Billionaire charter backers clash. Broad vs. DeVos

Billionaires DeVos vs. Broad

Power philanthropist Eli Broad is urging senators to vote against confirming fellow billionaire and right-wing school "choice" advocate, Betsy DeVos.

The growing grassroots resistance to Trump's choice for Ed Secretary has split the charter/voucher movement and its wealthy backers. Pro-choice groups and think tanks have been thrown into a dither with some like BAIO's Howard Fuller endorsing DeVos while others, distance themselves for fear of being associated with Trump and the Alt-Right.

According to EdWeek:

In comparison to DeVos' philanthropic work, the Broads belong to a class of donors that prefer a much more managed approach to school choice, investing in charter school models that can scale up and measure their performance. They are strong supporters of charter management organizations—nonprofit networks of charter schools (think KIPP)—whose rapid growth has been propelled by the federal government and a handful of wealthy donors. 

Eli and his wife Edythe Broad are among some of the most influential backers of charter schools nationwide. Their foundation has given over $150 million to charter schools nationally. Of that, $79 million has gone to charters in Los Angeles. He's also used his money to influence local school board elections in favor of pro-choice, anti-union candidates.

He's also a big Democratic Party campaign donor who personally bankrolled many of Arne Duncan's ed initiatives and currently is underwriting Education Post, the pro-charter, anti-teacher union project run by Duncan's former assistant, Peter Cunningham.

But Broad has no real problems with Trump or the Republicans. In 2013 he was exposed for secretly funding a right-wing, anti-union group connected with the Koch Bros. He formerly helped run the failed giant AIG Corp., once the world's biggest insurer, into the ground.

DeVos and her husband Richard on the other hand, are free-market evangelical conservatives who favor vouchers and for-profit charters as opposed to, what she calls, "government schools". Her appointment has far less to do with her competencies or lack thereof as a department head, but rather as an ideologue and an important piece of the Trump/Bannon move to take over and demolish the institutions of government, including the Dept. of Education.

Broad's letter to McConnell and Schumer urging them to dump DeVos, came on the same day as two Republican senators announced that they plan to vote against DeVos' confirmation. Both Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska hail from rural states. Both raised concerns over DeVos' hyper-focus on school choice and her overall knowledge of public schools.

Only one more Republican needs to break with the party to sink DeVos' nomination, but GOP leaders say they are confident DeVos will ultimately be confirmed as the next secretary of education.

We'll soon see if Broad has enough juice to swing one-more Republican vote away from DeVos. I doubt it.

Charter billionaires invade WA to attack supreme court justice

Chief Justice Barbara Madsen

In September, WA's state supreme court ruled that charter schools are unconstitutional because they are governed by appointed — rather than elected — boards and therefore are not “common schools” eligible for state education funds. The chief justice, Barbara Madsen, wrote that “money that is dedicated to common schools is unconstitutionally diverted to charter schools.”

Now, charter supporters, including billionaires like Eli Broad, Paul Allen, Connie Ballmer, Ken Fisher and Alice and Jim Walton, are backing a campaign to oust Madsen.

Much of the money is flowing in from outside the state. The political arm of an organization called Stand for Children is backing Madsen's pro-charter opponent, with some $116,000 in July alone.

Most of the cash is coming from Connie Ballmer, a philanthropist married to former Microsoft chief executive officer Steve Ballmer, who gave $500,000. Others include Vulcan Inc. and Netflix founder and Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings.

Fisher funded a new political action committee called Judicial Integrity Washington. In recent weeks, the PAC has spent $100,000 on radio ads for Madsen's pro-charter opponent, Greg Zempel.

In 2011, Stand for Children’s Jonah Edelman, co-founder and chief executive officer, was caught on video, bragging about how he manipulated people to get reform legislation passed in Illinois.

Making the case against power philanthropy

This is the second time I've posted excerpts from this 2013 article which originally appeared in Dissent Magazine.

