Archives for category: Dark Money
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Waltons Fund “National Parents Union” to Advocate for Privatization

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2019 //
20

 

Maurice Cunningham, a dogged investigator of Dark Money, has discovered a shell operation funded by the multibillionaire Walton family. 

It is called the “National Patents Union,” and its goal is to defund public schools and transfer public money to private hands.

Its leader Keri Rodriguez led the effort in Massachusetts to raise the cap on charter schools in 2016. The referendum would have allowed a dozen new charters every year forever, located wherever they chose. The vote went overwhelmingly against the charter proposition.

But wherever there is money, there are people ready to pick up the banner of privatization. And the Waltons, whose fortune exceeds $150 Billion, have plenty to spend in their quest to destroy public schools.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization, School Choice, Walton Foundation

Bombshell Report About Copycat Legislation Written by ALEC but Adopted by Your State

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2019 //
30

Democracy is under attack, not only in D.C., but in the state capitols.

To understand just how serious this attack is, how insidious it is, how well-funded it is, please open the link.

This new USA Today/Arizona Republic/Center for Public Integrity in-depth investigation is a bombshell report on the thousands of “copy-and-paste bills” introduced and passed in state legislatures which purport to represent local interests but instead further a corporate or industry agenda. Among the goals: passing ESA Vouchers that siphon public funds from public education and redirect them to private, religious and home schooling.

ALEC and corporate America are churning out legislation that is introduced in your state under false pretenses as “reform.” Every one of these bills is meant to protect corporations and profiteers, whether in health care or any other industry.

You may have noticed a sudden mushrooming of voucher legislation in state after state. It was not written by your legislators. It was written by the rightwing corporate funded American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC.

Not only is ALEC funded by corporations, it is funded by the DeVos family and the Koch brothers.

Arizona SOS beat them last fall by fighting for a referendum on vouchers. ALEC and the Koch brothers lost 65-35. The corporate mobsters hate refunds. They prefer to buy legislators, which is easier and cheaper.

There is quite a lot of fascinating material about the hoaxing of the public.

Here is the education piece:

“For Susan Edwards, it seemed like a godsend when Arizona lawmakers introduced a bill to create a new kind of school voucher for students with disabilities.

“With the money – funded by dollars taken from a recipient’s local district school – the mother of two children on the autism spectrum could send her kids to a private school where they would receive specialized attention they wouldn’t get elsewhere.

“With a sympathetic group of students as the face of the legislation, Democrats and Republicans rallied behind the 2011 bill which borrowed language from the Goldwater Institute, ALEC, and American Federation for Children, the pro-school choice group founded by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

“Edwards’ opinion of the program, however, changed drastically as legislators later introduced bill after bill to give vouchers to more students, culminating in lawmakers approving them for all students.

“None of those bills, however, guaranteed Edwards’ sons and others with disabilities could keep their vouchers as more students were added. She didn’t know it at the time, but lawmakers were drawing their ideas from model  legislation.

“Edwards said  she realized in retrospect that students with disabilities were used as a Trojan horse to put on the legislative agenda a fringe idea that was part of a much bigger campaign. In the years that followed, 19 other states debated 93 nearly identical proposals based on model legislation. They became law in Florida, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina and Tennessee.

“Every single, little  expansion, if you look at who’s behind it, it is the people that want to get that door kicked open for private religious education,” Edwards said. ”All we (families with disabled students) are was the way for them to crack open the door.”

“Riches, Goldwater’s CEO, said starting the Empowerment Scholarship Account voucher program with a small group of students and expanding it was the best approach.

“When you are talking about a big idea, a new idea, usually the best way of approaching it is to wade into it and demonstrate it can work on a smaller level and then grow it from there,” Riches said.

“The groups behind Arizona’s move toward universal vouchers, however, were shown in indisputable terms that the public opposed their ideas.

“On Election Day 2018, Arizona voters rejected universal vouchers by a 65-35 margin.

“It was only the most recent example of model legislation that didn’t reflect the will of voters, USA TODAY/Arizona Republic found.

