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Arkansas: Inside the Shadowy World of the School ”Choice” Movement, Part 3

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2019 //
2

Cathy Frye was a journalist for 21 years, then changed careers and eventually landed a job as communications director of a Walton-funded organization called the Arkansas Public Schools Resource Center (APSRC), which was actually a covert front for the school choice movement.

I previously posted her Part 1 and Part 2.

In this post, she reveals more about the deceptive organization that existed to suck public school districts into the Walton school choice universe by pretending to help them.

Frye describes a secretive office where no one one was allowed to collaborate with anyone else. When she was told to apply for a new round of Walton funding, she couldn’t discuss her grant proposal with other department heads, who were writing their own proposals. For years, she never learned whether her proposal was funded.

She writes:

To this day, I don’t know whether the Waltons ever signed off on the grant application or not.

I asked several times in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to see the entire grant application so that I would know what I needed to do to assist other departments in meeting their goals. I never received one. Nor did I ever hear an explanation as to why not.

Why all the secrecy?  Because if you read the application in full, you’ll notice that that APSRC’s focus isn’t on all public schools. 

While the number of traditional public school districts – with or without conversion charters on their campuses – far exceeds the number of charter schools in Arkansas,  a reading of the grant application will make it clear who gets priority standing. 

Yes, 100 percent of Arkansas’ open-enrollment charters are members of APSRC. But they are far fewer in number than the state’s many rural school districts, and, really, if they want Walton support, they have no choice but to become members. Also, bear in mind that more than 85 percent of APSRC’s members are traditional public school districts that may or may not have conversion charters on their campuses. 

I finally managed to snag a copy of the entire grant application and feel compelled to share this little gem from “Request/Purpose” section: 

APSRC has long been a strong advocate for the improvement of educational policy and advocacy for issues at the core of our work which matches the Walton Family Foundation’s principles of accountability, transparency, choice, and sustainability. 

Before moving on to the next topic, I’m just going to note that a lack of transparency and accountability will one day be APSRC’s downfall. 

As a journalist, I know that people who are secretive, deceptive and paranoid are more than likely hiding something. 

Her boss, she says, was secretive, deceptive, and paranoid.

When the legislature convened, she was warned not to talk to any legislators she knew.

She covered a news conference called by State Senator Joyce Elliott. Frye covered the news conference and quoted Senator Elliott in a story she sent out to members of APSRC. Her boss was furious.

The next day, Smith asked why I had quoted Elliott.

“Well, she’s the person who called the news conference,” I said. “It would be kind of weird to not quote her.”

“Well, nobody likes her,” Smith shot back. 

Said no newspaper editor ever.

This is getting long and time is getting short – my family is still waiting on dinner – but this is what I want those of you residing in – or supporting – the Little Rock School District to know. 

Yes, APSRC has some talented folks on staff. And they do a great job of trying to provide professional development. That said, the organization’s primary role is to lobby on behalf of school “choice.” It is not a friend to public schools. It is using them to help shroud its true mission…

Supporters of a return to local control within LRSD – please hear me: 

APSRC wants your facilities. Each year, the organization’s charter director is required to court and bring in potential CMOs. These charter operators always tour the same two cities – Little Rock and Pine Bluff. Sometimes they meander down to the Delta, but they are most interested in Little Rock and Pine Bluff. Again, read the grant application. It’s a road map to Walmartized education. 

Meanwhile, APSRC is charged with propping up any failing charters. Why? Because school facilities are a prize to win and keep. Just look at how things unfolded in the Covenant Keepers/Friendship drama. (More on that in another post.) 

I’ll end by saying this: APSRC wants your buildings. It wants your students and the funding that goes with them. It does not care if its actions result in re-segregation. It will do everything it can to help the State Board do away with legit unions.

Think of it this way – open-enrollment charters are merely placeholders in the Waltons’ endeavor to dismantle public education.

  • Get the building.
  • Get the students.
  • Get the funding that follows the students.
  • Prop up the failing charters. Continue the pursuit of private-school vouchers. 
  • Rinse. Repeat. 

 

 

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Disruption, Education Industry, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Tim Jackson: Why Little Rock Parents Cannot Trust Arkansas’ Governor or State Board

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
3

Tim Jackson is a parent with children in the Little Rock School District and an active member of Grassroots Arkansas, which has been fighting for the restoration of democratic control of the LRSD public schools. He is also a film-maker. He attended the state school board meeting that theoretically restored local control.

