IDEA Charter Chain and Its High-Spending Ways

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2020 //
8

The IDEA charter chain has received hundreds of millions in federal funding to expand. It has garnered a lot of attention, however, for its caviar tastes. The IDEA board approved a management proposal to lease a private jet for nearly $2 million a year, for the convenience of its executives. Not like your average school board or superintendent!

But their luxury tastes have not been curbed by the negative reaction private jet problem.

Among other big-ticket items noted in this story, here is a notable one. IDEA CEO Tom Torkelson flew to a private meeting with Betsy DeVos in Florida, in a nine-passenger jet in which he was the only passenger. DeVos has given IDEA more than $200 million from the federal Charter Schools Program. She loves IDEA.

The Texas Monitor reports:

Last October, the CEO and president of the largest charter school company in Texas took a trip to Houston. They didn’t travel the way most public-school employees would have. Instead, they traveled by private jet, their spouses and five children came along for the trip, and they got around Houston not by Uber or rent car, but in a chauffeured SUV.

That trip was just one item in an $800,000 bill that IDEA Public Schools racked up between 2017 and 2019 on private jets and other luxe travel spending. Although IDEA received $319 million from the State of Texas and $71 million in federal money in 2018, this kind of travel would be illegal for public school district and state employees in Texas. Traditional public-school supporters and charter school advocates alike say it’s the kind of spending that gives a black eye to the charter school concept.

Charter schools receive no property tax revenue, as traditional public schools do, but are funded through state and federal grants. Like other public schools, they can also raise money from private donors. IDEA says it uses some of that private money for its luxury travel.

Records show that company CEO Tom Torkelson, his wife and three children, along with IDEA President JoAnn Gama, her husband and two children, stepped off a private jet at Sugar Land Regional Airport and jumped into the chauffeured SUV. The reason for the trip, records show, was to “visit Houston school sites.”

The flight cost is not noted in the records, nor is the reason for the spouses and children coming along on the trip. The vehicle, rented from Casablanca Limousines in Houston, cost $1,800.

At about the time of the Houston trip, IDEA was preparing to lease a private jet – the same plane that the district had used on an individual trip basis since at least 2014. But board members nixed the lease after the deal became public.

In December 2019, IDEA announced the plane lease had been put aside.

In March, Torkelson proclaimed that “IDEA will not pay for private air travel” any longer.

Four days later, IDEA released the district’s transportation records to Peyton Wolcott, a Texas-based education advocate who had submitted a request for the documents in January.

She questioned the timing and the sincerity of Torkelson’s vow to end the subsidized travel.

“Why shouldn’t IDEA’s board and executives, who enjoyed Texas taxpayers’ largesse, dig deep into their pockets and pay it back? “she said. Records show IDEA has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on private-plane travel in the past five years.

Flights by Torkelson and IDEA staffers inside Texas between 2017 and 2019 cost, on average, about $1,300 per one-way trip, with a discount for round-trip fares. For example, a private, round-trip flight taken by Torkelson in fall 2018 from McAllen to San Antonio ran $2,340. A commercial flight on United Airlines today would cost $377 for the same route. Bills for private flights can also include lodging and meals for pilots as well as other costs. See a sample invoice here.

Torkelson took a private jet to Tampa in November to meet with U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to discuss “education philanthropy,” records show. He was the only passenger on the jet, which holds nine people.

I mean, really, do you expect such powerful people to fly economy like a public school employee?

IDEA promises that 100% of its students who graduate will enroll in a four-year college. What they don’t point out is that students are not allowed to graduate unless they have been accepted by a four-year college. And, yes, there are colleges that accept every applicant.

Nonetheless, Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic hopes that IDEA and KIPP will open in Arizona. Arizona has the most lax charter oversight in the nation. It’s the only state that allows for-profit operators of charters (many other states ban for-profit charters, but allow for-profit management, as in Michigan, where 80% of all charters are run by for-profit EMOs). It’s hard to judge whether Arizona or California has had the most charter scandals, but Arizona has had some big ones, where charter operators have made off with millions of dollars, and it was all legal.