Joanne Barkan is on the case of the new breed of muscle philanthropists who hide their obscene wealth in tax-sheltered foundations and use it to exercise unaccountable displays of power over public education and all aspects of public life. She makes the case that the super-rich don’t need billions of dollars in tax relief annually to exert their will in the public sphere.

Writes Barkan:

One hundred years later, big philanthropy still aims to solve the world’s problems—with foundation trustees deciding what is a problem and how to fix it. They may act with good intentions, but they define “good.” The arrangement remains thoroughly plutocratic: it is the exercise of wealth-derived power in the public sphere with minimal democratic controls and civic obligations.

Power philanthropists exercise greater control than ever over public ed. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation have taken the lead, but, says Barkan, other mega-foundations have joined in to underwrite the self-proclaimed “education reform movement.” Some of them are the Laura and John Arnold, Anschutz, Annie E. Casey, Michael and Susan Dell, William and Flora Hewlett, and Joyce foundations.

The so-called reforms include: privately-operated charter schools; "Parent Trigger" laws; using students’ scores on standardized tests to evaluate teachers and award bonuses; abolishing teacher tenure; and ending seniority as a criterion for salary increases, layoffs, and transfers.

Barkan proposes a list of reforms that would rein in the excesses of the giant foundations reduce their leverage in civil society and public policymaking while increasing government revenue.

Read her entire article, Plutocrats at Work: How Big Philanthropy Undermines Democracy, in the latest issue of Dissent.

Camp Philos at the Vineyard. My invite must have gotten lost in the mail.

Walton/Broad took their whole crew to Martha's Vineyard over the weekend to bone-up on marketing tactics for charter/privatization brand. How nice for them. What about me? I like the Vineyard.

Topics included: Doubling Down on Success or Losing It All: What’s At Stake in 2016;

How We Win: Strategies and Tactics to Combat an Organized and Vocal Opposition; 

What’s Next in the Edu Political Funding World?; and How to Tell the Pro-Reform Story Successfully.

The Philos "reform" crowd, mostly Clinton Democrats I'm told, includes the likes of -- Rahm Emanuel, Howard Fuller, Peter Cunningham, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senator Mary Landrieu, Eva Moskowitz, Charles Barone (DFER), Ben Austin (Parent Revolution), and so on.

Last year, Edushyster tried to go, but they wouldn't let her in. She obviously didn't have the proper security clearance. 

We hear a bunch of Chi electeds went to Martha's Vineyard this past wknd with @DFER_News. Check out their camp.... https://t.co/U3BmJxZcnO

— Raise Your Hand (@ILRaiseYourHand) October 20, 2015

Charter billionaires buy L.A. school board election

Charter billionaires Walton, Hastings, Bloomberg & Broad buy school board election in L.A. 

"We've sunk to a level where there is no viable discourse and no moral conscience when it comes to public education and control of the school board." -- LAUSD board member Steve Zimmer

It's happened again. A PAC of billionaire charter patrons spent millions and virtually bought a school board election. This time in L.A. According to the L.A. Times,

Contributors to PACs that took part in the campaigns on behalf of charter supporters included Netflix founder Reed Hastings, $1.5million (to the charter group only); former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, $550,000; Walmart heir Jim Walton, $375,000; and philanthropist Eli Broad, $205,000.

The victory of charter school co-founder Ref Rodriguez over progressive Bennett Kayser, gave charter privateers the seat they needed to open up the district to what they hope will be unfettered charter expansion. Rodriquez also had the backing of anti-union groups like Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst. His endorsement list includes the operators of charters that L.A. Unified tried to close because of low test scores and other problems. The charters appealed to other agencies and were able to remain open. No district in the nation has more charters, or more students enrolled in them, than L.A.

But despite spending millions on L.A. board campaign, they fell short of a clean sweep. In the west San Fernando Valley, incumbent Tamar Galatzan, who had been a close ally of disgraced former Supt. John Deasy and had the support of charter advocates and other well-funded groups, lost to challenger Scott Schmerelson, an ally of the teachers union.