“Model-legislation factories have increasingly proposed what are known as “preemption” bills. These laws, in effect, allow state legislators to dictate to city councils and county governing boards what they can and cannot do within their jurisdiction—including preventing them from raising the minimum wage, banning plastic grocery bags, and destroying guns.  

“USA TODAY’s algorithm found more than 100 such bills had been introduced on an expanding array of topics.

“Kansas stopped local efforts to require restaurants to list calories on their menus.

“Arizona and New Hampshire prevented local regulations on home rentals. Airbnb has lobbied against home-sharing restrictions, often with the Goldwater Institute’s assistance.

“One model pushed by ALEC and the Goldwater Institute prohibits local jurisdictions from creating occupational licensing requirements. It reflects conservatives’ and libertarians’ belief that job licensing stifles competition and hurts the economy, and should only be required when it involves health and safety.”

At least 20 states have enacted voucher legislation, most using the ALEC model. Only Arizona held a referendum, which SOS Arizona fought for and handily defeated despite being outspent by the Koch and DeVos forces.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Dark Money, Democracy, Hoax, Vouchers

New Jersey: Dark Money Is Paying to Double Down on High-Stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
February 22, 2019 //
15

Wake up, parents and teachers in New Jersey! The billionaires and Dark Money are launching a sneak attack on your children and students.

When he ran for office, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy promised to scrap the Common Core-aligned PARCC and end the state’s high-stakes exit exams.

But billionaires and hedge fund managers don’t want to stop high-stakes testing. They love PARCC because it makes public schools look bad. Making public schools look bad helps the privatization movement.

Dark money and billionaires are dumping money into the bank accounts of key legislators to keep the testing machine alive. Find out which billionaire education reformers are behind the push to keep high-stakes standardized testing alive in New Jersey, and which legislators are doing their bidding. #HijackedByBillionaires

PARCC is a ridiculous exam whose standards were set so high that most students were certain to “fail” to reach proficiency. Half the states in the nation adopted it when it was unveiled in 2010, but almost all have abandoned it. Today only 5 or 6 states still use PARCC, and New Mexico recently announced it was dropping PARCC.
Legislator Theresa Ruiz is leading the fight to keep high-stakes testing. The Bill to save PARCC passed by one vote in the State Senate yesterday and goes to the Assembly for a vote on Monday.

“New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy campaigned on a promise to end PARCC and eliminate exit testing. Following his lead, the New Jersey Department of Education toured the state to get feedback on standardized assessments, wrote a report summarizing their findings, and proposed new regulations to replace ones passed during the Christie administration.

“But on September 12, 2018, before the Board’s discussion began, Senator Teresa Ruiz crashed the New Jersey State Board of Education meeting and suddenly regulations that seemed like a slam dunk were tabled.”

In Ruiz’s latest election, the largest contribution ($5,377) to her campaign came from Education Reform Now Advocacy (ERNA), a dark money 501(c)(4) advocacy organization associated with Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), a PAC started by billionaire education reformers.
As a 501(c)(4), ERNA is not required to disclose their donors. This means the people of NJ have no right to know who the money behind Ruiz’s largest campaign contribution came from.Ruiz also received maximum contributions of $2,600 from New Jersey billionaires Alan Fournier and David Tepper, the founders of Better Education for Kids (B4K). They are hedge fund managers who meddle in New Jersey education on behalf of testing and privatization.

B4K, Inc. gave Ruiz a direct contribution of $1,000.

B4K has been the bullhorn for Tepper and Fournier’s reform agenda for close to a decade.

Senate President Steve Sweeney, a Ruiz ally, has fast tracked the bill to be voted on by the full Senate.

Sweeney is no stranger to education reform billionaires either. In fact, in his last election, millions of dollars were spent to support Sweeney and fend off an attempt by the New Jersey Education Association to unseat him.

The New Jerseyans for a Better Tomorrow PAC, which is run by a former Sweeney aide, received over 2 and a half million dollars from General Majority PAC which is “widely seen” as being controlled by New Jersey political boss, George Norcross.

General Majority PAC brought in contributions from three of the nation’s biggest education reform champions.

The largest contribution of $500,000 came from Walmart heiress Alice Walton, followed by $200,000 from Texas billionaire and former Enron trader John Arnold, and $100,000 from California billionaire and Netflix founder Reed Hastings.

