Archives for category: Billionaires
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Harold Meyerson: Why Do Billionaires Care So Much About Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2017 //
26

Harold Meyerson, editor of The American Prospect, raised a question that I have heard dozens of times: Why do billionaires care so much about charter schools? Why have so many of the 1% decided that charter schools will provide a better education than public schools?

Are we to believe that the Walton Family, Eli Broad, Michael Dell, Doris Fischer, Reed Hastings, and many lesser-known billionaires are consumed by a passion for equity?

Inevitably, one must also wonder why billionaires are indifferent to evidence that charter schools are typically no better, and often much worse, than public schools?

Why are they so intent on weakening America’s public schools, a bedrock of our democracy?

Meyerson writes:

“Living in separate eras when the middle class was—and is—embattled and the gap between rich and poor was—and is—immense, billionaires have largely shunned the fights that might truly narrow that gap: raising the minimum wage, making public colleges and universities free, funding sufficient public investment to create genuine full employment, reviving collective bargaining, and raising progressive taxes to pay for all of that.”

To put it bluntly, the great crusade for charters is a diversion from the true economic issues of our day.

We can only dream about a government willing to tax the billionaires, intent on raising the minimum wage, and determined to provide economic security for all. That would address the sources of inequality.

But Billionaire would rather talk about charter schools.

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform

How Millionaires Make Money by Paying into Voucher Fund

By dianeravitch
May 31, 2017 //
7

The currently popular means of establishing vouchers in the states where the state constitution forbids them is called an “education savings account.” The way it works is otherwise known as money laundering. Suppose Daddy Warbucks owes the state $200,000 in taxes. He gives the money to an independent organization that gives out money for private and religious schools. He gets a state tax credit and may actually make money on the deal if he also gets a federal tax credit.

Very clever. Daddy Warbucks makes a generous gift of money that should have gone to the state treasury to pay for public services. The independent organization collects millions of dollars to hand out as vouchers.

This particular game was created in Florida, where the state courts ruled vouchers unconstitutional, and the voters rejected an effort by Jeb Bush to alter the state constitution.

Now it is happening in Missouri, where the richest man in the state is Rex Sinquefield.

Rex has long been a hater of public schools. He stands to achieve his dream, undermining the public schools, and getting a hefty tax deduction too.

Categories Billionaires, Florida, Missouri, Privatization, Vouchers

Tom Ultican’s Sharp Critique of What Went Wrong and How to Make Things Right

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2017 //
19

Tom Ultican became a teacher of math and physics in San Diego after a career in Silicon Valley. He is retiring. He loves teaching.

He describes with precision the people who imposed bad ideas on the schools and messed them up. Maybe they meant well but their lack of knowledge or experience in the classroom led to naive and foolish and failed interventions, like Common Core and “turnaround,” with mad firings.

He writes:

“Standards based education is bad education theory. In the 1960’s Benjamin Bloom proposed mastery education in which instruction would be individualized and students would master certain skills before they moved ahead. By the 1970’s this idea had been married with B.F. Skinner’s behaviorist philosophy and teachers were given lists of discrete items for their students to master. The “reform” became derisively known as “seats and sheets.””

Tom says he is leaving the classroom. I hope there is a way to keep his kbowledge, experience, and wisdom engaged in educating the next generation.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Competency Based Education, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, NCLB, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, San Diego, Technology, Turnaround Schools

Mercedes Schneider on 50CAN

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2017 //
10

Mercedes Schneider wrote a post about 50CAN, which exists to spread the gospel of charter schools, state-run “Achievement school districts,” and high-stakes grading systems (unclear whether the high-stakes are only for public schools, as most states haven’t done much to identify or close failing charter schools).

Their agenda is a match with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Betsy DeVos (who supports accountability for public schools only).

As Schneider points out, there is a lot of chatter on the website about “citizen advocates,” but it is clear from the membership on the board that 50CAN is run by the same wealthy magnates that finance other corporate reform, privatizing organizations. On the board, for example, is the Connecticut billionaire Jonathan Sackler, whose family became among the richest in America producing the highly addictive opioids OxyContin.

When you see the size of the staff, you realize that this is a very well funded organization with a multi-million dollar budget.