Look who's running the Broad Foundation

Bruce Reed

One of the characteristics of the Ownership Society is the fluid movement of key personnel back and forth between government and corporations. Carry this over into the world of ed reform and what's been called the education/industrial complex and you find similar movement between government, and power philanthropy.

The latest example has Bruce Reed, assistant to President Barack Obama and chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, being named president of the Broad Foundation, one of the big 3 in power philanthropy, along with Gates and Walton. According to a Broad Foundation release:

As the foundation's first president, Reed, 53, will oversee the activities and investments of The Broad Foundation's work to improve America's public schools. Founder Eli Broad will become chairman of the foundation.

Reed also has strong ties to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and co-authored with then-U.S. Rep. Emanuel, "The Plan: Big Ideas for Change in America."

Since 1999, The Broad Foundation has "invested" more than $580 million in corporate-style school reform, focusing on the spread of privately-run charter schools and the training and insertion of many big urban district school superintendents.

Eli Broad is a powerful, politically-connected Los Angeles-based billionaire who was recently exposed for secretly funding a right-wing, anti-union group connected with the Koch Bros. He formerly helped run the failed giant AIG Corp., once the world's biggest insurer, into the ground.

Investigators reveal Eli Broad's under-the-table support for right-wing groups

New York Times

Well-known corporate chiefs, including power philanthropist Eli Broad, funded illegal "dark money" contributions to groups in the Koch brothers' political network that were involved in Thursday's record campaign finance settlement in California, according to settlement documents. 

A report in the L.A. Times shows that Broad posed as a liberal supporter of Gov. Brown's tax initiative to support public education by making the wealthy pay their fair share. All the while, Broad was secretly pouring more than a million dollars into the right-wing, anti-union fund set up to oppose that same initiative. 

Duplicitous Broad

A Huffington report shows that Charles Schwab, founder of Charles Schwab Corp., donated $6.4 million through Americans for Job Security. Broad, who publicly backed Brown's tax increase proposition, made a $500,000 contribution, according to the documents. Las Vegas Sands Corp. CEO Sheldon Adelson and his wife gave a combined $500,000. Crossroads GPS, the dark money nonprofit founded by Karl Rove, chipped in $2 million.

According to the N.Y. Times, AJS is nothing more than a conservative Republican Party front, run by former Bush political director, David Carney, with ties to Rove, Bachmann, and  Boehner.

Diane Ravitch blogs that she spoke in Sacramento two years ago, she spent two hours with Governor Brown and he told her he had to be diplomatic and nice to Michelle Rhee to keep Eli Broad’s support for his tax increase. "He was fooled" says Ravitch.

Yuck, Tuck

Marshall Tucker Band

When I first got this news from a friend in L.A.,  I thought she was talking about Marshall Tucker, the S. Carolina piano tuner after whom one of my favorite '70s bands ("Heard it in a love song") was named.  But alas, it was about Marshall Tuck, the corporate f*%k, who just announced he's running for State Supt. of Education in California.

Tuck is the head of the Partnership for LA Schools and former Green Dot Charter exec. He's also big in the so-called Parent Revolution, the group behind the so-called "Parent Trigger", one of the great hoaxes ever played on public school parents and their children.

Tuck will be running against the incumbent Tom Torlakson, who I'm sure will be baited for being a "union lover" (a Class 1 felony in some parts of the state). Tuck will most likely have a huge pot of money in his war chest coming from the likes billionaire boys clubbers like Broad, DFER and other corporate reformers.

According to the L.A. Times:

Under Torlakson and Gov. Jerry Brown — who also enjoyed teachers union support — the state has bucked national trends in education policy. Top state officials, for example, have resisted efforts to make students' standardized test scores a major component of a teacher's performance evaluation. 

Running against Tuck, I wish him luck.

L.A. performing arts school principal -- "I've had it!"

"No one has found a way to fund any of the programs that are ongoing," Isaacs said in an interview. "We have a $65-million theater and no money to run it.

Norman Isaacs, the Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts' fifth principal in four years, has resigned over the district's lack of arts funding. The school fails Deasy's and Broad's funding test because it's a mainly-neighborhood school, not a charter.

