former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa got knocked out despite millions in pro-charter money from billionaires poured into Villaraigosa’s campaign (via a California Charter Schools Association (CCSA) PAC. In the runoff, Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom will face Republican (endorsed by Trump) businessman John Cox, in a state where Republicans are heavily outnumbered.

California’s primary is “top two” — regardless of party, the top two finishers face off in November if none gets 50%+ of the primary vote. It was generally expected early on that Democrats Villaraigosa and Newsom would face each other in the general election.

Partway through the campaign, pro-“reform” billionaires started pouring millions through the CCSA PAC into Villaraigosa’s campaign, making it look like suddenly he would have a fabulous, huge edge — but the more there were reports of pro-“reform” billionaire millions pouring in through the pro-charter PAC, the more Villaraigosa dropped in the polls, and the polls were accurate.

Newsom does not have a pro-“reform” history, though he’s highly debated in California and Bay Area Badass Teachers Facebook groups, and some people have pointed out that he has made comments praising TFA and he says he supports good charters. In this campaign, Newsom had a panel of education advisers that included two San Francisco leaders who are strongly anti-charter and are friends of mine; as well as anti-“reform” academic Julian Vasquez Heilig.

But the most fascinating thing is that the more pro-charter millions coming from the billionaires poured into the Villaraigosa campaign, the more he dropped in the polls — it was practically proportional. I don’t delude myself that the voting public dislikes “reform” or charters or even know what they are, but I suspect that there are negative connotations to millions from the billionaires, especially since some were out-of-state billionaires.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Gavin-Newsom-grabs-early-lead-in-CA-governor-s-12970788.php

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

California: 5 Billionaires Trying to Elect a Charter-Friendly Governor and State Ed. Superintendent

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2018 //
11

Imagine this absurd scenario: Five billionaires are pouring huge sums of money into the races for Governor of California and State Superintendent of Instruction. What is their main goal? More charter schools. More and more.

Crazy but true

You would think the main goal of campaign funding would be the economy, or water, or health care,the environment. No, it is charter schools.

Open the link to see who they are.

And be sure to read the comments. One from Lisa Alva could be a post by itself.

It speaks volume about the ultimate goal of the privatizers.

Lisa Alva writes:

Based on my experience, I believe that the goal of this consortium is on-line learning for most California students, supported by expensive software and more expensive hardware that replaces unionized teachers where possible.

I was on the Board of Directors for Villaraigosa’s Partnership for Los Angeles Schools; I was in every meeting of this entity and heard their claims and concerns first-hand, I saw their methods in the planning and implementation phases, I heard their rationales and values. I saw and heard that data and results were the focus that kept money and participation among donors at an acceptable level. I did not ever, ever hear or see efforts to gather information from classroom-level staff; aside from image-building listening sessions, teacher experience was largely unimportant in making decisions or plans.

I worked at a PLAS high school from the inception of PLAS as a teacher and a coordinator. I saw that the so-called “graduation rate” of “80%” that Tuck and Tony V. are claiming was completely gamed using on-line “learning” in credit-recovery classes.

Nothing different was taking place in classrooms.

No students were held accountable for anything.

Students freely web-surfed, copied and pasted their way to diplomas despite the supervising teachers’ best efforts to enforce real learning. Teachers eventually revolted, resulting in tighter standards for enrollment in credit recovery classes, which diminished the “amazing results” significantly.

I saw very expensive executives burn through a revolving door of management, first in the pursuit of immediate impact, and then in pursuit of other employment. Two top executives responsible for the dramatic increase in graduation statistics lasted less than a year in the PLAS; they, like many other PLAS people, now work in San Diego or in private education-related enterprise.