You will notice frequency of the phrase, “evidence-based,” but don’t be fooled. In almost every state, public schools outperform charter schools. And the only full-fledged Achievement School District is in Tennessee. It has been a dismal failure.

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

Laura Chapman on 50CAN

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2017 //
15

50CAN is a corporate reform organization that originated in Connecticut as ConnCAN. It was led by the billionaire Jonathan Sackler. Sackler owns Purdue Pharmaceuticals, which created the drug OxyContin, which is a highly addictive painkiller. The drug financing the expansion of charter schools made the Sackler family very wealthy (at last count, a net worth of $14 billion), but it is also implicated in the nation’s opioid crisis.

ConnCAN went national as 50CAN. (I learned from reading Elizabeth Young Bruelh’s book “Childism” that CAN is an acronym in the psychiatric literature that stands for “child abuse and neglect.”

Laura Chapman did some research and this is what she learned:

“According to Media Matters.org, 50CAN stands for the 50 State Campaign for Achievement Now. 50CAN is a network of state-level organizations pushing for pro-voucher and free-market education policies across the country. It has affiliates in Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, and “fellowships “in California, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Wisconsin.

“The 2016 policy goals focused on passing state legislation in affiliate states to spur the rapid expansion of charter schools and to reduce state oversight of these schools.

“50CAN “partners” with many conservative and rightwing organizations that want to control school policy. Among these partners are the Commonwealth Foundation (a member of the State Policy Network) which, according to Politico includes these “associate members”: ALEC, David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Foundation, FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation. Add the Thomas B. Fordham Institute (see Wikipedia and board of directors); and Policy Innovators in Education Network (PIE) active in 34 states promoting market-based education.

“Each state in 50CAN has strategic partners and interlocking directorates among members. This inbreeding is planned and extensive. It is masked by the ambiguous language of “strategic partnerships” for policies and for advocacy, a relationship of “affiliate status,” and for “campaigns” (lobbying initiatives) with right wing organizations and projects. 50CAN state affiliates know how to find and to co-opt groups that should be defending public education. Go to jonathanpelto,com for a chilling report from early this year about the activities of ConnCAN.

“Here is another example. PIE (Policy Innovators in Education Network) is a sprawling network of deep-pocket and dark money power-brokers promoting market-based education in 34 states and Washington, DC. Members can be found here: http://pie-network.org/pie-network-members/

“Who finances PIE? Foundations set up by billionaires who have no respect for public education and othe institutions with democratic governance. PIE is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, Joyce Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, New Venture Fund, and McKnight Foundation.

“In March, 50CAN and Michelle Rhee”s StudentsFirst announced that they would merge and begin operating under the 50CAN name nationally, although state chapters of StudentsFirst will, for the most part, retain their “brands.”

“All of that is a a fraction of what’s going on, and with tax breaks for the “non-profits” who are working together for a “collective impact.”

https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/04/27/here-are-corporations-and-right-wing-funders-backing-education-reform-movement/210054#50can

My addendum: the PIE Network was launched by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, ConnCAN, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

Who is Behind the Assault on Public Education?

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2017 //
23

Howard Ryan, writing in Monthly Review, analyzes the sources of support for corporate reform and privatization.

Ryan writes:

Over the past three decades, public schools have been the target of a systematic assault and takeover by corporations and private foundations. The endeavor is called “school reform” by its advocates, while critics call it corporate school reform. Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg has given it the vivid acronym GERM—the global education reform movement. Its basic features are familiar: high-stakes testing; standardized curricula; privatization; and deskilled, high-turnover faculty. In the United States, public schools have become increasingly segregated, destabilized, and defunded, with the hardest hit in low-income communities of color.

Nevertheless, while the political conflicts and social ramifications of the school reform phenomenon are well known, basic questions about the movement remain underexamined. Who really leads it? What are their aims and motives? After briefly taking up the statements of the reformers themselves, I will turn to the views of their progressive opponents, and offer a critique of three influential interpretations of the school reform movement. Finally, I will present my own theory about this movement, its drivers, and its underlying aims…

A large body of research, however, challenges the merits of high-stakes testing and other elements of the corporate school reform package. It is also at least questionable whether the reformers really believe their own statements.