He wrote this account:

ARKANSAS STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING – 10.09.19

Yesterday’s meeting of the Arkansas State Board of Education was another exercise in futility for the true stakeholders in the Little Rock School District. Don’t believe the headlines that local control of the district has been returned or will be retuned anytime soon to an elected school board. All the State Board did yesterday was trash an ill conceived and inequitable framework for reconstituting the district that it announced last month but could not sustain in the face of political and public opinion headwinds.

Board Chairman Diane Zook made it clear – much to the chagrin of Board members who were trying to appear conciliatory – that nothing changed yesterday. And Zook has no intention for things to change until the District is recreated in the image of the prevailing “business knows best” education model that bedevils American public education. As if American public education needed another self-important, self-entitled, shortsighted, external force bedeviling it.

I sat on the front row at yesterday’s meeting for eight hours until I was invited to leave by the Arkansas State Police who were brought in as a show of force by the board. Chairman Zook – whose personal animus toward the Little Rock School District is both unreasonable and inexhaustible – read twice from a prepared statement that anticipated more public outcry to what she knew was coming later in the meeting. We were told yesterday that 1) Police officers would escort anyone who spoke out of turn from the building. 2) Anyone who was escorted from the building yesterday would be banned from speaking in future meetings. 3) The Chairman would decide what constituted “out of turn.”

One of Ms. Zook’s frequent rebuttals when we cry “taxation without representation” over the State’s heavy-handed and demonstrably underhanded takeover is to remind us that we have a Community Advisory Board. Under the terms of the State takeover the Community Advisory Board of the Little Rock School District has no authority, no public accountability, and members serve solely at the pleasure of the State’s Education Commissioner, Johnny Key – a man so unqualified for the job that the Arkansas Legislature had to reduce the qualifications for the job in order for Governor Asa Hutchinson to appoint him.

An influential member of that Citizens Advisory Board stood in the parking lot of the Arkansas Education Building a month ago and told me that the nine members of the State Board of Education are the Governor’s choice for overseeing public education in Arkansas. This CAB member elaborated that under the Arkansas Constitution those nine appointed people don’t owe the people of Little Rock “a vote, a voice, or an explanation for anything they do.” I was told that if I didn’t like, I should go change the Arkansas Constitution.

So, that’s our representation. That’s what Diane Zook wants us to feel good about.

The State Board never fails to create chaos at the end of its meetings – at least at meetings in which the Little Rock School District is on the agenda. Yesterday was no exception. In a flurry of confusion and a complete flaunting of acceptable procedure the Board voted 9-0 to cease recognition of the Little Rock Educators Association as the sole contract negotiator for teachers and other full time support staff in the Little Rock School District. The LREA has been under attack since the State takeover and FOIA requests bear out that the Board’s plan for the LREA hasalways been death for the union by a thousand cuts. Yesterday the Board twisted the knife.

This action did not kill the union. But it is another serious attack and clear evidence that Zook and Company do not have a plan for the Little Rock School District but they do have a vision for it. It’s a vision that values the haves and patronizes the have-nots while expanding a privatized system of public education that we will pay for as a society for the next 50 years.

Tim Jackson | tjackson@category-one.com 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Lies, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Rev/Dr. Anika Whitfield on Arkansas Decision to Crush Little Rock Teachers’ Union

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
20

Yesterday the Arkansas State Board of Education voted to return control of the Little Rock School District to the people of Little Rock. This followed massive demonstrations and demands by the citizenry. At the same meeting, the board voted unanimously to deny recognition to the Little Rock Educators Association, which represents 60% of the teachers in the district.

Rev/Dr. Anika Whitfield, an activist in Grassroots Arkansas, was outraged by the latter decision. She is a podiatrist and an ordained minister. For her volunteer fight for public schools and democracy, she is one of the heroes in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH.

She wrote the following response to the board’s stripping of the teachers’ right to join as a union.

October 10, 2019 will be a day marked in Arkansas history as the enslavement of LRSD teachers and educators, a day when democracy and liberation was denied to them.
 