The Tuck-Villaraigosa effort has nothing to do with creating whole, self-actualizing citizens who can handle the challenges of a 21st century workplace and lead happy, fulfilled lives. With John Deasy back in California and Eli Broad’s plan for charterizing California schools in full swing, the automization of public education seems to be a foregone conclusion.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

A Guide to the Corporations Defunding Public Schools and Opposing Striking Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 15, 2018 //
20

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ARTICLE YOU WILL READ TODAY. SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS, YOUR SCHOOL BOARD, YOUR LOCAL MEDIA, YOUR ELECTEDS. TWEET IT. POST IT ON FACEBOOK.

In the states where teachers have engaged in walkouts and strikes, public education has been systematically starved of funding. Typically, corporate taxes have been cut so that funding for education has also been cut. The corporations benefit while the children and their teachers are put on a starvation diet.

Who are the corporations and individuals behind the efforts to shrink funding for public schools and promote privatization?

This article makes it clear.

It begins like this, then details a state-by-state list of corporations and billionaires backing the cycle of austerity and school privatization.

“The ongoing wave of teacher strikes across the US is changing the conversation about public education in this country. From West Virginia to Arizona, Kentucky to Oklahoma, Colorado to North Carolina, tens of thousands of teachers have taken to the streets and filled state capitals, garnering public support and racking up victories in some of the nation’s most hostile political terrain.

“Even though the teachers who have gone on strike are paid well below the national average, their demands have gone beyond better salary and benefits for themselves. They have also struck for their students’ needs – to improve classroom quality and to increase classroom resources. Teachers are calling for greater investment in children and the country’s public education system as a whole. They are also demanding that corporations, banks, and billionaires pay their fair share to invest in schools.

“The teachers’ strikes also represent a major pushback by public sector workers against the right-wing agenda of austerity and privatization. The austerity and privatization agenda for education goes something like this: impose big tax cuts for corporations and the .01% and then use declining tax revenue as a rationale to cut funding for state-funded services like public schools. Because they are underfunded, public schools cannot provide the quality education kids deserve. Then, the right wing criticizes public schools and teachers, saying there is a crisis in education. Finally, the right wing uses this as an opportunity to make changes to the education system that benefit them – including offering privatization as a solution that solves the crisis of underfunding.

“While this cycle has put students, parents, and teachers in crisis, many corporations, banks, and billionaires are driving and profiting from it. The key forces driving the austerity and privatization agenda are similar across all the states that have seen strikes:

“*Billionaire school privatizers. A small web of billionaires – dominated by the Koch brothers and their donor network, as well as the Waltons – have given millions to state politicians who will push their pro-austerity, pro-school privatization agenda. These billionaires lead a coordinated, nationwide movement to apply business principles to education, including: promoting CEO-like superintendents, who have business experience but little or no education experience; closing “failing” schools, just as companies close unprofitable stores or factories; aggressively cutting costs, such as by recruiting less experienced teachers; instituting a market-based system in which public schools compete with privately managed charter schools, religious schools, for-profit schools, and virtual schools; and making standardized test scores the ultimate measure of student success.”

Keep reading to learn about the interlocking web that includes the Koch brothers, the Mercers, the Waltons, the fossil fuel industry, their think tanks, and much more, all combined to shrink public schools and replace them with charters and vouchers.

By the way, rightwing billionaire Philip Anschutz of Colorado was the producer of the anti-teacher, anti-public education, pro-charter propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.”

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Arizona, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Colorado, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Privatization, Teacher Pay, Walton Foundation, West Virginia

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg Want YOUR Ideas!

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
49

According to James Shelton and Bob Hughes, respectively of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiate and the Gates Foundation, they want to hear from you!

They don’t understand why there is such a big gap between research and practice. They don’t see why schools are improving so slowly despite their best efforts.

They write”:

Recent months have thrust some of the education sector’s resource strains into the national spotlight. Across the country, budget constraints in several states have highlighted the difficulty of educating today’s students in crumbling schools, and with decades-old instructional materials. Meanwhile, many educators are struggling to support students through the increasing pressures of poverty, a changing economy, and a demand for higher-level skills. Yet despite these challenges, the education sector spends less than a tenth of the average percentage on research and development across other U.S. industries.