ERNA, the dark money 501 (c)(4) that was Ruiz’s largest campaign contributor, contributed $25,000 to General Majority PAC.

Sweeney also received direct maximum contributions of $2,600 from Alan and Jennifer Fournier, David Tepper and B4K, Inc..

Here is an infographic that shows the reach of Dark Money, Wall Street, hedge funds, and assorted billionaires into the effortto preserve high-stakes testing in New Jersey.

 

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corruption, Dark Money, Education Reform, New Jersey, Testing

Who Paid the Acting Attorney General’s Salary?

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2018 //
5

This appeared today in the Washington Post?

We don’t know who was paying Matthew Whitaker, and that’s a problem

By Ray Madoff

Ray Madoff is a law professor at Boston College and the director of the Boston College Law School Forum on Philanthropy and the Public Good.

Someone was paying acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker, and we don’t know who it was.

As The Post reported earlier this week, Whitaker — who was chosen in 2014 to lead a mysterious charity with undisclosed funders — received more than $1.2 million over the course of three years before he joined the Justice Department.

We don’t know who funded this charity, called the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, or why they chose to do it. But what we do know is that the way it reportedly operated under Whitaker’s leadership raises questions as to whether the organization acted as a conservative political campaign operation. We also know that those who funded the organization were able to do so entirely anonymously while writing off their donations on their taxes, all thanks to an increasingly popular charitable vehicle called the donor-advised fund.

This should not be allowed.

By design, charities are not supposed to be mysterious. Because the federal government heavily subsidizes these organizations through generous tax benefits to both donors and the organizations, they are subject to broad disclosure requirements to ensure that they are fulfilling a recognized charitable purpose. These include listing their largest donors on their annual tax returns.

Different charities are subject to differing levels of disclosure depending on what type they are. Public charities — for instance, the Red Cross — are required to disclose their largest donors on their tax returns, but this information is only made available to the Internal Revenue Service and to states that request it. But private foundations — such as the Gates Foundation or any of the smaller foundations that wealthy individuals and families commonly create — are required to also make this information available to the public.

Donor-advised funds undermine these rules by obscuring the true source of funds. They operate like charitable checking accounts. Donors transfer cash or property to a donor-advised fund sponsoring organization and receive an immediate charitable deduction for their donation. Donors then “advise” the sponsoring organization to make a payment from their accounts to their chosen charities. Because a donation received from a donor-advised fund is reported as a donation from the sponsoring organization, and not from the individual who directed it, regulators and the public are left in the dark as to the true funders of charitable organizations.

This is the case in Whitaker’s organization. DonorsTrust, a supporter of conservative causes and a donor-advised fund sponsoring organization, reportedly channeled $600,000 to Whitaker’s charity. DonorsTrust explicitly touts on its website its ability to provide anonymity to its donors. As a result, neither the public nor regulators know who was behind Whitaker’s paycheck.

Just this year, two federal appellate courts ruled in favor of state regulators requiring charities to disclose the identities of their large donors. While some donors might not like the idea of having their identities revealed, these courts recognized that this information is important for regulators to have so they can ensure charities are operating for public, and not private, purposes.

Because its funding comes from a donor-advised fund, Whitaker’s organization was able to also avoid public disclosure of its large donors. If it were categorized as a private foundation (instead of a public charity), it would have been required to report to the public — not just to regulators — the names of any donor who contributed more than $5,000.

This is not what Congress intended in 1969, when it separated private foundations from public charities. It did so because lawmakers believed that charitable organizations funded by a small number of donors were more susceptible to engaging in self-dealing than organizations that received broad public support. The problem is that in defining what constitutes “public support,” Congress included not just significant funding from small donors, but also contributions from the government and other public charities. Since contributions made through a donor-advised fund are technically donations from the fund’s sponsoring organization (which itself is a public charity), a small number of donors can easily create a new public charity that avoids the public disclosure that would otherwise come with private foundation status.

