Archives for category: Billionaires
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Eva Moskowitz Chastises Dan Loeb, Ever So Gently

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2017 //
8

Billionaire Dan Loeb has raised many millions for Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter chain. He has also donated generously to the chain, to Cuomo, to the breakaway Democrats who enable Republicans to control the State Senate (and block tax increases for billionaires), and to Congressional Republicans (who want to remove health care from millions of Americans and give tax breaks to billionaires).

Loeb said something bad. He compared the leading Democrat, a black woman, to the Ku Klux Klan and said she was worse.

So Eva had to say something about the chair of her board. She said his vile, racist rant was “insensitive.”

But she said he has done many wonderful things, which apparently overshadow the one time he let his true feelings show in public.

So, don’t judge this man, says Eva, for his one racist comment. Offensive as it was, he must be allowed to raise more millions for Eva, Cuomo, Congressional Republicans, and the charter industry.

Categories Billionaires, Cuomo, Andrew, Harlem Success Academy

Billionaire “Regrets the Language” of Racial Remark, Eva Stays Mum

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2017 //
26

Billionaire Dan Loeb first insulted State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins–who is African-American– by saying she had done more to damage the lives of children of color than anyone wearing a hood, then issued a mealy-mouthed semi-retraction in the face of the outrage he encountered. He was just too passionate about school choice, he said, and didn’t watch his language.

“After midnight on Friday, Loeb apologized for his comment, saying, “I regret the language I used in expressing my passion for educational choice.” Loeb also deleted the Facebook post.”

He is chairman of the board of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Network of charter schools. In addition to the millions he has personally donated, he has raised millions more from his Wall Street friends.

Will his racist comment spoil Eva’s big moment? Her memoir will be published this year, in which she projects herself as the new face of the privatization movement, once held by Michelle Rhee.

Loeb’s closeness to the Trump administration is not a plus in NYC. Eva too has boldly defended Trump, to the dismay of her teachers and other charter leaders. She was interviewed by Trump for Secretary of Education and welcomed Ivanka Trump and Paul Ryan to tour one of her schools. It matters not at all to her that Trump wants to slash funding on public schools. He wants to increase funding for charters and vouchers, and some of that money may come her way.

“Moskowitz recently angered some of her teachers when she refused to publicly state her support for undocumented and transgender students and staff in her schools, and finally relented to saying she would protect vulnerable students after a tense back-and-forth with staff members. In the weeks following Trump’s election, Moskowitz repeatedly refused to answer questions from reporters about whether she would commit to supporting undocumented students in her schools under Trump’s immigration policies.”

Say this for Eva: she stays focused on what matters most to her: money and power. Don’t expect her to distance herself from Loeb’s racist comments.

There is a subtext or narrative behind this story. You can flesh it out. It is about very rich and very powerful white people civilizing and “uplifting” little black children, while despising the black people who disagree with them. There is a word for it. I think it is called colonialism.

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Racism

Daniel Loeb, Hedge Fund Manager and Chairman of Success Academy, Slanders African-American Legislator

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2017 //
18

Daniel Loeb, billionaire chair of the board of Success Academy Charter Schools, slandered State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, an African-American woman who is the Democratic leader of the State Senate.

The backstory is that Cuomo has collaborated with a group of breakaway Democrats who side with the Republicans in the State Senate. Although Democrats have the majority in the Senate at 32-31, the so-called Independent Democrats vote with the Republicans, assuring that Republicans continue to control the Senate even though they are in the minority. Charter supporters, like Daniel Loeb, know that the interests of both charters and the financial community are safe with the Republicans. If Democrats had enough votes to control the State Senate, Senator Stewart-Cousins would be majority leader. Cuomo likes having Republicans in control because it allows him to be the broker between the Assembly and the Senate. Cuomo prides himself on his fiscal conservatism, so he is happy to have Republicans running the upper chamber of the legislature. It also guarantees that Cuomo won’t be forced to veto progressive legislation.

