Twenty-five new charter schools will open in Phoenix, targeting low-income Latino students. The project is funded mainly by the Walton Foundation. The schools will rely on Teach for America recruits.
The story in the NY Times notes that charter schools in Arizona get more public funding than public schools and charter schools get lower test scores.
This is privatization for the sake of privatization, taking advantage of a chance to break public education with low-wage workers and promises.
Seth Sandronsky, a journalist in Sacramento, reports here on some extraordinary events in that city that should raise eyebrows. Maybe even some hackles.
Read Sandronsky to learn about State Senator Ron Calderon, his brother Thomas Calderon, Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, ALEC, the Walton Family Foundation, Pearson, Connections Academy, the Sacramento Bee, and various other characters eager to reform our schools.
I would summarize, but this web is too tangled for me.
Since some readers had trouble opening the link, here is how the story begins:
Papering Over Public K-12 School Reform
By Seth Sandronsky
Private interests are busy paying for political favors from lawmakers at the state Capitol in California, writes Dan Morain, a columnist with The Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/2013/11/13/5905448/dan-morain-the-investigation-into.html
According to him, what we know about Sen. Ron Calderon, a pro-business Democrat representing Montebello, and snared in an FBI sting operation recently, is just the tip of the dollars-and-politics iceberg.
The good senator has ample company, Morain continues. He mentions other actors and forces in the fetid pay-to-play of California state politics.
Yet his column omits the donor role of a leading public K-12 school reform group under the state Capitol dome. What is going on?
Al Jazeera America’s Oct. 31 unveiling of an FBI affidavit that alleges Sen. Calderon’s multiple alleged wrongdoings includes his brother Thomas Calderon’s meeting with star education reformer Michelle Rhee’s lobbyists. Her StudentsFirst group operates from a national headquarters in Sacramento.
The affidavit alleges that StudentsFirst lobbyists met with Sen. Calderon’s brother on Feb. 20. On Feb. 21, Sen. Calderon introduced a teacher-reform measure, Senate Bill 441 that Rhee’s group supports: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/sen/sb_0401-0450/sb_441_cfa_20130423_084911_sen_comm.html
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, Rhee’s husband and never a classroom teacher, backed Sen. Calderon’s SB 441, which failed to pass out of committee. The mayor’s education non-profit, Stand Up for Great Schools, a 501(c)(3) non-profit that accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Walton Family Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the big-box retailer, also supported SB 441, which teacher unions opposed.
As Trevor Aaronson of Al Jazeera America reports: “Ronald Calderon’s push for the education bill came after Rhee’s organization provided critical financial support to the political campaign of his nephew Ian Calderon. In May 2012, state records show, StudentsFirst funneled $378,196 through a political action committee to Ian Calderon’s successful campaign for the California Assembly”:
Rhee’s donation to Ian Calderon represents just over eight percent of StudentsFirst $4.6 million of donations to its 501(c)(4) nonprofit. That figure comes from its Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service, for the tax year ending July 31, 2011.
Operating in 34 states now, the IRS allows 501(c)(4) groups to engage in political activity such as lobbying: “Seeking legislation germane to the organization’s programs (as) a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes.” Oh, and the donor names to StudentsFirst’s 501(c)(4) are secret.
One of the states where StudentsFirst operates is Tennessee. There, Rhee’s ex-husband, Kevin Huffman, is a GOP governor’s appointed state head of public schools.
StudentsFirst’s political donations have swayed lawmakers to evaluate teachers based on their pupils’ standardized test scores: http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/tncode/ This policy fits with American Legislative Exchange Council’s model legislation for education reform.
Back in the Golden State, SB 441 was a bid to amend the state Education Code. Accordingly, Sen. Calderon’s bill would have potentially changed the education of 6 million kids attending California’s public K-12 schools.
Comparing ALEC’s “Teacher Evaluations and Licensing Act,” part of its “Indiana Education Reform Package,” approved at the 2011 ALEC yearly meeting: http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/indiana-education-reform-package/ ( “chapter 3” of an omnibus bill) with Sen. Calderon’s SB 441, one sees similar phrases and words. As we know, ALEC is pushing forward across the U.S. with public K-12 school reform bills, using language that corporate lobbyists write and lawmakers vote on.