Whitaker’s organization is particularly concerning because of the prohibition against charitable organizations engaging in political activities. The Post reports that Whitaker, while serving as executive director of his charity, focused most of his media comments against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. His organization also targeted Democrats with ethics complaints. The identity of its funders could be relevant in evaluating the political nature of these activities. For example, if the funding had come from Donald Trump or another candidate, it could indicate that the true purpose of the organization was political in nature and that it should not qualify as a charity at all.

It is time for Congress to stop allowing donor-advised funds to make a mockery of our charity oversight rules. If purportedly charitable organizations want to benefit from generous tax breaks, we deserve to know who’s really funding them.

Categories Dark Money, Education Reform

Colorado: Governor-Elect Jared Polis Packs His Education Transition Team with Privatizers

By dianeravitch
November 16, 2018 //
36

Coloradans should not be surprised to learn that Governor-Elect Jared Polis has packed his transition team on K-12 education with people who have a history of preferring charters and vouchers over public schools.

Polis himself founded two charter schools and is a fierce advocate for privately managed charter schools. He was one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

So of course he appointed Jen Walmer from DFER, the notorious organization of hedge fund managers who advocate for charter schools, never for public schools, and who are anti-union, pro-merit pay and pro-high-stakes testing. DFER is the face of corporate reform, using its ample resources to undermine public education. Walmer, according to the article, is an unregistered lobbyist for DFER. The Democratic party of Colorado (and California) both passed resolutions calling on DFER to stop calling itself “Democrats for Education Reform” because its idea of “reform” is to turn public schools over to private management. Its political action arm, Education Reform Now Advocacy, bundles hedge fund money to candidates in state and local races across the nation without releasing the names of the donors. The linked article says that ERN gave out $1.8 million in Colorado races, “almost all of it on behalf of Polis and Democrats running for the General Assembly. Education Reform Now Advocacy is a dark money group that doesn’t disclose its donors.”

It gets worse. Polis invited former Republican Congressman Bob Schaeffer to join his transition team on K-12 education. Schaeffer supports vouchers. Not only that, he directs the “Leadership Program of the Rockies,” an organization that prepares candidates to run for local school boards and to become active in local politics on behalf of vouchers and other conservative principles. Schaeffer’s group was active in leading the effort to turn Douglas County into the first district in the nation to vote for vouchers. The DougCo School Board supported by Schaeffer paid former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett $50,000 to speak to local civic leaders and praise its voucher plans. After a bitter, divisive fight, the entire pro-voucher board members were ousted by popular vote in 2017.

Schaffer also is chairman of the board of the Leadership Program of the Rockies (LPR) a Republican-leaning organization that provides training on conservative principles and leadership. Its graduates include three of the former members of the Douglas County Board of Education who approved a controversial private-school voucher program in 2011. Schaffer advocated for the state board of education to endorse the voucher program.

The Dougco program led to lawsuits, including a trip all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It was dismantled last year after voters elected an anti-voucher school board.

Another member of Polis’ transition group is Michael Johnston, who ran for governor against Polis and lost. Johnston is a graduate of Teach for America and author of what is possibly the most punitive teacher evaluation law in the nation, known as SB-191. Johnston, of course, favors privately managed charters. I was in Denver in 2010 on the day the SB-191 passed. I was scheduled to debate Johnston, who arrived at the event the minute I finished speaking. He proclaimed that as a result of SB-191, which based 50% of the evaluation of teachers and principals on student test scores, Colorado would soon have great teachers, great principals, and great schools, because the bad teachers and principals would be fired. Reformers across the country hailed Johnston and his law as the dawning of a new day. Last year, one of Colorado’s reform leaders, Van Schoales, lamented the failure of Michael Johnston’s law. Most teachers were not teaching the tested subjects, so could not be judged by student test scores. All of Colorado’s 238 charter schools waived out of this wonderful system designed by one of their champions. The new evaluation system failed: less than 1% of the state’s teachers were found to be “ineffective,” about the same as before the law. As Van Schoales put it, we “not only didn’t advance teacher effectiveness, we created a massive bureaucracy and alienated many in the field.”

So what Governor-Elect Polis has pulled together is a transition team devoted to charter schools, vouchers, the discredited VAM method of evaluating educators, and high-stakes testing.

