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Maurice Cunningham: A Privatizing Philanthropist Buys Space in the Boston Globe

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2019 //
25

Maurice Cunningham is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts who writes a blog that”follows the money.” He also happens to be one of the heroes in my new book “Slaying Goliath.”

In this post, he warns that philanthropists are using their vast resources to buy control of the news, in this case, the Boston Globe. You may recall that Eli Broad gave the Los Angeles Times $800,000 a year yo increase its education coverage at the same time that he was trying to buy control of the LAUSD school board and ultimately put half the city’s children in charter schools. Fortunately, another billionaire bought the paper who was not interested in the schools, and Broad’s money went down the drain.

In Boston, as Cunningham explains, the Barr Foundation made a $600,000 gift to the Boston Globe. He explains that the Barr Foundation has a long history in the privatization movement.

This is not an innocent, no-strings-attached gift.

Cunningham writes:

The announcement last week of the $600,000 grant from the Barr Foundation to the Boston Globe was presented as a public spirited philanthropy offering the Globe the means to research our education system’s failures and report back on how to fix them.  It is not. It is the dawn of philanthro-interest group journalism.

That’s a mouthful so let me explain. Journalism is easy – the Globe is the most important media outlet in the state. Philanthropy is something that generates positive responses as leading citizens “give back” to the community. What? You’d rather have them buy another yacht? But philanthropies are increasingly acting like interest groups[1] and that is what Barr is doing. It’s expending money to gain influence for its policy preferences on education.[2]

Get over the idea of Barr as a disinterested philanthropy scrupulously pursuing only the public good. It’s an interest group. How so?

Consider the political operating charities Barr has been supporting in the bitter contest between union and civil rights and community groups versus the wealthy interests who wish to privatize public education. Barr’s Form 990 tax returns show it routinely donates to political non-profits that promote privatization.

  • In both 2015 and 2016 Barr gave $200,000 to Stand for Children, a beard for privatization interests. (SFC, then funded by members of Strategic Grant Partners, was behind the 2010 charters ballot measure and the 2012 anti-union ballot proposal, both of which ended in compromise legislation).
  • In 2016 Barr gave $125,000 and in 2017 $175,000 to Educators for Excellence “to support the launch of E4E’s Boston chapter.” E4E is a faux teachers operation, a company union alternative to real teachers’ unions.[3]
  • Barr has contributed to Massachusetts Parents United, the Walton family front that executes privatization activities for the WalMart heirs.[4]
  • Just this year Barr funded the rollout of SchoolFacts Boston, a new operating non-profit headed by former mayoral candidate John Connolly, whose candidacy was backed by $1.3 million in dark dollars from Democrats for Education Reform Massachusetts. Connolly recently appeared at a DFER event.

We also can’t ignore the history of the money man behind Barr, Amos Hostetter Jr. (By the way, did Hostetter donate to DFER for the 2013 Boston mayor’s race? We’ll never know. DFER is a dark money front).

  • In 2009 Hostetter contributed $32,500 to the Committee for Public Charter Schools, the ballot committee formed by Stand for Children to support a ballot initiative in support of more charter schools.
  • In 2016 Hostetter secretly donated over $2 million to Families for Excellent Schools in favor of Question 2 to increase the number of charter schools. Because Hostetter hid his donations behind that dark money front, his largesse was not known until the Office of Campaign and Political Finance ruled that FESA had violated state campaign finance law and ordered it to disclose the true sources of its funding. Hostetter was the fourth largest individual donor to FESA.[5] If not for OCPF, we’d never know.[6]

Keep reading. The Barr Foundation is buying influence. It’s money will be used to point the Globe to ideas favored by Barr and to ignoreodeas that Barr dismisses.

This is a new-dangled kind of corruption.

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

Another Reformer Organization Pops Up

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2019 //
7

There seems to be no shortage of money to create new corporate reformer organizations, and they seem to open faster than anyone can keep track of them.

Here is a new one: Results for America. 

You will recognize the names of some prominent figures in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations.

Notable among them is Jim Shelton, who worked for Gates, Arne Duncan, and then led the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Let’s hope they pay attention to the scandals now afflicting the charter industry and don’t use their money and weight to promote more of what has already proven to be a failure.

The website cites the federal Every Student Succeeds Act as one of its successes:

Strengthening Public Education

RFA helped develop the evidence provisions in the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act which could help states and district shift up to $2 billion annually toward evidence-based solutions in FYs 2017-2020.

Considering that ESSA retained NCLB’s mandated annual testing, it is hard to see where the evidence is for its “success.” If the measure is test scores, then ESSA has not moved the needle. ESSA maintains the Bush-Obama failures, with the sole exception being the removal of the insane 2014 deadline by which every student would be proficient. What part of ESSA has succeeded? What evidence is there to believe that “every student” will succeed because of this pointless law?

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

Bill Phillis: State Takeovers Cause Chaos, Not Improvement

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2019 //
1

Bill Phillis of Ohio writes:

School Bus
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Cleveland Plain Dealer analysis of trends in test scores in HB 70 districts: NO IMPROVEMENT
The state takeover of school districts (HB 70 of the 131stGeneral Assembly) has caused chaos in school communities, fattened the wallets of consultants, but has not demonstrated improved test scores.
The federal government, via No Child Left Behind (NCLB), has created chaos in school communities throughout the nation. Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is not much better than NCLB. The feds are attempting to run schools via NCLB and ESSA with no success. Some states like Ohio are also trying to run school districts with no success.
The feds need to help the states implement a system of education in accordance with each state’s constitutional provisions. In turn, the states need to help districts provide equitable and adequate educational opportunities and then butt out of local school management. Communities have far greater capacity to manage their schools than state and federal officials.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
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Categories Accountability, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Ohio, Privatization, Race to the Top

John Thompson: Did We Ever Disagree? He Says We Did.

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2019 //
24

 

John Thompson says we used to disagree, but he has come around. My memory is not what it used to be, but I recall that he took issue with my use of the term “corporate reformers.” He used to think that the “reformers” were trying to help and just needed the hand of friendship extended to them. Now he thinks otherwise.

He knows that I tried to meet Bill Gates when I visited Seattle. My requests were always rebuffed. There are just so many times you can try without getting a message that the meeting will happen never.

He ponders in this post whether I hurt reformers’ feelings and whether I should care.

Ravitch acknowledged that “reformers say I am ‘mean’ or ‘harsh’ when I say that some ‘reformers’ have a profit motive or that their grand plans actually hurt poor minority children instead of helping them.” She had been told, “Bill Gates was very hurt by my comments about his effort to remake American education. He frankly could not understand how anyone could question his good intentions.” But Ravitch had never questioned his intentions, even though she “certainly question[s] his judgment and his certainty that he can ‘fix’ education by creating metrics to judge teachers.”

Ravitch confessed to being less worried about the Billionaires Boys Club’s feelings than their “constant repetition of the blatant lie that American public education is a failure.” She said, “Dear reformers, please know that I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just wanted to let you know that your efforts to create a dual system of publicly funded schools turns back the clock to the shameful era before the Brown decision.”

And Ravitch “wanted you to know that your reliance on standardized testing is a grand mistake.” She opposed reforms mostly based on the edu-philanthropists’ theories, and wanted them to realize “your speculative plans are not ‘hurting the feelings’ of teachers and principals, they are ruining their careers, ruining their reputations, doing real and tangible damage to the lives of real people.”

John comments with his own insights:

Communicating with representatives of the nation’s elites, I learned that most of the pro-reform experts realized that something had gone terribly wrong. Although few agreed the huge body of evidence showing that their movement had taken terrible inner city schools and made them worse, most admitted that it had not produced very many positive changes. Some of the poorest students had been helped and others had been hurt. And reformers often knew that they had had far more success driving veteran teachers out of schools than in finding replacements.

I was not completely wrong in believing we could start a dialogue. A bipartisan coalition was making Oklahoma one of the first states to undo the worst education policy of the era: the use of test scores in teacher evaluations. But I was mostly wrong and Ravitch was right. The Billionaires Boys Club merely adopted a kinder, gentler public relations spin. Then, schools were further undermined by budget cuts, and the exodus of experienced teachers, leaving public education even more vulnerable.

So, we need a new round of the type of conversations that I’ve tried, while heeding Ravitch’s hard-earned wisdom.

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

The Resistance Is Winning! Democrats Abandon Charter Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2019 //
56

The biggest battle in the fight against privatization has been to persuade the Democratic Party that it had been hoaxed by Republicans into adopting the Republican agenda. According to this article in The Washington Post, Democratic support for charter schools has evaporated, at least among the candidates.

The title of the article is “Democrats abandon charter schools as ‘reform’ agenda falls from favor.” No one has more egg on their faces than the editorial board of the Washington Post, which loves charter schools and defends them at every turn.

Until 1993, Democrats supported equity and federal funding for public schools, while Republicans supported choice, testing, competition, and accountability.

Then Bill Clinton embraced charter schools, testing, standards, and accountability. Then came NCLB and it was endorsed by Ted Kennedy and the entire Democratic Party.

Then the Obama Race to the Top gave total support to the Bush NCLB approach of charters, testing, and harsh accountability, and Arne Duncan spent seven years parroting the Republican line that the best way to improve schools was to get tough on teachers, make tests harder, and open more charter schools.

According to the Washington Post, the Democratic love affair with charters is over. 

The steady drumbeat of scandals and the vivid advocacy of Betsy DeVos have killed the Democrats’ charter love. 

Suddenly, the Democratic candidates for president  seem to have realized that school choice is a Republican issue. Supporting the public schools that nearly 90% of all students attend is a Democratic issue.

This is awkward for Democrats like Governor Jared Polis of Governor and Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, all fans of charters.

Democrats have long backed charter schools as a politically safe way to give kids at low-performing schools more options. Many supported merit pay for the best teachers and holding schools accountable for test scores.

The presidential contest is proof that’s no longer the case.

If the candidates say anything about charter schools, it’s negative. Education initiatives boosted by the Bush and Obama administrations are nowhere to be found in candidate platforms.

Instead, the Democratic candidates are pitching billions of dollars in new federal spending for schools and higher pay for teachers, with few of the strings attached that marked the Obama-era approach to education.

It adds up to a sea change in Democratic thinking on education, back to a more traditional Democratic approach emphasizing funding for education and support for teachers and local schools. Mostly gone is the assumption that teachers and schools are not doing enough to serve low-performing children and that government must tighten requirements and impose consequences if results do not improve.

As a senator, Joe Biden said private school vouchers might help improve public schools. As vice president, he was atop an administration that made support for charter schools a requirement to access federal grant funding. But when asked about charters — privately run, publicly funded schools — during a recent forum with the American Federation of Teachers, Biden sounded a negative note.

“The bottom line is it siphons off money for our public schools, which are already in enough trouble,” he said….

Bernie Sanders thus far is the only candidate to call for an end to federal funding of charter schools. The safe position for Democrats is to oppose “for-profit” charters, while ignoring the fact that many “nonprofit charters” are operated by for-profit management corporations.

The story continues:

It’s an unsettling development for advocates of the structural changes that have fallen out of favor, and a sharp turn from where many Democrats were just a few years ago. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had pushed a bipartisan drive for accountability, and charter schools were the answer for Democrats who opposed private school vouchers but wanted to offer other options to children — often children of color from low-income families — assigned to low-performing schools. They were important to some civil rights leaders and became a central plank in the drive for school accountability….

The American Federation of Teachers has been hosting candidate forums throughout the country, inviting contenders to spend a day with teachers and then answering questions town hall-style.

At the town hall with Biden last month, AFT President Randi Weingarten was so warm and complimentary that it left some with the impression she was laying the groundwork for an endorsement.

“Vice President Joe Biden was our north star in the last administration,” she said. “We didn’t always get along with the Obama administration positions on education, but we had a go-to guy who always listened to us.” She added: “He’s with us because he is us.”

During the Obama administration, the National Education Association was so angry it called forEducation Secretary Arne Duncan to resign, and the other big teachers union, the AFT, came close…

The shift underway has Democrats who support charter schools and related policies nervous. Democrats for Education Reform is circulating results of a poll that show support for charter schools is higher among African American Democrats than whites. But overall, the poll found just 37 percent of Democratic primary voters have a favorable view of charters.

Some like-minded Democrats are working on something they call the Kids New Deal, hoping to find a candidate to support it. The centerpiece of the proposal is to make children a “protected class” under the law, which would make it easier for them to file lawsuits challenging, for instance, tenure for teachers, on the grounds that it hurts children.

“The goal here is to outflank the teachers unions from the left and not from the right,” said Ben Austin, a longtime education restructuring advocate.

DFER is the hedge fund managers group created to persuade Democrats to act like Republicans and support privatization. It offered big money for candidates who swallowed their line. DFER was condemned by the state Democratic Party in both California and Colorado as a front for Wall Street and corporate interests.

 Ben Austin is one of California’s most aggressive charter school proponents, having run the faux Parent Revolution, whose goal was to convert public schools to charter schools. He spent millions of dollars from Gates, Waltons, and other billionaires, but converted only one or two public schools. If he is behind the “Kids New Deal,”’it is probably another billionaire-funded privatization vehicle.

The great news in this article is that those who have warned Democrats to return to their roots and stop acting like Republicans have won the debate.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Republicans, Scandals, School Choice, Testing

My List of Books for Summer Reading

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2019 //
23

In no particular order.

These are books I enjoyed and learned from.

Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World

Rucker Johnson, Children of the Dream: Why Integration Works

Noliwe Rooks, Cutting School:  Privatization,  Segregation, and the End of Public Education
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America 
Gordon Lafer, The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time
Nancy McLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Daniel Koretz, The Testing Charade: Pretending to Make Schools Better
Yong Zhao, What Works May Hurt—Side Effects in Education
Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle, Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save Our Schools and Help Children Thrive
Eve Ewing, Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side
Sent from my iPad
Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, History, Privatization, Racism, Segregation

Maurice Cunningham: When “Parent Groups” Are Funded by the Walton Billionaires

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2019 //
12

 

In my new book, Slaying Goliath, I focus on heroes of the Resistance. One of them is Professor Maurice Cunningham of the University of Massachusetts. He is a professor of politics and a blogger who believes in “follow the money.” His relentless pursuit of Dark Money in the Massachusetts charter referendum of 2016 (where voters overwhelmingly rejected charter expansion) led to the demise of the billionaire-funded front group called “Families for Excellent Schools.” It so happened that the “families” were billionaires who never set foot in a public school and never will.

In this post, Cunningham describes his fruitless effort to get a media outlet to acknowledge that the “parent group” it featured was Walton-funded.

Back on June 10 Masslive.com ran an editorial titled Meet the Newest Education Union: Parents which turned out not to be about education or unions at all but about the WalMart-heir front Massachusetts Parents United of Arkansas.  Helpful as always I sent an op-ed to Masslive setting the record straight but they paid no attention. Oh well. You can read the op-ed below.

It surprises me how little most media care about writing the basic facts about corporate “education reform” groups like MPU of AK, which would be non-existent without the millions of dollars poured in by the Waltons. The editorial board can take any position on issues they wish but it doesn’t excuse them from not informing their readers about who is funding and thus controlling the privatization fronts. Are they just not curious? I can’t imagine the motto “We don’t ask too many questions” would look good on the masthead. Is “follow the money” an elective in journalism school that got axed due to budget cuts?  Is it not news that state education policy is being hijacked by family of billionaires? Is it still not news that the billionaires are from Arkansas?

If you’re from western Massachusetts, ask Masslive yourself, and feel free to pass along my Letter to Massachusetts Education Reporters which has six reasons why reporters should report on who is behind front groups with tantalizing names like Massachusetts Parents United, Educators for Excellence, and Democrats for Education Reform.

Cunningham says “Dark Money never sleeps.”

Any Group funded by the Waltons or other billionaires is by definition “inauthentic.”

Cunningham hates hypocrisy.

So do I.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Hypocrisy, Massachusetts, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Karen Francisco: Indiana’s School Choice Frauds

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2019 //
2

 

Karen Francisco, editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, is a great defender of democracy, honesty, and public schools. She is a keen observer of the school choice hustle in Indiana, where grifters and entrepreneurs are welcome to rip off the public. Thanks, Former Governor’s Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, and compliant legislators.

In this editorial, she explains how charter schools and voucher schools evade accountability. One neat gimmick is to change the name of a failing choice School, and the clock gets reset. Presto, Change-O.

She begins:

When Horizon Christian Academy produced some of the lowest standardized test scores in the state in 2015, a spokeswoman for the Institute for Quality Education defended the Fort Wayne school’s poor performance by claiming accountability for Indiana voucher schools is greater than for public schools.

“Traditional public schools as well as public charter schools can receive an F for four consecutive years before the state can intervene,” Erin Sweitzer told The Journal Gazette. “Private voucher schools, however, are required to stop accepting new voucher students after two consecutive years of receiving a D or F.”

What Sweitzer and other voucher proponents don’t acknowledge is the accountability loophole that allows charter and voucher school operators to walk away from a failing school and open shop under a different name – with barely an interruption in the generous flow of state tax dollars. After a D grade in 2015-16, Horizon Christian Academy went on to receive an F for each of the next two academic years. The state prohibited the school from accepting new voucher students last year, but paid $880,000 in vouchers for returning students. That’s on top of the $11.4 million Horizon’s three schools have collected since the taxpayer-funded voucher program began in 2011.

Now, the school’s co-founder has left Horizon and is preparing to open a new faith-based school, Abraham Preparatory Academy.

Tammy G. Henline told The Journal Gazette’s Ashley Sloboda that the school, at Statewood Baptist Church, is planning a “large, public registration soon.” WFFT-TV reported the school will “rely heavily on a virtual curriculum” and is seeking state accreditation, which would make it eligible to receive vouchers.

If the Indiana State Board of Education approves accreditation, it will deliver Exhibit A in the accountability charade supported by voucher proponents.

In the name of parent choice, they ignore policies that allowed the failing Imagine public charter school to reopen as Horizon Christian Academy and for unlicensed educators to earn six-figure salaries overseeing D- and F-rated schools.

Apparently the voters in Indiana don’t care about how taxpayer dollars are wasted.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Indiana, Privatization, Vouchers

Civil Rights Leader Jitu Brown Speaks Out Against Privatization by Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2019 //
6

 

Jitu Brown is leader of the Journey for Justice and a national civil rights leader.

In this interview, he explains why he opposes school closings, charter schools, and vouchers, which have been disproportionately imposed on communities of color.

Don’t believe the claims by corporate reformers that black and brown parents want privately managed charters where they have no voice. They want well-funded public schools with experienced teachers and a full array of programs and services, where their voice matters.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

ProPublica: How Teach for America Became An Arm of the Charter School Movement

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2019 //
20

 

ProPublica reports on its investigation of the funding and mission of Teach for America, in which it discovered that TFA is an arm of the charter movement, which aims to replace public schools with non-union private charter school.

This is an eye-popping article, an exemplar of investigative reporting.

It begins:

When the Walton Family Foundation announced in 2013 that it was donating $20 million to Teach For America to recruit and train nearly 4,000 teachers for low-income schools, its press release did not reveal the unusual terms for the grant.

Documents obtained by ProPublica show that the foundation, a staunch supporter of school choice and Teach For America’s largest private funder, was paying $4,000 for every teacher placed in a traditional public school — and $6,000 for every one placed in a charter school. The two-year grantwas directed at nine cities where charter schools were sprouting up, including New Orleans; Memphis, Tennessee; and Los Angeles.

Here are some things you will see documented in this article.

TFA is one of the richest nonprofits in the nation.

TFA has received huge gifts from the anti-union, anti-public school Walton Family Foundation.

TFA supplies a large supply of teachers for non-union charter schools.

TFA has used its resources to help its alumni attain positions of power, as state and local superintendents and as state and local school board members, where they advocate for charter schools and TFA. In Colorado, a TFA alum Michael Johnston is running for U.S. Senate and has received huge campaign contributions from allies of TFA and DFER (Democrats for Education Reform).

Read the article to understand the nexus of power that ties TFA to the Waltons and the privatization movement.

To understand how deeply connected TFA is to rightwing politics, note that a member of its national board of trustees is former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who promoted the DeVos agenda of charters and vouchers while in office. Haslam is a billionaire.

The two outside members of the board of TFA’s political arm, Leadership for Educational Equity (sic) are billionaires Emma Bloomberg and Arthur Rock.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Privatization, Teach for America
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