The Auditorium in the Arkansas Department of Education was overflowing with concerned community members from the LRSD.  People who took leave from work to lend their voices for a people’s democracy to a nine member board appointed by a republic/empire run by billionaires and millionaires who maintain their wealth primarily from the economy of persons who earn the lowest compensation.  With the help of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the Walton Family Foundation, Stephen’s, Inc. and Walter Hussman have been siphoning money from the people in our state who are the most vulnerable, our children.  And, to add insult to injury, they are targeting our children who primarily come from homes were their families are the lowest income earners in our state. The wealthy are maintaining their riches by stealing from the poor.  This a model of capitalism that traces back to the origins of this nation that we call the United States of America. 
 
Yesterday, we witnessed the nine appointed members of the state board of education unanimously remove the collective bargaining power of teachers and educators.  Their coup of sorts was made deliverable through a myriad of chaotic twists and turns of the worst type of confusion and violations of Robert’s Rules of Order.  And, after reflecting on the manner in which the state board of education directors conducted themselves on yesterday, it has become more evident that their goal was to be deceitful and underhanded, to ward off any opportunities for the public to call their hand and stop their votes. 
 
Dr. Sarah Moore, one of the nine appointed directors of the Arkansas State Board of Education, who worked as a Doctoral Academy Fellow at the Office of Education Policy (funded by the Walton Family Foundation) at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, made the initial motion to no longer recognize the Little Rock Educators Association (LREA) at the end of their call meeting on September 27, 2019. Yesterday, Atty Chad Pekron, who was appointed by Gov. Asa Hutchinson to the state board of education in July 2019, made and rescinded two or three motions to overturn, table, and then to vote on Dr. Moore’s tabled motion from the September 27th meeting.
 
After all of the smoke was clear, and the confusion was never resolved, the public realized that the state board of education voted to unanimously deny the Little Rock school teachers and educators the recognition of their union.  What a sad day in Little Rock and in Arkansas history. Justice, Liberation, Equity and Democracy continue to be lawfully denied by the Empire of the Republic of wealth, greed, and fear that is being unjustifiably marketed as a great America.  
Categories Arkansas, Little Rock, Teachers, Unions, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: Inside the Shadowy World of the School “Choice” Movement, Part 2

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
2

Cathy Frye continues her revelations about her three years working as communications director for a Walton-funded organization deceptively named the Arkansas Public Schools Resource Center (APSRC). As is by now universally known, the Walton family supports charters and vouchers, not public schools. As is less well known, privatizers create organizations with misleading names to fool the suckers. As she explained in part 1, 85% of the rural public school districts in the state of Arkansas pay good money to belong to an organization that does not serve their interests.

She writes:

APSRC uses Constant Contact to email its members. Recipients are divided into various groupings. Some emails are sent only to open-enrollment charter schools. Others only to traditional districts. And still others to anyone and everyone. 

This is where things get dicey. 

You see, APSRC Executive Director Scott Smith is but one of three Arkansas Walton stepchildren vying for the attention of wealthy absentee parents. 

You’ve got Smith representing APSRC, which purports to represent and serve both traditional public school districts and open-enrollment charters. 

Next up is Gary Newton of Arkansas Learns, who happens to be the nephew of Arkansas State Board of Education Chairman Diane Zook. 

And then we have The Reform Alliance, which currently uses a voucher program to “help” special-education students, foster kids, etc… attend private schools  – many of which are faith-based – and to give up any rights they have under the IDEA Act. (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act)

All three organizations lobby state lawmakers on behalf of the Waltons. All three are at all times pursuing often contradictory/opposing passages of legislation. All three are always, always at odds with one another. 

The 2017 General Assembly proved to be a challenge for me. If I wrote about private-school-voucher bills, Smith fretted. I found that interesting. I mean, if APSRC truly represents and supports public schools, you’d think he would be right up front testifying before lawmakers with other membership organizations – the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, for example. Or maybe the Arkansas School Board Association. 

And you would think that I would be able to freely report on such bills, testimony and reactions. 

Nope.  Because – horrors! – I might offend Arkansas Learns and/or The Reform Alliance. In other words, I might have angered the generous benefactor of all three competing nonprofits – the Walton Family Foundation. 

Three “competing” organizations all serving one master: the Waltons.

Then she discovered a curious fact. The Waltons were funneling their money to the APSRC through a university.

It was around that time (2017) when I started to question why Southern Arkansas University had been deemed the public entity that would provide  APSRC with HR services. SAU also kept track of our leave time and managed our benefits and retirement plans. 