In a private meeting with Democratic members of the State Senate, trying for unity, Cuomo noted that most of the Senate members were from New York City, and that the leader of the Independent Democrats, Jeffrey Klein (whose district is mainly in the Bronx, with a sliver in suburban Westchester), had a better understanding of the suburbs than the city representatives. At that point, Senator Stewart-Cousins objected and pointed out that she represents the suburbs of Westchester.

After this story appeared, Daniel Loeb hurled a slur at Senator Stewart-Cousins on Facebook.

The hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb, a prominent supporter of charter schools and a major financial backer of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and congressional Republicans, accused the African-American woman who leads the Democrats in the New York State Senate of having done “more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”

Mr. Loeb made the reference, apparently to the Ku Klux Klan, in a posting on Facebook in response to an article in The New York Times this week in which the Democratic leader, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, confronted Mr. Cuomo about prejudging her based upon race and gender.

In a private meeting last month, The Times reported, Ms. Stewart-Cousins said to Mr. Cuomo during a debate over who best understands suburban voters: “You look at me, Mr. Governor, but you don’t see me. You see my black skin and a woman, but you don’t realize I am a suburban legislator.”

Mr. Loeb weighed in on behalf of Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the leader of a group of Democrats that has split from Ms. Stewart-Cousins.

“Thank God for Jeff Klein and those who stand for educational choice and support Charter funding that leads to economic mobility and opportunity for poor knack kids,” Mr. Loeb wrote, with “knack” apparently a typographical error for “black.” “Meanwhile hypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses do more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.”

Mr. Klein leads a group of eight Democrats who in 2011 broke away from the main Democratic conference, led by Ms. Stewart-Cousins. Mr. Klein’s group, the Independent Democratic Conference, has in the past sided with the Republicans in the Senate to keep Ms. Stewart-Cousins out of the powerful post of majority leader.

Daniel Loeb is a major player in the charter world because of his chairmanship of Success Academy. He is also a major player in politics because he is a big donor. When Ivanka Trump visited New York City, Loeb escorted her on a tour of one of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools.

Mr. Loeb and his wife have donated more than $170,000 to Mr. Cuomo in recent years, state records show. He has also supported Republicans, with contributions including $500,000 to a super PAC that supported Jeb Bush in 2015, $150,000 to the Republican National Committee that year and $700,000 to a super PAC supporting House Republicans in 2016.

Carol Burris wrote recently that Loeb had given even more money to Cuomo than the Times reported:

Success Academy Chairman Daniel Loeb, founder and chief executive of Third Rock Capital, and his wife, have directly contributed over $133,000 to Cuomo. Since 2015, Loeb has added $300,000 to Moskowitz’s PAC, and another $270,000 to other PACs that support Cuomo. That’s more than $700,000.

Daniel Loeb shows the true colors of the charter industry in New York City. He doesn’t pretend to be a liberal. He has the nerve to call an African-American legislator “worse” than the Ku Klux Klan. What do you call a man like this? Indecent? Shameless? Arrogant?

For many reasons, I place billionaire Daniel S. Loeb on this blog’s Wall of Shame.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, New York, Privatization, Wall of Shame

Los Angeles: The Unprecedented Flood of Campaign Cash That Elected a Pro-Charter Majority to the School Board

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2017 //
20

Howard Blume in the Los Angeles Times describes the flood of campaign cash that managed to sink School Board President Steve Zimmer and another candidate and put a pro-charter majority in charge of the school board.

The billionaires pulled out all the stops to gain control of the board. Now the president of the LAUSD board is Ref Rodriguez, who launched a charter chain in LAUSD. Contrary to my first report, Rodriguez stepped down from the board of his charter chain (PUC). But his sympathies are clear.

A last-minute splurge of donations from billionaire Eli Broad and businessman Bill Bloomfield swept the pro-charter candidates to victory. More than $15 million was spent by both sides, the most ever spent on a school board election in American history.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings alone spent more than $7 million. The Waltons added a few shekels.