So, get this, despite low teachers’ salaries, despite crumbling buildings, despite funding that has not reached 2008 levels, the real problem is that we are not spending enough on R&D.

Could you help them with some of your ideas?

Here is my idea: When you two multibillionaires come up with a plan to reinvent education, find a willing district to experiment on. Get the consent of the teachers. Listen to them before you start your Big Plan. Don’t impose it on the nation until you can demonstrate that you have tried your Big Plan in one place and worked out the bugs and determined that it helps kids and teachers. Until then, please don’t use the nation as your petri dish. Our children are not your guinea pigs.

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Boston: Billionaire Seth Klarman, Charter Love, and Dark Money

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
17

 

Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts who has become an expert on the subject of Dark Money. He has his own name for the billionaires devoted to charter schools. He calls them the “Financial Privatization Cabal.” That’s clever and accurate but I stick with “corporate reformers” because there are fewer syllables.*

Cunningham (no relation to the charter-loving Peter of the same last name) has done a deep dive into the Dark Money funders of the 2016 campaign to expand charter schools in Massachusetts via a referendum called Question 2. A New York City organization called Families for Excellent Schools (FES) arrived on the scene to bundle and dispense Dark Money and renamed itself Great Schools Massachusetts. (FES was funded by the Waltons and has now been replaced by a new group which calls itself Massachusetts Parents United, also Walton funded.)

What is Dark Money? It is money given to political campaigns by donors whose identities are hidden. The donors do not want their names to be revealed. So they give to a group like “Families for Excellent Schools.” After the charter lobby lost in Massachusetts in 2016, beaten by a sturdy coalition of teachers, parents, and volunteers, the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance conducted an inquiry and fined FES for failing to disclose the names of its donors. The fine was $426,00, along with a five-year ban on future political activity in Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter, FES folded due to a #MeToo scandal involving its executive director.

Before it closed its doors, FES was required to reveal its donors. One of them was  billionaire Seth Klarman.

Maurice Cunningham has checked out Klarman and found that he is one of the top donors to the Republican Party in New England. He doesn’t like Trump, so he recently gave $222,000 to the Democratic Party. That was front-page news in the Boston Globe.

Cunningham wonders why Klarman’s gift of $222,000 to the Democrats made the front page, but his gift of $3 Million to the pro-charter campaign in 2016 didn’t merit even a mention. 

But then relentless Maurice Cunningham discovered this:

“Klarman also is a part owner of the Fenway Sports Group, the Boston Red Sox parent company that is led by principal owner John Henry. Henry is also owner and publisher of The Boston Globe.”

Blood is thicker than water. Money is thicker than blood or water.

It is way past time that I name Maurice Cunningham to the honor roll of this Blog for his indefatigable sleuthing and pursuit of Dark Money. As always: Follow the money.

PS: To learn more about Stand for Children as a conduit for Dark Money and about Strategic Grant Partners read this post by Cunningham. 

*He explains:

“A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: I’ve failed to come up with a catchy name for the dark money funders so for now I’ve settled on “Financial Privatization Cabal.” Financial since most of the dark money is coming from the financial services industry. Privatization, because I believe their intention is to privatize public services. Cabal because it denotes a secret plot.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Boston, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Fake, Honor Roll, Massachusetts, Walton Foundation

The Corporate Plan to Prepare Our Children for a Life of Servitude

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2018 //
35

 

In this insightful and harrowing article, we can see clearly the contours of a devilish plan, hatched in the corridors of ALEC and other corporate-controlled entities. The centerpiece of the plan is the destruction and privatization of public education, which all of us own and paid for with our taxes.

Read it and get involved. Join the Networkfor Public Education. Join your local advocacy group. Never despair. Don’t stop fighting.

It begins like this:

It was the strike heard ‘round the country.