Isaacs tells the L.A. Times:

 "We have a $65-million theater and no money to run it. It got to the point where I could not get the support from the district that was so very important, and I needed to call attention to that." 

When the school board decided that 70% of enrollment must come from the low-income neighborhoods adjacent to the school, wealthy funders, led by billionaire power-philanthropist Eli Broad, withdrew their support. Broad wanted the campus entirely removed from district control.

The Times reports:

...building interest in the school is difficult because, during tight budget years, the district reduced elementary and middle school arts programs that could feed students to the high school. Nearby Virgil Middle School, for example, had a highly regarded orchestral music program and later added a dance program. But budget cuts terminated both efforts, officials said.

In L.A. a shift at the top of school takeover group

Broad-trained Sullivan takes over as head of L.A. "turnaround" group

Outgoing Mayor Villaraigosa pulled a fast one on newly-elected mayor Eric Garcetti. He brought in a new manager, trained by the Broad Foundation, to run the corporate reform/school privatization group,  Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, less than a month before Garcetti was to be sworn in as mayor.

Joan Sullivan, currently Villaraigosa's deputy mayor for education will replace the embattled Marshall Tuck, as head of the group. Sullivan comes out of the Broad Institute and was at one time, the head of a New York charter school.
PLAS is a big-money player in the school turnaround business, taking over struggling neighborhood schools and turning them over to private management companies.

Corporate reformers and union haters target Zimmer in L.A. board race

 

I have done several posts on various local school board elections which recently have become targets for corporate reform types bent on district takeovers. Their aim is to gain control of hundreds of school district budgets and shift money away from neighborhood public schools and into the pockets of private charter school operators.

In October, I referred to a piece  in The Nation which asked, "Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?" and mentioned the heroic but unsuccessful campaign of Karan Harper Royal  for the 3rd District seat on the Orleans Parish School Board.down in New Orleans. She faced an uphill battle because the pro-charter, anti-union, corporate reform types like Joel Klein and Netflix billionaire Reed Hastings poured big money behind the campaign of puppet candidates like Sarah Usdin.

Now the privatizers and corporate reformers are setting their sights on Los Angeles where they hope to unseat progressive, pro-teacher and union-friendly board member, Steve Zimmer. According to the L.A. Times, an "outside group" has raised for than $1.5 million to fund past campaigns. Power philanthropist Eli Broad leads the way with a contribution of $250,000 to Coalition for School Reform, which includes L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Also in for $250,000 is billionaire A. Jerrold Perenchio, who headed the Univision network for years. Another $100,000 donor is Lynda Resnick, the entrepreneur behind POM Wonderful juice and other entities. Investor Marc Nathanson and his wife, Jane, have together given $100,000.  And the list goes on and on.

The clearest battle lines are drawn in District 4, which stretches from the Westside to portions of the west San Fernando Valley. There, one-term incumbent and former teacher Steve Zimmer faces parent and lawyer Kate Anderson. Zimmer is supported by the teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, as well as other influential unions. 

 What other reason to you need to support and contribute to Zimmer's campaign than to look at who's opposing him?

Billionaires jump into Louisiana school board race. Why?

An  article in the Oct. 17 Nation by  Matthew Cunningham-Cook, asks the question, "Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?"

As Naomi Klein detailed in The Shock Doctrine, post-Katrina New Orleans has been Ground Zero for efforts to privatize schools and weaken teacher unions—hallmarks of education reform. After the hurricane, the vast majority of New Orleans public schools were taken over by the states’ Recovery School District—the district that was subsequently headed by John White. Nearly all of the city’s 7,500 public school employees were fired, although a few were later rehired. The post-Katrina shock also saw the advent of a limited voucher program and a massive expansion of charter schools, many of them for-profit. Education Secretary Arne Duncan actually said that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” and Michael Bloomberg repeated this position almost verbatim in a profile in Fast Company in 2011. And yet, the Recovery School District received a “D” on the state’s evaluation system in 2011, making it the second-lowest-performing district in the state.