We turn to Connections Academy, a for-profit online learning enterprise that began in Houston, Texas. Once upon a time, this company co-led ALEC’s education task force.
Enter Pearson, Inc., a $7 billion publicly traded, global firm that profits shareholders through certifying teachers, grading standardized tests, publishing textbooks and providing digital curriculum on iPads. Pearson Connections in August 2011. Connections left ALEC soon after, said Brandon Pinette of Pearson in an email.
However, the state bills that Connections, the second largest online school company nationwide to K12 Inc., supported on ALEC’s education task force are still operative, said Rebekah Wilce, a researcher and reporter for the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy. K12 Inc., the biggest cyber school firm and formerly owned by Kaplan, Inc., the giant test preparation company, remains a member of the ALEC education task force, according to her.
Meanwhile, The Sacramento Bee financially backs Mayor Johnson’s nonprofit St. HOPE (Helping Others Pursue Excellence ) Development Company: http://www.sthope.org/fund-1.html. Johnson’s nonprofit, with help from the local school board and billionaire philanthropists such as Eli Broad, converted Sacramento High School to a nonunion charter school after pupils’ scores on high-stakes standardized tests fell in 2003.
Read the whole post, which is fascinating.
PS: Dan Morain, the columnist mentioned in first paragraph, was just named editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee.
Joanne Barkan has an excellent essay in Dissent magazine that explains how foundations founded by plutocrats use their wealth and political power to damage democracy.
She uses the example of public education to demonstrate how a small number of large foundations have captured control of public policy, taking it out of the hands of voters and parents to impose their will and get what they want.
She offers the examples of the AstroTurf groups created by the Gates Foundation; these are groups that pretend to represent local, grassroots groups but in fact carry out the wishes of the plutocrats.
Then there is the example of grants offered to districts that are contingent on certain officials remaining in office.
Then there is the example of the “parent trigger,” which manipulates parents to hand over their public school to a private corporation.
And another example is the practice of the Broad Foundation, which underwrites the salary of certain public officials to ensure that it gets its way.
She asks a good question: why are these plutocrats allowed to get tax breaks as they impose their control over and subvert a democratic institution?
This is a subject that deserves a book-length treatment. With her meticulous research skills and her understanding of the political dynamics involved, Joanne Barkan is just the one to do it.
The extremists in the North Carolina legislature and in the governor’s mansion have decided that the state’s public education system must be subject to market pressures.
That means they want public money put into private hands, as much as possible.
North Carolina was once the most progressive of southern states. It is now among the most regressive, competing with Louisiana in a race to the bottom.
Please note that the lawmakers did not put the decision about vouchers in the hands of the electorate.
No state referendum on vouchers has ever passed, and they know it.
Being fearful to say out loud what they are doing, they call vouchers with a deceptive name, as do their supporters in other states. They call them “opportunity scholarships.”
One state official is responsible to oversee the nearly 700 schools that are eligible to receive voucher students.
The campaign for vouchers was funded by extremist groups, from inside and outside the state.
Please note that in the latest TIMSS international tests, students in North Carolina’s public schools took the test and were rated as one of the highest performing entities in the world.
Want to know about vouchers in North Carolina?
Read these outstanding and objective articles by Lindsay Wagner of the NC Policy Watch. Here, here, and here.
Who is footing the bill to privatize public dollars? Follow the money. North Carolina has its own Art Pope, who handsomely funds libertarians who agree with his views; this very conservative and politically important multi-multi-millionaire is now state budget director. Art Pope was profiled by the New Yorker magazine because of his outsize influence in changing the face of the North Carolina Republican party.
And then there is all the out-of-state money that has helped elect a reactionary legislature.