I would later learn that the SAU Foundation is the recipient of Walton grant funds intended for APSRC. SAU is charged with disseminating the money and administering HR services for APSRC staff. 

When I started working for APSRC, I was given the same (presumably) packet handed to new university employees. 

So why funnel funding through state university foundations? Remember, from 2008 until 2012, the University of Central Arkansas served as APSRC’s Walton-funding dispensary.

Why so devious? Why so much obfuscation?

My hunch is that the Waltons know that what they are selling would be rejected by the public if it had honest labeling. The Waltons really don’t understand that most people like their public schools and don’t want to go to a privately-run charter where they have no voice or to a religious school, and they don’t want to split up their community into competing factions. They want to cheer for the same basketball team and have a senior class that represents the whole community, not a bunch of little schools that open and close on a whim.

I am looking forward to more insider reports from Cathy Frye.

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: State Board Votes to Restore Local Control to Little Rock But Read the Fine Print

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2019 //
2

 

The Arkansas State Board of Education planned to restore local control to schools in the whitest part of Little Rock, but the community rose up in opposition and demanded the restoration of the entire district, one Little Rock.

Massive crowds gathered to raise their voices in protest and the state board folded.

THE ARKANSAS STATE Board of Education abandoned its previously adopted plan to relinquish only partial control of Little Rock School District after widespread pushback by thousands of teachers, parents, students and community activists who argued it would have catapulted the city into another era of segregated schools.

Instead, the board voted unanimously Thursday to return control of the entire school district to a locally elected school board under a yet-to-be-agreed-upon memorandum of understanding with the state that will include some continued monitoring of the city’s poorest performing schools.

The decision, prompted by a surprise motion to scrap the previous plan, shocked many gathered at a meeting to protest it who were expecting to face stiff opposition by the governor-appointed board.

Cathy Frye, who has been writing about her experiences inside the shadowy world of school choice in Arkansas, says that the battle is won, but the war is not. 

She says the decision was a tactical retreat by the Waltons. They won’t give up. They want the property.

She writes:

The Arkansas State Board of Education, during what appeared to be a meticulously staged meeting, voted Thursday to return the Little Rock School District to local control. 

This about-face occurred because state leaders and board members feared further public shaming and opted instead for an awkward retreat.

Stakeholders celebrated the vote, only to get a clapback from the state board when it next voted to oust the Little Rock Education Association. (As we all know, Governor Asa Hutchinson and his GOP underlings loathe unions.) 

Remember, the Waltons have invested millions in organizations that lobby specifically for the Arkansas school -“choice” movement. Despite today’s vote to reinstate local control, the Walton Family Foundation will persist in its efforts to dismantle LRSD and other districts that might appeal to charter-school leaders and the private-school crowd.

Again, they don’t just want your students and the funding that follows them. They want your facilities. (More on that below.) 

Right now, given public sentiment, the Waltons will let things quiet down. But you can bet that the various nonprofits that they fund already are stepping up their behind-the-scenes efforts to get their projects back on track. 

It is imperative that the various grassroots organizations involved in fending off the Waltons’ school grabs remain intersectional and vigorous in their efforts to protect their districts, teachers, students, and, again, their buildings. You have won a battle. Not the war.

She offers some concrete advice for the Resistance.

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Little Rock, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Arkansas: Inside the Shadowy World of the School “Choice” Movement, Part 1

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2019 //
7

Cathy Frye is an experienced journalist who switched careers. Three years ago, she was hired to work for the Arkansas Public School Resource Center as communications director. Before she was hired, she was asked if she had any qualms about charter schools, and she said no. When she quit her job in June 2019, she decided to tell what she had learned, and she started to report about her experiences on her blog. 

Here is the lowdown. Eighty-five percent of the rural public school districts in the state belong to the Arkansas Public School Resource Center, but the APSRC is a Walton-funded school choice operation.

When Frye quit, she said she felt a burden lift.

No more working in an environment steeped in secrecy and paranoia. No more placating a male boss who acted more like an abusive stalker ex-boyfriend than an actual leader. No more weird workplace silos that left “team leaders” completely in the dark as to what other departments were doing. No more legislative education committee meetings that reeked of conspiracy, deception and stale men’s suits in dire need of dry-cleaning. 

I think the turning point for me was when, at the beginning of APSRC’s annual membership drive in the spring/summer of 2019, Smith said on three occasions – in my presence – that “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” 

“Them” refers to public school districts – as in APSRC’s current member districts and potential member districts.

