Who brought Jonah Edelman amd SFC to town? Bruce Rauner

Education blogs are buzzing about Stand For Children anti-hero, Jonah Edelman, whose braggadocio has left the corrupt underbelly of corporate school reform badly exposed. But to understand this story, one has to look past Edelman because, as everyone over at the local saloon knows, behind every small-time player stands a big-time player.

In today's Chicago Sun-Times, "Braggart angers teachers' union after tough negotiations over reform bill", education writers Roz Rossi and Abdon Pallasch tell at least part of the story about Edelman's trip to Illinois, his bags packed with hundred-dollar bills in search of willing politicians (are there any unwilling in this state?) ready to abandon their traditional union base and vote for the anti-union SB7.

Enter the big-time player:

Edelman was recruited to Illinois by Bruce Rauner, a Republican venture capitalist and former client of Mayor Rahm Emanuel who helped make Emanuel a millionaire when Emanuel was an investment banker. Because Rauner is Republican, Edelman said some expected his group to fund Republican candidates. But Edelman said he realized [State Sen Michael] Madigan was the game in Illinois and so he funded six of Madigan’s Democratic legislative candidates and only three Republicans.

Billionaire Rauner who bankrolled Emanuel's mayoral campaign, is also a charter school entrepreneur with a chain of Chicago charters bearing his name. Rauner chairs the the education committee of the powerful anti-union Civic Committee of the Commercial Club and his name even appeared in local gossip columns as a possible choice for Emanuel's new schools chief. 

“Sneed hears rumbles mega-rich venture capitalist Bruce Rauner, who burps money and made certain a ton had been tossed into Rahm’s election campaign, is being eyed as the city’s new school CEO.”

With Rauner's help, and millions more coming from local billionaires with names like Pritzker, Crown and Zell, Edelman spread the money around like a horny John, outspending and out-foxing the unions at every turn. 

“They [the unions] essentially gave away every single provision related to teacher effectiveness that we had proposed — everything we had fought for in Colorado,” Edelman said in Aspen. “We hired 11 lobbyists, including four of the absolute best insiders and seven of the best minority lobbyists, preventing the unions from hiring them.”

Almost too disgusting to quote. It's no wonder that everyone on all corners of EdelGate want this thing to go away. Not a chance.

Koldyke's Chicago 'turnaround' investment

Koldyke

It all began when venture capitalist and Mayor Daley golf buddy, Mike Koldyke (Frontenac Capital) decided he could save the public school system by running it like a business. Frontenac had been a big investor in for-profit colleges like DeVry and Rasmussen College, which trained technically skilled workers for local businesses. Scrutiny of for-profit colleges by the feds has them, and everybody across the for-profit sector, examining how they measure student success and relying more and more on standardized testing.

In 2001, with lots of political clout and years of good will built up from his days sponsoring the Golden Apple Foundation, and as a trustee of  the Chicago Public Education Fund, Koldyke decided to get into the heavily D.O.E.-funded school-turnaround business by establishing his own non-profit venture, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL).

Koldyke brought in Chicago banker and corporate power broker, David Vitale to run his operation. Vitale was then tapped by Mayor Emanuel to become Chicago school board president along with another AUSL exec, Tim Cawley, coming over  to serve as CPS Chief Administrative Officer. With virtual control of the board and the central office, Koldyke can now assure a stable funding pipeline to his 19 turnaround schools, even in the midst of the current budget crisis when neighborhood schools are being starved of operating cash.

"Clearly they're very tied in to the political establishment in Chicago and they're getting opportunities in funding not available to anybody else," said Julie Woestehoff, executive director of Parents United for Responsible Education. -- Chicago Tribune

The Trib goes on to report:

The new CPS administration backs the organization but critics are concerned that turnaround schools, which are championed by President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, get resources at the expense of neighborhood schools.

...the 19 turnaround schools — failing schools targeted for overhaul by CPS — are run by the nonprofit Academy for Urban School Leadership, which will train 90 teachers in its academies this year. The number of AUSL training academies will double to 14 within the next two years. The program partners with National-Louis University, placing graduate students in AUSL-run turnaround schools.

With those extra millions in CPS funding at its disposal, AUSL claims to have produced an 8-point rise in elementary school test scores but little or no gain in high school scores. But with the modest bump in test scores has come lots of chaos and disruption in the lives of thousands of the neediest of Chicago's school kids. Koldyke's prescription for the city's so-called "failing schools" is the mass firing of teachers and their replacement with AUSL teachers along with an accompanying movement of kids from one school to another. This disruption and break in relationship between students, teachers and their former schools, was one of the factors in the 2009 melee at Fenger High School which led to the death of Derion Albert. In a column on the Fenger tragedy published in the Chicago Sun-Times (October 2, 2009) former CTU president Deborah Lynch wrote,

“School turnarounds have turned out to be the deadliest reform of all. How could anyone expect that completely eliminating all the professionals and staff of a tough high-poverty high school could be a good thing?”

NY Mag: Klein should be well-prepared for fixing Murdoch scandal

He took a position with News Corp. after stepping down from his education post in December, and now it looks as if he's got his first big project on behalf of Rupert Murdoch: Klein, a lawyer by training, will "provide important oversight and guidance” as the company deals with the fallout from the ballooning News of the World scandal. (Among other things, the tabloid reportedly hacked into the cell phones of a murdered 13-year-old and families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.) -- New York Magazine

How Stand For Children, Jonah Adelman, Jo Anderson, others with millions in corp backing, took IL unions for a ride.

Stand for Children's Jonah Adelman (right).

Fred Klonsky says, "It’s too bad there is not a transcript of the Aspen video of Stand For Children’s Jonah Edelman’s presentation. It could be studied in every Local and Region in the IEA."

He says their ability to raise $3 million dollars from the Chicago corporate community allowed them to “jam it down their throats.” When they met in the lame duck session following their electoral victories, Edelman says that the IEA and the IFT were willing to discuss all the issues they would not discuss just six months earlier. In fact, he says they “gave away” in the first minutes of negotiation what it took the entire struggle in Colorado to accomplish, where they eventually destroyed collective bargaining. Edelman says the cave-in was led by the IEA. “It has a history of pragmatism,” he says. -- Fred Klonsky's blog

Go to the 22 minute mark on the video where he describes, in glowing terms, former IEA Executive Director Jo Anderson, Jo’s son who runs Chicago’s Teach for America and Audrey Soglin.

* Since this was posted, the video was pulled from the Aspen website. Here is the transcribed version, thanks to Parents Across America. 

Just what the Gates Foundation needs, another $1.5 billion from Buffett

Warren Buffett made his annual gift of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, turning over about $1.5 billion worth of stock. The gift is the fifth installment in Buffett's plan to transfer the majority of his wealth to the Seattle-based foundation run by the Microsoft Corp. co-founder and his wife. The foundation is the world's largest with an endowment of $37.1 billion.-- Monitor

Murdoch's new fixer, Joel Klein

Reforming the "reformers"

Murdoch

Klein

Johnny-come-lately school  reform profiteer Rupert Murdoch has to deal with yet another scandal. It seems his people have been doing some phone hacking, bribing and spying on police on behalf of some murder suspects -- or something like that. Who the hell can understand this latest Murdoch mess?

So who does he call on to bail his News Corp conglomerate out of trouble? None other that fixer Joel Klein, former N.Y. schools chancellor. It was Klein who recently engineered the $27 million-dollar deal between News Corp and the N.Y. public schools. Now Klein, the former federal lawyer who helped make the Microsoft anti-trust suit go away for Bill Gates, will have to do the same for Murdoch and his News of the World chief, Rebekah Brooks.

Now Joel I. Klein, who left his post as the city’s schools chancellor in  December, has been given a task by one of the world’s most powerful media moguls: helping to oversee one of the seamier media scandals in recent memory...In a brief telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Klein said he was “not in charge” of handling the investigation, but he declined to elaborate on the specifics of his role. “It’s just what it said in our release today: I’m providing counsel and advice to the company,” he said. -- NYT

The Grand Coalition Against Teachers

Joanne Barkan describes the scope of the anti-teacher, anti-union network of corporate school "reformers" in this Dissent Magazine piece.

The Bush Administration launched the era of federally mandated, high-stakes testing in public schools with its “No Child Left Behind” program in 2001. Schools not making “adequate yearly progress” in raising math and reading scores risked being re-staffed, replaced with charters, or shut down. This quickly produced predictable results: teaching to the test, narrowed curriculum, and incidents of cheating. But the next step—the federal drive to use student test scores to grade teachers—came exclusively from the Obama administration.

Ownership Society News

The death of the Dodgers by corporate greed

McCourt & commissioner,  Bud Selig

Dave Zirin, writing in The Nation asks, "What does the L.A. Dodgers bankruptcy say about America?"

The Dodgers are arguably the most culturally significant franchise in the history of American Sports. It’s the team of Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela, and Hideo Nomo. That’s more than just a tradition. That’s a Ken Burns epic From their days in Brooklyn, the Dodgers were the franchise of the immigrants, the strivers, the ones who thought the American Dream was there for those willing to scratch and bleed for it....

 ...As Harold Meyerson wrote in the Washington Post, the Dodgers now represent “a particularly vicious form of capitalism that America has come to know too well the past few decades: a new owner takes over a venerable firm and extracts what he can for himself, decimating the company and damaging the community in the process”...

...As Meyerson wrote, “I’ve long believed that kids who grew up listening to Scully got at least a 30-point bump on their verbal SAT.” Now Scully is just another person the Dodgers went to court so they wouldn’t have to pay. Now he’s just another senior citizen wondering how a California dream could become so scarred. What does the Dodgers bankruptcy say about America? Everything.

Walton money continues to flow into corporate ed reform

BENTONVILLE, Ark., June 28, 2011 -- Today the Walton Family Foundation announced investments totaling more than $157 million in education reform initiatives for 2010 – a $23 million increase over 2009, in which education reform grants totaled $134 million... Having invested more than $1 billion in education reform, the Walton Family Foundation is the largest donor to initiatives that support parental choice and competition within education. -- PR Newswire

Walton money  focuses on seven regions throughout the nation that serve high concentrations of low-income families. They include Albany, Denver, East and South Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Newark and Washington, D.C. The foundation started investing in New Orleans schools following Hurricane Katrina, beginning in 2006 – helping create a school system where 70 % of public school students currently attend privately managed charter schools.

In D.C., the Walton Foundation was one of Michelle Rhee's largest patrons while she was chancellor. They threatened to pull out their "investment" from D.C. when Rhee was fired. But the district continues to be the biggest target of the Walton's to a tune of about $16 million/year.

Other "strategic" Walton investments include:

• Teach For America                                      $16,652,436
• Charter School Growth Fund                       $12,533,526
• DC Public Education Fund                           $10,000,000
• KIPP Foundation                                            $8,650,000
• California Charter Schools Assoc.                 $3,940,652

Corp. sponsorship of charter schools in exchange for student slots, board seats

BATON ROUGE -- Over the objections of some public school advocates, the Louisiana Senate voted 22-16 Monday to allow corporations to sponsor charter schools in exchange for controlling up to half of the enrollment slots and half of the governing board seats. House Bill 421 by Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, must return to the House, where the lower chamber is expected to approve only minor changes and send the bill on to Gov. Bobby Jindal, who announced his support for the measure in January. The House approved the bill 72-23 earlier in the session.

The bill continues a recent trend of the Legislature embracing policies that redirect tax dollars away from traditional public schools to charter programs, private school tuition scholarships and tax breaks for families that pay private school tuition. A separate bill this session, which now awaits Jindal's signature, would allow a household to deduct from their taxable income up to $5,000 in private school tuition and expenses per child. -- Times-Picayune

Ohio Gov. Kasich -- 'Thanks Koch Bros."

In an "unlisted video" which Gov. Kasich recorded using state resources, he tells the Koch Industries astroturf group Americans For Prosperity: 

"... in the four months that I've been Governor, we've accomplished a lot in Ohio... in all of these efforts the strong support of Americans for Prosperity has made a really big difference. ...it's so important that Ohio's fighters for freedom, the grassroots leaders of Americans for Prosperity, continue to lend their support to the effort to get Ohio back on track." -- ProgressOhio.org

Growing share of income for the rich

Inequality in the U.S. has has grown steadily since the 1970s, following a flat period after World War II. In 2008, the wealthiest 10 percent earned almost the same amount of income as the rest of the country combined.

INCOME LEVEL		NUMBER OF PEOPLE	AVERAGE INCOME	OVERALL CHANGE 1970-2008
Top 0.1%		152,000	$5.6 million	+385%
Top 0.1-0.5%		610,000	$878,139	+141%
Top 0.5-1%		762,000	$443,102	+90%
Top 1-5%		6.0 million	$211,476	+59%
Top 5-10%		7.6 million	$127,184	+38%
Bottom 90%		137.2 million	$31,244	-1%

*Based on the salary, bonuses and stock options of the three highest-paid officers in the largest 50 firms. ** Calculated from Bureau of Economic Analysis data. NOTE: All figures have been adjusted for inflation.

SOURCES: The World Top Incomes Database and reports by Jon Bakija, Williams College; Adam Cole, U.S. Department of Treasury; Bradley T. Heim, Indiana University; Carola Frydman, MIT Sloan School of Management and NBER; Raven E. Molloy, Federal Reserve Board of Governors; Thomas Piketty, Ehess, Paris; Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley and NBER. GRAPHIC: Alicia Parlapiano - The Washington Post. Published June 18, 2011.

Say it ain't so, Arne

DOE Officials Accused Of Leaking Info To Short-Sellers

Marcus Barum blogs on  Huffington Post:

Did Education Department officials leak market-sensitive info to stock traders?" That's the provocative headline from Project on Government Oversight reporting on a probe by the agency's inspector general into controversial claims that may implicate Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

The Daily Caller reports:

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn blasted the Education Department Wednesday for what he called “very significant inappropriate behavior in tipping hedge funds on short selling private education” and called on a key Senate panel to investigate the matter. Coburn was referring to documents released last week by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog group that has called for federal authorities to investigate market manipulation by famous Wall Street short-seller Steven Eisman.

The Hill reports:

One email exchange shows a DOE employee informing a short seller of the expected date the rules would be proposed, a piece of information that then appeared in a Morgan Stanley investment report one week later.Wait! Morgan Stanley? Isn't that Bill Daley's company?

A much better way for Gates fund to spend his billions.

(Reuters) - Britain and billionaire Bill Gates pledged $2.3 billion at an international donor conference on Monday to fund vaccination programs to protect children in poor countries against diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia. -- Guardian

It's actually hard to imagine that the Gates Foundation invests 10X more than this each year in environmentally polluting profit-making ventures that often cause the health problems that the vaccines are meant to prevent.

Joel Klein hails the new order

The Broadie roster

Not so long ago, people pointed to Michelle Rhee in the District and me in New York as the major “reform superintendents.” When we left those positions in the past year, some asked whether it was the “end of an era” and questioned the future of education reform. What a difference a few months can make! -- WaPo, "School Reform's New Generation"

Is this the new face of corporate school reform?

From May 31, 2011 Business Insider:

At the end of 2010, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp paid almost $400m in cash to purchase 90% of Wireless Generation, a company that bills itself as "the leading provider of innovative education software, data systems, and assessment tools for reading, writing and math,"

On Tuesday, News Corp announced "The Future of American Education: A Presidential Primary Forum." The joint effort with the College Board will pit "all Republican primary candidates who meet a threshold level of support in national polls" against each other.

The Wall Street Journal's Paul Gigot and Joel I. Klein, former  Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education and current CEO of News Corp's education division will moderate the panel.

"Reformer" Klein is a hustler supreme

He helps land Rupert Murdoch a $27 million no-bid contract from NY schools

The money - part of the state's $700 million in Race to the Top winnings - will go to Wireless Generation, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., to develop software to track student test scores, among other things. Wireless Generation helped build a similar system in the city called Achievement Reporting and Innovation Systems, or ARIS, that has been widely criticized in the city. The contract would expand the ARIS system statewide.

In a request sent to the state controller's office in May to sign off on a no-bid process, officials cited the tight timeline for beginning the Race to the Top project and the company's record at producing results. -- Daily News

hy did the state argue for this contract? On the basis of Wireless’ record in developing ARIS, NYC’s much criticized $80 million data system. Recently, Lindsey Christ of NY1 in an award-winning three-part series pointed out the glaring deficiencies of ARIS and the far superior data system developed by NYC teachers for relative pennies. Last fall, Gotham Schools did a similar expose; we featured critical observations from a teacher about the inadequacies of the system back in 2008.  The hi-tech community recognized it a huge boondoggle and a “super mugging” when the no-bid contract was first announced in 2007. -- NYC Public School Parent

Supreme hustler Klein, who could rake in as much as $4.5 million this year at his new gig with News Corp., also will collect $34,000 annually for life after serving 8 years as chancellor. This after slamming teacher pensions as "hollowing out public education."

Higher [Hedge)ucation

Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study.

The company that manages Harvard's investment funds declined to comment.

"It is Harvard management company policy not to discuss investments or investment strategy and therefore I cannot confirm the report," said a spokesman. Vanderbilt also declined to comment. -- Guardian

Has America in 2011 become 200 AD Rome?

Dust-bowl refugees walk towards Los Angeles during the Great Depression. House prices have now fallen further than in the 1930s. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

British Guardian Economics Editor, Larry Elliott ponders whether America in 2011 is Rome in 200AD or Britain on the eve of the first world war: an empire at the zenith of its power but with cracks beginning to show.

The experience of both Rome and Britain suggests that it is hard to stop the rot once it has set in, so here are the a few of the warning signs of trouble ahead: military overstretch, a widening gulf between rich and poor, a hollowed-out economy, citizens using debt to live beyond their means, and once-effective policies no longer working. -- "Decline and fall of the American empire"

Gov. Walker's war on public ed

John Nichols, writing in The Nation, describes the massive resistance movement growing in opposition to Wisconsin Gov. Walker's assault on collective bargaining rights and on public education.

Yet Walker refuses to compromise. So beholden is he to political paymasters such as the Koch brothers and the De Vos family, which has steered millions of dollars into the state to promote his extreme proposals to replace on of the nation’s strongest public education systems with voucher programs and privatization schemes, that the governor continues to pressure his legislative allies to enact a biennial budget that slashes spending for education and local services.

New Gates palace opens in Seattle

Symbol of unchecked foundation power

New Gates 900,000 sq. ft. "campus" cost $.5 billion in tax-exempt dollars.

In order to keep its tax-exempt status, the Gates foundation has to give away about $3 billion a year. Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, says the foundation's influence goes far beyond that.

"They're influencing governments in lots of different ways — and corporations, and really everybody else in society, and it's not just about writing checks," she says. It's about setting agendas, framing debates, advocating the foundation's point of view and taking action. Palmer says the foundation has changed the perception of what a private organization can do. -- NPR

Merrow says Klein was the architect of current corporate reform

In Sunday's Daily News, John Merrow claims that, "Love or loathe him, Joel Klein is the person most responsible for shaping U.S. schools today." Improbable as it may sound, Merrow is probably right. Corporate lawyer Klein, now hustling school district contracts for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., was a totally unqualified, yet major player in the disaster they now call public school reform. The fawning Merrow even credits Klein with nurturing Michelle Rhee.

His critics — and there are many — discount the academic achievements Klein boasted about, particularly after the flabby nature of state tests was exposed and scores were recalibrated, leading to significantly lower gains for many public schools on his watch. They say he was obsessed with test scores and didn't pay enough attention to genuine learning.

Powerful Dem backs N.J. T-Party gov's school voucher program

In an interview after the ceremony, Norcross said his interest in school choice was borne of moral obligation and old-fashioned capitalism. -- Star Ledger

High-powered Dem, George E. Norcross III rushed to Gov. Christie's side in the wake of the N.J. gov's chopper scandal. The billionaire insurance mogul who also sits on the Democratic National Committee, came out at a Camden rally and locked arms with the T-Party gov in support of his OSA school voucher plan for New Jersey. Sitting alongside Christie and Norcross was a who's who of the school "choice" (voucher) movement: Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf and several executives representing Excellent Education for Everyone, or E3.

"Cooper Hospital and my family's foundation are going to be involved in several new charter schools in the city of Camden," Norcross announced. He had previously signaled interest in establishing a new charter school in Camden, but Friday was the first time he stated definitively and in public that the wheels were already in motion. -- Courier Post

Besides being chairman of the board at Cooper Hospital, Norcross is actively involved in the redevelopment of Camden's Lanning Square neighborhood. A new cancer institution and teaching hospital are among the major facilities already under way.

Rhee helped design Ohio's union-busting bill for T-Party Gov. Kasich

Michelle Rhee, who claims to be operating with close to a billion-dollar war chest from Gates, Broad and other power philanthropists and conservative groups, has played a major role in drafting Ohio's union-busting legislation. 

Between January and April of 2011, [Rhee's] StudentsFirst group employed Robert Klaffky, the president of firm Van Meter, Ashbrook & Associates and a close adviser to Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) to help push various aspects of education policy. In particular, the group, established by Rhee after she left the D.C. school system following then-Mayor Adrian Fenty's defeat, had Klaffky work on SB5, the infamous anti-collective bargaining bill passed into law but already facing the likelihood of referendum.-- Sam Stein, Huffington

In addition to appearing alongside Kasich at a recent event with the US chamber, she has also worked closely with Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fl.), the third leg of a triumvirate of new, sharply anti-union governors. Rhee has also drawn support and adulation from Obama's Education Sec. Arne Duncan.

The "big three" in power philanthropy

E.D. Kain's American Times blog at Forbes, examines the role of the "big three" power philanthropists, Gates, Broad and Walton, in driving current school reform policies. His  2-part series begins with "The Deep Pockets Behind Education Reform." Kain responds to an earlier Think Progress piece by Zaid Jilani which focuses primarily on ultra-right power brokers like the DeVos family.

Any discussion of education philanthropy is incomplete without mention of the “New Big Three” as a triumvirate of sorts. It’s true that the other players Jilani mentions have a role in the education debate, but the “New Big Three” are the game changers.

For all the money floating around, even the powerful Gates Foundation has met with more failures than successes. Time and again Gates has changed course, shifting from a focus on small schools initially, to testing and a focus on teacher compensation more recently.

Media huckster Rupert Murdoch discovers school reform.

Look out kids!

Rupert Murdoch, the power and money behind FOX News and the right-wing Weekly Standard, has almost single-handedly turned the world's news media into tabloidworld and now wants to do the same to the world of public education. He's hired former NYC chancellor Joel Klein as his education front man and he has already signed a $400 million deal with Mayor Bloomberg to bring NewsCorp into the schools.

You can see Klein's hand in this obviously-planted Guardian story where Murdoch poses computers in the schools as the solution to poverty and racism.

Murdoch attacked the "mandarins of mediocrity" who argued children were too poor, too ignorant to learn or were immigrants who had difficulty understanding. "This is absolute rubbish. It is arrogant, elitist and unacceptable," he said.

"In putting this creative force into schools we can ensure the poor child in Manila has the same chance as the rich child in Manhatten," Murdoch said. "The key to our future is to unlock this potential."

Murdoch attacking arrogance and elitism? Surely we've moved to Bizzaro World. But then again, this is the man who (along with Glen Beck) called Pres. Obama a "racist."

Gates has spent close to a billion dollars buying "grass-roots" advocacy

“We’ve learned that school-level investments aren’t enough to drive systemic changes, The importance of advocacy has gotten clearer and clearer.”  -- Gates Foundation spokesman Allan C. Golston

According to a story by Sam Dillon in today's NYT, The Gates Foundation is using a big chunk of its multi-billion fund to pay teachers to testify at hearings in opposition to their own unions and in favor of more test-based accountability. Writes Dillon:

For years, Bill Gates focused his education philanthropy on overhauling large schools and opening small ones. His new strategy is more ambitious: overhauling the nation’s education policies. To that end, the foundation is financing educators to pose alternatives to union orthodoxies on issues like the seniority system and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers.

In some cases, Mr. Gates is creating entirely new advocacy groups. The foundation is also paying Harvard-trained data specialists to work inside school districts, not only to crunch numbers but also to change practices. It is bankrolling many of the Washington analysts who interpret education issues for journalists and giving grants to some media organizations.

Wealthy powerful forces driving expansion of vouchers and "choice"

Betsy Devos

Two weeks ago, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) marked “a new era for education in Indiana” when he signed into law one of the most expansive school voucher laws in the country, opening up a huge fund of tax dollars for private schools. Daniels' school reform plan even received a blessing from none other than Arne Duncan.

Daniels told the WSJ he talks more with Education Secretary Arne Duncan than he did with any Bush Administration cabinet secretary during his 2001-2003 tenure at the White House. Vouchers have been unpopular with the American public. Between 1966 and 2000, vouchers were put up for a vote in states 25 times, and voters rejected the program 24 of those times. But powerful ownership society forces are driving successful voucher initiatives in several states despite their unpopularity with the voters.   

"What I want in education is almost completely aligned with what President Obama wants," Mr. Daniels says, noting the administration's support for charter schools and merit-based pay for teachers.

If one looks behind the curtain — at the foundations, non-profits, Political Action Committees (PAC) — into the workings of the voucher movement, it’s apparent why it has gained strength in recent years. A tight-knit group of right-wing millionaires and billionaires, bankers, industrialists, lobby shops, and hardcore ideologues has been plotting this war on public education, quietly setting up front group after front group to promote the idea that the only way to save public education is to destroy it — disguising their movement with the innocent-sounding moniker of “school choice.”  - Think Progress

A soon-to-be published Think Progress report identifies this list of  powerhouse voucher supporters, including:  Betsy DeVos, American Federation of Children (AFC), Alliance for School Chioice (ASC), Bill and Susan Obernborf, and The Walton Family Founcation,

Behind the "choice" movement

Richard and Helen DeVos are the parents of Dick DeVos, whose wife leads the American Federation for Children, a leading school choice advocate that moves millions of dollars to support local legislation expanding voucher and public-to-private school initiatives. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation also donated $200,000 to the Alliance for School Choice between 2007 and 2008, a Washington, D.C.-based school choice organization that supports public funds paying for students private school tuition costs. -- American Independent

Koch Bros. Bankroll Legal Dream Team to Defend Wisc. Union Busting

From Uppity Wisconsin

One of the Koch brothers front-groups, the union-busting group National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, is rolling their tanks into Wisconsin to defend against a lawsuit from Dane County Firefighters and other public employee unions challenging the constitutionality of Walker's union-busting bill.

A 4/26 NRWLDF letter sent to numerous right-wing leaders in Wisconsin, said:

Dear Right to Work Supporter:
As you may know, three Madison local AFL-CIO unions, Laborers Local 236, Firefighters Local 311, and AFSCME Local 60, have sued the State of Wisconsin and Governor Walker to have the courts declare unconstitional the "budget repair bill," 2011 Wisconsin Act 10.  This is an attempt to reverse the decision of the legislature to repeal compulsory unionism for most public sector employees.

Staff attorneys with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have defended similar statutes against constitional attacks before the United States Supreme Court.  The Foundation is willing to help public employees of Wisconsin preserve their right to be free from forced tribute to unions.

"Willing to help public employees"?   It doesn't get any more perverse than that!

The People's Business

From The People's Business by Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray

...corporations have also established a stronghold in both education and the media. Today, corporate ties to universities run deep, and their designs on our system of public education are growing daily." (p.6)


When corporations begin to control the delivery of essential services like water, education, and health care, we can find ourselves in a troubling situation where making money becomes more important than providing reliable and affordable service, and where corporations--largely accountable only to their shareholders--are granted control over captive markets with dependent customers. (p. 136)

The idea of turning public schools over to the private sector goes back at least a half-century to an article written by Milton Friedman in 1955, which called for the privatization of public schools. Privatization of public schools is becoming increasingly popular with a variety of groups, including libertarians interested in shrinking the government, religious groups that denounce secular liberalism of public education, anf for-profit educational corporations looking to boost their bottom line. (p. 163)

Drutman, Lee, and Charlie Cray. The people's business: controlling corporations and restoring democracy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.

The Kochtopus spreads it tentacles into schools

From the New Yorker
Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama.
by Jane Mayer August 30, 2010

In the mid-eighties, the Kochs provided millions of dollars to George Mason University, in Arlington, Virginia, to set up another think tank. Now known as the Mercatus Center, it promotes itself as “the world’s premier university source for market-oriented ideas—bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems.” Financial records show that the Koch family foundations have contributed more than thirty million dollars to George Mason, much of which has gone to the Mercatus Center, a nonprofit organization. “It’s ground zero for deregulation policy in Washington,” Rob Stein, the Democratic strategist, said. It is an unusual arrangement. “George Mason is a public university, and receives public funds,” Stein noted. “Virginia is hosting an institution that the Kochs practically control.”

The brothers have given money to more obscure groups, too, such as the Independent Women’s Forum, which opposes the presentation of global warming as a scientific fact in American public schools. Until 2008, the group was run by Nancy Pfotenhauer, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Mary Beth Jarvis, a vice-president of a Koch subsidiary, is on the group’s board.

Juan Cole:The Koch Brothers and the End of State Universities

The real scandal around the endowment by the Koch brothers of two chairs at Florida State University is that state universities now have to seek such outside money and accept strings. The reason they have to do so is that many state legislatures have chosen not to have state universities any more. At many ‘state universities’ the state contribution to the general operating fund is less than 20 percent, falling toward 10 percent.

Koch Bros -- Homes are where the heart is

Charles and David Koch are worth $42 billion and make $13 million every day while vulnerable Americans struggle to afford shelter and groceries. Meet three Florida seniors who rely on Social Security and are fighting back against the Koch brothers attempt to make them homeless. They tell the Kochs what's on their minds.

Koch Bros. Buying Professors to Spread the Gospel of Greed

ThinkProgress reports that the Koch Foundation reached an agreement in 2008 to fund professors at Florida State University, as long as they would teach right-wing economic theory. In fact, the Koch Foundation had to approve any faculty hires who were paid with its “donated” funds

The Saint Petersburg Times reports:

A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University’s economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting “political economy and free enterprise.”…

Under the agreement with the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, however, faculty only retain the illusion of control. The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it’s not happy with the faculty’s choice or if the hires don’t meet “objectives” set by Koch during annual evaluations.

George Mason University also received over $23 million from Koch Bros. foundations to hire seven libertarian professors.
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Cerf: wants no vote allowed on charter schools

Forget teacher certification

Former Edison exec Chris Cerf, now N.J. State Supt. wants end to teacher certification.

“I don’t care if a teacher is certified and has a Ph.D from Harvard. If their students aren’t learning in a year, we ought to take not of that,” Cerf told the state Senate Budget Committee. -- APP.com

Cerf is also trying to prevent voters from having the opportunity to vote for charter schools or the monetary appropriations that support them. The reason? Voters would most likely vote to oppose them.

 "If the electorate does not support or cannot afford charter schools, then continued State support for such schools becomes an extension of a dictatorship, rather than a democracy." --Salvatore Pissuro, "Are N.J. charter schools an extension of a dictatorship or a democracy"

The DeVos Family

Amway, Blackwater all part of the DeVos empire

By now you've surely heard of the Kochs. Meanwhile, the powerful, wealthy DeVos family has remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America's schools.

Rachel Tabachnick posting at AlterNet has the goods on the super-wealthy DeVos family. 

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business.

Dick DeVos is said to have coined the term "government schools" when referring to public education.

Tabachnick  also describes the role of Howard Fuller, the conservatives' hired gun in the African-American community. Fuller, a '60s civil rights activist, is the founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO). The group tries to portray school vouchers as an effort to help low-income kids and children of color "escape" public schools to the freedom of private and religious schools.

But Tabachnick says that a new report explores the money trail behind BAEO, finding that it leads directly to a handful of wealthy right-wing foundations and individuals that have a deep agenda -- not only supporting the school voucher movement, but also backing anti-affirmative action campaigns and other efforts that African American organizations have opposed or considered offensive.”

Roberts, former GM exec, now running Detroit Public Schools

Snyder (left) and Roberts

Michigan's T-Party governor Rick Synder, has appointed a former General Motors Corp. executive as the new emergency manager for Detroit Public Schools. Roy Roberts will take over for Robert Bobb, who was named the school district's emergency financial manager in 2009. Roberts currently is managing director and co-founding member of the Chicago-based private equity investment firm Reliant Equity Investors.

Roberts made his millions during GM's good years. When he retired in 2000 as GM group vice president for North American sales , service and marketing, he was the highest ranking black person in the car industry.

See Modern School for more on Roberts.

What is it with these guys with two alliterative first names --Bob Bobb and now Roy Roberts?

Trib's John Kass tells how he fell out with Daley

Despite the fact that we were falling out, I didn't want to be the critic, the hammer. I wanted to interpret and explain. But by the mid-1990s, Daley's hatchet men had rigged employment tests to build vast patronage armies, allowing him to control all of Cook County and become the dominant political silverback male in Illinois.

He was the strongman of the wrought-iron fist, with all those suck-ups around him, laughing at his jokes like hyenas in a children's cartoon. There was a media love fest. And I couldn't take it anymore. -- Chicago Tribune, May 5, 2011

Rahm gives Daley's daughter a job

Mayor Daley’s daughter Nora Daley Conroy, and son, Patrick, attend his finally City Council meeting. | Brian Jackson~Sun-Times

Look dad, I'm an arts commissar!

Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel gave a gift to outgoing Mayor Daley. He gave Daley's daughter, Nora Daley Conroy a job as chair of his Cultural Affairs Advisory Council. Emanuel says he hopes Conroy will serve a “critical role” in helping the newly-merged Dept. of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, carry out its core function of engaging Chicago’s diverse artistic communities.”  Maybe it's just me, but this pick doesn't sound all that "diverse" if you get my drift.

He also chose a Joyce "Foundation official, Michelle Boone to lead the merged departments. There's nothing new here except the fact that there's nothing new here, despite all the usual Rahm campaign talk about "reform."

What's this got to do with schools? The mayor runs the schools. The Joyce Foundation is one of the main underwriters of corporate school reform in Chicago, ie. Renaissance 2010. Joyce also funded Emanuel's transition committee. The mayor's wife Maggie, ran Gallery 37 and After School Matters, which became a conduit for patronage contributions for businesses wanting city business once the Shackman Decree officially banned patronage. A former director for Gallery 37, Boone also serves on the board of the Arts Alliance Illinois, Grantmakers for the Arts and other community-based arts organizations.

You see where this is going?  To any school reform groups, teachers or schools looking for funding for initiatives that aren't in line with the mayor's version of school reform, all I can say is, good luck.

OR hire Eddie Burke's law firm

Speaking of doing business with the city, check out the list of companies seeking contracts from Mayor Rahm, who are also clients of  Eddie Burke's law firm. Burke also happens to be the most powerful alderman on Chicago's City Council:

In 2009, Burke reported 34 law clients that did business with the city. Last year, he added five more. 

The list includes: Avis Budget Group; AT&T; Bank of America; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois; Brandenburg Industrial Service; Centerpoint Properties; Centrum Properties; Cole Taylor Bank; Columbia Michael Reese Hospital; Commonwealth Edison; Community Housing Partner XI, L.P.; Dominick’s; Elenco Electronics; Fifth Third Bank; Friedman Properties; Greater Southwest Development Corp.; The Habitat Company and Harris Bank.

Burke’s client roster also includes: Humana, Inc.; Imperial Realty; Jewel Osco; JP Morgan Chase Bank; K-Five Construction; Kenny Construction; Marc Realty; MB Real Estate; New West Realty; Northern Trust; Northwestern Memorial Hospital; Seaway National Bank; Southwest Airlines; South Shore Plumbing & Heating Supply; Standard Bank & Trust; T Mobile; U.S. Equities Realty; Union League Club of Chicago; Walgreens; WBBM and Wentworth Tire.

We were promised an Ownership Society...

Derek Thompson, associate editor at The Atlantic, writes:

We were promised an "ownership society." It was President George W. Bush's campaign slogan when he ran for reelection in 2004. The comforting term invoked responsibility and stability. It connoted a patchwork of plots, homes, and fences extending into the horizon of every city suburb. So much for campaign promises. Today, we're suffering a crisis of ownership, and Bush's slogan reads like an epitaph to an era of hyperconsumption.

Free-Market Think Tanks and the Marketing of Education Policy

Kevin Wellner, professor of education and director of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC),writing in Dissent Magazine:

The most engaged in this neoliberal education campaign are organizations focused on school choice: Democrats for Education Reform (and their 501(c)(4), Education Reform Now Advocacy), Education Sector, and the Progressive Policy Institute; as well as service-oriented groups like New Leaders for New Schools, the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) and Green Dot charter networks, Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, Stand for Children, the New Schools Venture Fund, and even the leadership of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Ravitch: Outrage of the week

Diane Ravitch asks: When did we vote to hand over American education to Gates & Pearson?

Yes, indeed, the education reform business is booming. A recent article in Idaho details the campaign contributions of online learning companies to the state superintendent of instruction, who recently decided—surprise!—to mandate online learning and laptops for every student. This is the new face of corporate reform. It offers entree to the vast riches of the nation's education industry, a sector that spends about $800 billion of public money at the local, state, and federal levels. Some refer to the No Child Left Behind Act as "no consultant left behind." It has been and continues to be a bonanza for the testing, test preparation, and tutoring industries. Race to the Top has opened the door to many more consultants, charter operators, and turn-around strategists. The gold rush is on! -- Bridging Differences Blog

Some of the corporate muscle behind KIPP

The Gap, Viacom, Bain Capital, Netflix, Walton...

John Fisher, Chairman

President, Pisces, Inc.
Mr. Fisher is President of Pisces Inc., an investment management company for the Fisher family. He is also a partner of Sansome Partners, the private investment partnership of the Fisher family. He sits on the board of the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco, San Francisco Day School and the Alliance for School Choice.
Mr. Fisher is a graduate of Princeton University and Stanford's Graduate School of Business. He and his wife live in San Francisco with their four children.

Philippe Dauman

President and CEO, Viacom, Inc.
Mr. Dauman is President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom and has served on the Company's Board of Directors since 1987. Viacom is the world's leading entertainment content company and it engages audiences on television, motion picture and digital platforms through many of the world's best known entertainment brands, including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, COMEDY CENTRAL, Spike TV, BET and Paramount Pictures. Under Mr. Dauman's leadership, in 2009 Viacom partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to launch the "Get Schooled" initiative, which aims to increase high school and college graduation rates, improve postsecondary readiness and promote the fundamental importance of education.

Mr. Dauman earned his bachelor's degree from Yale College and his law degree from Columbia University Law School. He is a director of National Amusements, Inc. and Lafarge S.A. He is also a member of the Business Roundtable and serves on the Executive Committee of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Board of Trustees for The Paley Center for Media and the Dean's Council of Columbia University Law School.

Doris Fisher

Founder, Gap Inc.
Mrs. Fisher, co-founder of Gap Inc., is an exceptional volunteer and philanthropist whose generosity has positively impacted such fields as education, the arts and health care. A graduate of Stanford University, Mrs. Fisher's volunteer work there began in 1969, the year she and husband, Don, opened the first Gap store in San Francisco.

Over the years, Mrs. Fisher has offered exemplary services to the Graduate School of Business Advisory Board, the Stanford Art Museum Advisory Board, the School of Medicine, the Cantor Arts Center, the Stanford Alumni Association, the Office of Development, and the Board of Trustees. In addition, she has served on the Princeton Art Museum Advisory Board, the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors and the Northern California Cancer Center Board since 1983.

Reed Hastings

Founder and CEO, Netflix, Inc.
Mr. Hastings founded Netflix in 1997 and launched the subscription service in 1999. In 2005, Time magazine added Mr. Hastings to its "Time 100" list of the one hundred most influential global citizens. Earlier in his career, he founded Pure Software, which he built into one of the world's 50 largest public software companies.

Mr. Hastings was President of the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He has led successful statewide political campaigns for more charter public schools and easier passage of local school bonds. He received a BA from Bowdoin College in 1983 and an MSCS degree from Stanford University in 1988. 

Mark Nunnelly

Managing Director, Bain Capital
Mr. Nunnelly is Managing Director of Bain Capital, a leading global private investment firm based in Boston. In 1989, Mr. Nunnelly helped found Information Partners, a venture and technology fund backed by Bain Capital that focused on early stage investing. Currently, Mr. Nunnelly sits on the Boards of Domino's Pizza, Warner Music Group, Eschelon Telecom, and Houghton Mifflin Company.
Mr. Nunnelly is an active supporter of several charitable organizations, serving as a member of the Board of Directors of Jumpstart. He has also been actively involved with City Year since its inception. Mr. Nunnelly received his MBA, with Distinction, from Harvard Business School, and an A.B. from Centre College, where he is a Trustee.

Carrie Walton Penner

Trustee, Walton Family Foundation
Carrie Walton Penner is an education reform advocate who is committed to dramatically improving K–12 student achievement in the United States, especially in low-income communities. Along with the other Walton family members, she guides the Walton Family Foundation’s education reform strategies and investments. The Foundation believes that the best way to achieve continuous and sustainable improvements in K–12 schools is to create competition among schools by empowering parents to choose among them.


Ms. Penner serves as a board member of several organizations including the California Charter School Association, EdVoice, the Alliance for School Choice, and the California Academy of Sciences. She earned a B.A. in economics and history from Georgetown University and master’s degrees from Stanford University in education policy and program evaluation. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, Greg Penner, and their four children.

Shawn Hurwitz, Founding Board Member, Emeritus

President and CEO, MAXXAM Property Company
Mr. Hurwitz is President and CEO of MAXXAM Property Company, a real estate development company focused on community development and related real estate investment.  As President and CEO, Mr. Hurwitz is responsible for the supervision and implementation of all real estate activities, including development, acquisition, disposition, investment, sales and marketing, and operating activities.

Mr. Hurwitz served as a founding board member of KIPP Foundation from 2000 to 2009. He also served as Chairman of the Board of KIPP Houston’s schools from 1998 - 2006, thus playing an active leadership role in the creation of KIPP’s first region in Houston as well as the national replication.

Don Fisher, Founding Board Chair, Emeritus 

September 3, 1928 – September 27, 2009

Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Gap Inc., Co-Founder KIPP Foundation
Mr. Fisher was the founder and chairman emeritus of Gap Inc. He served on the board of trustees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, was a director of the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco and a governor of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Mr. Fisher was also on the California State Board of Education and was a director on the board of EdVoice and Teach For America.

Mr. Fisher was the director of the National Retail Federation and received the Retailer of the Year award in 1996. He was also actively involved in the California Business Roundtable and the Committee on Jobs Executive Committee. Other honors include the California Arts Council Governor’s Award for Individual Patrons of the Arts and selection to the Bay Area Business Hall of Fame and American Academy of Achievement.

In 2000, Don Fisher Co-Founded the KIPP Foundation and served as Chairman of the Board until 2009.

Rhee Fee

Hi Leonie,

Thanks for your interest. Michelle’s standard fee is 50K plus first class expenses from DC.  We encourage all offers, even if not at her full fee, since certain groups are very appealing to her and her number one goal is to raise awareness of the problems facing our educational system and speak on affecting positive change.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.
Kind Regards,
Peter
Peter B. Jacobs
Creative Artists Agency

http://www.rheefirst.com/?p=455

Back to School for the Billionaires

“Our role is to take risks that government is not willing to do ... People question my motivation,” -- Eli Broad

The richest man in America stepped to the podium and declared war on the nation’s school systems. High schools had become “obsolete” and were “limiting—even ruining—the lives of millions of Americans every year.” The situation had become “almost shameful.” Bill Gates, prep-school grad and college dropout, had come before the National Governors Association seeking converts to his plan to do something about it—a plan he would back with $2 billion of his own cash. -- Newsweek

L.A.'s Deasy stacks bureaucracy with Gates guys

John Deasy (L.A. Times)

The L.A.Times has reported that about 20 senior jobs in the school bureaucracy will be funded not by taxpayer dollars but by philanthropists Eli Broad and Casey Wasserman, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others.

Broad and Wasserman, for instance, are strong proponents of charter schools, and the Gates Foundation has supported charter schools as well as softening tenure rules and making test scores a bigger part of teacher evaluations. Several of the new hires also come from that reform world. The new superintendent of schools, John Deasy, is a former official at the Gates Foundation. --L.A. Times (Editorial: "LAUSD: Public education and private money may prove a mixed bag")