Amplify in the dumper. Another Joel Klein/Chris Cerf loser.

 

Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein

"A lot of poor quality work passed off as final products, most everything is worked out in production leading to many hot fixes and more long hours. Little respect for teachers or end-users in many within the company.... No, I would not recommend this company to a friend." -- A 2013 Review from a former Wireless Generation employee

What happened to Amplify? It's a bust. School districts who bought in are screwed. Thanks Joel Klein and Chris Cerf.

Rupert Murcoch's News Corp spent nearly $1 billion on its digital education business, In 2010, they paid $360 million for a 90% stake in Wireless Generation, a company based in Brooklyn that specializes in education software, data systems and assessment tools which was supposed to help teachers analyze student performance and customize lessons.

Once the Murdoch criminal scandal in Europe died down, former N.Y. schools Chancellor Joel Klein led the company’s aggressive push into the U.S. education market and New Jersey schools chief Chris Cerf left his job to become chief executive of Murdoch's Amplify Insight ed tech firm.

Murdoch, Klein and Cerf became the darlings of U.S. corporate school reformers and international criminal Murdoch, whose company is an ALEC supporter, even keynoted Jeb Bush's 2011 Education Summit.

Hundreds of cash-strapped public school districts (including Chicago) were encouraged to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and handed Murdoch's people control of all student records and family information. Amplify, became a top industry seller.

But News Corp. announced today that it would cease actively marketing Amplify’s Access products to new customers. It claims it will continue to provide service and support to its existing customers. But the Company is reviewing strategic alternatives with respect to Amplify’s remaining digital education businesses.

According to The Street:

Known as Amplify, the digital-education unit within Murdoch's News Corp (NWSA - Get Report)  has been hampered by the slow adoption of its mobile device known as the Tablet computer. 

The tablet's future was said to be riding on Amplify's ability to sell the device into districts for the 2015-2016 school year. That effort appears to have fallen short of expectations made five years ago after News Corp, with great fanfare, hired former New York City education commissioner Joel Klein and then paid $360 million for a 90% stake in Amplify's predecessor, Wireless Generation. 

The $1 billion Amplify tablet.

In May, Amplify Chief of Staff Justin Hamilton hinted that such plans might be in the offing when he said that "we will always be responsive to the marketplace."

You might remember Hamilton as Arne Duncan's former press secretary in charge of selling Duncan's Race To The Top. It seems he didn't do any better hustling Amplify.


Says Klein to school districts that bought in -- "Tough luck, suckers."

Why Cerf jumped ship in N.J.

Cerf bails on Christie

If Jersey Jazzman tells me that the Christie's Bridgegate scandal has nothing to do with the timing of Chris Cerf's jumping ship and heading for Murdoch (see comments) I believe him. There's no one who knows N.J. ed politics better than JJ.

I never meant to imply that the bridge scandal and Christie's zero chances of running for president in 2016 were the main reasons, anyway. We all know by now what drives guys like Cerf. Like his former boss, Joel Klein, who left his post as Bloomberg's school chief in N.Y. for Murdoch's greener pastures, only to return with Amplify contracts in hand, Cerf has dollar signs in his eyes.

UNION RESPONDS

NJEA Pres.Wendell Steinhauer expressed concerns that Cerf’s new position will allow him to profit from the “misguided mandates” he has brought to New Jersey schools, including the new teacher evaluation system linked to upcoming PARCC standardized tests.

“While it is clearly a very good career move for Commissioner Cerf, he leaves New Jersey at a time when schools, educators and students are struggling with these new mandates. As a result of his rush to impose costly and unproven high-stakes testing in New Jersey, districts are spending money they don’t have to implement testing they do not need,” Steinhauer said in a statement released today. “Educators are being subjected to a poorly understood and badly implemented evaluation system that relies far too heavily on the kind of costly assessment and student data systems that Mr. Cerf’s new employer helps districts implement, for a cost.”