There is the grand success of former legislator Eddie Farnsworth, who pocketed up to $30 million by turning his for-profit chain into a nonprofit chain.

Then there was Glen Way, who made millions building his charter schools.

Michael and Olga Block founded the BASIS charter chain in Arizona, whose demographics are skewed white and Asian, get very high test scores, but take home enough to buy a NYC condo for $8.4 million.

No one has accused KIPP or IDEA of fraud, so maybe Arizona needs them, that is, if you think itis a good idea to continue stripping students and resources from public schools.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Preet Bharara: Donald Trump is the Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated on America

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2020 //
53

Preet Bharara, former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, tweeted this:

@PreetBharara
Patriotic American & proud immigrant. @Springsteen fan. Banned by Putin, fired by Trump. Former US Attorney, SDNY. Host of “Stay Tuned” doingjusticebook.com/
Mar. 09, 2020


Donald Trump is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on America

He is a liar

He is a cheat

He is a bad businessman

He can’t spell

He doesn’t read

He doesn’t listen

He has no principles

He doesn’t give a shit about anyone

He is profoundly disloyal

He projects his every flaw on others

He doesn’t know facts

He doesn’t respect science

He doesn’t get math

He doesn’t acknowledge history

He doesn’t even understand weather

He wanted to buy Greenland

He wanted to nuke hurricanes

He says he’s a genius

But he won’t release his grades or tax returns

He attacks war heroes while he pardons war criminals

He accuses others of nepotism while he privileges his own children

He whines about criticism as he spews nothing but bile

He calls patriots “human scum” while surrounding himself with scumbags like Roger Stone

He claims to be alpha while he endlessly whines like stuck pig

He says he’s for America though he cozies up to despots

He said no one has more respect for women than he does

He said he knows more than the generals

He suggested he has a special talent for infectious diseases

I am angry and worried right now. As are tens of millions of Americans. I don’t know what will happen next but what I do know is this:

Donald Trump is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on America

You can follow @PreetBharara.

Categories Education Reform

Audrey Watters: Will the Ed-Tech Industry Take Advantage of the Coronavirus Crisis?

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2020 //
31

Audrey Watters reminds us of Rahm Emanuel’s immortal words, “Never allow a good crisis to go to waste.”

And she see the enthusiasts of the ed-tech industry ready to pounce and take advantage of the current crisis. She lives in Seattle, possibly the epicenter of the crisis.

She writes:

Some schools in the Seattle area — both K-12 and colleges — have closed, and there has been intense pressure on administrators to shut everything down and move instruction online. (Governor Inslee has just announced the state is considering “mandatory measures” to combat the spread of the illness, so we shall see what exactly that means.) I’ve heard lots of local tech workers complain angrily that, in a region that’s home to Microsoft and Amazon, there is really no excuse for schools staying open. Digital learning, they argue, is already preferable. And now, they say, it’s necessary.

But that just strikes me as wildly uninformed — although that’s never stopped the tech industry from intervening in education before. It’s an assertion that rests on the assumption that ed-tech is good, that it can replicate at home what happens in the classroom. “This may be our moment,” ed-tech folks exclaim, giddily sharing lists of their favorite digital learning tools (with little concern, it seems for questions of accessibility, privacy, or security) and tips for quickly moving “to the cloud.” Of course, education technology — as a field, an industry, a discipline, a solution, what have you — has had decades and decades and decades to get this right. It still hasn’t. So when you hear “this is our moment,” you should recall perhaps the thesis of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. What we’re poised to see in response to the coronavirus — and not just in education, to be fair — is more disaster capitalism, and “disaster capitalists share this same inability to distinguish between creation and destruction, between hurting and healing.”