West Virginia’s public school teachers had endured years of low pay, inadequate insurance, giant class sizes, and increasingly unlivable conditions—including attempts to force them to record private details of their health daily on a wellness app. Their governor, billionaire coal baron Jim Justice, pledged to allow them no more than an annual 1% raise—effectively a pay cut considering inflation—in a state where teacher salaries ranked 48th lowest out of 50 states. In February 2018, they finally revolted: In a tense, nine-day work stoppage, they managed to wrest a 5% pay increase from the state. Teachers in Oklahoma and Kentucky have now revolted in similar protests.

It’s the latest battle in a contest between two countervailing forces: one bent on reengineering America for the benefit of the wealthy, the other struggling to preserve dignity and security for ordinary people.

If the story turns out the way the Jim Justices desire, the children of a first-world country will henceforth be groomed for a third-world life.

Gordon Lafer, Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon, and Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT, help illuminate why this is happening, who is behind it, and what’s at stake as the educational system that once united Americans and prepared them for a life of social and economic mobility is wiped out of existence.

The Plan: Lower People’s Expectations

When Lafer began to study the tsunami of corporate-backed legislation that swept the country in early 2011 in the wake of Citizens United—the 2010 Supreme Court decision that gave corporations the green light to spend unlimited sums to influence the political system—he wasn’t yet clear what was happening. In state after state, a pattern was emerging of highly coordinated campaigns to smash unions, shrink taxes for the wealthy, and cut public services. Headlines blamed globalization and technology for the squeeze on the majority of the population, but Lafer began to see something far more deliberate working behind the scenes: a hidden force that was well-funded, laser-focused, and astonishingly effective.

Lafer pored over the activities of business lobbying groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – funded by giant corporations including Walmart, Amazon.com, and Bank of America—that produces “model legislation” in areas its conservative members use to promote privatization. He studied the Koch network, a constellation of groups affiliated with billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. (Koch Industries is the country’s second-largest private company with business including crude oil supply and refining and chemical production). Again and again, he found that corporate-backed lobbyists were able to subvert the clear preferences of the public and their elected representatives in both parties. Of all the areas these lobbyists were able to influence, the policy campaign that netted the most laws passed, featured the most big players, and boasted the most effective organizations was public education. For these U.S. corporations, undermining the public school system was the Holy Grail.


After five years of research and the publication of The One Percent Solution, Lafer concluded that by lobbying to make changes like increasing class sizes, pushing for online instruction, lowering accreditation requirements for teachers, replacing public schools with privately-run charters, getting rid of publicly elected school boards and a host of other tactics, Big Business was aiming to dismantle public education.

The grand plan was even more ambitious. These titans of business wished to completely change the way Americans and their children viewed their life potential. Transforming education was the key.

 

 

 

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers

Who Owns the Schools? The Public or the Rich Elites?

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2018 //
35

 

Lisa Haver and Deborah Grill pose this question in an incisive article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. 

There was a national media flap when billionaire investor Stephen Schwarzman offered his alma mater in Abington, Pennsylvania, $25 million in exchange for renaming the school, putting his name over six entrances, and changing the curriculum to meet his demands. Ultimately, the board refused some but not all of his requirements.

Haver and Grill worked in the Philadelphia public schools. They say, “Welcome to our world,” where the Uber-rich have owned the public schools for years and run them into the ground.

”In November 2011, the state-imposed School Reform Commission (SRC), absent any public deliberation, approved a multimillion-dollar grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In return, the SRC agreed to several conditions, including yearly charter expansion, implementation of Common Core standards, more school “choice” and testing, and permanent school closures. No one elected Bill Gates, typically portrayed in the media as just a very generous rich guy, to make decisions about Philadelphia’s public schools. But his mandates have had devastating and lasting effects on the district, much more than renaming one school.”

No one elected Bill Gates. An unelected board outsourced control of the Philadelphia public schools to an unaccountable billionaire. Why? Money. No evidence. No research. No wisdom. Just money. Goal: Privatization. Means: Silence the public.