I don't know, but I think "concern" may be to soft a word here. It's this revolving door between the ed bureaucracy and ed corporate complex that makes the Ownership Society's wheels go round.

HILARIOUS CHRISTIE

Funniest moment (as least for me) came yesterday during Christie's visit to Chicago on a fundraising trip for the RGA, when he blamed his Bridgegate scandal on the "lack of civility" in Washington. Does he think we've forgotten? In case you have, here's a reminder:

 I can use a lot of words for Washington D.C. ‘civilized’ would not be one of them.” -- Chris Christie 

Cerf jumps Christie's ship in N.J. Goes to work for Murdoch

Cerf hooks up with Murdoch

Darling of scandalized Gov. Chris Christie and the state's corporate school "reformers," Chris Cerf is out as New Jersey schools chief. Cerf said Monday he will leave his $141,500-a-year job on Feb. 28 to become chief executive of  international criminal Rupert Murdoch's Amplify Insight ed tech firm. He's following his old boss, Joel Klein, who was New York City schools chancellor, over to Murdoch. Cerf was Klein’s deputy from 2006 to 2009.

It was 59-year-old Democrat Cerf who brokered a landmark tenure law with AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten, a contract which bases teacher evaluation largely on student test scores, and who has approved 37 N.J. charter schools. He was also a key player in the deal to bring $100 million in Mark Zuckerberg money into the corporate reformers' pockets.

Cerf said the timing of his decision had nothing to do with the gov's fall from grace and praised Christie for being “truly an authentic believer in school reform.”

“None,” he said of the timing in relation to the burgeoning scandals. “The answer is none, absolutely none.”

Translation: Of course it has everything to do with it.

Murdoch's Wireless Generation, education's NSA?

I'm half anticipating that a techie or two over at New Corp's ed division will jump ship and flee to Hong Kong after whistle-blowing Murdoch hacking of U.S. students' families. Maybe a Wireless Generation competitor like McGraw-Hill or Pearson, will offer them asylum on one of their privately-owned islands.

Former N.Y. schools chancellor, Joel Klein became Murdoch's go-to guy on damage-control after the company’s News of the World tabloid in Britain had hacked into the phone of a murdered 13-year-old, Milly Dowler. London hearings soon revealed that Murdoch's criminal enterprise was bribing officials and  hacking phones and internet (including police) nationwide.

In 2010, News Corporation paid $360 million for a 90% stake in Wireless Generation, a company based in Brooklyn that specializes in education software, data systems and assessment tools to help teachers analyze student performance and customize lessons.Once the British scandal died down (what short memories the "wireless generation" has), Klein led his company’s aggressive push into the U.S. education market.

Murdoch soon became the darling of U.S. corporate school reformers and keynoted Jeb Bush's 2011 Education Summit. Hundreds of cash-strapped public school districts (including Chicago) were encouraged to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and have handed Murdoch's people control of all student records and family information. Murdoch/Klein's on-line teaching program, Amplify, is also a top industry seller.

Review from a former Wireless Generation employee-- "A lot of poor quality work passed off as final products, most everything is worked out in production leading to many hot fixes and more long hours. Little respect for teachers or end-users in many within the company.... No, I would not recommend this company to a friend."

The school data-mining business is very competitive and includes Gate-funded operation, inBloom. Aside from accessing student records, it is also being used to spy on teachers and violate their privacy in many ways, ultimately replacing them altogether in the classroom.

I'm not opposed to online teaching/learning or record-keeping and think the new technology has much to offer, especially in the area of integrated and personalized learning, pacing and remediation. But there's no evidence that Murdoch's products are a successful application of if Klein is just a good (well-connected) huckster.

I do know that Murdoch and Klein are the last guys, outside of Booz, Allen, Hamilton and the NSA, that should have their hands on student records and school information.

Just waiting for that whistle to blow.

