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Laurene Powell Jobs Gives Away $100 Million to Reinvent High Schools

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2016 //
47

Laurene Powell Jobs has given away $100 million to 10 schools, with the goal of reinventing the high school. Ms. Jobs is the widow of Steve Jobs, the legendary co-founder of Apple. She is very active in the corporate reform movement. She is on the boards of Teach for America, NewSchools Venture Fund, and Stand for Children.


The ten prizes come from XQ: The Super School Project. The high school redesign competition has financial backing from the Emerson Collective, an organization launched by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

“The Super School Project was born out of the conviction and commitment that every child from every background has a right to a quality education that prepares them for a future none of us can easily predict,” said Russlynn Ali, the chief executive officer of the XQ Institute, in a press release. (Ali has long worked in the education policy arena, including a stint as an assistant secretary for civil rights in the Obama administration.)

Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in D.C., recalls the efforts of the New American Schools Development Corporation, which held a competition in 1991 to redesign the American school. It gave away $50 million. No traces remain.

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

Megan Tompkins-Stange: Why Should Bill Gates Decide How Our Children Should Be Educated?

By dianeravitch
September 17, 2016 //
23

Megan Tompkins-Stange recently wrote a book (Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform and the Politics of Influence) about her study of certain big foundations. I posted EduShyster’s interview with her. She writes here about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and its intention to remake American education, without asking parents or educators if they agree with the foundation’s plans.

She describes the Gates Foundation’s pivot from small schools to Common Core to “personalized learning.” Each pivot involved maximum imposition on districts and states eager for new money, and the money also had strings attached. The strings designed by the Gates Foundation.

As Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the Walton family foist their experiments on other people’s children, they have no accountability for their mistakes. Sometimes they don’t even seem to acknowledge them.

She writes:

But education is a public good: a fundamental human right to which citizens in a democratic society are entitled. It isn’t a private good that can be negotiated with, or directed by, private interests. This distinction is particularly important in low-income communities that are populated predominantly by people of color, where foundations have long concentrated efforts to pursue unproven innovations. These communities are often those most in need of support, where philanthropists feel they can make the biggest impact. That’s why cities in crisis like Detroit and New Orleans have become central sites for charter schools, many of which are low in quality.

However, while foundations may want to catalyze innovation on behalf of poor children, they must be careful to avoid treating schools and communities as laboratories, particularly when poor families are so susceptible to the threat of uninformed consent. In fact citizens are beginning to push back against foundation funding of ‘proof points’ in their districts, arguing that schools are not testing grounds for wealthy philanthropists to conduct their social experiments. In 2016, for example, the California NAACP called for a national moratorium on all new charter schools.

Until recently, public opinion on the democratic responsibilities that accompany private philanthropy by the wealthy was fairly indifferent. A 2006 study, for example, found that 98 per cent of press coverage on philanthropy was neutral or positive in nature. But since then the debate has opened up, and school reform has become the centerpiece of efforts to highlight the dilemmas involved in ‘private funding for the public good’ as philanthropy is often described.

The key issue here is accountability, not stopping the flow of funding into schools that desperately need resources. Foundations are almost unique among large institutions in being free of accountability mechanisms with teeth, so long as they file some basic paperwork with the IRS and steer clear of openly partisan politics. A private corporation or a government department would not have weathered the cycle of interventions in schooling that the Gates Foundation has pursued over the last 15 years—they would have been held accountable for their failures and subject to greater scrutiny by the public.

That’s very difficult to do with foundations because they are self-funded, self-appointed and largely self-regulating institutions with no democratic mechanisms for debate and accountability, but it would certainly be possible for governments at the state and federal levels to mandate the inclusion of members of the public such as teachers, school superintendents, and independent education experts in deliberative processes around any major innovation, and to enforce regular Congressional reviews of foundations’ work whenever it aims to change national policy around public goods like education.

Foundations are notoriously insular institutions, which rarely welcome or seek out criticism, especially from the voices of affected communities. They also tend to resist attempts to regulate their activities—arguing that this would inevitably lead to political interference—but the balance of accountability has swung too far away from public oversight. Even small-scale measures like improving the diversity of boards of trustees have been opposed or watered down by foundation interests.

However, if foundations refuse to put their own house in order then democratically elected authorities have every right to step in. After all, if philanthropy is indeed ‘private funding for the public good’ (and receives tax benefits in return), then the ‘public’ must be involved in monitoring their performance.