The article takes note of the estimated 2,000 teachers who rallied against Gov. Jindal's "reform"  bill on March 14, but were not let into the committee room. It also mentions Karran Harper Royal, a leading activist who is a mother of a child with disabilities and who's running as a progressive candidate for the board. I met Karran last August at the SOS Convention and was impressed by her obvious leadership qualities. She is active in Parents Across America and deserves our support for her campaign.

Classic Eli Broad: "Never let a crisis go to waste"

Katrina aftermath

"Never let a serious crisis go to waste." -- White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Nov. 2008.

In a recent Edweek piece by a similar title, billionaire power-philanthropist Eli Broad resurrects this quote made infamous by Chicago's now autocratic mayor. It's become an operational phrase for "getting things done" by skirting the public will and abandoning democratic decision-making. For Broad and other disaster capitalists, as Naomi Klein calls them, it's all about taking advantage of real disasters, like Hurricane Katrina. Or if a crisis doesn't exist -- manufacture it.

The manufactured "crisis" to which Broad refers is the fact that U.S. students, taken as a whole, don't test as high on the NAEP as students from several other countries. Writes Broad:

American students today rank 31st in the world in mathematics and 23rd in science. If the academic rankings of our most precious resource—our young people—reflected the rankings of our Olympic athletes, it would be a source of major national embarrassment.

From this statement alone, you can see that being rich and knowing anything about testing and international  assessment rankings don't necessarily go hand in hand. For one thing, national averages on standardized test scores are just that -- averages. If you would take the scores from our wealthiest schools, they would rank right up there with the world's best. Likewise, our poorest, resource-starved urban and rural schools would rank among those of the world's least developed nations.

Secondly, Olympic athletes aren't an average representation of our generally overweight and slow-moving populus. God help us in the Olympic games if they were. It is a funny thought, though. I'd like to see a Billionaires' Race to the Top event in the London Olympics, where Broad and Bill Gates would race up a hill against the world's richest man, Carlos Slim of Mexico (or even against the most interesting man in the world --you know, the guy in the beer commercials). But I digress.

"Preservation of human dignity"

Broad may not know this, but the Olympic games, like public education, weren't originally intended as an arena for competition between nations, or for one country to embarrass another, but rather as a showcase for individual athletes from around the world. Eli Broad would do well to study the Olympic Charter which talks about Olympism as "a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education." The stated goal of the Olympics is "to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."

Wow! Wouldn't that make for a great vision statement for public education?

By comparing public education with the Olympics against the backdrop of "national embarrassment," Broad debases both. Rahm's old crisis quote brings to mind a similar statement from free-market guru Milton Friedman. In the aftermath of Katrina, Friedman called the deadly storm, "not a disaster but an opportunity" to fire every public school teacher in New Orleans and to replace public schools with private school vouchers.

Broad would concur with his ideological mentor Friedman. Never let a good hurricane or global economic disaster go by without seizing the opportunity to crush unions, privatize public space and make a few bucks for yourself along the way.

Gates uses funding to force privately-run charters on school districts

Last spring, as the Texas Legislature debated massive cuts to public schools—one of many desperate measures to close a $27 billion biennial budget deficit—10,000 protesters massed in Austin for a “Save Our Schools” rally. In the end, the damage to the state’s already-underfunded schools added up to $5.4 billion, forcing districts to lay off tens of thousands of teachers and staffers. -- American Prospect

The Gates Foundation moved on Austin and and other districts, forcing them to sign a pledge to promote privately-run charter schools in exchange for funding. Gates calls it their District-Charter Collaboration Compact under which the foundation awards the districts—14 so far—$100,000. These districts also supposedly get a shot at another $40 million worth of grants.

Last fall, following the Austin school board signed such a pledge with local charters. The agreement, Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said, would make Austin eligible for grants “from people and places that otherwise would not have given us the time of day.” A month later, the city again became a venue for protests—smaller, but equally vociferous—arguing against a new partnership.