People are hurting and people are frightened right now. And thanks to the utter incompetence of the Trump Administration, there’s surely still more to worry about; still more people are going to suffer. This isn’t the time to be triumphant about ed-tech’s possibilities. This isn’t the time to prove anything about ed-tech, quite frankly. This an emergency response to a crisis.

Do all students have access to high-speed broadband at home? K-12 or otherwise? Nope. Do all students have access to laptops at home? Nope. Schools know this, and it’s part of the calculation they make whether or not to move everything online. But closure isn’t just about classes. The function of schools extends well beyond instruction. This is particularly true in K-12 schools, which also serve for many students and families as childcare, community centers, health care providers, disability support services, and places to eat breakfast and lunch. To close the doors to a school shifts the burden of all these services onto individual families.

Spare me the techno-solutionism. Let’s talk about big structural change. (But let’s not act like we’re gonna implement that tomorrow morning, ok?)

Categories Health, Seattle, Technology

Mike Deshotels: Every Reform Imposed in Louisiana Has Failed and Harmed Children

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2020 //
13

Mike Deshotels reviews the past several years of “reform,” funded by the Walton Family and Michael Bloomberg, and declares that every part of it has failed.

Deshotels writes that the suspension of recess so that students could have more time for test prep led to lower test scores!

He writes:

Why isn’t constant drilling on test taking skills at the expense of recess, PE, art, music, vocational education, and other “less important” instruction producing higher test scores? Maybe because the current trend to ignore fundamental child development principle’s is harmful in every way, including killing the joy of schooling for both children and teachers! Teachers in Finland, whose students perform at the top of the rankings on international achievement tests, routinely take young children outdoors where they can play, investigate nature and develop normally as they are programmed by their genes to do. Why do American reformers insist on counteracting nature and instead have transformed our education system to motivation killing test drudgery?

It was equally stupid to remove teachers from the decision-making process and leave it to legislators and the state education department. What a bad idea!

This outrageous trampling on the rights and critical input of the teaching profession in education decisions has actually resulted in the opposite of what our non-educator reformers said they wanted to do. Do you think our government can stop the Corona virus by ignoring the recommendations of the highly trained experts in disease prevention? The same is true of refusing to listen to real teachers about education reform. Do you believe, as the reformers would have you believe, that education reform in Louisiana is really working in preparing students for college and careers? Are you willing to ignore the most recent devastating revelation by our own Board of Regents that after all the reforms imposed on K-12 education in Louisiana, only 18 out of one hundred of our students will attain a college degree of any kind. Not even a two year associate’s degree! These are the worst results I have ever seen! Don’t blame the teachers. Teacher attended the legislative committee proposing these changes by the thousands to protest these untested ideas, only to be scolded for having the nerve to come to Baton Rouge on a school day (but that was the only time the Education committee was meeting!). Now the chickens are coming home to roost and thousands of our most dedicated teachers have left the profession.

Who has been making decisions? The Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, exactly the worst people to decide how to educate the state’s children.

The stranglehold over control of public education by the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry promises even more failure with the upcoming appointment of John White’s replacement.
Make no mistake about it, LABI has had almost total control over K-12 education for over 4 years since they used Michael Bloomburg’s and Walton family contributions to totally purchase all the BESE elected positions. They have made nothing but bad decisions with all this power. The school privatization they pushed has been almost a total failure with data showing that students who stay in their public schools do significantly better than they do when they move to a voucher or charter school.

Now LABI is preparing to pick the state’s next superintendent to succeed the failed John White, who mastered the art of spinning data to make it look good when it wasn’t. Of course, they are pushing White’s loyal assistant.

Let’s look at some of the real results of LABI supported reforms. On their web site, LABI claims that Louisiana is closing the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged students. Data demonstrates instead that the exact opposite is true. They are also dead wrong claiming that ACT scores are improving. LABI is now down to apparently basing its education policies on wishful thinking rather than evidence.