The good news here is that the public is becoming increasingly aware of the foundations’ influence and their lack of accountability. They can mess up a district, a state, or the nation and walk away saying that their grand ideas were not implemented correctly. We have never actually heard an apology from Bill Gates about his teacher evaluation by test scores fiasco or the Common Core controversy or inBloom, nor will we get one when parents rebel against the farce of “personalized learning” by computer. Don’t expect an apology from Eli Broad for all the top-down corporatists that he sent out to school districts across the land. And the Walton family is digging in and investing hundreds of millions every year in the privatization of public education. No excuses! No apologies! No remorse!

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

Mercedes Schneider Responds to Checker Finn’s Paean to Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2016 //
18

Mercedes Schneider responded during her lunch break at school to the Finn, et al, article in the Wall Street Journal.

She says there is no mass movement to charter schools. Instead, there is a movement bought and paid for by billionaires, millionaires, and others who have embraced free-market ideology.

“Finn et al. are just a part of the well-financed corporate ed reform mass of think tanks, billionaires and hedge funders trying to foist reforms onto the American public in the name of a “quiet revolution.””

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

OUTRAGE: How the DeVos Family Paid the Michigan GOP to Block Charter Accountability

By dianeravitch
September 6, 2016 //
20

Okay, maybe you can’t be shocked anymore to learn that billionaires have bought politicians. Still, when you read this article in the Detroit Free Press, I think you will be as outraged as I was and am. The charter lobby has outdone itself this time. I haven’t paid as much attention to the DeVos family as I should have. Their fortune comes from Amway. Betsy DeVos started a privatization organization deceptively named the American Federation for Children. The family would like to replace public education altogether, preferably with vouchers. They are devotees of the free market ideology, though they are happy to have government subsidize the free market. One thing is clear: they despise public schools and will gladly reward legislators to agree with them.

This article was written by Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. If the DeVos family and the Michigan GOP wanted to help the children of Detroit, would they insist on eliminating any accountability for charter schools?

Henderson writes:

“Bought and paid for.

“Back in June, that’s how I described the Detroit school legislation that passed in Lansing — a filthy, moneyed kiss to the charter school industry at the expense of the kids who’ve been victimized by those schools’ unaccountable inconsistency.

“And now, through the wonder of campaign finance reports, we are beginning to see what it took to buy the GOP majority in Lansing, just how much lawmakers required to sell out Detroit students’ interests.

“The DeVos family, owners of the largest charter lobbying organization, has showered Michigan Republican candidates and organizations with impressive and near-unprecedented amounts of money this campaign cycle: $1.45 million in June and July alone — over a seven-week period, an average of $25,000 a day.

“The giving began in earnest on June 13, just five days after Republican members of the state Senate reversed themselves on the question of whether Michigan charter schools need more oversight.

“There’s nothing more difficult than proving quid pro quos in politics, the instances in which favor is returned for specific monetary support.

“But look at the amounts involved, and consider the DeVos’ near-sole interest in the issue of school choice. It’s a fool’s errand to imagine a world in which the family’s deep pockets haven’t skewed the school debate to the favor of their highly financed lobby.

“And in this case, it was all done to the detriment of children in the City of Detroit.

“Deep pockets, long arms

“Back in March, the Senate voted to place charter schools under the same authority as public schools in the city, for quality control and attention to population need and balance, in line with a plan that had been in the works for more than a year, endorsed and promoted by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder.

“But when the bills moved to the state House, lawmakers gutted that provision, returning a bill to the Senate that preserved the free-for-all charter environment that has locked Detroit in an educational morass for two decades. After less than a week of debate, the Senate caved.

“Even then, several legislators complained that the influence of lobbyists, principally charter school lobbyists, was overwhelming substantive debate. The effort was intense, they said, and unrelenting.

“Now we know what was at stake.

“Five days later, several members of the DeVos family made the maximum allowable contributions to the Michigan Republican Party, a total of roughly $180,000.

“The next day, DeVos family members made another $475,000 in contributions to the party.

“It was the beginning of a spending spree that would swell to $1.45 million in contributions to the party and to individual candidates by the end of July, according to an analysis by the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.

“The polite term for this kind of reflexive giving is transactional politics; it is the way things work not just in Lansing but in Washington, and in political circles in all 50 states.