The billionaires strike again, intent on destroying public education and democracy, and opening even more privately managed, privately owned and nonunion charters.

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

Nonprofit Quarterly: Some Very Expensive Lessons for Billionaire School Reformers

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
34

I have found a sensible person writing about school “reform.” His name is Martin Levine and he writes for the Nonprofit Quarterly. Thus far, everything he has written shows a depth of common sense and wisdom that is utterly lacking among the “reformers,” especially the billionaire reformers. He must have gone to public school, unlike those user-wealthy philanthropists who have decided that they can remake American education to fit their own ideology (though never to provide urban kids the same quality of education that the philanthropists enjoyed as children). I see from his bio that he is a graduate of City College of New York, a public institution of higher education, so he is certainly a public school graduate.

Levine’s latest article ponders the failure of “reform” in Detroit. Poor Detroit has been a playground for the meddlesome and clueless rich. But Levine does not describe the collapse of the Education Achievement Authority or of Eli Broad’s failed interventions into Detroit education or DeVos’s endorsement of charters, both for-profit and nonprofit. That will wait for the next chronicler of Detroit’s fate.

Having the ability to invest billions is not enough to guarantee success. That’s one of the lessons a growing list of mega-donors and large foundations is learning from their efforts to transform and improve public education. In many cases, the initiatives they have launched have been more disruptive than effective. Missing from much of their work has been a recognition of the need to work with families and communities and a willingness to engage in the often-messy work of building success from the bottom up.

At the end of June, the multi-year, multimillion-dollar Excellent Schools Detroit announced it was quietly going out of business after seven years of trying to improve the schools of their home city. According to Bridge Michigan, “Excellent Schools Detroit began as a coalition to support the opening of good schools, the closure of underperformers and to grade the city’s traditional, charter and private schools to help inform parents…Excellent Schools Detroit received funding from numerous foundations, including Skillman, The Kresge Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the McGregor Fund.”

He goes on to briefly touch on the Reverse Midas touch of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. Whatever they have touched in education has blown up. Unfortunately, they refuse to address the root causes of low performance. Until they do, they will continue to experience failure.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

St. Louis: Who Is Rex Sinquefield?

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2017 //
22

Rex Sinquefield is a self-made billionaire in St. Louis. He grew up poor, unlike most of today’s billionaires. He lived in an orphanage. Having pulled himself up from rags to riches, he thinks that everyone else should do the same. He has a passion for protecting his wealth, cutting public services, and reducing taxes. He has no compassion for those less fortunate than himself. None.

Here is what you need to know about him.

“Sinquefield is doing to Missouri what the Koch Brothers are doing to the entire country. For the Koch Brothers and Sinquefield, a lot of the action these days is not at the national but at the state level.

“By examining what Sinquefield is up to in Missouri, you get a sobering glimpse of how the wealthiest conservatives are conducting a low-profile campaign to destroy civil society.

“Sinquefield told The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that his two main interests are “rolling back taxes” and “rescuing education from teachers’ unions.”

“His anti-tax, anti-labor, and anti-public education views are common fare on the right. But what sets Sinquefield apart is the systematic way he has used his millions to try to push his private agenda down the throats of the citizens of Missouri.

“Our review of filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission shows that Sinquefield and his wife spent more than $28 million in disclosed donations in state elections since 2007, plus nearly $2 million more in disclosed donations in federal elections since 2006, for a total of at least $30 million.

“Sinquefield is, in fact, the biggest spender in Missouri politics.

“In 2013, Sinquefield spent more than $3.8 million on disclosed election-related spending, and that was a year without presidential or congressional elections. He gave nearly $1.8 million to Grow Missouri, $850,000 to the anti-union teachgreat.org, and another $750,000 to prop up the Missouri Club for Growth PAC.