The same is true of teacher evaluations based on student test scores using our defective state tests. LABI has insisted that Louisiana evaluate its teachers partially on student test scores. But all the data proves that the VAM system used is unstable and inaccurate. So a couple of years ago I got thrown off of a state committee studying changes to VAM because I had the nerve to state on my blog that LABI was like the dog that caught the truck with this whole VAM fiasco. They don’t have any idea what to do with VAM but they will never admit they were wrong. Meanwhile some very competent and dedicated teachers have had their careers ruined by VAM and thousands of great teachers have left the profession.

Louisiana has been fully in the grips of the Disruption Machine. It has fallen to the bottom of NAEP, which John White hailed as “proof” that the state had enacted higher standards. More failure like that and Louisiana will fall below Alabama and New Mexico, the lowest performing states.

Louisiana has bought into all the favorite remedies of “reform” (aka disruption), and there is nothing to show for it but failure, propaganda, and lies.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Failure, Louisiana, Privatization, Vouchers, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

John Ogozalek: What Teachers Can Do to Help During Epidemic Crisis

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2020 //
84

John Ogozalek teaches in rural upstate New York.

He writes:

Let’s hope we dodge this bullet as a nation.

But it sounds like the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to go sideways.

What if schools close for weeks -if not months?

What will teachers do during this time off? (Assuming we’re not taking care of family in our own homes.)

And, let’s face it, the idea of teaching online just isn’t going to last long if at all for many K-12 schools. Seriously.

Here’s the thing…

Teachers represent an already organized, very locally based force -across the entire nation.

Instead of waiting for the federal government’s response to get organized (which under Trump’s leadership seems like a disaster in the making as valuable time slips by) perhaps our unions and school districts can get moving on this challenge right now.

Hopefully, we won’t be needed. But why not get ready to help?

I do not want to sit around my house if school is closed.

Could I volunteer with a local doctor? Check on shut ins?

At the minimum, schools can have meetings right now to make sure teachers and staff have accurate contact information including alternate means to communicate in case the internet is stressed. What happens to families who are lacking child care? And, those kids who rely on school lunch?

We can start to organize and at least offer our volunteer assistance to the government. A sort of “Teacher Force” at the ready for those of us who can lend a hand.

By moving forward without fear and working together maybe we can create a model for other groups? And, most importantly, offer some help to the children in our communities.

You have contact with people in charge of things in this country, especially union leaders.

I think this idea might get off the ground pretty quickly if an organization like NYSUT, for example, gets local presidents on it. Of course, we’d include administrators and anyone else in the school who wants to pitch in. We’d need a thoughtful template to respond effectively…a plan informed by public health experts. A package of possible options that local schools can consider and perhaps choose from.

Just an idea, Diane. Maybe the higher ups somewhere are already thinking in this direction?

If not, maybe we should….

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Reform, Health, Principals, Students, Teachers

Backlash Against Ed Tech in the Classroom

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2020 //
44

Debbie Truong writes in the Washington Post about parents who object to teachers’ reliance on iPads in the classroom. Twenty years ago, the burgeoning industry asserted that Ed tech would motivate students and lead to higher test scores, but that promise was never filled.


Meaghan Edwards had just finished reading children’s books to her son’s third-grade class when the teacher announced that students could have free time before lunch. Instead of playing cards, talking with friends or reading more, the students pulled out their iPads.

“They were zoned out like little zombies,” recalled Edwards, whose children attended school in the Eanes Independent School District in Austin.

The school system is one of many coast to coast that have spent millions of dollars on initiatives aimed at putting computers or tablets in the hands of every student, sometimes as early as kindergarten.
Do kids learn more when they trade in composition books for iPads?

The largest school district in Virginia, Fairfax County Public Schools, announced last year plans to provide Dell laptops to students starting in third grade. Less wealthy school systems have issued bonds to purchase devices, borrowing millions of dollars for laptops, iPads and Chromebooks.

