Billionaire wing-nut throwing his money around Missouri 'school reform'

Sinquefield

It's hard to imagine that a wackadoo wing-nut like Rex Sinquefield could be the director of a St. Louis children's social service agency or a trustee at DePaul University (where I teach). But nevertheless, there he is -- the billionaire teacher hater, who once called public education, "an invention of the Ku Klux Klan" to hurt African American children -- still throwing his money around so-called school reform.

This time he's personally funding a campaign for an amendment to the state constitution in Missouri that would break teacher tenure and put the state's teachers on a pay-for-test-scores regimen.

The “Teachgreat.org” initiative would limit teacher contracts to no more than three years. It also requires “teachers to be dismissed, retained, demoted, promoted, and paid primarily using quantifiable student performance data as part of the evaluation system,” according to the summary on the group’s website.

Diane Ravitch blogs:

Sinquefield founded a fund that now manages over $300 billion. He is also founder and president of the Show-Me Institute, a libertarian policy belief-tank.

We have seen in state after state that conservative ideologues can buy politicians. But we will see whether they can also buy enough of the public, through advertising and public relations, to start the purge that Sinquefield believes is necessary.