This is the release of emails in response to FOIL of “In the Public Interest.”
Read to see interchange between Bush foundation and corporate interests.
Archives for category: For-Profit
I will speak at the Save Texas Schools rally on February 23 in Austin.
Help stop budget cuts and vouchers.
Join me in Austin.
Fight for the future of public education in Texas!
SAVE TEXAS SCHOOLS RALLY
February 23, 2013
Dear Save Texas Schools Supporter,
As you know, our public schools are under attack now more than ever. With continuing brutal budget cuts to education, a broken testing system, and proposed private school vouchers that would further drain resources from public schools, it’s time to STAND UP for Texas kids and schools.
Here’s how to make your voice heard during the 2013 legislative session.
1. Be part of our “Fight for the Future” campaign, launching in early January. Every Texas legislator needs to hear repeatedly from you about key issues affecting our schoolchildren. We’ll tell you how with a different idea each week.
2. Join thousands of fellow Texans on Saturday, February 23, 2013 at the Texas Capitol.
RALLY UPDATE
11 am march on Congress Ave., noon to 1:30 pm rally at the Capitol.
Expected Attendance: HUGE! Let’s top 2011’s record of 13,000.
Confirmed Speakers: Supt. John Kuhn, Diane Ravitch. More soon!
Transportation: We can help you with buses from your area this year. Visit savetxschools.org for information.
Become a Local Rally Organizer! See our website to sign-up!
What’s Wrong With Vouchers?
We need to let Sen. Patrick (Senate Education Chair) and other legislators know that vouchers are a BAD idea, because:
1. Vouchers would drain another $2 billion from public education on top of other cuts.
2. Taxpayer money should not be used to fund private and religious schools.
3. Vouchers have been tried in other states and abandoned after failing to improve educational outcomes.
Learn more .
. .
Texas is at a crossroads. The decisions made in the next six months will determine our children’s educational opportunities and our state’s economic prospects for decades to come. The fight for our future is now- please join us in standing up for Texas kids!
Sincerely,
Save Texas Schools
The Walton Family Foundation has many billions of dollars. Though not as big as the Gates Foundation, it is one of the biggest three donors to education today. (The third billionaire foundation is the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.) All three of these foundations support charter schools, testing, and choice.
Of the three, the Walton Foundation is the most conservative. It has a strong preference for free-market and libertarian policies. Last year, it handed out $159 million in education grants. This year, $158 million.
Here is their list of winners for 2012.
The Walton Foundation is built on the fortune produced by the Walmart stores. Walmart is not a friend to Main Street, and the Walton Foundation is not a friend to community public schools. The foundation, like its stores, likes disruption. It disrupts communities and destroys the small-timers that get in the way of the free market. Privatization is the theme of their giving.
If you have time to review the list, you will see many familiar names, some in your own state, advocating for charters and vouchers, which have become a top priority for the far-right.
Teach for America: $11,445,000 million. The DC Public Education Fund was a big winner with $5.9 million, but it seems unlikely that any real public school will see a dollar of this grant. KIPP picked up $8.3 million. The Center on Reinventing Public Education–which writes research studies of charter schools–got $700,000. Students for Education Reform: $250,000. StudentsFirst collected $2 million. Eva Moskowitz’s chain (Success Academy) collected $1 million. Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education came away with $1 million. The ex-liberal, now conservative group Stand for Children won more than $600,000, perhaps to continue their assault on teachers’ unions. GreatSchools, Inc., which grades schools, picked up $4.3 million. Howard Fuller’s pro-voucher group, Black Alliance for Educational Options, won $1.1 million. The once-liberal, now conservative Brookings Institution received $666,000.
Look over the list of the lucky winners. The one consistent theme is support for school choice, for charters and vouchers. Even the organizations with the word “public” in their name are supporters of school choice.
Perhaps what is most surprising and disturbing in the list is the inclusion of media outlets that should be strictly nonpartisan and neutral. It is frankly difficult to believe that the Walton Foundation makes grants to any organization that is truly nonpartisan on the issues about which it is passionate. So here is the shocking lineup:
$1.4 million for National Public Radio.
$100,000 for the Education Writers Association.