But some parents in parts of the country where the programs are in place want to scale back, saying the devices are harming the way young children learn.

From Northern Virginia to Shawnee, Kan., to Norman, Okla., parents have demanded schools reduce or eliminate use of digital devices, provide alternative “low-screen” classwork and allow parents to say they do not want their children glued to glowing screens. Some families have even transferred their children to schools that are not so smitten with technology.

Maryland health and education officials released guidelines on using digital devices in school that include reminding students to take eye and stretch breaks and that encourage educators to offer collaborative learning assignments on and off the devices.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/more-students-are-learning-on-laptops-and-tablets-in-class-some-parents-want-to-hit-the-off-switch/2020/02/01/d53134d0-db1e-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html

Categories Education Reform, Technology

Wendy Lecker, Civil Rights Lawyer, Reviews SLAYING GOLIATH

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2020 //
2

Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer for the Education Law Center who writes regularly for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and the Stamford (CT) Advocate.

https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Wendy-Lecker-A-fighter-against-bad-education-15111892.php

She writes:

Diane Ravitch is rare in American public policy — a public figure who very publicly admitted that the positions she once championed were wrong. Dr. Ravitch is a historian of education and former assistant secretary of education under President George H.W. Bush — and was once a vocal champion of two pillars of education “reform”: school choice and standardized testing. In 2010, she published a book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” in which she meticulously critiqued these policies, and rued her role in pushing them.

Since then, Dr. Ravitch has tirelessly fought ill-conceived and harmful education policies and promotes a vision of public education that she believes is better for children and truer to our democratic ideals. She not only writes and speaks out herself, she also gives voice to many others fighting for public education, known and unknown. In her blog (dianeravitch.net), which has been viewed by tens of millions, she posts articles and commentaries on education policy from journalists, activists, teachers, parents, scholars and students. It is a must-read blog for anyone who wants to keep up with what is happening around the country in public education. (Full disclosure — Dr. Ravitch has posted many of my columns on her blog). In addition, Ravitch started, along with other activists, the Network for Public Education, a research and advocacy organization that connects supporters of public schools nationwide.

For all her critiques of education reform, or more accurately, “education disruption,” as she calls it, Ravitch is an optimist. Her new, well-researched, yet accessible book, “Slaying Goliath,” exemplifies this positive outlook.

The book doesn’t start out terribly optimistically. Early on, Ravitch presents a daunting list of the many billionaires and foundations that have funded this disruption, and the think tanks and policy organizations they fund to convince state and national politicians to impose their schemes.

For example, Ravitch notes that in North Carolina, that Tea Party extremists killed that state’s successful Teaching Fellows program — which worked with public universities to build a pipeline of career teachers- and diverted that program’s funding to Teach for America, whose minimally trained teachers make no more than a two-year commitment. Interestingly, in North Carolina’s long-running school funding case, a court ordered plan approved in January to ensure state compliance with its constitutional duty to provide an adequate education to all children, calls for reinvigorating and expanding the Teaching Fellows program.

Ravitch maintains that the influence these Goliath philanthrocapitalists buy, installing their chosen public policies and often trampling community will, is corrosive to democracy.

The book chronicles the failures of the reforms pushed by disrupters. For example, Ravitch details how standardized test-based teacher evaluation was devoid of evidence from the start, yet was pushed by Bill Gates and other influential disrupters, then imposed across the nation. Eventually, this scheme was exposed as fatally flawed, invalidated by experts and courts, and mostly abandoned. Even the Gates foundation ultimately admitted that it was a failed idea, but not before billions of dollars was wasted. Ravitch also surveys the corruption and dark money that pervades many of the disrupters’ privatization schemes, providing a clue as to why, despite their clear failures, these bad ideas seem to persist.