I spent decades looking for facts. I believe in transparent and ethical journalistic practices.

Baffle them with bullshit?

Um, that’s a hard no. 

We’re talking about the education of Arkansas’ children. We’re talking about the teachers who work long hours for pitiful pay. We’re talking about inadequate funding, inadequate facilities and the fact that the state has taken its largest school district hostage just so that it can take it apart and reinstate segregation in the Little Rock School District.

There will be no “baffle them with bullshit” from my little corner of the universe. 

Also, covering the 2019 legislative session left me disturbed and downright angry about what is happening in public education. The 2017 General Assembly gave me serious pause. The 2019 session revealed the seamiest side of the school-”choice” movement.

In this post and those that will follow, I’m going to share the details of my three years at APSRC. Since quitting, I’ve learned that most people – even those in education – don’t realize how APSRC is structured or how it operates. Yes, it’s a nonprofit primarily funded by the Waltons. But it’s also a powerful and influential force where the governor and state Legislature are concerned. 

This is a blog that I will follow.

The Waltons, like their fellow billionaires the Kochs and the DeVos family, are dedicated to the destruction of public schools.

How clever to launch a “public school resource center” with which to peddle their anti-public school venom.

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Fraud, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Mercedes Schneider: Billionaires Jim and Alice Walton Seek to Purchase Louisiana State Board

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2019 //
8

 

The Walton Family is collectively worth more than $150 billion, and their hobby is undermining and disrupting public schools across the nation. Since Louisiana has an election for the state board of education in a few days, you will not be surprised to learn that Jim and Alice Walton dropped $200,000 on candidates pledged to support charter schools, vouchers, and Teach for America.

Mercedes Schneider reports in this post that the Waltons waited until close to Election Day so that Louisianans would not have time to learn that out-of-State billionaires were trying to buy the state board elections.

The Waltons are determined to harm the public schools that educated their father Sam Walton and most of them.

The family belongs on the blog’s Wall of Shame for their ceaseless attacks on public schools, unions, experienced teachers, and communities.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Louisiana, Privatization, Teach for America, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Max Brantley: The Little Rock School Crisis, and Parents Fight to Stop Walton-Funded Takeover

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2019 //
3

Max Brantley is editor of the Arkansas Times, where he courageously confronts the depredations of the powerful Walton family against the public sector.

In this post, he summarizes the Waltons’ current efforts to take over the Little Rock school district, so they can eliminate public schools and replace them with charters. Any Democrat who thinks that charter schools are “progressive” should visit Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, or any other red state where the billionaires are doing their best to destroy public education.

He begins:

I’ve collected some items today related to the 2019 Little Rock school crisis, in which the Asa Hutchinson administration is attempting to supercharge the agenda of the Billionaire Boys Club, led by the Walton Family Foundation, to end a meaningful Little Rock public school district.

The plan is to continue to build charter schools (lightly regulated private schools operated with public money); to bust the teachers union, and to create a district of haves and have-nots. Under the Hutchinson plan, prosperous neighborhoods would have a semblance, but not complete democratic self-determination in schools. Poor neighborhoods (generally heavily black) would remain under control of a state Board of Education that has failed them miserably in five years as a supervisor.

He cites a post from this blog, describing the federal study of NAEP that concluded that charter schools do NOT outperform public schools.

He notes that even the Walton-funded University of Arkansas Department of Educational Reform acknowledges that test scores are not all that important.

He writes:

You get a district with a high poverty rate and you get lower test scores. Governor Hutchinson wants to punish Little Rock for that, while holding harmless dozens of other schools and districts with similar low scores. Here, they blame the teachers.

He cites Mercedes Schneider’s expose of Oregon-based Stand for Children, which is pouring big money into the Louisiana race for state board of education, and notes that the Waltons are financing their own efforts in Arkansas to undermine the public schools of Little Rock to make it easier to take them over and end public education.

And then he turns to Brett Williamson, a member of the state school board appointed by Governor Asa Hutchinson, who seems to specialize in insulting parents and supporters of public education. Williamson is one of the current crop of Republicans who do not believe in local control, especially for districts enrolling children of color.

Like Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post and Karen Francisco of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Max Brantley is a national treasure who is fearless in confronting the privatization behemoths owned by billionaires.