$250,000 for Education Week (Editorial Projects in Education).
$185,000 for Bellweather Education Partners (TIME magazine columnist Andrew Rotherham).
Just when you thought politics could not get weirder, we learn that a public relations guy is running a campaign against President Obama’s pick for Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel.
Turns out the campaign is run by Bradley Tusk, who has the following connections: Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, and Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy. He also ran the NY campaign to lift the cap on charters, paid for by the Wall Street crowd and Mayor Bloomberg.
This is one of the strangest set of links in politics today.
Remember when decisions about schools were made by the superintendent and the principals? And when teachers closed their door and their classroom was their domain? That was long, long ago.
How could it happen that New Jersey officials cut the ribbon at the opening of a new charter school facility in September, but the school just lost its nonprofit status?
Jersey Jazzman here reviews the nonstop administrative incompetence of the New Jersey Department of Education in relation to its failure to provide adequate oversight.
He concludes:
“I don’t think I’ve even covered it all, but you get the point: New Jersey’s oversight of charter schools under Chris Cerf has been a disaster. He brought in people light on experience – both in education and in New Jersey – and the state’s children have paid the price for their incompetence.
“And it’s not just the turnover at the NJDOE that’s caused this train wreck; it’s the infestation of inexperienced ideologues, paid for by California billionaires who bad-mouth New Jersey’s students and schools. Their arrogance and intransigence have turned the state’s charter approval and oversight processes into a bad joke.”
Jersey Jazzman has stitched together an amazing story of chicanery, some of it legal, some of it not.
The “not legal” part is the easiest to explain: the chief financial officer of the Brighter Choice Foundation in Albany was arrested on charges of embezzling some $200,000. Curiously, he was hired even though he was previously charged with embezzlement when he worked for a bank. Apparently, no one noticed.
But then comes all the “legal graft,” the kind that banks and corporations have perfected over the years.
When you see the public money–appropriated to educate children, to pay teachers, to reduce class size, to buy musical instruments–allocated to financiers, it is baffling.
Tax-breaks, loans, tax-exempt bonds, profits, limited risks, return on investment. To understand school reform today, it might help to be an accountant.
In response to an earlier post about how we have been changed from citizens to consumers:
Reading this post, i was reminded of these remarks by the
Nobel laureate Toni Morrison at fundraiser for my congressman, Rush
Holt.
These are courtesy of Andrew Tobias’s blog: “When I was young
we used to be called citizens—American citizens. Some of us
were called ‘second class’ citizens, yet the term, the category,
the aspiration was citizenship. Some time after the end of World
War II another definition of Americans arose — ‘consumers.’
Every narrative, advertisement, political promise was to, for and
about the powerful, courted and always obeyed American
Consumer. So we did—consume. Happily,
extravagantly, mindlessly—until the credit card, the mortgaged home
or homes, the college tuition loans came due. Now the category has
changed again. We are now simply taxpayers or not-taxpayers.
Think of the difference, the cognitive and emotional difference
between thinking of oneself as a citizen and regarding oneself as
merely a taxpayer. If I am simply an American taxpayer, I am
alarmed about where my money goes; I may even resent the recipient,
wonder whether he or she or it (the institution) is worthy of my
money. On the other hand, if I am principally an American citizen,
I have to wonder about what’s best for my country, my state, my
neighbors, the young, the elderly and the unfortunate. That shift
in national identity informs so much of the discourse and the
political choices of our representatives. Obviously, I prefer
the label ‘citizen,’ which is precisely why I admire Rush
Holt. To me his works, his advocacy, his personal and
political philosophy stem from the concept of citizenship and what
it demands of us. From education to healthcare, to women’s
rights, civil rights, support for artists—his concerns and labor
are those of a citizen for citizens. And that commitment is
rare these days. If you help him, support him, with your resources
and your own enthusiastic commitment, you will be a champion for
that ancient and blessed definition: Citizen.”
Pearson has a contract with the state of Texas for five years that is worth close to $500 million.
That ought to bring gold-plated service and products to the children of Texas, right?
Wrong.
Pearson is advertising for test graders in Texas on craigslist!
The graders need only a bachelor’s degree, and they will be paid $12 an hour.