“However, these amounts do not include whatever total he spent last year underwriting the Show-Me Institute, which he founded and which has reinforced some of the claims of his favorite political action committees. The total amount he spent on his lobbying arm, Pelopidas, in pushing his agenda last year will never be fully disclosed, as only limited information is available about direct lobbying expenditures. Similarly, the total amount he spent on the PR firm Slay & Associates, which works closely with him, also will not ever be disclosed. These are just a few of the tentacles of his operation to change Missouri laws and public opinion…”

Sinquefeld has lobbied to eliminate limits on campaign contributions and to eliminate state income taxes and property taxes. He has a special passion for eliminating teacher tenure, gutting teachers’ unions, and promoting vouchers.

“Nowhere are Sinquefield’s destructive intentions clearer than in his campaign against public education.

“I hope I don’t offend anyone,” Sinquefield said at a 2012 lecture caught on tape. “There was a published column by a man named Ralph Voss who was a former judge in Missouri,” Sinquefield continued, in response to a question about ending teacher tenure. “[Voss] said, ‘A long time ago, decades ago, the Ku Klux Klan got together and said how can we really hurt the African American children permanently? How can we ruin their lives? And what they designed was the public school system.’ ”

“Sinquefield’s historically inaccurate and inflammatory comments created a backlash from teachers, public school advocates, and African American leaders, who called it “a slap in the face of every educator who has worked tirelessly in a public school to improve the lives of Missouri’s children.”

“The statement would be easy to write off as buffoonery if it didn’t come from Sinquefield, who has poured millions from his personal fortune into efforts to privatize education in the state through voucher programs and attacks on teacher tenure.”

The jewel in his crown is the Show-Me Institute, a libertarian “think tank” that he funds to supply advocacy and research for his ideas.

Got the idea? A billionaire who hates the public sector.

Categories ALEC, Billionaires, Privatization

The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative: Do You Trust Them?

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2017 //
13

Martin Levine writes in the Nonprofit Quarterly about the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, expressing his concerns about transparency and democratic values.

The concern has been that in structuring such a large commitment as an LLC rather than as a trust or another form of charitable gift, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg upset the norms that have protected the public interest. In an earlier NPQ story, I raised this concern directly, writing that What Zuckerberg and Chan have done is more an act of investing in themselves than a decision to give away their assets. It privatizes the way these funds will be directed and minimizes the public’s control of how charitable dollars are spent. In a time when there is a growing concentration of wealth in the United States, as illustrated by a study recently published by the D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, the difference this makes presents a great danger to our nation’s civil society in general and to the nonprofit sector.

Levine asks the important questions about CZI:

Will Chan and Zuckerberg see the value of openness and democracy? Will they recognize the difference between the public and private sectors? Or as successful entrepreneurs, will they see no need for public checks and balances? With each step forward by CZI it appears that they see themselves as capable of balancing public and private interests with little input from the public. They are asking us to trust their good intent and their ability to protect the common good. Despite their being smart, successful, and generous, this does not bode well.

This young couple is worth about $50 billion, more or less. Because of Z’s success as a tech entrepreneur, many fear that CZI will put more money into “personalized learning,” meaning “depersonalized learning,” or replacing human teachers with machines. As with all such projects started by billionaires, we wonder, who elected them to redesign our public schools?

Open the article to see the picture of Mark Z.

I don’t mean to engage in “lookism,” but I can’t help but think “middle school” when I see him.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Technology

Rob Reich of Stanford: Big Philanthropy Empowers Plutocrats

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2017 //
39

Rob Reich,Director of the Center for Rthics in Society at Stanford University, warns that big money is using the guise of philanthropy to advance their personal agenda and bypass democratic institutions.

https://qz.com/1035084/philanthropists-dont-deserve-our-gratitude-says-a-stanford-ethicist/

“Exceptionally wealthy people aren’t a likeable demographic, but they have an easy way to boost personal appeal: Become an exceptionally wealthy philanthropist. When the rich use their money to support a good cause, we’re compelled to compliment their generosity and praise their selfless work.

“This is entirely the wrong response, according to Rob Reich, director of the Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University.
Big philanthropy is, he says, “the odd encouragement of a plutocratic voice in a democratic society.” By offering philanthropists nothing but gratitude, we allow a huge amount of power to go unchecked.