I had a brief and unpleasant personal experience with Polis in 2010, when I was invited to meet with the Democratic members of the House Education Committee to talk about my reasons for abandoning school choice and standardized testing. We met in a Congressional conference room. I explained that charter schools and vouchers were harming public schools and were part of a national effort to turn public education into a free market (this predated my awareness of Betsy Devos, who makes no bones about her desire to do exactly what I predicted). At the end of my talk, Polis took the floor, announced that my book (The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education) was “the worst book he had ever read.” He then threw the book across the table at me, and said, “I want my $20 back.” Another member of the committee reached into his wallet, pulled out a $20 bill, and bought the book from Polis. To say he was rude would be an understatement.

Parents of Colorado: Prepare to protect your public schools from your new Governor. He doesn’t like public education.

Categories Charter Schools, Colorado, Dark Money, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Reform, Vouchers

Betsy DeVos’ Family Gives $2 Million to Far-Right Candidates

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2018 //
13

During her confirmation hearings, Betsy DeVos pledged not to make political contributions while she was Secretary of Education.

But, knowing her penchant for parsing words, we may now assume that she was not covering the political donations of her family, which continue.

This latest review of political donations by Ulrich Boser and Perpetual Baffour of the Center for American Progress shows that the DeVos family gave $2 Million to far-right candidates.

My hunch is that they gave far more than $2 million, through Dark Money PACs that do not disclose the names of their donors.

The report finds:

“Even by the loose standards of U.S. campaign finance laws—and President Donald Trump’s blatant corruption—the donations by the family members of a Cabinet official have been brazen. In February 2018, Richard DeVos, Secretary DeVos’ father-in-law, gave $1 million to the Freedom Partners Action Fund—a political action fund that has long been associated with far-right causes. Over the past year, the DeVos family has also given $350,000 to the Republican Congressional Leadership Fund and another $400,000 to the Republican National Committee.

“The DeVoses have also donated to specific candidates for federal and state office. Wisconsin’s far-right firebrand, Gov. Scott Walker (R), for example, has received more than $635,000 over the past decade from the DeVos family—including $30,000 in 2018. Bill Schuette, Michigan’s Republican attorney general who is running for governor, received almost $40,000 over the past year.

“But it seems that the state of Arizona is of particular interest to the DeVos family’s political agenda. Rep. Martha McSally (R), who is in a tight race for a U.S. Senate seat, landed $54,000 in contributions from the family this cycle—more than any other U.S. Senate candidate received from the DeVoses. Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) has likewise received more in campaign contributions from the DeVos family than any gubernatorial candidate across the country this election cycle, raking in $50,500 in donations.”

In Wisconsin, a vote for Scott Walker is a vote for Betsy DeVos.

In Michigan, a vote for Bill Schuette is a vote for Betsy DeVos.

In Arizona, a vote for Martha McSally is a vote for Betsy DeVos.

A vote for these candidates is a vote for charter schools and vouchers.

A vote for these candidates is a vote to privatize public schools.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Mercedes Schneider: Voters in Indianapolis Have a Chance to Vote Out a Corporate Reformer

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2018 //
2

Mercedes Schneider notes that Indianapolis is the target of a corporate reform takeover.

She describes the situation, then notes that this election offers voters a chance to vote out a school board member who supports privatization.

She writes:

When it comes to killing traditional public education in favor of market-based ed reform models that remove the community control from its own schools, market-based ed reformers means business– and the public would do best to believe that there is a market for the usurping of community influence over schools….

Granted, it is easier to discuss this issue from 2018 hindsight; however, the candidate who serves as the focus of the remainder of this post, Mary Ann Sullivan, is running for reelection on November 06, 2018, and there is still time for unsuspecting Indiana voters to educate themselves about what she was and is before heading to the polls in November 2018….

Let the lessons begin.

First of all, beware of those deflecting attention away from “school type” in the name of
improving educational opportunities for children,” especially if the candidate offering such advice is drawing quite the trove of funding to support her campaign.