Atlanta's testing scandal

I highly recommend these two excellent articles on Atlanta's testing scandal: Atlanta test cheating: Tip of the iceberg? by Valerie Strauss in the Washington Post and Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta Is Indicted in Testing Scandal by Michael Winerip in the New York Times. Both emphasize the connection between the widespread testing scandals and current policies and practices associated with corporate-style school reform,  No Child Left Behind and Race To The Top.

Writes Strauss:

In New York City, for example, Joel Klein became chancellor of the largest public school system in the country in 2002 and proceeded to institute a no-excuses mentality, attacking teachers unions, closing public schools and pushing the expansion of charter school. He touted a rise in standardized test scores, until, that is, it became clear that the test score improvements were phony. In 2010, state officials revealed that scores had been inflated, and thousands of parents who thought their children were performing on grade level learned that they weren’t. Klein quickly left his job and went to work for Rupert Murdoch.

Writes Winerip:

What made Dr. Hall just about untouchable was her strong ties to local business leaders. Atlanta prides itself in being a progressive Southern city when it comes to education, entrepreneurship and race — and Dr. Hall’s rising test scores were good news on all those fronts. She is an African-American woman who had turned around a mainly poor African-American school district, which would make Atlanta an even more desirable destination for businesses.

From the D.O.E. to Murdoch

Another high-ranking education official has figured out where his bread is buttered. Arne Duncan's press secretary, Justin Hamilton has followed former N.Y. Chancellor Joel Klein over to the evil media empire of Rupert Murdoch.

Hamilton becomes senior vice president for corporate communications. Klein, the former chancellor of New York City public schools, is executive vice president at Murdoch’s News Corp. and director of Amplify.

One of the hallmarks of the Military-Industrial complex was the revolving door between the Defense Dept. and corporate contractors. So maybe we should call this the Corporate-Education Complex.

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?

$700 billion K-12 ed market is "ripe for disruption" says Klein

Klein

PW reports:

Asserting that the K-12 education market is “ripe for disruption," Joel Klein, former New York City schools chancellor, now executive v-p at News Corp. and director of Amplify, its education unit, offered a presentation of Amplify’s business model and plans to release hardware and software solutions optimized for a new generation of digitally savvy students and teachers. Klein outlined plans to release an open source tablet device, and specialized teaching software tied to it and to Common Core standards and data analytics, all in an effort to transform the basic model of American education. 

Klein says, "the educational market was worth about $700 billion total, and outlined a $17 billion K-12 market targeted by Amplify."

Look who's attacking Chicago's striking teachers

No, this strike feels more about attitude—"the mayor doesn't respect us"—than substance.

It's none other than Rupert Murdoch's bag man. In an op-ed in Sunday's Wall Street Journal, News Corp. executive V.P Joel Klein attacked the ongoing teachers' strike in Chicago without disclosing his role in administering $4.7 million in educational testing contracts at the heart of the dispute.

Media Matters reports that Klein, the former schools chancellor for New York City, was hired by Rupert Murdoch to run News Corp.'s education division in July of 2010 and is now the CEO of Amplify. While the Journal -- which is also owned by News Corp. -- identified Klein as Amplify's CEO, neither the paper nor Klein himself disclosed that the company has millions of dollars in contracts for the very testing that is a central issue in the strike.

In May, Chicago Public Schools entered into an agreement with Wireless Generation to provide "math assessment services" and "literacy assessment services" to the school district. The math agreement is for "a total cost not to exceed $1,700,000" while the literacy assessment cites a cost "not to exceed $3,000,000."

Klein back to pimping Murdoch's Amplify program

Murdoch & Klein

"What we're trying to do is really become a hub for serious thinking and trying to make sure that technology is a positive force," Klein said in an interview. "Because I've long said that just giving a kid a computer isn't going to change the game."

Now that Rupert Murdoch has hired the best criminal defense lawyer money can buy, former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein is freed up to do what he does best -- hustling Murdoch's products back to the public school system.

While the criminal investigation into the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal continues, Klein is back in New York to launch Amplify, News Corp.'s digital learning program. Amplify and AT&T will fund a pilot project that will put tablet computers in students' hands in order to "track student progress."