The voucher promoters–who represent the most reactionary elements of our society–are always able to find and pay people of color willing to make ridiculous claims that they are doing the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by helping to destroy public education that serves all children. Think of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, which is handsomely funded by the Walton Family Foundation (whose stores do not allow unions and pay minimum wage to their employees). And North Carolina has its own cheerleaders for local billionaires, falsely laying claim to Dr. King’s campaign for public responsibility, not privatization.
And lest we not forget: the governor’s senior education advisor is Eric Guckian, a distinguished leader groomed by Teach for America.
The most reactionary and anti-union of the major foundations–the billionaire Walton Family Foundation–has awarded $20 million to Teach for America to send bright, ill-prepared new college graduates into the nation’s classrooms. The largest contingent –700–will go to Los Angeles.
That city has a large number of nonunion charter schools.
TFA aids the Walton ambition to privatize public schools and rid them of union teachers. As such, they are a mainstay of the privatization movement.
I was trying to decide which poem to share with you, when I saw that a reader suggested one of my favorites: “Ozymandias.” What a lesson this poem teaches about life, time, the illusory nature of power and fame. And when we read it, we ask ourselves what matters most, what endures, what can we do in this life that matters?
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”.
Walmart, owned by the fabulously wealthy Walton family of Arkansas, has told the city of Washington, DC, that it will not build stores there if the City Council passes a “living wage” bill. The members of the family are billionaires and at the very least multimillionaires.
Walmart wants to pay only the minimum wage of $7.50 an hour. The City Council wants a “living wage” of $12.50 an hour, reflecting the high cost of living in DC.
Walmart says it will abandon DC if required to pay such “high” wages.
Have you seen the ads that Walmart is running on national television that show how their employees are achieving their dreams because of their beneficent employer? On $7.50 an hour?
The Walton Family Foundation is happy to throw millions of dollars into DC charter schools, but not provide a wage that will allow the parents of the children in those schools to make choices about their lives.
Just when Teach for America was down to only $300 million in assets, the Walton Family Foundation awarded it another $4.3 million to send ill-trained young college graduates to spend two years teaching in the Delta.
It seems like only yesterday, maybe two years ago, that the foundation gave TFA $49.5 million.
Surely the brand new TFA recruits in the Delta will do no harm, and maybe do some good, helping to staff schools where teachers are hard to find. At least they are not taking the jobs of experienced teachers who were laid off by budget cuts.
However, it is difficult to see TFA as a systemic response to the needs of the nation’s poorest communities. Shouldn’t the neediest students have a corps of experienced, career educators who are committed to stay with them for many years?
The Walton foundation is one of the nation’s wealthiest and also the foundation most committed to privatization of public education.
Logan T. Carlson, an investigative journalist for the Gannett News Service, noticed that the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas is funded by pro-voucher foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. A group of researchers at the Project have been responsible for the five-year evaluation of Milwaukee’s voucher program. They found that the voucher schools did not affect students’ test scores, but led to a high graduation rate. Critics point out that 56% of the students who enrolled in the voucher program left before graduating.
Even more worrisome is the connection between the research project and campaign donors.
Carlson writes:
“The research conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas is paid for primarily by special interest groups that also donate to politicians pushing for the voucher expansion.
“A Wisconsin Democracy Campaign report on school choice special interest money shows that individuals with ties to foundations that have funded the School Choice Demonstration Project have donated more than $630,000 to Wisconsin politicians, most of them Republicans, during the past decade.”
Patrick Wolf, the lead researcher from the University of Arkansas, said his research was unaffected by the source of the funding. However, in an opinion piece he wrote recently, Wolf strongly endorsed school choice in Minnesota and warned Minnesotans that they had fallen behind in adopting school choice programs, such as vouchers and charters.
The reporter noted that the Walton Family Foundation had spent over $500 million in the past three years to support school reforms, especially vouchers and charters. In 2002, the foundation gave $300 million to the University of Arkansas, which the article calls Walmart University.
When the University established its Department of Education Reform, funded in part by Walton, it invited Jay Greene to chair the department. Greene is known as a strong advocate of vouchers. Patrick Wolf holds the endowed chair of school choice in the department.
Diane Ravitch's blog 