“But the DeVos family has a singular focus on one issue, school choice. And given Michigan’s murky campaign finance laws, it’s harder to quantify what’s going on until long after it has happened.

“The substantive tragedy here, of course, is much starker.

“The legislation the DeVos family bought preserves a unique-in-the-nation style of charter school experimentation in Detroit.

“If I wanted to start a school next year, all I’d need to do is get the money, draw up a plan and meet a few perfunctory requirements.

“I’d then be allowed to operate that school, at a profit if I liked, without, practically speaking, any accountability for results. As long as I met the minimal state code and inspection requirements, I could run an awful school, no better than the public alternatives, almost indefinitely.

“That’s what has happened in Detroit since the DeVos family helped push the charter law into existence 20 years ago.

“On average, the schools don’t perform on state and national tests much better than public schools. A few outliers have reached remarkable heights. A few have done much worse. And charter advocates have become crafty liars in the selling of their product.

“They’ll crow, for instance, that nearly twice as many of their kids do as well on national math assessments as the public schools. What they don’t tout are the numbers, which show the public schools are 8%, and the charters at 15%.

“Regardless of outcome, none of the charter school establishment has been subject of a formal oversight and review that would reward the best actors and improve the worst.

“Education should always be about children. But in Michigan, children’s education has been squandered in the name of a reform “experiment,” driven by ideologies that put faith in markets, alone, as the best arbiters of quality, and so heavily financed by donors like the DeVos clan that nearly no other voices get heard in the educational conversation.

“The legislation debated this spring in Lansing was the first meaningful effort to change that — not to punish charter schools for independence, but to subject both charter and public schools to a rational means of review and improvement.

“There is no conscionable objection to this kind of basic oversight. But the DeVos family’s purchase of the souls of the GOP majority stalled progress for children in this state’s largest city.

“In all the other states where I’ve lived — Maryland, Illinois, Kentucky — it is impossible to imagine such a tightly held interest wielding that much influence.

“Why allow it?

“Beyond the substantive problem, there is the profound question of the sanctity of our political process.

“Is this how we do business in Michigan? Is this how we reach conclusions about important matters of public policy? The DeVos family isn’t breaking any law. The question we have to ask ourselves is why our laws permit this measure of single-interest dominance in politics.

“Back in the spring, I suggested that the legislators who sold out to the DeVos family be rounded up, sewn into burlap bags with rabid animals, and tossed into the Straits of Mackinac.

“My hyperbole was fueled by indignant outrage. I meant it to be. This kind of craven betrayal by public officials, so naked and with so much consequence for vulnerable citizens, ought to make all of us indignant, and outraged.

“Now that we know the other part of the story — the DeVos family’s apparent purchase of our state’s GOP — it should do more than outrage us.

“It should motivate us to make change.”

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

Joshua Leibner: 100 Reasons I Never Liked John Deasy

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2016 //
13

Joshua Leibner wrote an open letter to celebrated author Ta-Nahisi Coates, with the expectation that Mr. Coates would never see the letter.

Leibner, an NBCT teacher in Los Angeles for 20 years, wrote this letter to counter an “open letter” that John Deasy had written to Ta-Nahisi Coates.

Leibner acknowledged that both of them were using the format to make a statement directed at the public, not the author.

He used his letter to excoriate Deasy and his fealty to the agenda of the Billionaire Boys Club.

If Deasy would like to respond to Joshua Leibner, I welcome his letter.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles

Billionaire Foundation Secretly Funds Surveillance System for Baltimore

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2016 //
21

The John and Laura Arnold Foundation secretly funded a wide-area surveillance system for Baltimore, according to news reports.

See here and here and here.

Last week, the NPQ nonprofit newswire covered the story of the private funding of a surveillance system that would have monitored the streets of Baltimore secretly from the sky. The secrecy began with the funding mechanism, which bypassed the public scrutiny that the usual budgetary processes would have necessitated. The grant was made anonymously by Laura and John Arnold and run through a donor-advised fund at the Baltimore Community Foundation, whose president claims he knew nothing about it.