Klein said he has been working full-time at Murdoch's Amplify since mid-June after News Corp. hired general counsel Gerson Zweifach to focus on continuing fallout from the hacking scandal, which broke about six months after Klein started working at Amplify.

Given the ongoing investigation, we're not exactly sure what tracking their progress means. NYC would do well to track Murdoch's progress with a digital ankle bracelet.

Media Matters nails WSJ and ALEC on "Parent Trigger"

According to Media Matters:

The Wall Street Journal this morning failed to report ties between the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and controversial "parent-trigger" legislation that would allow parents to take over and convert public schools to charter schools. They also failed to report that the Journal's parent company, News Corp, is a member of ALEC. The Journal's treatment of the legislation also cited no criticism of the proposal, which has been described as an effort "to manipulate parents into letting [the charter school lobby] privatize more public schools."

WSJ's parent company, New Corp. is owned by international publishing criminal Rupert Murdoch whose chief henchman is Joel Klein. Klein, the former New York City schools chancellor, is recognized as one of the godfathers of corporate school reform and school privatization.

The MM piece quotes Leonie Haimson, Executive Director of Class Size Matters, who calls the parent trigger "an underhanded trick by the charter lobby to manipulate parents into letting them privatize more public schools."

Murdoch's News Corp. is an ALEC Member

Murdoch (l) and Joel Klein.

No big surprise here. Adam Peshek, who staffs ALEC's Education Task Force, told Education Week that News Corp. has been a member of both ALEC's Education Task Force and Communications and Technology Task Force since January 2012.

This according to PR Watch:

When News Corp. acquired Wireless Generation, a for-profit online education, software, and testing corporation, for $360 million in cash in 2010, Rupert Murdoch called the for-profit K-12 education industry "a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed." A few weeks before the closing of the deal, News Corp. hired Joel Klein, then the chancellor of New York City schools, to run its education division.

Murdoch also donated to ex–DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s new group, StudentsFirst, which according to The Nation "has pledged to spend more than $1 billion to bring for-profit schools, including virtual education, to the entire country by electing reform-friendly candidates and hiring top-notch state lobbyists." At an earlier Media Institute awards dinner in Washington shortly before he bought a financial stake in privatizing education through purchasing Wireless Generation, Murdoch called Rhee a "bona fide reformer."

How Klein tapped his "heavy breather" billionaire pals for charter $$$

Klein & Murdoch

New York Mayor Bloomberg was forced, following a Freedom of Information request, to release hundreds of email messages which showed the corrupt machinations behind the push for charter schools. In particular, the emails revealed the role played by former chancellor, Joel Klein, who is now a general in Rupert Murdoch's international criminal organization.

They show a desperate Bloomberg and Klein in a “fight of our life," putting pressure on funders to deliver millions of dollars in an effort to beat back teacher and community resistance.

The e-mails show that in February 2010, Mr. Klein and several charter school advocates participated in a phone call with the board members of the Robin Hood Foundation, a nonprofit group that fights poverty. The first attempt by charter advocates to get the State Legislature raise the charter cap had failed miserably, and the main advocacy group pushing for the higher cap, Education Reform Now, needed money for a second attempt, which was ultimately successful. -- New York Times

 One message showed Klein's own disrespect for the very funders he was hitting up.

“Who’s the heavy breather on the call?” wrote a participant, whose name was redacted. “Normally, I’d ask them to mute their phone but I don’t want to alienate any donors.”

“Some overweight billionaire,” Mr. Klein replied.

More on Canada's "war" on unions

Geoffrey Canada's "war " on teachers union with Rhee, Klein, Home Depot, hedge-funders, and Robin Hood Fund, gets a WSJ (Murdoch) pat on the head.

"We are very worried that the teachers unions are really pushing that this time period, the Bloomberg time period, be thought of as over, and now we…get back to business as usual," said Mr. Canada, head of the Harlem Children's Zone, which won fame in the 2010 documentary "Waiting for 'Superman.'"

