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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

Maurice Cunningham: The Waltons Create a “National Parents Union”

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2019 //
11

 

Maurice Cunningham is a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, who has a remarkable passion for tracking Dark Money.

In this post, he warns that the Walton Family has funded an AstroTurf group called “the National Parents Union,” which hopes to organize parents to demand privately-managed charter schools and to fight teachers’ unions.

Cunningham is very familiar with the Walton tactics of putting up front groups to pursue their goals. Along with other billionaires, DFER, and the now-defunct Families for Excellent Schools, they funded a referendum in Massachusetts in 2016, aimed at lifting the state cap on charter schools. Cunningham’s blogs, posted at public radio station WGBH’s website, exposed the billionaires behind that effort, and the referendum was overwhelmingly defeated.

The new “NPU” is an outgrowth of the Walton efforts in Massachusetts.

Can this one fool parents into demanding privatization of their public schools? Not likely.

 

Categories Education Reform

The Walton Plot to Privatize the Public Schools of Arkansas

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2019 //
22

The headquarters of the Walton/Walmart billionaires is in Bentonville, Arkansas, so it is not surprising that the Walton Family Foundation and the members of the family (net worth: $100 billion) have decided to privatize the public schools of Arkansas.

Arkansas is a poor state. It doesn’t have an abundance of private schools that are as good as its underfunded public schools but the Waltons want every child to have a voucher or a charter school to attend.

Legislators are easy to buy in a poor state. The Waltons own quite a few.

The Arkansas Education Association did the research and described the empire that the Waltons have constructed in service to their goal of owning and privatizing the public schools of Arkansas. In the Walton plan, there will be no “public schools,” only privately managed charter schools and vouchers for religious schools.

The AEA report lays out the Walton Empire of Privatization in detail, with their bought and paid for think tanks and academics.

Although this report includes a lot of names, it is just one slice of the nationwide effort to plunder our public schools. These organizations have a vast infrastructure and deep pockets that can seem daunting, but our students are counting on us to stand up and speak out.

While they may have more cash, we have the power of numbers and common sense. Arkansas’s taxpayers and students would be better served by investing our scarce resources to improve our neighborhood public schools and helping all of the students who attend them.

Our public schools are the anchor of our communities, and the best way to expand opportunity for all. This idea does not require twisted statistics, or market tested language to trick people into supporting it. It’s as old as the country itself.

Do you think any member of the Walton Family ever feels ashamed of the damage they are wreaking on our democracy?

What about their minions? Have they no shame?

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Shame, Vouchers

Michael Kohlhaas Reveals More Secret L.A. Charter Emails: How a Grant of $325,000 from the Waltons Evaporated

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2019 //
20

Michael Kohlhaas is combing through the treasure trove of leaked emails about the inner world of the Los Angeles charter industry.

He recently posted about the short and strange debut of Ganas Academy.

It got a grant of $325,000 from the Walton Family Foundation. The founder proceeded to pay herself $13,000 a month, spent $63,000 on consultants, and another $15,000 on lawyers, and so on, and soon the money was all gone. But the school wasn’t ready to open, even though the founder was paying a recruiter a bonus of $850 to sign up students.

Kohlhaas writes:

I just got a small set of records from everybody’s favorite star-crossed charter school horror show, that is to say GANAS Academy. The set is woefully incomplete, and it’s pretty clear that Sakshi Jain is lying to her lawyer about it yet again, but nevertheless there is some essential material in there, and you can browse through the whole pile of it over here on Archive.Org.

And by far the most important material in here is GANAS Academy’s general ledger in MS Excel format1 along with monthly bank statements through June 2019. The ledger shows every credit and every debit from the inception of the school in August 2018 with very detailed descriptions. The story kicks off with a $325K grant from the Walton Family Foundation, deposited in the California Credit Union on August 11, 2018 as shown on that month’s bank statement and it’s all downhill from there.

In September 2018 she began paying herself $13K per month, as shown in that month’s statement and this continued at least through June 2019, which is the last monthly statement I have.2 But like I said, the real action is found in that ledger. It’s there that we learn that the $325K Jain has been burning through came from the Waltons. That she spent about $63K on recruiting students, which no doubt includes the $850 per kid bounty she paid her recruiter. And last but never least $15K to charter school contract killer law firm Young, Minney, and Corr.3

So that, friends, is the charter school innovation laboratory model. Get a ton of free money from an appalling gang of zillionaires and proceed to burn through it at an astonishing rate. A quarter of a million dollars between August 2018 and June 2019.4 And at the end, you don’t even have a damn school. Although I will say that given the horrific nature of these schools, the world is clearly better off having her spend all that money and not start a school than otherwise.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Walton Foundation

The Walton Family Makes $4 Million Every Hour

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2019 //
46

 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek posts this story about the rapidly escalating wealth divide: The Walton Family is the richest in the world. Its wealth grows by $4 million every hour of every day.

