Archives for category: Billionaires
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Karen Wolfe: The Next Election for the LAUSD Will Be a Showdown Over Privatization

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2016 //
5

Karen Wolfe, a public school parent and blogger in Los Angeles, reports on the upcoming battle royal for control of the school board.

The charter ndustry is planning a raid on the school board, and their candidates can expect to be showered with money from billionaires who want to privatize more of the public schools. As karen points out, most of the donors will be able to hide their names until the primary is over, so voters won’t know which billionaires have decided to buy their public schools.

Steve Zimmer, president of the school board, will be challenged by a parent organizer for the California Charter School Association, the mother lode of privatization. Zimmer started his career as a TFA teacher, but stayed in the classroom for 17 years. The billionaires raised nearly $5 million to beat him last time he ran, but he prevailed.

Carl Petersen, a staunch friend of public schools, is running for a seat.

In another board race, the queen of corporate reform, Monica Garcia, is being challenged by teacher Lisa Alva. This will be an interesting contest because Lisa Alva started her career on the reform team but fell off the bench when she happened to participate in a conference call in 2013 that disillusioned her.

There is another candidate, Nick Melvoin, with sterling reformer credentials. He has raised $161,000. Garcia has raised $132,000. Zimmer has raised $29,000. So far. The billionaires and PACs haven’t weighed in yet. They will. The LAUSD is a big prize. The second largest district in the nation. Nearly a quarter of the students in the district attend charter schools. Billionaire Eli Broad wants half the kids in charters. He is persistent.

Will the people of Los Angeles allow the billionaires to take control of their public schools?

The primary election will be held on March 7, 2016 and the general on May 16.

We will watch this election closely as it develops.

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

Jeff Bryant: Education Victories We Can Celebrate

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2016 //
10

Jeff Bryant, a wise observer of politics and education, offers solace at a time when supporters of public education fear the ascendancy of a Republican President and Congress devoted to privatization of schools.

He reviews the electoral victories for public schools.

Chief among them, of course, were the overwhelming defeat of charter school measures in Massachusetts and Georgia.

Another victory occurred in Washington State, where Bill Gates spent $500,000 into an effort to unseat Supreme Court justices who ruled that charter schools are not public schools. The Justice who wrote that decision, Barbara Madsen, was re-elected with 64% of the vote. Two other incumbents were re-elected.

Montana Governor Steve Bullock, a strong supporter of public schools, was re-elected, running against an advocate of school choice.

California voters passed measures to assure school funding.

One other piece of good news–and these days, any piece of good news is welcome–is that Maine voters narrowly agreed to raise taxes by 3% on upper-income taxpayers, to increase education funding.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Georgia, Maine, Massachusetts, Montana, Politics, Supporting public schools

California Charter Industry Spends BigTime on Elections to Cement Its Power

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2016 //
9

Investigative reporter Bill Raden of Capitol & Main exposes the political machinations of the billionaire-funded charter industry, which wants more kids, more schools, more market share. Enough is never enough.

Expenditures by charter school lobbying groups was near $24 million, pumped into 35 legislative races. The charter industry wants to buy influence to protect its market share.

Raden writes:

California’s “school choice” movement has always benefited from generous subsidies by a narrow spectrum of big-spending entrepreneurs, many of whom are billionaires. Their wealth has helped give the state the highest number of charter schools in the U.S., even as their election largess has left it with the nation’s most expensive school board elections.

Capital & Main’s analysis of the latest campaign-finance records for the five largest charter school IECs reveals that those same personal fortunes are at the center of the charters’ apparent attempt to buy some Sacramento political insurance against a growing resistance among both lawmakers and the public to the industry’s unbridled expansion in the state.
The amount spent by charter IECs represents about $40 for each of California’s 581,100 charter school students, and a 300 percent jump from 2014 charter election spending — about 570 percent over 2012.

Most of the charters’ IE spending (88 percent) was directed by three committees that served as the 501(c)(4) political arms of industry lobbyists California Charter School Association (CCSA) and EdVoice, the charter school advocacy nonprofit founded by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings: CCSA’s California Charter Schools Association Advocates IE Committee, and the Parent Teacher Alliance (sponsored by the CCSA’s IEC); and the EdVoice Independent Expenditure Committee. (Neither EdVoice nor CCSA responded to requests to comment for this article.)