All the usual suspects are bellying up to the anti-union feeding trough, including DFER's Joe Williams.

"They're going to be running this like a full-time political campaign that doesn't end," said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, which works toward similar goals.

Geoffrey Canada declares war on teacher unions

Rhee & Canada lead the war on teacher unions.

“Folks are genuinely looking for opportunities to make peace and not war,” Mr. Canada said. “And I think that’s terrific. But someone has to make war.” -- Geoffrey Canada        

Canada's war declaration comes at the end of a Times story announcing the formation of a well-financed and politically connected alliance aimed at nothing less than smashing teacher unions. The new Officers in the anti-teacher army include (as you might expect) Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee. Klein left his post as NYC schools chancellor to pimp for international criminal and tabloid publishing giant Rupert Murdoch. Rhee is building her own billion-dollar lobbying company, Children First, and advising Tea Party Gov. Rick Scott on his own union-busting initiatives. The new group, called StudentsFirstNY, is an arm of Rhee's lobbying group, Children First. Others include, Micah Lasher, who is leaving his job next week as the director of state legislative affairs for Mayor Bloomberg, Eva Moskowitz, the former councilwoman who now runs a chain of  charter schools, former Mayor Koch; and Canada.

The group's strategy is to pour money in pour money into the upcoming political campaigns of anti-union politicians and particularly the next N.Y. mayoral election. It follows the lead of Gates Foundation-backed Stand For Children who used a similar campaign strategy to elect Illinois pols favorable to the passage of the anti-union Senate Bill 7. Also recall that the same tactic was used in D.C. when corporate reformers and muscle foundations backed Fenty (and Rhee) in a losing mayoral campaign which resulted in Rhee getting the boot. 

******

The war on unions and progressive organizations also uses dirty tricks right out of the Nixon Watergate playbook. This disciple of the late Andrew Breitbart, and a staffer for Republican Congressman Thad McCotter of Michigan, thought he was being clever when he tried unsuccessfully to fake it as a union organizer.

For several years, young conservatives have made a cottage industry of going undercover and trying to goad people working at perceived liberal institutions — like Acorn, NPR and Planned Parenthood — into saying something stupid. Trained by well-financed foundations, these dirty tricksters pose as pimps, sex traffickers and Muslim activists and record conversations surreptitiously. Then they release videos that have often been heavily edited.

But all it took was for him to open his mouth for listeners to see he was just another right-wing douchebag. 

New manifesto for corporate school reformers

Klein and Rice offer their manifesto the Council on Foreign Relations

Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice are the authors of the latest in a long string of Ownership Society Manifestos dating back to A Nation At Risk. They presented their report,  U.S. Education Reform and National Security to, of all people, the Council on Foreign Relations. It portrays public schools as a threat to our national security and sonds the national security alarm as a scare tactic to push their school privatization agenda.

The report supposedly  represents the findings of a task force of "prominent education experts, national security authorities, and corporate leaders" who claim:

Educational failure puts the United States' future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk. The country will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long.

It calls for an expansion of school vouchers and privately-run charter schools, along with Common Core standards as supposed cures for the U.S.' weakened global economic and security position.

Remember if was the Nation At Risk report back in 1983, which first raised the alarming connection between public education's supposed failures and imminent threats to national security.

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss points out that severaql task force members, including Linda Darling-Hammond and the AFT's Randi Weingarten, signed on to the report (wrongly, in my opinion)  only for the purpose of offering their dissenting opinions as an attachment.

Thanks to Strauss for posting this piece of dissent by Carole Artigiani, joined by Darling-Hammond, Stephen M. Walt, and Weingarten.