The reformers’ interest in school improvement appears, in a number of ways, to be less than genuine, to mask a different agenda. They prescribe models for mass education that they do not consider suitable for their own children. They sponsor think tanks to produce “junk research” praising their models, while ignoring studies that contradict their models. They insist that full resourcing of schools is unimportant or unrealistic, and that “great teachers” will succeed regardless of school conditions, class size, or professional training.”

You will find it interesting to see how he weaves together the various strands of the corporate reform movement.

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

Esquire: “Is There a Point to All This Cruelty?”

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2017 //
11

Charles P. Pierce blogs regularly for Esquire, and he is one of the few mainstream writers who understands the creeping (now galloping) privatization of public education and knows that it is a very bad thing for our society.

You will enjoy reading this post, unless you are Betsy DeVos.

With the proposed budget cuts to the federal budget for education, he writes, DeVos isfinding ways to fulfill her life’s dream of destroying public education and monetizing all those bright shiny faces.

He writes:

Betsy DeVos does not know anything about public education except that she doesn’t believe in it as a concept. Free public education is one of the unquestioned triumphs of the American experiment, but it’s a disposable commodity to a know-nothing fanatic who married into a vast fortune and dedicated a lot of it to wrecking public education. One of the worst things about electing an unqualified dolt to be president is that the dolt’s administration is a paradise for free-range maniacs and their personal crusades. This is a case in point.

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

“Don’t Like Betsy DeVos? Blame the Democrats”

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2017 //
109

I wrote this article for The New Republic.

https://newrepublic.com/article/142364/dont-like-betsy-devos-blame-democrats

It explains how Democrats set the stage for DeVos’ anything-goes approach to school choice by their advocacy of charter schools. Charters are the gateway to vouchers. We have seen many groups like Democrats for Education Reform try to draw a sharp distinction between charters and vouchers. It doesn’t work. Once you begin defaming public schools and demanding choice, you abandon the central argument for public schools: they belong to the public.

The political side to this issue is that the Democratic Party sold out a significant part of its base–teachers, teachers unions, and minorities–by joining the same side as ALEC, the Walton family, and rightwing conservatives who never approved of public schools.

Their pursuit of Wall Street money in exchange for supporting charters helped to disintegrate their base. To build a viable coalition for the future, the Party must walk away from its flirtation with privatization and support the strengthening and improvement of our public schools.

Please share this article widely.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Unions

Massachusetts: More than $43 Million Spent Last Fall in Losing Effort to Expand Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
6

The battle over Question 2 in Massachusetts was overshadowed by the national election, but it was an important bellwether in the fight against privatization.

The amount of money spent was phenomenal. The usual billionaire suspects put up most of the money to promote the measure and the teachers’ union, spending the dues collected from individual teachers who work daily in the classrooms of the state, put up most of the money to resist increased privatization of public schools.

The ballot measure was defeated overwhelmingly, by 62-38. The only districts to approve it were affluent districts that would unlikely to have any charters, and the districts that voted against it most heavily were those that already had charters and saw the drain on their budgets.

An Associated Press review of donations to school choice ballot questions and candidates found that spending on the 2016 question — which would have let Massachusetts add up to a dozen new or expanded charter schools each year outside of existing caps — topped $43 million.

Of the nine school choice-related ballot questions put before voters across the country since 2000, that level of spending was second only a 2000 ballot question in California, which would have established school vouchers.

Spending on the California question neared $63 million.

Both the Massachusetts and the California question failed. In Massachusetts, more than six in 10 voters rejected the proposal.

Those supporting the Massachusetts question included a handful of big money donors who rank among the top 48 individuals or married couples who gave at least $100,000 from 2000 to 2016 to support statewide ballot measures advocating for the creation or expansion of charter schools or taxpayer-funded scholarships that can be used for private school tuition for students in kindergarten through high school, according to the AP review.

Some of those top money donors to last year’s ballot question hailed from out-of-state including: Alice Walton, of Arizona, a member of Wal-Mart’s Walton family, who gave $740,000; Bloomberg founder and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who contributed $490,000; and John Douglas Arnold, of Texas, a Centaurus Advisors hedge fund manager and former Enron trader, who gave $250,000.