“Here in Philadelphia, the Gates Compact conferred authority upon the Philadelphia School Partnership (PSP) “to provide funding …to low-performing or developing schools.” PSP has since raised tens of millions from a stable of wealthy donors; most has gone to charter schools, in keeping with Gates’ pro-privatization ideology. PSP’s influence has grown in the last seven years: the group now funds and operates teacher and principal training programs, oversees a website rating all Philadelphia schools, and holds the district’s yearly high school fair. PSP’s money, like Schwarzman’s, always comes with strings attached, whether that means changing a school’s curriculum or a complete overhaul of faculty and staff, as its 2014 grant to two North Philadelphia schools mandated.”

The PSP meetings are closed to the public. Its board members are wealthy suburbanites.

There is something to be said for democracy. Why has Philadelphia prevented its citizens from having any role in the o ersight of the public schools? Could those who have a genuine stake in them do worse than the rich dilettantes who control them now?

 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Privatization

Billionaire Dan Loeb Gives $15 Million to Eva’s Success Academy for More High Schools

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2018 //
74

 

Eva Moskowitz just received a gift of $15 million from billionaire Dan Loeb, chair of the board of Eva’s Success Academy. Just last year, Loeb received negative public attention for comments widely regarded as racist after he chastised the leading Democrat in the State Senate—who is African American, saying she did more damage to children of color than anyone who ever wore a hood because of her criticism of charter schools.

Many people denounced Loeb’s remarks and called on him to resign, but Eva stood by him. Her forbearance was rewarded with his $15 million to her high school, which just graduated 17 students (of a class that started in kindergarten as 100). Loeb said he hoped that Eva could make her model “scalable.”

How a school with a shedding/dropout/attrition rate of 83% becomes “scalable” is mysterious.

The charter chain plans to open eight new high schools by 2033.

Here is the curious math.

Only 17 students were members of Success Academy’s first graduating class. All 17 are going to college. These are the students that survived the original 100 that enrolled in kindergarten.

That is many many millions of dollars invested to produce 17 graduates who are college bound.

Of the 32 students who graduated from eighth grade at Success charters, nine attended other high schools before going to Success Academy’s High School of the Liberal Arts. Five left before graduating.

Honestly, I don’t understand the math. I can’t figure out how this adds up to 17 graduates, but maybe someone else will and can explain it in a comment.

PS:

Eliza Shapiro explained the math of SA graduation rate to me.

“Basically 32 kids started their 8th grade year together at Success
9 left after 8th grade to go to other high schools and never enrolled/matriculated/entered SA HS
5 other kids enrolled at SA HS and left between the start of their freshman year to the present
That’s all I know! :)”

17 graduated. One may have been held back. Unaccounted for.

 

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy

Yes, Betsy: Spending Does Matter

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2018 //
51

 

Imagine billionaire Betsy DeVos telling the nation that spending doesn’t make a difference in terms of education outcomes. But she did and she is wrong, as Chalkbeat explained.

For starters, correlation is not the same as causation.

But let’s talk common sense, inasmuch as Betsy already said she is not a “numbers person.”

When parents have the means to do so, they move to high-spending suburban districts. It’s not just for the grass and the trees, Betsy. In high-spending districts, their children have beautiful, well-maintained buildings. They have small classes. They have experienced teachers who are paid well. They have up-to-date science laboratories. They have the best technology. They have classes in history, civics, and government. They have programs in the arts. Their schools have a band, a chorus, dance, film, an orchestra, a string quartet, and more. They have a robotics team, a chess club, a debate team. They have a library with a real librarian. They have a school nurse, a social worker, a psychologist, and all kinds of sports activities.

If urban schools were well-funded, they would have all of this. But they don’t.

Betsy, if you truly believe that money doesn’t make a difference, try this thought experiment. What if you gave all your money away? Where would you be today?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Funding
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