“...National security requires a healthy economy, energy independence, investments in research and development, strong defense, a thriving civil society, a respected and involved diplomatic corps, and, most of all, a healthy and high-functioning political system. (The current political environment is a clear demonstration of what happens when we have a public—and public officials—who are uninformed and/or ill-informed about our nation’s history, our political system, and the values upon which it was built.)
“Certainly schools must play a critical role in assuring that these needs of national security can be met. Yet, while some of the data are disturbing, nothing in this report convinces me that that our public schools “constitute a very grave national security threat facing this country.”

“Indeed, claims of alarm can only set the stage for dramatic actions unsupported by evidence: in this case, market-based approaches to school reform, that, overall, have not demonstrated their effectiveness. Indeed, charter schools and vouchers are diverting funds and energy away from neighborhood schools, and the more successful ones rely on additional support from private sources (“voluntary taxation”), a situation that is neither sustainable nor scalable. 

They might have also taken note of this nation's engagement in "eternal war" on several fronts at once. It is that, and certainly not public education which has become the main cause of our weakened global security position as well as a threat to our economy, our democracy and public education here at home.

There's one better to make this point than Pasi Sahlberg, Finland's equivalent to Arne Duncan. Finland leads the world in reading and math scores which Sahlberg attributes to their de-emphasis on standardized testing and valuing of the nation's teachers. In a tweet the other day, Sahlberg asks: 

Would Finland do well in education if it was an empire? Or had over 20% child poverty rate? Or spent over 4% of GDP in defense? Who knows!

The question answers itself.

U.K.'s version of Duncan in bed with Murdoch, Klein

Brit Ed Sec. Michael Gove 

"I'd expect in the next [few] months we'd be making some acquisitions," Klein told the Financial Times. "There's the willingness to put in significant capital."

The most corrupt and the most powerful media man in the world is Rupert Murdoch. His criminal acts -- bribing cops, spying on innocent victims, tapping phones-- have cause great harm and have threatened his empire which is now under scrutiny both in Britain and in the U.S.

Murdoch's strategy has been to reinvent himself as an education/technology organization. He hired former N.Y. schools chancellor, Joel Klein as his fixer-in-chief, and continues to make millions in new contracts with schools systems worldwide.

At the end of summer 2010, Murdoch formally hired Klein for $2m (£1.3m) a year, plus a $1m signing bonus, to launch what he called a "revolutionary, and profitable, education division". Murdoch bought Wireless Generation, a US educational technology firm, for $360m, and gave it to Klein to run. Murdoch's vision was that he would digitise the world's so far unexploited classrooms. He told investors: "We see a $500bn sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs." He envisaged some of News Corporation's large library of media content being beamed to pupils' terminals.

The Guardian reports that Britain's education secretary, Michael Gove (the U.K. equivalent to Arne Duncan), a former Times reporter, is now snuggling up to Murdoch and will play a key role in Murdoch's attempt to penetrate (no pun intended) the U.K. education market.

According to the Guardian: 

In a speech to the National College for School Leadership, Gove singled Joel Klein out for praise. Klein was a US lawyer then running the New York school system. But Klein was also Murdoch's own favorite US educator. His clashes with the teachers' unions and his enthusiasm for academy-style "charter schools" had caught the tycoon's interest. Murdoch planned to hire Klein himself.

Gove told his British audience on 16 June that US reformers such as Klein were insisting on "more great charter schools … free from government bureaucracy" because they were "amazing engines of social mobility".

Corporate "reformers" are buying local school board elections

Progressive candidate Emily Sirota (at left) lost the election to Anne Rowe who was financed by corporate front groups. 

A pivotal campaign in Denver

It's long been an accepted fact, even by the least cynical amongst us, that national elections are the playgrounds of the rich. Especially with recent court rulings that "corporations are people," corporate interests, secretly and openly, have flexed their muscles by backing pro-corporate, anti-union candidates and lobbying against environmental and other market regulations. But who would have dreamed that these same forces, operating with virtually unlimited funds at their disposal, would begin targeting local school board races?
 