The top 48 donor list also includes Massachusetts residents who supported the 2016 charter school question, including: Edward Shapiro, a Wellesley resident and partner at Par Capital Management, who gave $225,000; Bradley Bloom, a Wellesley resident and co-founder of Berkshire Partners, who gave $150,000; and Ray Stata, a Dover resident and Analog Devices founder, who contributed $125,000.

All told, supporters poured nearly $27 million into trying to persuade Massachusetts voters to support the initiative. The opposition, funded largely by teachers unions, spent more than $16 million fighting the question.

The group spending the most to support the question — the New York City-based Families for Excellent Schools — contributed more than $17 million. The group has refused to say who is funding them.

New Yorkers are familiar with “Families for Excellent Schools.” This is the group that spent millions on television advertising to attack Mayor Bill de Blasio when he tried to rein in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools. The New York Times reported that the group consists of wealthy Wall Street moguls. These “families” for “excellent schools” are rich white men who live in places like Greenwich, Connecticut, and other affluent suburbs, who have probably never set foot in a public school.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Massachusetts

Peter Dreier: How Big Money Hijacked Democracy in Los Angeles

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2017 //
18

Peter Dreier, a professor of political science at Occidental College, gives his political analysis of the Los Angeles school board election.

He writes:

[Nick] Melvoin and his billionaire backers dramatically outspent school board president Steve Zimmer’s campaign, making the District 4 race the most expensive in LAUSD history.

Political pundits will spend the next few days and weeks analyzing the Los Angeles school board election, examining exit polls, spilling lots of ink over how different demographic groups — income, race, religious, union membership, gender, party affiliation, and others — voted on Tuesday.

But the real winner in the race was not Nick Melvoin, but Big Money. And the real loser was not Steve Zimmer, but democracy – and LA’s children.

Who backed Melvoin?

Billionaires, many of whom live far from Los Angeles, bought this election for Melvoin. Their money paid for non-stop TV and radio ads, as well as phone calls, mailers and newspaper ads (including a huge wrap-around ad on the front of Sunday’s LA Times). Melvoin’s billionaire backers paid for 44 mailers and at least $1 million on negative TV ads against Zimmer.

The so-called “Independent” campaign for Melvoin was funded by big oil, big tobacco, Enron and Walmart, and other out-of-town corporations and billionaires. They paid for Melvoin’s ugly, deceptive, and false attack ads against Zimmer, a former teacher and current school board president. Melvoin is so devoted to the corporate agenda for our schools that during the campaign he said that the school district needed a “hostile takeover.”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who lives in Santa Cruz, donated close to $5 million since last September to the California Charter School Associaton’s political action committee, which poured big bucks into Melvoin’s campaign.

Among the big donors behind Melvoin and the CCSA were members of the Walton family (Alice Walton, Jim Walton, and Carrie Walton Penner) ― heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune from Arkansas, who’ve donated over $2 million to CCSA. Alice Walton (net worth: $36.9 billion), who lives in Texas, was one of the biggest funders behind Melvoin’s campaign. Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflicks (net worth: $1.9 billion), who lives in Santa Cruz, donated close to $5 million since last September to the CCSA’s political action committee, including $1 million a week before the election.

Other moguls behind Melvoin and the CCSA include Doris Fisher (net worth: $2.7 billion), co-founder of The Gap, who lives in San Francisco: Texas resident John Arnold (net worth: $2.9 billion), who made a fortune at Enron before the company collapsed, leaving its employees and stockholders in the lurch, then made another fortune as a hedge fund manager; Jeff Yass, who lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, and runs the Susquahanna group, a hedge fund; Frank Baxter, former CEO of the global investment bank Jefferies and Company that specialized in “junk” bonds; and Michael Bloomberg (net worth: $48.5 billion), the former New York City mayor and charter champion. Eli Broad (net worth: $7.7 billion), who hatched a plan to put half of all LAUSD students in charter schools by 2023 — an idea that Zimmer fought — donated $400,000 to CCSA last Friday, on top of $50,000 he gave in November. He made his money in real estate and life insurance.

Not surprisingly, most of these billionaires are big backers of conservative Republican candidates and right-wing causes. Several are on the boards of charter school chains.

Citizens United strikes again. Until there are campaign finance limits, big money will win more elections and corrupt our democracy.

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