According to Abby Rapoport, writing in the American Prospect:

It’s a story being repeated across the country. With most states cutting school funding, Gates and other private foundations are wielding outsize influence over public education, using their much-sought-after millions to fund and shape a top-down reform agenda. Like the other major (but smaller) players, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation, Gates uses its funds to encourage public schools to adopt a more corporate approach.

 Of course there's little difference the power foundations and federal funding, in this regard. Arne Duncan has also used his control of federal dollars to make competitive grants to states and school districts through Race To The Top, in exchange for a promise to close neighborhood schools and turn them over to private operators.

Power philanthropy: 'Influence peddling writ large'

Political reporter Nicholas Confessore has an important piece in today's Times, "Policy Making Billionaires" which reveals the disproportional power over public policy and institutions held by and handful of the world's richest men.

“It’s sort of influence-peddling writ large,” said Richard L. Brodsky, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning research organization Demos and a former New York State assemblyman. “The notion that the society is better served by the super-rich exercising their charitable instincts is in the end anti-democratic.”

Power Philanthropy's biggest givers & getters

A new report on foundation activity, Critical Contributions: Philanthropic Investment in Teachers and Teaching (www.criticalcontributions.org), released today by the University of Georgia and Kronley & Associates, found that foundations directed $684 million to teachers and teaching between 2000 and 2008.

The analysis, the first comprehensive examination of philanthropy activity in this area, also revealed that much of the funding came from a relatively small number of foundations.

The top 10 foundations accounted for 50 percent of all grants and include:
1.Carnegie Corporation of New York $81,969,575
2.Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation $78,167,363
3.Annenberg Foundation $36,725,000
4.Michael and Susan Dell Foundation $25,401,978
5.Broad Foundation $24,554,869
6.Joyce Foundation $23,773,256
7.Lilly Endowment, Inc. $21,224,576
8.Milken Family Foundation $20,700,625
9.Ford Foundation $17,581,716
10.Stuart Foundation $14,459,666


In addition, the study found that more than 60 percent of all foundation grants between 2000 and 2008 went to 10 organizations:

1.Teach for America $213,444,431
2.Academy for Educational Development $59,063,000
3.Northwest Educational Service District 189 $45,012,830
4.Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation $21,561,106
5.The New Teacher Project $17,955,680
6.University of California at Santa Cruz, New Teacher Center $16,642,730
7.Teacher Advancement Program $15,480,625
8.National Board for Professional Teaching Standards $12,401,350
9.Philadelphia Foundation $10,000,000
10.Teachers Network $9,441,402

Other highlights of the report include:

• Driven by investments in Teach for America, which was awarded $213 million, recruitment was the largest grantmaking category, capturing 38 percent of funding. This was followed by professional development (22 percent) and teacher preparation (14 percent). All other categories combined received less than 10 percent of grant funding.|

• Today, there is a convergence between the philanthropic sector and federal policymakers. Policies and practices developed, tested and advocated for by foundations have been included in new federal initiatives, including “Race to the Top.” Funders are now seeking strategies to leverage the opportunities provided by the new federal programs while considering whether and how these programs might be sustained when federal funding ends.

The report was developed collaboratively by a team of researchers from Kronley & Associates and the University of Georgia College of Education with support from the Ford Foundation. Arthur M. Horne, dean of the UGA College of Education, and Robert A. Kronley, president of Kronley & Associates, are co-principal investigators. Claire Suggs is the principal author, with significant input from Kathleen deMarrais. Additional members of the team included Karen Watkins and Kate Swett. The report can be downloaded at www.criticalcontributions.org.

See Valerie Strauss' piece in the Washington Post: "Where private foundations award education cash."

Does a bear crap in the woods?

Headline in today's Monitor: "Is the Broad Superintendents Academy trying to corporatize schools?"

“What venture philanthropy is doing seems to me to be wielding influence not to help public institutions, but to destroy public institutions, or take control of them,” Mr. Horn said. “This is a dangerous place, where corporations and government get mixed up.”