Mike Elk at In These Times reports that increasingly, large donations from wealthy individuals and corporations are pouring into schools board races around the country to enact an agenda that attacks collective bargaining rights of teachers unions and increases the privatization of public education through charter schools and vouchers. Increasingly, it appears that outside corporate groups are becoming involved in school board races across the country from Illinois to Louisiana to Denver. Denver was their most recent target with their front group Alliance for Choice in Education serving as their conduit.

The fingerprints of national corporate organizations coordinating the money from companieslike Wal-Mart are all over the Denver School Board Race, writes Elk.

A corporate reform group called A+ Denver hired a prominent supporter of school vouchers named Van Schoales to be its executive director. Schoales previously worked for the national privatization reform group called Education Reform Now, which pushes vouchers and which is funded, in part, by Rupert Murdoch and was run by Murdoch’s top aide former NYC School Board Chancellor Joel Klein. In addition, the slate of pro-reform candidates has also been endorsed by the national organization Democrats for Education Reform (DEFR). “DFER’s endgame has little to do with learning and everything to do with marginalizing public-sector unionized workers and bringing down the cost of taxes for social programs.” 

N.Y. Chancellor Tisch spends millions on Race-To-Top 'advisers"

Chancellor Tisch

Power philanthropy rules the schools

“Private people give money to support things they’re interested in.” -- Roger Tilles, member of the Board of Regents.

Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, is contracting 13 research fellows  to advise the education commissioner and the 17-member board on how to spend its $700 million Race To The Top grant. The fellows will  be paid as much as $189,000 each, in private money; to date, $4.5 million has been raised, including $1 million donated Tisch herself. She is a member of one of New York’s multi-billionaire families.

Donors to the program will include Bill Gates ($892,000), who is leading the charge to evaluate teachers, principals and schools using students’ test scores; the National Association of Charter School Administrators ($50,000) and the Robbins Foundation ($500,000), which finance charter expansion; and the Tortora Sillcox Family Foundation ($500,000), whose mission statement includes advancing “Mayor Bloomberg’s school reform agenda.”

Tisch's bankrolling of the program is another indication of a new trend in ownership society schooling where representatives of the billionaire class directly run public institutions themselves and use tax-exempt private investment, either directly, or thorough their private foundations) to do an end run about the democratic process.  Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he would be running a city youth program with $30 million of his own foundation money.

NYT's Michael Winerip writes:

Public education has never been so divided, between those like Dr. Tisch, Commissioner John B. King Jr. and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg who support the Obama administration’s signature Race to the Top initiative and its emphasis on standardized tests and charter schools; and dissenters on the board, who call it a Race to the Bottom and put their faith in teachers as well as traditional public schools. The Race to the Bottom folks warn that the supposedly free fellows come at a stiff political price.

Race to the Top requires states to develop student-data collection systems. Recently the Education Department awarded a $27 million no-bid contract to Wireless Generation, a company owned by Rupert Murdoch and overseen by a former New York City chancellor, Joel I. Klein. Mr. Klein is a good friend of Dr. Tisch. The state comptroller’s office is investigating whether it was proper to award the contract without bidding.

Murdoch's fixer, Joel Klein

klein_murdoch_reuters

From Politico.com

At first glance, it may seem odd for Klein, a lifelong Democrat who worked in Washington in the Clinton White House counsel’s office and in New York as the independent mayor Michael Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, to be the chief defender of the owner of the U.S.’s most powerful conservative media outlets.

More recently, before Murdoch hired Klein, the two men demonstrated a shared passion for education reform. Last October, Klein introduced a speech that Murdoch gave on education reform at the annual gala of The Media Institute in Washington. At the outset of his speech, Murdoch praised the “miracles that Joel has been performing for the New York City school system” and called him, with eerie prescience, “a man for all seasons.”

 

Klein got his biggest dose of pressure and media attention as head of New York’s public schools, a job he took without any educational credential besides a four-month stint teaching in Queens. Bloomberg charged him with the politically radioactive task of overhauling the school system, a job that Klein approached with the political fearlessness only an outsider can have."