In every Diane Ravitch book, I always find new light shed on a topic I thought I knew. “Slaying Goliath” is no exception. In one fascinating chapter, Ravitch reviews the research on intrinsic motivation and its connection to the flawed reward-and-punishment philosophy that underpins education disruption policies. She describes in detail how renowned experts studying these concepts alerted Congress in 2011 to the faulty logic behind and dangers of test-based accountability, to no avail.

The author profiles some of the Davids battling these disruptive Goliaths: from Providence high school students objecting to standardized testing, to community members such as Jitu Brown, fighting school closures and privatization in Chicago, to the teachers around the country protesting deplorable conditions in their underfunded schools.

While these underdogs have not always succeeded, Ravitch’s book provides hope that sanity can be restored to education policy. Throughout the book she places the opposition to educational disruption in the context of the growing awareness about big money’s toxic influence on American politics and policy in general. She reminds readers that “no genuine social movement is created and sustained by elites.” Ravitch notes that those who have risen have shown others that grassroots organizing can have an impact.

Let us hope that Ravitch is right and these Davids will, for the sake of all our children, ultimately prevail.

Wendy Lecker is a columnist for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group and is senior attorney at the Education Law Center.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Resistance, Vouchers

Bill Phillis: Ohio Has Diverted $14.7 Billion to Charters and Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 9, 2020 //
6

Bill Phillis is a retired state official in Ohio. As founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy, he follows the money. And he finds that nearly $15 billion has been diverted from public schools to charters and vouchers.

Educational opportunities lost in public school districts due to the state’s confiscation of $14,673,524,789 for the charter and voucher whims

Traditional public school students have been denied massive educational opportunities by the state’s confiscation of $14.7 billion from school districts. Much of the $14.7 billion has been wasted; hence, all students are being shortchanged.

The state’s constitutional responsibility is to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools. Instead of fixing the system as directed by the Ohio Supreme Court, the state has frittered away $14.7 billion of school district funds.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Funding, Ohio, Vouchers

Fred Klonsky: Erik Prince’s Long History Spying on Americans

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2020 //
13

Fred Klonsky, retired teacher in Illinois, recounts Erik Prince’s long history of engaging in espionage against his fellow citizens.

Erik Prince recruits CIA and British spies to spy on us for Donald Trump.

He writes:

The story in the Times details how Prince recruited ex-U.S. and British spies to infiltrate organizations including, but not even closely limited to, teacher unions.

Erik Prince is Betsy DeVos’ brother. DeVos is Trump’s Secretary of Education. Devos also has close ties to many Michigan-based right-wing, anti-union organizations. Among them is the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy.

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.

Of course, this is nothing new.

For example, in 2011 all my work emails and personnel files were the subject of a FOIA filed by Ben Velderman of the Michigan-based Education Action group which had ties to the Mackinaw Center and Betsy DeVos.

This was just after having served as president of my NEA union local for ten years.

(The operations reported in the Times were) run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.

This is a step up from the days when these groups were using hacks like Ben Velderman to do their dirty work.

Now they are using professional spies.

Is this legal? Can’t Erik Prince be sued for violating the civil rights of others?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Civil Rights, Education Reform, Evil

Erik Prince, Brother of Betsy DeVos, Master of Domestic Espionage

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2020 //
29

Erik Prince, brother of Betsy DeVos, imagines himself a hero. He owned a mercenary army, which hired killers for foreign conflicts, now he has a network of spies who infiltrate peaceful domestic organizations, like teachers’ unions. If your phone is tapped, Erik or one of his spies might be listening in. Is this even legal? Does he care?

The New York Times reported on Prince’s latest vile caper:

Erik Prince, the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents.

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.
Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.

Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.

Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump’s aides and family. Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. But the effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Mr. Trump’s agenda.

Mr. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has at times served as an informal adviser to Trump administration officials. He worked with the former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn during the presidential transition. In 2017, he met with White House and Pentagon officials to pitch a plan to privatize the Afghan war using contractors in lieu of American troops. Jim Mattis, then the defense secretary, rejected the idea.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Evil
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