Second, check for out-of-state contributions. According to Sullivan’s October 10, 2014, pre-election filing, she already had $51.4K in her campaign chest, including $2,000 in contributions from California billionaire Reed Hoffman, founder of Linkedin, and his wife, Michelle Yee, plus $1,100 from Manhattan, NY-based Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

One might think that one or two out-of-state, ed reform contributors really doesn’t matter, but it does, and where there are a couple, there will likely be more:

According to Sullivan’s 2014, end-of-year filing, her campaign received a total of $73.7K for a local school board election– including $2,500 from former New York City mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, and $2,500 from Connecticut billionaire and OxyContin heir, Jonathan Sackler.

Out-of-state billionaires spending money on school board elections is a hallmark of the ed reform preference of ushering in charter schools while snuffing out community schools.

Finally, where there is market-based ed reform, there is likely notable support from a business entity. In Sullivan’s case, it’s the political action committee (PAC) of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, the Indy Chamber Business Advocacy Committee (BAC).

In 2014, Indy Chamber BAC supported Sullivan for a total of $18.8K ($10.5K cash; $8.3K in-kind).

Stop and think about that for a second: A candidate for school board has the $18.8K support of a business advocacy committee. it makes sense if one considers that ed reformers view education as a business and charterization of entire districts as an ultimate goal.

So, here we are, Indianapolis, in October 2018.

IPS is now marketized via the likes of the Mind Trust, which Sullivan endorses, and Sullivan is running for re-election.

Sullivan’s 2018 contributions (also here) to date are more modest than in 2014: $11K total, with $8.7K coming from the business PAC, Indy Chamber BAC.

Converting neighborhood schools to the portfolio model is part of the business of ed reform, and Sullivan is a conduit for ed reform in IPS.

Okay, Indy voters: Now that you know who is financially backing Sullivan, will you reelect her or send her packing?

Categories Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Indianapolis

Tom Ultican: Who Should Be the Next Leader of California Schools? A Banker or a Social Worker?

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2018 //
12

Tom Ultican, retired teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California, here describes the billionaires and bad policies behind Marshall Tuck’s campaign for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

He sees the Tuck campaign as a new front in the “Destroy Public Education Movement,” which he has written about extensively.

Here are some of the Big Money contributors to Tuck’s campaign:

The Waltons control Walmart and have been spending heavily to privatize public schools for more than three decades.

Bill Bloomfield is a rich guy from LA who has also poured $7,000,000 into independent expenditures for Tuck.

The Rogers family is the main local force behind the privatization of Oakland’s school system.

Doris Fisher founded The Gap with her husband Don. They have spent extensively promoting charter schools and were the first significant benefactors for the KIPP franchise.

Eli Broad is the only person to found two fortune 500 companies. He announced plans to charterize half of Los Angeles’s schools and published a guide for closing public schools.

John Scully was the former CEO of Apple and consistently supports school privatization.

David Horowitz is a Republican activist who gained notoriety for his anti-affirmative action campaign.

Arthur Rock is Silicon Valley royalty who spends lavishly to support school privatization.

Peter Chernin was COO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. He is also a movie producer of some note.

Reed Hastings is possibly the most dedicated destroy public education billionaire. He sat on the board of the California Charter Schools Association for many years.

Richard Riordan is the billionaire former Mayor of Los Angeles who spends millions on public school privatization.

John Arnold is the ex-Enron executive who did not go to jail. He and Reed Hastings have each invested $100 million in a new national school privatizing organization called The City Fund.

Jonathan Sackler is the heir to the billionaire inventors of Oxycontin. Besides selling addictive drugs, Jonathan invests in the privatization of America’s schools.

Les Biller is a former CEO of Wells Fargo bank. He and his wife have a foundation in Seattle, Washington where they give heavily to charter schools.

Julian Robertson Jr. is a hedge fund manager in Chicago who thinks California really needs Marshal Tuck.

Stacy Schusterman is an energy industry heir from Tulsa, Oklahoma. She has been particularly active in California school board elections.

Michael Bloomberg is the billionaire former New York mayor who spawned Joel Klein, Eva Moskowitz and Michelle Rhee. He spends heavily on California school board elections.

The big money is not in direct contributions like those listed above. It is in the money for independent expenditure committees that do not have contribution limits. For example, the Ed Voice for the Kids Pac has already reported spending over $13,000,000 in support of Tuck (Id 1243091). There are many more of these PACs spending money to elect Tuck such as Education Reform Now Advocacy for Tuck and Charter Public Schools Political Action Committee.