Anyway, now the Arnolds would like to claim that the outrage caused by the way the project was planned and funded entirely without public input is all part of a healthy process of public dialogue:

“We haven’t created a position as to whether or not Baltimore should use it. This is the first of many steps to evaluate whether the technology should be used,” said Laura Arnold, a Houston-based philanthropist who is paying for the surveillance with her billionaire husband, John. “No program would be successful unless they address these issues [of privacy]. They’re never going to reduce crime in Baltimore or any city unless the community is part of the solution. This is all very healthy.”

Laura Arnold is a lawyer, which you may be able to detect in the following statement:

As supporters of the ACLU, we deeply recognize the concerns and the tradeoffs that need to be made on privacy. Not only do we fully respect and support that process; for us, we don’t see it as a contradictory thing. We should have this conversation.

Although police department officials have denied that the program was secret, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and city council members said they, at least, were entirely in the dark until the publishing of an expose in Bloomberg Businessweek. No wonder they did not want to share! Now, a public hearing on the program is being scheduled by the city council. Maryland Public Defender Paul DeWolfe says the program should be halted immediately.

Laura Arnold would never, she said, “presume to tell you what’s best for your neighborhood.” I think the neighborhood might see that differently. Philanthropic money in public systems is enough of a complication and an end-run around democracy. Secret philanthropic money in public systems—especially in systems of policing—is an affront to taxpayers.—Ruth McCambridge

The Arnold Foundation is better known for its support for charter schools and its animus towards public pensions.

Categories Baltimore, Billionaires, Privacy

California: Meet the Billionaires Who Are Financing the Spread of School Privatization

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2016 //
58

The California Teachers Association created a useful graphic of the billionaires who are supporting charter schools and privatization of public schools. (There are many more billionaires supporting privatization, but this is a good start.)

Here are a few things you should know about the people on this site.

The Waltons are probably the richest family in America. Forbes estimates their family fortune at $130 billion. Privatizing public education is a family hobby or passion. Wherever there is a critical election, whether in Washington State or Georgia, you are likely to find that a Walton has put in big money to help those who want to replace public schools with private management. They don’t like unions. They boast that they have funded one of every four charters in the nation. I don’t know if any of them have a union, but I doubt it. Walmart is non-union, and it has thrived–for the Waltons, if not for its workers. Workers at Walmart had to fight to get minimum wages. Many qualify for food stamps. If the Waltons wanted to reduce poverty, they could do it by raising the wages of their workers to $15 an hour. They have 1 million low-wage workers. Imagine the good the Waltons could do if they gave their workers a living wage.

Arthur Rock not only gives generously to charters, he is a major contributor to Teach for America. He personally pays for its Washington, D.C., interns who work as Congressional staff and diligently protect TFA’s financial and political interests.

Reed Hastings owns Netflix. He told a meeting of the California Charter Schools Association that he looks forward to the day when there are no local school boards. Think of it. You would get to pick your charter but have no voice whatever in its decision making. Democracy is such a nuisance. Hastings contributed to a fund to oust the chief judge of Washington State this fall because she wrote the opinion saying that charter schools are not public schools. He established a $100 million fund to promote charter schools headed by the guy who ran New Schools for New Orleans.

Doris Fisher is the matriarch of the Fisher Family that owns the Gap and Old Navy. The family has heavily supported KIPP and TFA. The three Fisher children went to Phillips Exeter Academy.

Eli Broad pushes to eliminate public schools everywhere. His Broad superintendents have been strategically placed in key positions in school districts across the country after being carefully indoctrinated in his view that the best way to improve public schools is to replace them with charters. He likes to work with school districts where there is minimal public participation, preferably where the mayor has total control. He wants to put half the children in Los Angeles in privately managed charter schools. He is another reformer who doesn’t like democracy. The more autocratic control, the better the environment for his top-down management plans.

The Laura and John Arnold Foundation of Houston has made its mark beyond supporting charter schools in California. John Arnold tried, but failed, to turn Dallas into an all-charter district. He has a passion for eliminating defined-benefit public pensions and replacing them with 401Ks, which fluctuate with the market. When investigative reporter David Sirota discovered that Arnold was financing a PBS program on the “crisis” in public pensions, PBS was shamed into returning Arnold’s donation of $3.5 million.

Know your reformers!

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

Massachusetts: NAACP Opposes Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2016 //
25

Massachusetts will vote in November on Question 2, which would expand the number of privately managed charter schools, a dozen a year forever. The promoters of charters claim to be “saving” poor minority children. But the NAACP for New England sees through the propaganda.