The remainder was distributed by the Govern for California Action Committee, a PAC controlled by anti-public-pension gadfly and neoliberal Democrat David Crane; and by Parents and Teachers for Student Success – StudentsFirst, the IEC of the national pro-charter group founded by Michelle Rhee.

“They’re investing heavily in maintaining a deregulated environment,” said United Teachers Los Angeles Secretary Daniel Barnhart before the election. “This really isn’t about kids. In their own words, they say it’s about market share.”
He may be right. Though the teachers union spent nearly $33 million on the election, the bulk of that (around $20 million) went to Proposition 55, the education-funding measure that aimed to benefit all California classrooms — both charter and public school students. The charter IECs spent solely on pro-charter legislative and school board candidates.

The unions spent money to support education, both for public schools and charter schools. The charter industry spent only to protect its future prospects for opening more charters and draining more resources from public schools.

Governor Jerry Brown is the ultimate protector of the charter industry. He vetoed a bill to block the educationally disastrous for-profit online charter industry. And he vetoed other bills to rein in charter abuses.

The industry may have become more aggressive this year because the public is growing wary of its promises, its scandals, and its propaganda. The ACLU issued a blistering report about charters in California, and the NAACP call for a moratorium on charters was a body blow to billionaires who think they are in the forefront of the civil rights movement. They are not.

This greedy, self-absorbed industry has overplayed its hand. The public is catching on. The billionaires will have to spend more to buy more legislative seats to stave off a public uprising against them.

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

Good News on a Gloomy Night: Question 2 in Massachusetts Fails Overwhelmingly

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2016 //
204

All the Presidential polls were wrong. Clinton appeared to be headed for a big victory until FBI Director James Comey informed Congress that he had discovered a new trove of emails. He decided there was no problem on the Sunday before the election. I can’t help but think that she was never able to revive the momentum after Comey’s intervention. And so we have a President-elect who has never held public office, has no governmental experience, has made statements that are racist, misogynist, andxenophobic. His party will control Congress. He will select at least one and possibly two or three Supreme Court justices.

On the subject of education, he has shown little interest. He held one press conference at a for-profit charter school in Ohio and promised $20 billion in federal funds for charters and vouchers, transferred from existing programs. He has shown no interest in public education.

But there is a piece of good news in the midst of a dark night for public education.

Voters in Massachusetts overwhelmingly defeated Question 2, by a margin of about 62%-38%. Question 2 would have permitted the addition of 12 charter schools every year into the indefinite future.

A vibrant coalition of parents, educators, and students withstood a barrage of dark money and won. They organized, mobilized, knocked on doors, rallied, and they won. More than 200 school committees passed resolutions against Question 2. None supported it.

The bottom line that unified opponents of the measure was that charters would drain funding from the public schools.

Proponents spent at least $22 million, most of it from out of state donors. Big givers were billionaires and hedge fund managers.

This was the first contest over charter schools in which the key issues became public: the billionaire funding from out of state; the deceptive advertising that flooded the airwaves; the opponents’ recognition that the charter movement was an assault on public schools, an effort to privatize them.

On a sad night for the nation, it is heartening to see that the people defended their public schools…and won.

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

Oakland: Charter Billionaires Attack School Board Member with Negative, Misleading Flyers

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2016 //
4

Dark money leads to dark actions.

The usual billionaires are funding a campaign to put pro-charter candidates on the Oakland school board.

Rather than openly debate the issues, they have attacked a school board member with negative ads and flyers.

Dark money is turning School Board races into ugly, partisan elections, not divided by party but by allegiance to either democratically controlled schools or privatization.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools

Andrea Gabor: Dark Money Targets Massachusetts Voters

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2016 //
3

Andrea Gabor posted today an update on the Dark Money behind Question 2 in Massachusetts.

https://andreagabor.com/2016/11/07/update-how-long-time-charter-funders-are-upping-the-ante-in-their-bid-to-blow-the-bay-states-charter-school-cap/

She begins:

“On October 24, I posted the story below about dark money–much of it from out-of-state–flowing into Massachusetts to support a “yes” vote on a pro-charter-school ballot question known as Question 2. In the days just before the election, those funds have increased dramatically, making Question 2 the most expensive charter-school ballot initiative in the country, ever. In Massachusetts, which has the most highly rated public schools in the nation, more has been spent by proponents of Ballot 2 than both sides spent on any other ballot initiative in state history, and more dark money has flowed to the initiative than to any state or federal election. Here are the latest totals via Peggy Wiesenberg, attorney, activist and public-school parent who did the analysis for the original post:

—Families for Excellent Schools, $15.6 million

—Other dark-money donors $2 million

–Hedge fund and other investment managers $1.9 million

–Jim and Alice Walton $1.8 million

–Other donors, $1.3 million, including a total $490,000 from Michael Bloomberg

By contrast, union spending in opposition to Question 2, was about $11 million.”

The people of Massachusetts will decide tomorrow who owns their public schools.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Massachusetts, Privatization

New York Times: Balanced Account of Battle Over Question 2 in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2016 //
12

The New York Times published a fair and balanced account of the heated battle over Question 2.

It notes that $34 million will (so far) be spent on this question over whether to expand the number of charter schools. Most of it is “dark money” from out of state billionaires, like the Waltons of Arkansas.

It interviews people who favor Question 2 and people who oppose it.

It says that some leaders (like Elizabeth Warren) are against Question 2, while others (Governor Baker) support it.

It notes that some civil rights groups (like the Urban League) are for it, while others (the NAACP and Black Lives Matter in Cambridge) are against it.

The good news buried in the article is that the latest poll shows Question 2 losing.

It says that advocates for charters say it will cost no new money to open more charters, while supporters of public schools insist that it is already causing budget cuts in public schools and will lead to more budget cuts and school closings.

The bottom line of the battle is at the end of the article, where Maurice Cunningham of Boston University, who has studied the money behind the charter question, says:

“if you can’t stop the hidden billionaire money in Massachusetts, then you can’t stop it anywhere.”

Conversely, if the people of Massachusetts can beat back the billionaires, despite their command of television and the Boston Globe, then citizen action can beat the billionaires everywhere.

What is so thrilling about the battle over Question 2 is that everything we have discussed on this blog is coming out into the open: the NAACP, with its call for a moratorium, has stripped away phony claims about school choice being the “civil rights issue” of our time. The billionaires’ privatization agenda is debated daily by parents and civic activists. The fact that school choice is being pushed by Republicans and opposed by many Democrats is explicit.

If the people of Massachusetts vote “NO” on Question 2, it will be a resounding defeat for the billionaires and their Dark Money groups, and it will echo around the nation.

If the people of Massachusetts vote “NO” on Question 2, it will signal their determination to build a strong public school system for all children, not simply add a few more escape hatches for a few children, which would debilitate the public schools.

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

Los Angeles: Educators at 4 Public Schools Reject Broad-Walton Money

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2016 //
19

This just happened in Los Angeles: Educators at four LAUSD public schools turned away money from the two billionaire backers of privatization. Broad and Walton are offering funding to these schools at the same time that their charters are diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from the district’s public schools.


For immediate release
Media Contact:
Anna Bakalis
UTLA Communications Director
213-305-9654

UTLA Educators Overwhelmingly Vote Against Broad-Walmart Grant Funding

Los Angeles, CA – This week, educators at four LAUSD schools voted to reject grant money from “Great Public Schools Now,” the public face of a group backed by the California Charter School Association and bankrolled by billionaires Eli Broad and the Waltons of Walmart.

Educators say that this is a PR stunt, not a genuine effort to fund schools in need and are calling on the District to uphold the vote by not accepting the grant money from GPSN, in any way. These four schools are within the targeted 10 areas for Broad-Walmart funding.

The vote was 98% in favor of rejecting the money; ballot counts at Drew Middle School, Pacoima Middle School, San Fernando High School, and Gompers Middle School were, respectively, 35 to 1, 58 to 0, 72 to 0, and 22 to 3.

Jared Dozal, who voted against his school receiving Broad-Walmart money, is a math and computer science teacher at San Fernando High School. He says this is a distraction from real, lasting efforts for sustainable funding for all public schools.

“We know that some will see this as an opportunity missed for funding, but the amount offered is peanuts for the billionaires behind this effort,” Dozal said. “We won’t let this distract us from saving our schools from a corporate takeover, paid for by the people who only want to destroy public education.”