 

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Little Rock, Privatization, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Mercedes Schneider: “Stand for Children” Spends Out-of-State Money to Buy Louisiana Elections

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2019 //
4

 

Mercedes Schneider discovered that Oregon-based Stand for Children is pouring money into school board races in Louisiana. Why should an Oregon organization try to choose school board elections in another state? That’s the way the Disruption Movement works. The funding comes from the usual sources, none of which is based in Louisiana.

She writes:

Since 2012, hundreds of thousands of dollars has flowed into Louisiana elections from this Portland, Oregon, ed-reform organization, and when I examined the campaign finance filings for these three PACs, I discovered only two Louisiana contributors to one of the PACs, the Stand for Children LA PAC…

SFC is anti-union, pro-Common Core, pro-school choice—usual corporate-ed-reform fare. As for some of its major money: Since 2010, the Walton Family Foundation has funded SFC (via the SFC Leadership Center) $4.1M, with $400,000 specifically earmarked for Louisiana.

Then, there’s the Gates funding…

It all sounds so locally-driven, so grass-rootsy.

It’s probably best to not mention that SFC in Oregon finances the show.

.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Louisiana, Oregon, Privatization, Stand for Children, Walton Foundation

Steven Singer: Charter Schools Have Two Dads!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2019 //
25

Steven Singer has written recently about the origins of charter schools. He insists that Albert Shanker, president of the AFT, was not their father.

The real fathers of this first big step towards privatization, he writes, were Ted Kolderie and Joe Nathan of Minnesota, who wrote the nation’s first charter school law and opened the door wide for entrepreneurs, grifters, and attacks on unions.

Singer is a flame-thrower in this post, because he has come to see that behind the “progressive” facade of charters lurks Betsy DeVos, the Walton Family, the Koch brothers, ALEC, and a galaxy of public school haters.

He begins:

If bad ideas can be said to have fathers, then charter schools have two.

And I’m not talking about greed and racism.

No, I mean two flesh and blood men who did more than any others to give this terrible idea life – Minnesota ideologues Ted Kolderie, 89, and Joe Nathan, 71.

In my article “Charter Schools Were Never a Good Idea. They Were a Corporate Plot All Along,” I wrote about Kolderie’s role but neglected to mention Nathan’s.

And of the two men, Nathan has actually commented on this blog.

He flamed on your humble narrator when I dared to say that charter schools and voucher schools are virtually identical.

I guess he didn’t like me connecting “liberal” charters with “conservative” vouchers. And in the years since, with Trump’s universally hated Billionaire Education Secretary Betsy Devos assuming the face of both regressive policies, he was right to fear the public relations nightmare for his brainchild, the charter school.

It’s kind of amazing that these two white men tried to convince scores of minorities that giving up self-governance of their children’s schools is in their own best interests, that children of color don’t need the same services white kids routinely get at their neighborhood public schools and that letting appointed bureaucrats decide whether your child actually gets to enroll in their school is somehow school choice!

But now that Nathan and Kolderie’s progeny policy initiative is waning in popularity, the NAACP and Black Lives Matter are calling for moratoriums on new charters and even progressive politicians are calling for legislative oversight, it’s important that people know exactly who is responsible for this monster.

And more than anyone else, that’s Kolderie and Nathan.

Over the last three decades, Nathan has made a career of sabotaging authentic public schools while pushing for school privatization.

He is director of the Center for School Change, a Minneapolis charter school cheerleading organization, that’s received at least $1,317,813 in grants to undermine neighborhood schools and replace them with fly-by-night privatized monstrosities.

He’s written extensively in newspapers around the country and nationwide magazines and Websites like the Huffington Post.

Read it all. Joe Nathan has frequently commented on this blog, defending charters as just a different kind of public school. I disagree vigorously because it is obvious by now that charters have become vehicles for busting unions (more than 90% are non-union), charters are more segregated than public schools (especially in Minnesota, where there are charters specifically for children of different ethnic and racial groups), and they remove democratic control in communities of color. The proliferation of corporate charter chains adds to their reputation as destroyers of democracy.

Bottom line is that Walton money, Koch money, DeVos money is not meant to advance public education but to eliminate it.

There is a reason that the Democratic candidates for president are distancing themselves from the charter idea. They understand that they can’t support the DeVos agenda. Betsy did us all a favor by removing the mask.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Koch Brothers, Privatization, Segregation, Unions, Walton Foundation
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