“Philanthropy, if you define it as the deployment of private wealth for some public influence, is an exercise of power. In a democratic society, power deserves scrutiny,” he adds.

“A philanthropic foundation is a form of unaccountable power quite unlike any other organization in society. Government is at least somewhat beholden to voters, and private companies must contend with marketplace competition and the demands of shareholders.
But until the day that government services alleviate all human need, perhaps we should be willing to overlook the power dynamics of philanthropy—after all, surely charity in unchecked form is better than nothing?

“In extreme situations, such as a major disaster, Reich is supportive of donations from philanthropic organizations. But he’s strongly against private donors providing public goods on a longer-term basis, which he says contributes to a cycle whereby the state expects to provide less and philanthropists are relied on to pay for more and more. And a democratically elected government should be a far better provider of long-term services than wealthy individuals.”

That is precisely the reason that Bridge International Academies, the for-profit provider of low-cost schools in Africa is doing harm: it enables the state to do less and to shirk its responsibility to provide free, universal public education to all.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Ethics

Billionaire Elon Musk Knows What Schools Need to Do–and They Are Already Doing It

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2017 //
18

Elon Musk, tech billionaire, says he has the solution for schools: teach children to ask why. Engage them in constructing things to learn how they work.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/20/elon-musk-this-question-can-help-fix-the-u-s-education-system.html?utm_source=TopSheet&utm_campaign=5d4d14b0ca-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_07_21&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d40b014331-5d4d14b0ca-176133581

Is this news? No.

Wherever schools have the class sizes and resources and expert teachers they need, that is what they are already doing.

According to his Wikipedia entry, Musk went to a private school in South Africa, where he was bullied and beaten by other students. He doesn’t know much about American education. I wish I had the chance to tell him that the schools in affluent areas are doing what he suggests. That is the ideal.

The schools that are not teaching interactively have overcrowded classes, lack the resources to buy the needed materials, and have inexperienced and overwhelmed teachers. Furthermore, every school–rich and poor–is forced by federal law to spend (waste) time preparing to take standardized tests, which do not reward the critical, inquisitive thinking that you admire. The students who asks “why” and stops to think about questions will be penalized by these simple-minded tests.

Please, Mr. Musk, use your wealth and your platform to help bring your good ideas to every school.

Categories Billionaires, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Gary Sasso: Why Don’t the Billionaires Help the Schools That Most Children Attend?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2017 //
86

Gary Sasso, dean of education at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, asks a simple question: if billionaires like Bill Gates and Eli Broad care about our nation’s future, why don’t they help the public schools, which enroll 85% of America’s children?

Sasso wrote in Salon:

“Obscured by the rancor of the school reform debate is this fact: Socio-economic status is the most relevant determinant of student success in school.

“It is not a coincidence that the so-called decline of the American public school system has coincided with the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report, the wealth disparity between upper-income and middle-income families is at a record high. Upper-income families are nearly seven times wealthier than middle-income ones, compared to 3.4 times richer in 1983. Upper-income family wealth is nearly 70 times that of the country’s lower-income families, also the widest wealth gap between these families in 30 years.”

So why do the 1% blame teachers and unions for sociology-economic conditions they can’t control?

“Charter schools will never be the answer to improving education for all. It is simply not scaleable. And yet titans of industry such as Bill Gates, Eli Broad and the Walton family, and billionaires such as John Paulson who earlier this year gave $8.5 million to New York’s Success Academy charter school system, are pouring their millions into support for charter schools—millions that will not, incidentally, be invested in improving the schools that the vast majority of U.S. students attend: traditional public schools.

“Can it be a coincidence that those who have benefited most from the last 50 years of steadily increasing income inequality—the top 10 percent–support an education solution that hinges on denigrating public school teachers, dismantling unions and denying that income inequality is the underlying condition at the root of the problem?”

The facts don’t support their crusade for charters, he says, so they must be driven by ideology.

What do you think?

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Privatization
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