Twenty-five families in the world control $1.4 trillion.

In the magazine’s annual ranking of the world’s richest families, the Waltons are #1.

The numbers are mind-boggling: $70,000 per minute, $4 million per hour, $100 million per day.

That’s how quickly the fortune of the Waltons, the clan behind Walmart Inc., has been growing since last year’s Bloomberg ranking of the world’s richest families.

At that rate, their wealth would’ve expanded about $23,000 since you began reading this. A new Walmart associate in the U.S. would’ve made about 6 cents in that time, on the way to an $11 hourly minimum.

Even in this era of extreme wealth and brutal inequality, the contrast is jarring. The heirs of Sam Walton, Walmart’s notoriously frugal founder, are amassing wealth on a near-unprecedented scale — and they’re hardly alone.

The Walton fortune has swelled by $39 billion, to $191 billion, since topping the June 2018 ranking of the world’s richest families.

As educators know, the Waltons use a small part of their vast fortune to undermine public education and replace public schools with privately managed charter schools.

The least you can do is to avoid Walmart. Boycott Walmart. It may only cost them a few pennies, but do it.

In addition to their nefarious role as the single biggest founder of charters in the U.S., they are the biggest retailer of guns. Just another reason to boycott Walmart.

FYI, the founder of Walmart—Sam Walton—was a graduate of public schools. He graduated from David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Education Industry, Inequality, Privatization, Walton Foundation

How Walton Money Influences Charter School Debate

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2019 //
11

 

This article was published in the Detroit Free Press on a day when not many people were paying attention, December 25, 2018, but it should have been national news.

The Waltons, heirs to the anti-union Walmart empire, have been investing in black organizations to spread their views about charter schools.

The fact that the NAACP and Black Lives Matter have stood up to the bully billionaire behemoth and demanded a moratorium on charters is astounding and a great credit to their integrity.

It begins:

Amid fierce debate over whether charter schools are good for black students, the heirs to the Walmart company fortune have been working to make inroads with advocates and influential leaders in the black community.

The Walton family, as one of the leading supporters of America’s charter school movement, is spreading its financial support to prominent and like-minded black leaders, from grassroots groups focused on education to mainstream national organizations such as the United Negro College Fund and Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, according to an Associated Press analysis of tax filings and nonprofit grants data.

Here is the most astonishingly hypocritical statement in the article:

“Those closest to the challenge often have the best solution,” Marc Sternberg, who leads the Walton Family Foundation’s education efforts, said in a prepared statement.

 

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Walton Foundation

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

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2019 //
12

 

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

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

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

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

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

Cunningham says “Dark Money never sleeps.”

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

Cunningham hates hypocrisy.

So do I.

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

Mercedes Schneider: The Walton Foundation Funds a New “Grassroots” Initiative

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2019 //
24

 

Mercedes Schneider discovers that a prominent reformer has a new career. Hanna Skandera was State Commissioner of Education in New Mexico, where she tried to impose the “Florida Model of Mediocrity.” She fought with the state’s teachers for seven years and accomplished nothing. New Mexico remained at the bottom of NAEP, as one of the poorest states in the nation. Her goal of raising test scores flopped.

Schneider performs her wizardry of financial investigation.

It is impressive to see how many Astro-turf Disrupters have signed on to give the impression of a crowded room.

But bear in mind, as yet another bunch of organizations pop up, that the whole Disruption machine is spinning in circles. It has accomplished nothing other than Disruption, and is like an automobile with a full gas tank—refueled over and over by the Waltons—driving round and round and round, going nowhere, but kept in motion solely by the money that fuels it.

 

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Hoax, Walton Foundation

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

Arkansas: Who’s Who in the Charter Movement (Hint: Everyone Is Owned by the Waltons)

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2019 //
11

I can’t tell you how angry this post made me. I felt outraged and frustrated. It is not just about privatization. It is about the purchase of an entire state by one family. How can anyone teach civics in Arkansas when one family owns everything?

This post will make your head spin. Public schools in communities of color are taken over by the state, and charter schools open. One high-powered chain. spreads it’s tentacles across the state, scooping up the best students. A rotating cast of characters plays musical chairs at the state board, the state education department, and superintendencies.

The schools targeted for closure and privatization are schools that enroll mostly children of color. Everyone feels powerless to stop the Walton train.

Behind it all: ALEC, the Koch brothers, and the Walton Family. The Walton Family owns everything and every body.

Schools? Education? An afterthought.

This saga reads like a gangster tale. The mob always wins.

I was contacted by a minister in Little Rock who asked, what can we do? My advice: civil disobedience. Mass protests. Marches. Demonstrations. Chain yourselves to the schoolhouse doors. Nothing else will work. The greatest enemy is complacency, apathy, hopelessness. Faced with the unlimited power of a family that owns the state government, it is easy to feel hopelessness. But resistance is the only path. The other way, the status quo, is servitude.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, ALEC, Arkansas, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Walton Foundation
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