The Chairman of the Education Committee of the New England Area Conference of the NAACP weighed in at the Boston Globe:

AUGUST 27, 2016

“IT IS precisely because of our grave concerns about the devastating impact on black and brown children that the NAACP is part of a broad-based statewide coalition to defeat Question 2, which would lead to unfettered charter school growth, taking billions of dollars in state aid away from local district public schools (“Charter question divides Democrats,” Metro, Aug. 16).

“The battle over this ballot question is not between teachers unions and low-income and minority families. On one side are those who believe that we must stop defunding the public schools that educate 96 percent of our students. On the other are those who support the diversion of billions of dollars of education resources to publicly funded, privately managed, selective, separate, and unequal charter schools.”

John L. Reed
Chairman
Education Committee
NAACP — New England Area Conference
West Roxbury

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2016/08/26/group-fears-impact-more-charters-children-color/VNabfDqrYztsnKNn3d67yK/story.html?event=event25#comments

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform

“Students Matter” Loses Vergara, Files Lawsuit in Connecticut

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2016 //
34

Only hours after losing its lawsuit to block teacher tenure in California, the Silicon Valley-funded “Students Matter”filed a lawsuit in Connecticut, claiming that the state’s restrictions on magnet schools and charter schools discriminated against inner-city children.

Curious. Why isn’t this group suing the state for not giving the neediest schools the funds to reduce class sizes and provide social and medical services to the children?

“California-based educational-advocacy group has filed a federal lawsuit charging that Connecticut’s restrictions on magnet and charter schools harm city children and violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“Students Matter, a group best known for bringing an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to eliminate teacher tenure in California, filed a 71-page complaint Tuesday charging that “inexcusable educational inequity” in Connecticut was primarily the result of state laws “that prevent inner-city students from accessing even minimally acceptable public-school options.”

“The group is taking aim at laws that have put a moratorium on new magnet schools, limit the expansion of charter schools, and set per-student funding levels for districts participating in the Open Choice program in which city students attend suburban schools.

“A statement from Students Matter said, “Year after year, these parents have tried to avoid sending their children to failing public schools by trying to enroll them in magnet schools, charter public schools or other adequate public school alternatives.”

“However, the group contends that children have been “forced to remain in failing schools” because laws prevent magnets and charters from “scaling and meeting the need for high-quality schools demanded by Connecticut’s population.”

Hmmm. If students have a constitutional right to attend charter schools, do charter schools have the right to refuse admission?

I wonder if TIME Magazine will give the story a cover, as it did for Vergara, claiming that Silicon Valley knows how to fix failing schools. Or the cover it gave to Michelle Rhee, holding a broom, saying that she knew how to fix the public schools of D.C.

I have an idea: since David Welch, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur behind Students Matter, knows how to fix low-scoring schools, why doesn’t he offer to take over a district in California and show us how to do it?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Our Dam Poet on the Billionaires’ Burden

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2016 //
9

Our poet is missing. Poet, come back! We need your voice, your wit, your passion.

“The Billionaire’s Burden” (based on
“The White Man’s Burden”, by Rudyard
Kipling”)

 

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden,
Send forth the tests ye breed
Go bind your schools to test style,
To serve his market’s need;
The weight of heavy VAMness,
On captive folk and mild—
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half teacher and half child.

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden,
In patience to abide,
To veil the scheme for teach-bots,
The prime intent to hide;
With coded speech of Orwell,
You really must take pains
To make a hefty profit,
And see the major gains.

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden,
The public schools to fleece—
Fill full the days with testing
And Common Core disease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end that you have sought,
Destroy the Opt-out movement
Lest work be all for naught.

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden,
A tawdry rule of Kings,
The toil of IT keeper,
The sale of software things.
The data ye shall enter,
On privacy to tread,
To make a “decent” living,
Until they all are dead.

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard—
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:—
“Why brought he us from bondage,
From stupid blissful night?”

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden,
Ye dare not stoop to less—
So fulminate ‘gainst Apple
To cloak your Siri-ness;
And strategize in whispers,
For all ye leave or do,
Or silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh Diane on you!

 

Take up the Billionaire’s burden,
Have done with childish ways—
The Kindergarten playing,
The test-less former days
Come now, to join Reform-hood,
The pride of Duncan years
Cold, edged with Gates-bought wisdom,
The plan of Billionaires!

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