They will be “trained,” of course, but think of it. Their snap decisions will decide the fate of students, teachers, and schools. If they aren’t that good at what they do, children will fail, teachers will be fired, and schools will be closed. Because of decisions made by a temp worker.
Shocking as this is, it is nothing new. Todd Farley wrote a book called Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry, in which he described his many years inside the testing industry.
For a quick read right now, be sure to open this article, Dan Dimaggio’s horrifying account of his experiences as a test grader.
Here is a sample:
“Test-scoring companies make their money by hiring a temporary workforce each spring, people willing to work for low wages (generally $11 to $13 an hour), no benefits, and no hope of long-term employment—not exactly the most attractive conditions for trained and licensed educators. So all it takes to become a test scorer is a bachelor’s degree, a lack of a steady job, and a willingness to throw independent thinking out the window and follow the absurd and ever-changing guidelines set by the test-scoring companies. Some of us scorers are retired teachers, but most are former office workers, former security guards, or former holders of any of the diverse array of jobs previously done by the currently unemployed. When I began working in test scoring three years ago, my first “team leader” was qualified to supervise, not because of his credentials in the field of education, but because he had been a low-level manager at a local Target.”
So Texas spends nearly $500 million to hire an army of low-wage temps to make fateful decisions about the future of students, teachers, and schools. And of course it is not just Texas. It is every other state in the nation.
Why trust the judgment of a fallible teacher or principal, when you can rely on the judgment of a $12 an hour temp, supervised by a Target manager?
This is crazy.
A reader from Wisconsin points out that Governor Walker’s reforms are not intended to improve the schools, but to turn schooling into a free-market activity:
Thank you Diane for highlighting yet another unproven attempt to inject free market ideology into Wisconsin public schools.
The recent recall attempt exposed the forces supporting Gov. Walker and how they wish to dismantle public education and fill the void with free market principles. Walker rolled out phase two of his anti-public education plan in his State of the State address with more promises to “transform education” and “expand the number of choices for families in Wisconsin—be it a traditional, a charter, a voucher, a virtual, or a home school environment.”
The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute–which provided the first critique you mentioned– is in the same camp (or a suburb) of the MacIver Institute–which sponsored Operation Angry Badger designed to “document the shortcomings of public schools in Wisconsin.”
WPRI, MacIver, Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG), and the Tea Party forces supporting Gov. Walker have no intent to improve public education or provide support for our neediest students. A successful public education system with an extensive support network works against the lassez-faire capitalist ideology of these free marketeers.
A reader brought this column by Eric Zorn to my attention. It appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
The state of Louisiana is “reforming” hospice care for patients on Medicare. It will stop offering hospice care for many elderly people.
As part of his reforms, Jindal has started closing or privatizing the state’s public hospitals. See here and here and here.
He cuts most where the needs are greatest. This could catapult him to national stardom. The prestigious Brookings Institution in DC recently invited him to discuss his historic efforts to privatize public education.
As the Shreveport Times described the situation:
“BATON ROUGE — The start of February brings an end to programs that care for some of the most vulnerable citizens of the state, those in the final days of their lives and children at risk for mental health problems, the latest casualties of Louisiana’s budget woes.
Gov. Bobby Jindal made the cuts in mid-December to help close a nearly $166 million deficit in the current fiscal year.
And the cuts are only likely to get worse. The governor and lawmakers will have to deal with another $1.2 billion budget gap for the fiscal year that begins July 1, in a poverty-troubled state where so many people look to the state for assistance….
Among the reductions announced in December, doctors and hospitals that care for the poor, disabled and elderly in the Medicaid program will be paid less. Dental benefits to pregnant women through Medicaid will be cut off. Additional cuts are falling on the LSU hospitals that care for the poor and uninsured in north Louisiana. Dollars for juvenile justice treatment programs are shrinking.
The deepest cuts to services were made in the health and social services departments.”
As a New Orleans journalist put it: “In effect, Huey Long’s mantra of “Share the Wealth” has been replaced by Jindal’s dogma of tax virginity and privatization. Where Long preached, “Every man a king,” Jindal now says, effectively, “You’re on your own, pal.””
Diane Ravitch's blog 