Ultican contrasts the two candidates:

Tony Thurmond was born in Monterey, California. His father was stationed at the Fort Ord Army base. Tony’s father abandoned his family of four children. Thurmond’s Panamanian immigrant mother became a school teacher and moved the family to San Jose.

Tragedy struck six-years-old Tony when his mother died of cancer. Tony and a brother moved to Philadelphia where they were raised by a cousin.

After graduating from high school in Philadelphia, Tony matriculated to Temple University where he was elected student body president and received a BA in psychology. He attended graduate school at Bryn Mawr earning a dual masters in Law and Social Policy and Social work.

The most disgusting statement in the San Diego Union editorial read, “In his interview with us, Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, who finished second to Tuck in the June primary, seemed just as affable but not nearly as ambitious as Tuck.” In case that was too subtle; Tony is a black man.

After rising above his traumatic childhood and becoming educated, Tony married and returned to California in 1998. For the 20 years preceding his election to the California State Assembly, Thurmond served in various positions at non-profit social service agencies. Tony says it was his public school education that helped him become at 20-year social worker and serve on a school board, a city council and now the California State Assembly.

Tony has two daughters in public school.

Marshall Tuck received an MBA from Harvard University in 2000 and a BA in Political Science from University of California Los Angeles in 1995. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and has a wife and son.

He spent some time as a consultant at Mitt Romney’s Bain & Co. He was an investment analyst at the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone. He moved to Los Angeles to work at Salomon Brothers as an investment banker focused on both mergers and acquisitions. After a brief stint in sales for a Software company, in 2002, Tuck was hired by Green Dot Charter Schools as Chief Operating Officer.

In 2007, Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa had been rebuffed in his efforts to take control of Los Angeles Unified School District. He did convince a few donors to underwrite the takeover of a small number of schools in areas which had suffered years of poor standardized test results. They created a non-profit called Partnership for LA and Villaraigosa tapped Marshall Tuck to lead the Partnership.

Tuck had by then become the CEO of Green Dot. The year he left for the Partnership, Green Dot schools posted nine of the fifty lowest SAT scores among Los Angeles schools.

Tuck was extremely unpopular at the Partnership. The Sacramento Bee reported, “Teachers passed a vote of no confidence at nine of the schools at the end of the first year, leading to independent mediation.” An online education news paper in Los Angeles, School Matters, reported, “Many of us hoped that when right-wing business banker Marshall Tuck was ignominiously forced to step down as the ‘CEO’ of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools (PLAS), that we might have heard the last of Tuck altogether.”

Tuck’s authoritarianism and lack of education background has led to serial failures, however, those forces trying to privatize California’s public schools find his style to their liking.

In 2014, when Tuck lost the most expensive SPI race in California’s history, his allies were there to take care of him. Even though he has no training as an educator, he was made Educator-in-Residence at the New Teacher Center (NTC). Bill Gates has granted NTC $26,305,252 since 2009.

This Contest is Very Important If You Value American Democracy

Marshall Tuck is the representative of the Destroy Public Education billionaires who are spending massive amounts of money to get him elected. It is widely understood that elected school boards are the soil from which American democratic government rejuvenates itself. Dark “DPE” forces are undermining democracy in this country by destroying the people’s 200-years-old public education system. They must be stopped.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization

Massachusetts: The Waltons Won’t Take “No” for An Answer

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2018 //
18

In 2016, the Waltons decided that Massachusetts needed more charter schools. It must have annoyed them that the Bay State is considered the best state in the nation even though it has less than 100 charters.

They began planning a strategy to lift the cap. After Republican Governor Charlie Baker was elected, they thought it would be easy to add more charters. But the legislature refused. They launched a referendum and poured millions into “Yes on 2,” aided by other billionaire who love privatization. When the vote was tallied in November 2016, Walton and Friends (many of their names kept secret by Dark Money groups) got their backsides kicked. Yes on 2 was overwhelmingly defeated (62%-38%), winning only in a handful of affluent districts that never expected to see a charter school in their town.

They filed a lawsuit, claiming that the cap on charters denied black children educational opportunity. The state’s highest court threw out their case.

The main purveyor of Dark Money in the referendum was “Families for Excellent Schools,” which was required to reveal the names of donors after the election, pay a fine of nearly half a million dollars, and stay out of the state for four years. Shortly after, the New York-based FES collapsed.

Did the Waltons learn anything from this fiasco?

No. They have returned to Massachusetts with another AstroTurf group called the Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership. Some of the same players are present.

Professor Maurice Cunningham has chronicled the Datk Money intrusion into Massachusetts.

He tells the story of the new fake front here.

What Is the Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership?

As he reminds us, “Dark Money Never Sleeps Follow the money.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Dark Money, Education Industry, Massachusetts, Privatization, Walton Foundation

District Court in D.C. Strikes a Blow Against Dark Money

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2018 //
9

One of the stains on Democracy is “Dark Money,” that, anonymous donors who make large political contributions while masking their identity. The Koch brothers and other funders of corporate assaults on democracy used such conduits. In education elections, such groups as Education Reform Now and the California Charter School Association Advocates hide their donors names. A few years back, California held a referendum about raising taxes to support schools. Certain well-known billionaires publicly supported the tax but quietly funded a Dark Money campaign to defeat it.

The chief judge of the Federal District Court ruled that the names of all those who make political donations must be released, and the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. This is great news for those who believe in transparency and democracy!

Advocacy groups pouring money into independent campaigns to impact this fall’s midterm races must disclose many of their political donors beginning this week after the Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to intervene in a long-running case.

The high court did not grant an emergency request to stay a ruling by a federal judge in Washington who had thrown out a decades-old Federal Election Commission regulation allowing nonprofit groups to keep their donors secret unless they had earmarked their money for certain purposes.

With less than 50 days before this fall’s congressional elections, the ruling has far-reaching consequences that could curtail the ability of major political players to raise money and force the disclosure of some of the country’s wealthiest donors.

In an interview, FEC Chairwoman Caroline Hunter said that the names of certain contributors who give money to nonprofit groups to use in political campaigns beginning Wednesday will have to be publicly reported.

Hunter and other conservatives warned the decision could have a chilling effect just as the midterms are heating up.

“It’s unfortunate that citizens and groups who wish to advocate for their candidate will now have to deal with a lot of uncertainty less than two months before the election,” said Hunter, a Republican appointee.

Advocates for stricter regulation of money in politics celebrated the move.

“This is a great day for transparency and democracy,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which brought the case, said in a statement, adding: “We’re about to know a lot more about who is funding our elections.”

Yes, it throws “uncertainty” into the election when donors have to be known to the public.

It is unclear whether the decision is retroactive.

Since Citizens United was approved by the Supreme Court, Big Money has been unlimited in campaign spending. Now it faces the “uncertainty” of being publicly identified.

Boo hoo.

NPR reports:

“The Supreme Court’s decision comes less than a week after a new research report by the government reform group Issue One, which puts some dollar amounts on what these unreported donors are giving. The report, which took a year of research, finds that the top 15 politically active nonprofits raised and spent more than $600 million on campaigns between 2010, when Citizens United boosted secret fundraising, and 2016.

“The secret giving is made possible by a regulatory loophole at the FEC. The groups, usually organized as 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations or 501(c)(6) business associations, don’t register as political committees with the commission. With the loophole, the FEC wants donor disclosure only when a donor earmarks the money for specific ads.

“The top four spenders identified by Issue One are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the mainstream conservative Crossroads GPS, the Koch network’s Americans for Prosperity and the National Rifle Association. Issue One says that collectively, the four groups pumped at least $357 million into elections between 2010 and 2016.

“Opaque organizations are using contributions from opaque donors and secretly funding election campaigns and ads that are urging viewers to vote for or against candidates,” said Michael Beckel, research manager at Issue One. “And it remains very difficult to track back the true sources of dark money groups.”

“Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity has launched AFP Action — a superPAC that will regularly report its donors to the FEC, sidestepping the disclosure controversy.”

Categories Billionaires, Dark Money, Education Industry
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »