Submitted by Elaine Magliaro Guest Blogger
In May, David Sirota penned an article for Salon titled Selling out Public Schools. In it, he said that Mitt Romney, President Obama, and both of our major political parties were “assaulting public education.”
Sirota wrote:
On the Republican side, the Washington Post reports Mitt Romney just unveiled “a pro-choice, pro-voucher, pro-states-rights education program that seems certain to hasten the privatization of the public education system” completely. On the other side, Wall Street titans in the Democratic Party with zero experience in education policy are marshaling tens of millions of dollars to do much of what Romney aims to do as president – and they often have a willing partner in President Barack “Race to the Top” Obama and various Democratic governors.
Funded by corporate interests who naturally despise organized labor, both sides have demonized teachers’ unions as the primary problem in education — somehow ignoring the fact that most of the best-performing public school systems in America and in the rest of the world are, in fact, unionized. (Are we never supposed to ask how, if unions are the primary problem, so many unionized schools in America and abroad do so well?) Not surprisingly, these politicians and activists insist they are driven solely by their regard for the nation’s children — and they expect us to ignore the massive amount of money their benefactors (and even the activists personally) stand to make by transforming public education into yet another private profit center. Worse, they ask us also to forget that in the last few years of aggressive “reform” (read: evisceration) of public education, the education gap has actually gotten far worse, with the most highly touted policies put in place now turning the schoolhouse into yet another catalyst of crushing inequality.
Sirota says that charter schools and vouchers are one of the five most “prominent” of these policies. I would agree. There has been an education movement afoot for a many years whose aim is less about reforming public schools and more about the privatization of public education. One of the first steps in the “reform” process is funneling public money away from traditional public schools to “privately administered” charter schools and to private schools via tuition vouchers.
A Look at the New Student Voucher Program in Louisiana
Stephanie Simon (Reuters) has reported that Louisiana is “embarking on the nation’s boldest experiment in privatizing public education.” She wrote, “Starting this fall, thousands of poor and middle-class kids will get vouchers covering the full cost of tuition at more than 120 private schools across Louisiana, including small, Bible-based church schools.” Louisiana’s voucher program, which is said to be the most sweeping in the country, will “shift tens of millions of dollars from public schools to pay not only private schools but also private businesses and private tutors to educate children across the state.”
Governor Bobby Jindal and State Superintendent of Education John White, both of whom pushed for the voucher program, “promised to hold the private schools accountable for student achievement.” Yet, it has been reported that “money will continue to flow to scores of private and religious schools participating in Louisiana’s new voucher program even if their students fail basic reading and math tests…”
Casey Michel (TPMMuckraker) reported in July that students in every public school in Louisiana are subjected to standardized testing, but “voucher students — who will bring an average of $8,000 in tuition from ‘failing’ public schools to many that are affiliated with religious denominations — will only need to face testing if their new school has taken an average of 10 students per grade, or if the schools have accepted at least 40 voucher students into the grades testing.”
Simon said that according to new rules, “schools will not be penalized for poor scores on state standardized tests if they have fewer than 40 voucher students enrolled in the upper elementary or secondary grades.” Even if their voucher students fail to “demonstrate basic competency in math, reading, science and social studies,” the private schools will continue to receive state funds. Superintendent White estimated that 75 percent of the 120 private schools participating in the voucher program would “fall into this protected category.”
Participating schools that have more than 40 voucher students will be given a “numerical grade from the state based on their voucher students’ test scores.” Schools that score less than 50 on a 150-point scale will not be allowed to enroll more voucher students. Those schools will, however, still “continue to receive public money indefinitely to serve students already enrolled.”
Opponents of the voucher program say that their biggest concern is “the fact that the students may be transferring, on the taxpayers’ dime, to a school that will score worse than the one from which they left. That is, a student can leave a public school if it scores a ‘C’ or below on state standardized testing — but if the new private school scores the minimum of 50, the equivalent of a D-minus, it could still recruit new voucher students.”
Some of those who are critical of the new voucher program have voiced concerns about accountability procedures. Donald Songy, a representative of the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents, questioned the provision “that a private school wouldn’t be in trouble unless it scored less than 50, whereas a public school is labeled a failure if it scores less than 65.”
Now millions of tax dollars originally earmarked for Louisiana’s public schools will go to pay for private school tuitions—even if the voucher students in those schools are not achieving academically. Does this voucher program look like it could be the solution to the problem of failing schools in Louisiana?
Regarding Education in Private and Religious Schools Participating in Louisiana’s Voucher Program
It has been reported that most of the 120 educational facilities that will participate in the voucher program are Christian schools. Should citizens of Louisiana be concerned about what is being taught in private and religious schools that their tax dollars are helping to subsidize?
In her article Louisiana’s Bold Bid to Privatize Schools, Simon told of New Living Word—a school in Ruston that is willing to accept the most voucher students—more than 300. The school has a top-ranked basketball team—but no library. Simon explained how the students spend most of their school days “watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms.” She said, “Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.”
Simon also wrote of another school that is planning to make room for potential voucher students: “At Eternity Christian Academy in Westlake, pastor-turned-principal Marie Carrier hopes to secure extra space to enroll 135 voucher students, though she now has room for just a few dozen. Her first- through eighth-grade students sit in cubicles for much of the day and move at their own pace through Christian workbooks, such as a beginning science text that explains ‘what God made’ on each of the six days of creation. They are not exposed to the theory of evolution.”
According to Simon, there are private schools in Louisiana that have been approved to receive state funds that “use social studies texts warning that liberals threaten global prosperity; Bible-based math books that don’t cover modern concepts such as set theory; and biology texts built around refuting evolution.” Many of the schools “rely on Pensacola-based A Beka Book curriculum or Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach their pupils Bible-based ‘facts,’ such as the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of pseudoscience…” (14 Wacky “Facts” Kids Will Learn in Louisiana’s Voucher Schools)
Here are some examples of the “historical facts” that children may learn in these religious schools in Louisiana–courtesy of The Society Pages:
• Humans and dinosaurs co-existed.
• God designed “checks and balances” to prevent environmental crises, so chill! After all, “Roses are red, violets are blue; they both grow better with more CO2.”
• “Rumors” of foreclosures, high unemployment, homelessness, and general misery during the Great Depression are just socialist propaganda.
• Unions just want to destroy the accomplishments of “hardworking Americans.”
• Mormons, Unitarians, and Catholics = bad.
• And then there’s the history of racial/ethnic relations: “God used the ‘Trail of Tears’ to bring many Indians to Christ” and “Through the Negro spiritual, slaves developed patience to wait on the Lord and discovered that the truest freedom is freedom from the bondage of sin.” No, seriously — I didn’t make those up.
Opinions on the School Voucher Program
Education expert Diane Ravitch wrote the following about the school voucher program in Louisiana:
Bear in mind that public education is level-funded, so all these millions for vouchers and charters and online schooling and tutoring will come right out of the public school budget, making classes more overcrowded, closing libraries, shutting down services for students that need them.
Ravitch also wrote about the American Legislative Exchange Council’s links to the movement to privatize public schools in the The Washington Post:
A recent article in the Newark Star-Ledger showed how closely New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s “reform” legislation is modeled on ALEC’s work in education. Wherever you see states expanding vouchers, charters, and other forms of privatization, wherever you see states lowering standards for entry into the teaching profession, wherever you see states opening up new opportunities for profit-making entities, wherever you see the expansion of for-profit online charter schools, you are likely to find legislation that echoes the ALEC model.
ALEC has been leading the privatization movement for nearly 40 years, but the only thing new is the attention it is getting, and the fact that many of its ideas are now being enacted…
Charles P. Pierce wrote the following on his Esquire blog in July:
One wave of education “reform” demands almost continual high-stakes testing. Another wave of education “reform” demands that public money go to private for-profit “schools.” Now, the new wave of education “reform” demands that the high-stakes testing not count in the new for-profit “schools.” But this never has been about education. It’s been about destroying the public schools and protecting the right of people to marinate in superstition and nonsense.
*****
What is your opinion about the movement to privatize public education? What is your opinion about public money being spent to pay student tuitions at religious schools? Do you think that some school “reformers” are out to destroy public schools in this country?
SOURCES
Both Obama and Romney are assaulting public education. Five threats, in particular, stand out (Salon)
Louisiana’s bold bid to privatize schools (Reuters)
Louisiana sets rules for landmark school voucher program (MSNBC/Reuters)
Vouching for Failure in Louisiana Schools (Esquire)
Louisiana sets rules for landmark school voucher program (Chicago Tribune)
Louisiana’s Voucher Standards Called Into Question (TPMMuckraker)
Louisiana vouchers going mainly to church-affiliated schools (The Town Talk)
Despite criticism, Louisiana OKs accountability plan for school vouchers (The Town Talk)
Vouchers and the future of public education (Washington Post)
Ravitch: A primer on the group driving school reform (Washington Post)
14 Wacky “Facts” Kids Will Learn in Louisiana’s Voucher Schools (Mother Jones)
Some of Christie’s biggest bills match model legislation from D.C. group called ALEC (New Jersey On-Line)
A Close Look at Some Evangelical Textbooks (The Society Pages)
Nick,
You haven’t touched an open wound with regard to Obama. Did you read the beginning of my post? I’ll repost it here for you:
“In May, David Sirota penned an article for Salon titled Selling out Public Schools. In it, he said that Mitt Romney, President Obama, and both of our major political parties were ‘assaulting public education.'”
Nick,
OK. Let’s say we made you king and you institute merit pay and no unions.
Now let’s talk about how to educate our kids. Should teachers have Bachelor degrees? Should creationism be taught? Should private schools that receive vouchers meet the same academic standards as public schools?
I have a feeling that you will answer those questions just as I would. Will you indulge me?
nick,
Getting a little testy…are we?
You haven’t provided me with information or a good enough argument for me to change my mind. Show me how the school voucher program is going to improve the education of children in Louisiana.
Poverty, unsafe neighborhoods, family problems, and other societal issues visit themselves upon our public schools. Children bring their problems and worries to school with them. They don’t leave them behind at home. We need to address the problems of poverty, unhealthy and unsafe living conditions, abusive/neglectful parents, etc., and not blame the schools, teachers, and unions for all of our educational woes. We must start to treat the diseases and not just their symptoms. Otherwise, we won’t solve the problem of failing schools.
Competition brings about vast improvement and innovation. Vouchers create competition, which the staus quo abhors. Were you one of those anti competition folks on an earlier thread involving sports?
Let me give you an example of public v private competition. We all are frustrated w/ the DMV but if we want a driver’s license or a car registered, we have no option. So..we go to the DMV and spend hours being waited on by people w/ no competition. being a PI, I dealt w/ the DMV on a daily basis, getting driver’s license info, running plates, etc. So, I had the distinct pleasure of dealing w/ these slow motion people daily. Well, in the new millenium private companies started selling this info from the databases they puchased cheaply en masse. What happened Elaine? Why yes, the DMV set up a system where we PI’s could call in and get the info after setting up an account. And..they assigned good people to this who weren’t slo motion and quite competent.
If you’re a socialist then competition is an anathema to you. But all right thinking people see clearly that the greatest change and innovation is a direct by product to competition.
Your failure to respond to my comments about President Obama tells me I may have touched an open wound.
If you go back I stated @ the outset of this discussion I knew your mind would not be changed. Geez!
As to your question, my answer is no. The rich ones do just fine. Do you have a lot of experience w/ inner city schools? Poor rural schools?
Nick,
Is the discussion becoming tedious for you because you can’t convince many of us that public money should not pay student tuition to private/religious schools that aren’t required to meet the same educational standards as public schools?
Question: Do you believe that every public school in this country is failing its students and needs to be reformed?
Nick,
You’re assuming something that is not a fact–that I don’t think our educational system needs to change. I do. One of the things that I think is destroying the educational process in our public schools is high stakes testing. Those tests were brought to us in Massachusetts as part of school reform.
You say our current educational system much change–yet you have no problem with public money paying for tuition to private and religious schools that don’t have to meet the same educational standards as public schools. Some of these voucher schools teach creation “science.” I fail to see how schools that aren’t required to teach what is in a state’s educational framework and that often employ teachers who may not be college educated or hold a teaching certificate would be better educational institutions than public schools.
Another thing: There are thousands of public schools in this country that provide their students with an excellent education. Those schools don’t need to be “reformed.”
I noted the following in an earlier comment. I think it bears repeating:
“Our schools are a reflection of our society. We should address the many societal problems that are the causes of failing schools. I believe that early childhood educational programs for children who live in poverty and/or crime-infested neighborhoods would be one attempt at addressing those problems.”
Failing schools are a symptom of one of the maladies of our society. Address the problem/malady–don’t destroy public education in this country. Sending children to private and religious schools on the tax payers’ dime won’t cure the problems.
Curious, This thread is getting tedious. But, here’s a brief synopsis. When Obama and Duncan created Race to The Top some states took it seriously as a way to change and get more $’s to improve their schools. Many states scoffed @ the Race to The Top, presumably Elaine being among them. I live in Wi. where the teachers union is very strong and they simply thumbed their noses. Tenn. set up a system wherein 35% of merit of merit pay would be tied to test scores. Principal evaluations and other criteria, determined by a 15 person panel[including teachers] would set the other criteria. There are subjects not tested and so a personalized criteria is needed.
Curious, as I just said to Elaine, this is what Obama promised in 2008. Vote him out if you don’t like it. The teachers knew Hillary would not have rocked their boat, that’s why they went all in w/ their dollars for her during the 2008 primaries. Elections have consequences.
Elaine, You don’t need to limit your polemics to just Bill And Melinda Gates. Go after the deceased Steve Jobs. He was even more adamant on the need for a new paradigm. When The Gates, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama, and Arne Duncan as well as other intelligent, caring people are saying your system must change fundamentally, does it not mean anything to you? I do love your passion, Elaine. That’s not bu%ls&it. However, it saddens me that it is focused on a losing system that is changing, righteously so, whether you can abide it or not. This was a big part of the “change” Obama spoke about in his2008 campaign. And, unlike a lot of issues, he actually followed through on it. I assume you voted for him, and will again.
Nick,
Elaine, one terrific blogger, has offered me some very good advice – much better than me just flipping out* at the mention of a Tennessee merit pay program about which I know nothing.
So Nick, will you please explain the Tennessee merit plan and offer support for how it is improving education for Tennessee kids?
*Tennessee: The state that just recently passed the “Gateway to Sexual Activity Bill”.
School For Scandal: The Louisiana Voucher Plan Just Gets Worse And Worse – And Your State May Be Next
Aug 13, 2012 by Rob Boston in Wall of Separation
http://www.au.org/blogs/wall-of-separation/school-for-scandal-the-louisiana-voucher-plan-just-gets-worse-and-worse-and
Excerpt:
Meanwhile, the Monroe News Star has reported that state officials are hard at work to make the playing field as tilted as possible toward private schools. Starting this year, Louisiana public schools will use a “Common Core Curriculum” that is widely acknowledged to be more challenging. Private schools are free to ignore it.
The newspaper reported that private schools applying to the program must complete a form requesting “name, email and physical address and phone number of the school, whether the principal is certified, an estimated number of students, a mission statement, goals and objectives, daily schedules for pre-kindergarten through high school and a school calendar and projected student enrollment for each grade.”
That’s it. They aren’t required to provide information about what they plan to teach. As a result, schools like this one run by a man who heads up several dubious non-profit groups and calls himself a “prophet” are raking in taxpayer money.
Perhaps the most striking difference between the core curriculum and what many private schools teach will occur in science classes. Under the core curriculum, students will start leaning about evolution in the fourth grade, and it will be especially stressed in high school classes.
Religious schools that receive vouchers are under no obligation to teach evolution. In fact, many of the fundamentalist academies plan to teach creationism instead. Louisiana was subjected to international ridicule when word got out that some schools taking part in the voucher plan are using a biology textbook produced by a fundamentalist Christian publisher arguing that the legendary Loch Ness Monster in Scotland might be a living dinosaur, whose existence disproves evolution.
Some of you might be tempted to shake your heads and say, “That’s Louisiana!” I’d urge you not be complacent. The same big-bucks voucher advocates who brought Louisiana to this point are eyeing other states as well.
A voucher front group run by multi-millionaire Betsy DeVos is currently on the move in Wisconsin, looking to expand that state’s voucher plan – even though numerous studies have shown that it does not boost the academic performance of children taking part.
Voucher plans nearly passed this year in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; both states expect to see a re-match next year. Other states are also being targeted.
If you don’t want your state’s educational system to look like Louisiana’s, you’d better sit up and take notice. The public schools are under assault from the well-funded forces of sectarian zeal and privatization. They need your help.
DeVos team: Race-baiters, Women-haters
Right wing hopes Detroit joins effort
By Bankole Thompson
The Michigan Citizen
http://michigancitizen.com/devos-team-racebaiters-womenhaters-p3348-1.htm
Excerpt:
DETROIT — Republican billionaire candidate Dick DeVos does not say he is Republican in his TV ads, appearing as a successful businessman who is poised to turn around Michigan’s ailing economy if elected governor.
But a look at DeVos’ background, and the makeup of his campaign inner circle reveals a candidate that has bankrolled ultraconservative causes, worked to privatize public education and pursued ideological goals aligned with the religious right.
With a ‘money is might’ philosophy, and poll numbers in his favor, the GOP gubernatorial flag bearer is defining himself as a political novice with business acumen to solve the state’s economic woes.
“Dick DeVos is not a political novice. He and his family have spent more money on politics than on any other form of philanthropy,” said Rich Robinson executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network. “Whatever it is that he has done, he has not supported public education. I think it is important for people to know that.”
DeVos and anti-public education
Betsy DeVos, wife of candidate DeVos and former head of the Michigan Republican Party, now heads one of the biggest PACs in the country, All Children Matter. The PAC, which prides itself as an educational reform group, is based in Virginia but operates from Grand Rapids. It spends thousands of dollars in political campaigns around the country to promote vouchers and charter schools.
In 2004, All Children Matter, according to MCFN data, spent more than $8.2 million in at least 10 states including Florida, South Carolina, Washington and Virginia in its “education choice” campaigns against public education.
On its website, an All Children Matter report reads: “Works in some states to communicate with citizens about issues that are important to them, encouraging them to contact their candidates and legislators about these important issues.”
Education choice has been the signature issue for the DeVos family for years now. They promote tax credits for private and parochial school tuition and charter schools, Robinson said.
In 2000, the DeVos family spent more than $5 million on the failed voucher campaign in Michigan.
“Given that education is a complicated issue I think voters should be aware of what his [DeVos] track record is,” Robinson said. “This is an important preview of what will happen if he is elected governor.”
Presently an education bill in South Carolina called “Put Parents in Charge” is languishing in the General Assembly where Democrats and some Republicans have opposed the legislation. The bill would create tax cuts for middle and upper class parents of children attending private schools.
According to Metro Beat, an online news site in South Carolina, All Children Matter spent $150,000 in the campaigns of GOP political candidates Steve Parker in Spartanburg and Ken Wingate in Columbia for their endorsement of this school choice legislation.
“Donors include such six-figure contributors as Richard DeVos, Jr. [Dick DeVos] of Michigan who has used his Amway fortune to promote school choice, and John Walton of Arkansas, son of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton and one of five billionaires,” Metro Beat reported. “The tenor of the campaign revealed the sharp ideological bent of All Children Matter. For many years, ultraconservative groups and free-market economists have pursued an agenda to privatize public education in the United States to pursue their ideological goals. This necessarily requires a broad-based campaign to discredit public schools, a strategy that has been present in the current struggle in South Carolina.”
Elaine,
There is another player in Michigan and the heritage academys’… I forget the name, but he along with DeVos, Betsy specifically invested great resources in getting charter schools…….guided under the tutelage of one of the state universities……… One of my daughters wanted to work there…… Thank goodness she was offered employment in a very good public school system….. And not to bad of pay with benefits……
Why Should We Reform Education Using Microsoft’s Failed Ranking Policies?
By Nicole Belle
July 5, 2012
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/why-should-we-reform-education-using-
Few people have been as visible as Bill and Melinda Gates on the subject of education reform. Certainly, in our society, where having a large portfolio trumps any possible personal failings, Bill Gates is held up by the mainstream media as someone leading the charge for innovation in education reform.
But is he?
Gates has been advocating for the adoption of a ranking policy for teachers and schools that has been in use at Microsoft for years. Essentially, it assumes that in any team of ten, there would be two that would get great reviews, seven would get mediocre reviews and one would get a poor/terrible review. Are you sensing the inherent issue with these preconceived rankings? The employees at Microsoft can tell you:
Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
That’s right. The very policy being pushed to “fix” education is the exact same one that has damaged Microsoft’s ability to innovate and lead.
And it’s the same policy that Andrew Cuomo has adopted for New York schools. Diane Ravitch, who has been trying to stem this tide of using business principles to reform education, has some questions as well:
I am puzzled by what I read in the column cited here. I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.
I am puzzled by their funding of groups that are promoting an anti-teacher, anti-public education agenda in state after state. And I am puzzled by the hundreds of millions they have poured into the quixotic search to guarantee that every single classroom has a teacher that knows how to raise test scores.
Sometimes I wonder if anyone at the Gates Foundation has any vision of what good education is, or whether they think that getting higher test scores is the same as getting a good education. I wonder if they ever think about their role in demoralizing and destabilizing the education profession.
I don’t think there is anyone who will deny that we do need education reform. We are matriculating young people who are functionally illiterate and unable to think critically. And that is the generation charged with caring for us as we age. But rather than work in a way that demoralizes and demonizes teachers, we ought to be focusing on ways to raise and inspire every student.
Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on PA Public Schools
Rachel Tabachnick
Wed Apr 20, 2011
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/20/232844/831
Excerpt:
A new wave of school voucher bills is sweeping the nation, which would allow public education funds to be used in private or parochial schools. As with past waves of voucher initiatives, these new bills are largely promoted and funded by the billionaire DeVos family and a core group of wealthy pro-privatization supporters. They include Pennsylvania SB-1, soon coming to a vote in the PA Senate, and the “Vouchers-for-All” bill approved by the Florida Senate Education Committee on April 14. Betsy DeVos is at the helm of organizations that have set the stage for both bills, but you would never know it based on the propaganda being marketed to Pennsylvanians. Even if you are from another state, keep reading. Chances are a Betsy DeVos-led campaign is already at work in your state or will be there soon.
The DeVos family is recognized as one of the top national contributors to the Republican Party, free market policy institutes, and Religious Right organizations. Many of their previous attempts at using voucher initiatives to privatize the nation’s public schools have been transparent. Recent campaigns have been more covert and are camouflaged behind local efforts described as grass roots and bipartisan.
Pennsylvanians should not be deceived. Regardless of where one stands on the issue of school choice, behind the curtain of this effort is an interconnected network of right wing think tanks and billionaire donors, funded by foundations including those of the DeVos and Koch families and the Scaife, Allegheny, and Carthage Foundations of Pennsylvania’s own Richard Mellon Scaife. The leaders of many of these DeVos/Koch/Scaife-funded institutes openly voice their ideological objections to all forms of public education. Some even proudly display their support for a proclamation posted at the Alliance for Separation of School and State, which reads,
“I proclaim publicly that I favor ending government involvement in education.”
Years have been spent developing and promoting schemes to privatize public education. The report “Voucher Veneer: the Deeper Agenda to Privatize Public Education” by People For the American Way (PFAW), quotes Joseph Bast, President and CEO of the Koch/Scaife/Walton-funded Heartland Institute,
“The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.”
Dick DeVos advocates “stealth” strategy, Heritage Foundation, December 3, 2002
Blackwater In-Law DeVos outlines “stealth” plot against Public Education
May 4, 2011
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos-outlines-stealth-plot-against-Public-Education
Excerpt:
“The DeVos family crusade to eradicate public education… [is] being marketed as a solution to save public schools, but the big donors are tied to right-wing think tanks that openly advocate, and strategize, the end of public education. How can vouchers improve public schools if the people mobilizing the movement intend to eradicate public education? Regardless of your personal stance on “school choice,” it’s important to know who is behind the voucher movement and the agenda they don’t share with the public or advertise in their media campaigns.” – from Rachel Tabachnick’s report, Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on PA Public Schools
Last weekend, while revisiting a 2007 Alternet story I did covering the war on public education, The link between Private Armies & Private Schools?, I discovered an astonishing video of a speech Amway fortune heir Richard DeVos gave on December 3, 2002, at the Heritage Foundation (which DeVos money funds.) Dick DeVos is brother-in-law to private mercenary army Blackwater’s founder Eric Prince (hence my Alternet title.)
In the speech, DeVos laid out the next decade’s plan for the continuing right-wing assault on public education but warned his Heritage audience that “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities.”
From here, I’ll let Rachel Tabachnick, who has been covering the ongoing war on Public Education in depth, provide context for Richard DeVos’ Heritage speech. If you have not yet read the two reports Tabachnick links to in her introductory paragraph, I urge you to do so:
Strategy for Privatizing Public Schools Spelled out by Dick DeVos in 2002 Heritage Foundation Speech
Right-wing think tanks have determined that school vouchers are key to eradicating public education and Dick and Betsy DeVos lead the way in execution of the well-funded plan. The money is tracked in two extensive reports on Talk2action [1 and 2].
“We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,” Dick DeVos warned in a December 2002 speech at the Heritage Foundation. DeVos was introduced by former Secretary of Education William Bennett and then proposed a stealth strategy for promoting school vouchers in state legislatures. DeVos and his wife Betsy had already spent millions promoting voucher initiatives that were soundly rejected by voters. Pro-privatization think tanks had concluded that vouchers were the most politically viable way to “dismantle” public schools; the DeVoses persevered. Dick DeVos introduced his 2002 Heritage Foundation audience to a covert strategy to provide “rewards or consequences” to state legislators, learning from the activities of the Great Lake Education Project (GLEP) initiated by Betsy DeVos. Vouchers should be promoted by local “grass roots” entities and could not be “viewed as only a conservative idea.” DeVos added, “This has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible.”
Ten years later, the DeVos stealth strategy has been implemented and is winning the voucher war in several states. As recommended to the Heritage Foundation in 2002, the public face of the movement is bipartisan and grass roots, and millions of dollars are poured into media firms to reinforce that image. However, behind the scenes the movement continues to be led by the DeVoses, and the funding used to provide “rewards or consequences” for state legislators continues to be raised from a small group of mega-donors.
Great links Elaine. Bill Gates of all people!
Behind Grass-Roots School Advocacy, Bill Gates
By SAM DILLON
Published: May 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/education/22gates.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Excerpt:
INDIANAPOLIS — A handful of outspoken teachers helped persuade state lawmakers this spring to eliminate seniority-based layoff policies. They testified before the legislature, wrote briefing papers and published an op-ed article in The Indianapolis Star.
They described themselves simply as local teachers who favored school reform — one sympathetic state representative, Mary Ann Sullivan, said, “They seemed like genuine, real people versus the teachers’ union lobbyists.” They were, but they were also recruits in a national organization, Teach Plus, financed significantly by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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.
“We’ve learned that school-level investments aren’t enough to drive systemic changes,” said Allan C. Golston, the president of the foundation’s United States program. “The importance of advocacy has gotten clearer and clearer.”
The foundation spent $373 million on education in 2009, the latest year for which its tax returns are available, and devoted $78 million to advocacy — quadruple the amount spent on advocacy in 2005. Over the next five or six years, Mr. Golston said, the foundation expects to pour $3.5 billion more into education, up to 15 percent of it on advocacy.
Given the scale and scope of the largess, some worry that the foundation’s assertive philanthropy is squelching independent thought, while others express concerns about transparency. Few policy makers, reporters or members of the public who encounter advocates like Teach Plus or pundits like Frederick M. Hess of the American Enterprise Institute realize they are underwritten by the foundation.
“It’s Orwellian in the sense that through this vast funding they start to control even how we tacitly think about the problems facing public education,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who said he received no financing from the foundation.
Mr. Hess, a frequent blogger on education whose institute received $500,000 from the Gates foundation in 2009 “to influence the national education debates,” acknowledged that he and others sometimes felt constrained. “As researchers, we have a reasonable self-preservation instinct,” he said. “There can be an exquisite carefulness about how we’re going to say anything that could reflect badly on a foundation.”
“Everybody’s implicated,” he added.
Indeed, the foundation’s 2009 tax filing runs to 263 pages and includes about 360 education grants. There are the more traditional and publicly celebrated programmatic initiatives, like financing charter school operators and early-college high schools. Then there are the less well-known advocacy grants to civil rights groups like the Education Equality Project and Education Trust that try to influence policy, to research institutes that study the policies’ effectiveness, and to Education Week and public radio and television stations that cover education policies.
The foundation paid a New York philanthropic advisory firm $3.5 million “to mount and support public education and advocacy campaigns.” It also paid a string of universities to support pieces of the Gates agenda. Harvard, for instance, got $3.5 million to place “strategic data fellows” who could act as “entrepreneurial change agents” in school districts in Boston, Los Angeles and elsewhere. The foundation has given to the two national teachers’ unions — as well to groups whose mission seems to be to criticize them.
REPORT: Meet The Billionaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools And Kill Public Education
By Zaid Jilani on May 21, 2011
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/21/168363/billionaires-privatize-education/
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. A few days later, the Wisconsin state Assembly vastly expanded school vouchers, freeing up tax dollars even for private religious schools. GOP legislators in the Pennsylvania Senate say they have the votes to pass a sweeping voucher bill of their own. And on Capitol Hill, House Republicans successfully revived Washington, D.C.’s voucher system after it was killed off two years ago.
This rapid expansion of voucher programs — which undermine and undercut public education by funnelling taxpayer money to private schools — is remarkable. After all, 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.
Yet 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.”
ThinkProgress has prepared this report to expose this network and give Americans the knowledge they need to fight back against this assault on the nation’s public schools. Here are some of the top millionaires and their organizations waging war on our education system:
– Dick DeVos: The DeVos family has been active on education issues since the 1990′s. The son of billionaire Amway co-founder Richard DeVos, Sr., DeVos unsuccessfully ran for governor of the state of Michigan, spending $40 million, the most ever spent in a gubernatorial race in the state. In 2002, Dick DeVos sketched out a plan to undermine public education before the Heritage Foundation, explaining that education advocates should stop using the term “public schools” and instead call them “government schools.” He has poured millions of dollars into right-wing causes, including providing hundreds of thousands of dollars into seed money for numerous “school choice” groups, including Utah’s Parents for Choice in Education, which used its PAC money to elect pro-voucher politicians.
– Betsy DeVos: The wife of Dick DeVos, she also coincidentally happens to be the sister of Erik Prince, the leader of Xe, the mercenary outfit formerly known as Blackwater and is a former chair of the Republican Party of Michigan. Mrs. DeVos has been much more aggressive than her husband, pouring her millions into numerous voucher front groups across the country. She launched the pro-voucher group All Children Matter in 2003, which spent $7.6 million in its first year alone to impact state races related vouchers, winning 121 out of 181 races in which it intervened. All Children Matter was found breaking campaign finance laws in 2008, yet has still not paid its $5.2 million fine. She has founded and/or funded a vast network of voucher front groups, including Children First America, the Alliance for School Choice, Kids Hope USA, and the American Federation for Children.
– American Federation for Children (AFC): AFC made headlines recently when it brought together Govs. Scott Walker (R-WI) and Tom Corbett (R-PA) and former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee at a major school choice event in Washington, D.C. AFC is perhaps the most prominent of all the current voucher groups, having been founded in January 2010 by Betsy DeVos. Working together with its PAC of the same name and the 501c(3) organization also lead by DeVos, the Alliance for School Choice, it has served as a launching pad for school choice legislation across the country. AFC made its mark in Wisconsin by pouring thousands of dollars into the state legislative races, donating $40,000 in the service of successfully electing voucher advocate Rep. Kathy Bernier (R) and donating similar amounts to elect Reps. Andre Jacque (R), John Klenke (R), Tom Larson (R), Howard Marklein (R), Erik Severson (R), and Travis Tranel (R). DeVos front group All Children Matter also donated thousands to many of these same voucher advocates. Altogether, AFC spent $820,000 in Wisconsin during the last election, making it the 7th-largest single PAC spender during the election (behind several other mostly right-wing groups with similar agendas).
– Alliance for School Choice (ASC): The Alliance for School Choice is another DeVos front group founded to promote vouchers and serves as the education arm of AFC. In 2008, the last date available for its financial disclosures, its total assets amounted to $5,467,064. DeVos used the organization not only for direct spending into propaganda campaigns, but to give grants to organizations with benign-sounding names so that they could push the radical school choice agenda. For example, in 2008 the organization gave $530,000 grant to the “Black Alliance for Educational Options” in Washington, D.C. and a $433,736 grant to the “Florida School Choice Fund.” This allowed DeVos to promote her causes without necessarily revealing her role. But it isn’t just the DeVos family that’s siphoning money into the Alliance for School Choice and its many front group patrons. Among its other wealthy funders include the Jaquelin Hume Foundation (which gave $75,000 in 2008 and $100,000 in 2006), the brainchild of one of an ultra-wealthy California businessman who brought Ronald Reagan to power, the powerful Wal Mart Foundation (which gave $100,000 in 2005, the Chase Foundation of Virginia (which gave $9,000 in 2007, 2008, and the same amount in 2009), which funds over “supports fifty nonprofit libertarian/conservative public policy research organizations,” and hosts investment banker Derwood Chase, Jr. as a trustee, the infamous oil billionaire-driven Charles Koch Foundation ($10,000 in 2005), and the powerful Wal Mart family’s Walton Family Foundation (more than $3 million over 2004-2005).
– Bill and Susan Oberndorf: This Oberndorfs use their fortune, gained from Bill’s position as the managing director of the investment firm SPO Partners, to funnel money to a wide variety of school choice and corporate education reform groups. In 2009, their Bill and Susan Oberndorf Foundation gave $376,793 to AFC, $5,000 to the Center for Education Reform, and $50,000 to the Brighter Choice Foundation. Additionally, Bill Oberndorf gave half a million dollars to the school choice front group All Children Matter between 2005 and 2007. At a recent education panel, Bill Oberndorf was credited with giving “tens of millions” of dollars of his personal wealth to the school choice movement, and said that the passage of the Indiana voucher law was the “gold standard” for what should be done across America.
– The Walton Family Foundation (WFF):The Wal Mart-backed WFF is one of the most powerful foundations in the country, having made investments in 2009 totaling over $378 million. In addition to financing a number of privately-managed charter schools itself, the foundation showered ASC with millions of dollars in 2009. It also gave over a million dollars to the New York-based Brighter Choice Foundation, half a million dollars to the Florida School Choice Fund, $105,000 to the Foundation for Educational Choice, $774,512 to the Friends of Educational Choice, $400,000 to School Choice Ohio, and gave $50,000 to the Piton Foundation to promote a media campaign around the Colorado School Choice website — all in 2009 alone. WFF’s push for expanding private school education and undermining traditional public schools was best summed up by John Walton’s words in an interview in 2000. An interviewer asked him, “Do you think there’s money to be made in education?” Walton replied, “Absolutely. I think it will offer a reasonable return for investors.” (He also did vigorously argue in the same interview that he does not want to abolish public education).
The wealthy families and powerful corporate-backed foundations presented here are just a sampling of some of the forces currently taking aim at public education. By demonizing traditional public schools and the teachers that staff them, this corporate education movement is undermining a very basic aspect of our democracy: a public commons that provides true opportunity for all, no matter what their background or socioeconomic status.
While the goals of the figures in this movement are varied, their assault on our public education system is one and the same. Joseph Bast, the president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, explained his own thinking about vouchers once, saying, “The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.” It’s up to Americans to protect their schools, teachers, kids, and communities from that fate.