Dozal said the grant’s offer of “up to” $250,000 per year for three years is insulting, considering the amount of money siphoned from public schools to subsidize rampant charter school growth.

For example, according to LAUSD’s own numbers, Gompers Middle School has $1.4 million less in its budget than 2013. Since school budgets are in large part determined by enrollment, the rapid expansion of charter school growth has clearly impacted the middle school.

In the zip code that Gompers is in, and in the nearby zip codes, there are 21 charter schools. Thirteen of these are the largest corporate charters, including Green Dot, Alliance, Aspire and Kipp. The Waltons of Walmart have contributed generously to these four corporate charters, and Eli Broad alone has contributed more than $75 million over the last few years. In fact, in the June 2015 GPSN plan, Broad and Walton say they will be raising $135 million more for these charter school operators.

Getting the funding and resources our students need requires meaningful and sustainable initiatives. To that end, members of United Teachers Los Angeles join with parents and community members to address issues like school site improvements and student safety, enriched curriculum that includes funding for arts, music and ethnic studies as well as fully staffed schools with full-time nurses, librarians and counselors.

UTLA is also working to pass Prop. 55 on next week’s ballot, pursuing long-term funding solutions in Sacramento, and supporting efforts such as the Make It Fair campaign to close corporate property tax loopholes.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance, Teachers, Unions, Walton Foundation

A Map of the School Committees Against Question 2 in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2016 //
7

This map shows the school committees that oppose Question 2, which would add a dozen charter schools a year forever, located anywhere in Massachusetts.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SOPublicSchools/status/794242861273350144

The school committees know that creating a dual school system will leech resources from the public schools of their communities. They will have fewer teachers and programs. Charters have not “closed the achievement gap” in any other state or district? Why expand charter schools in the nation’s highest performing state school system?

The vote on November 8 will test whether out-of-state billionaires can persuade citizens to abandon their public schools. Will voters be smart enough to ignore the lies and propaganda pushing privatization of their community public schools? Will they resist the temptation to create a dual school system?

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

New York: 17 Tycoons Try to Buy Control of New York State Senate to Protect Charter Schools and Low Taxes

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2016 //
9

A small group of very wealthy financiers is spending at least $13 million to keep the GOP in control of the State Senate in New York. Most of the money is flowing through StudentsFirst, whose goal is to protect and expand privately managed charter schools.

A group of 17 wealthy donors has poured more than $13.4 million into four GOP-leaning super PACs in a bid to influence this year’s state legislative races, a new report claims.

The report from the activist group Hedge Clippers showed that the bulk of the money – about $10.6 million – went to New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany, a super PAC created by the pro-charter school group StudentsFirstNY.

Three other education reform PACs were also recipients of donations from the group of 17, the report found.

Hedge Clippers’ report comes as a super PAC created by the state teacher’s union, Fund For Great Public Schools, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past few weeks to boost Democratic efforts to take control of the state Senate.

“A small group of mega-wealthy donors is trying to sway our elections to protect their personal fortunes, while teachers’ unions are supporting candidates who will enact a progressive agenda for all working people,” said Michael Kink of the Hedge Clippers campaign.

Among the biggest donors were hedge fund managers Daniel Loeb, who gave about $3.2 million to the super PACs, and Paul Singer, who gave about $2.5 million. Wal-Mart heir Alice Walton also gave about $2.4 million.

Jenny Sedlis, executive director of StudentsFirstNY, slammed the Hedge Clippers report.

“A group of civic-minded New Yorkers formed StudentsFirstNY to ensure the needs of students factor into the policy conversation in Albany,” Sedlis said. “These reports are an attempt to intimidate funders so that student interests won’t be represented. Thankfully our funders care too deeply about children to be intimidated.”

We call the billionaires “moguls,” “oligarchs,” and “tycoons,” determined to privatize our public schools and destroy public education. StudentsFirst calls them “civic-minded New Yorkers.” When did Alice Walton move to New York? Aren’t you pleased to know that billionaires will not be “intimidated” by reports that they are trying to undermine our democracy and privatize public education, which they scorn as beneath them and unworthy of their patronage?

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »