Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In recent years, we have heard and read a lot about the failure of public schools in the United States. “Our schools are failing” has almost become a mantra with members of the media, many of our politicians, and the advocates of school reform. I have seen few people who have questioned the assertions made by the media, elected officials, and school reformers that schools in this country are not adequately educating our youth and that our educational system is a total and abject failure.
Many of those who criticize our public education system offer charter schools and the privatization of public schools as solutions to the “education problem” in this country.
I’m a retired public school educator. I have known and am friends with many current and former public school teachers. I know that there are many fine classroom practitioners working in our public schools today…and many excellent schools where our children receive a quality education. I am aware that there are also many schools where children may not be receiving the highest quality education. (What often go unmentioned in the media are the real reasons—including poverty—why some schools in this country may be failing.)
One problem with the “our schools are failing” mantra—as I see it—is that all our schools are lumped together in one basket labeled “failing.” How did this come to be? Do we Americans really believe that NO public schools in this country provide their students with an adequate education? Do we believe that all schools need to be reformed? If not, do we believe that even the schools which are actually doing an estimable job of educating their students need to be reformed?
I think it is time we start taking a good look at the individuals and organizations that are behind the push to establish thousands of charter schools and to use taxpayer money to fund private and religious schools as the means of raising the quality of education in this country.
ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council)
Last May, education historian Diane Ravitch wrote the following about one group that has been driving the school reform movement:
Since the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many states, there has been an explosion of legislation advancing privatization of public schools and stripping teachers of job protections and collective bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from public school teachers.
This outburst of anti-public school, anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded in 1973, ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state legislators. Its hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate interests in every sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the environment, the economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts model legislation that conservative legislators take back to their states and introduce as their own “reform” ideas. ALEC is the guiding force behind state-level efforts to privatize public education and to turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any reason. The ALEC agenda is today the “reform” agenda for education.
Ravitch continued:
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. Just last week, the Michigan House of Representatives expanded the number of cyber charters that may operate in the state, even though the academic results for such online schools are dismal.
ALEC Exposed provides a wealth of information about how—through ALEC—“corporations, ideologues, and their politician allies voted to spend public tax dollars to subsidize private K-12 education and attack professional teachers and teachers’ unions…” (You can find the information in Privatizing Public Education, Higher Ed Policy, and Teachers–the ALEC report prepared by The Center for American Democracy.)
Michelle Rhee and StudentsFirst
In addition to ALEC, there is another organization called StudentsFirst that has been helping to spearhead the effort to “reform” our public schools. According to Stephanie Simon, Michelle Rhee, founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, has “emerged as the leader of an unlikely coalition of politicians, philanthropists, financiers and entrepreneurs who believe the nation’s $500 billion-a-year public education system needs a massive overhaul.” Simon added that Rhee, the former chancellor of the D.C. public schools, “has vowed to raise $1 billion” for StudentsFirst, and “forever break the hold of teachers unions on education policy.”
Simon continued:
StudentsFirst has its own political action committee (PAC), its own SuperPAC, and a staff of 75, including a cadre of seasoned lobbyists Rhee sends from state to state as political battles heat up. She has flooded the airwaves with TV and radio ads in a half dozen states weighing new policies on charter schools, teacher assessment and other hot-button issues.
To her supporters, Rhee is a once-in-a-generation leader who has the smarts and the star power to make a difference on one of the nation’s most intractable public policy issues.
But critics say Rhee risks destroying the very public schools she aims to save by forging alliances with political conservatives, evangelical groups and business interests that favor turning a large chunk of public education over to the private sector. She won’t disclose her donors, but public records indicate that they include billionaire financiers and wealthy foundations.
In January the National Opportunity to Learn Campaign published its review of Rhee’s StudentsFirst State Policy Report Card for 2013:
Here’s an excerpt from the summary of the campaign’s review:
On Monday, the pro-privatization education group StudentsFirst, led by former D.C. public schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, released a State Policy Report Card, ranking states and giving each a letter grade based on their implementation of a slew of education reform policies. Rather than focus on issues facing students and families, particularly those affected by unequal access to school resources, the policy benchmarks in the new report reveal StudentsFirst’s obsession with charter schools and de-professionalizing the teaching profession. The report pushes policies that are either untested or disproven — but happen to be welcome in the halls of right-wing think tanks and politicians.
The National Opportunity to Learn Campaign listed five reasons why the StudentsFrirst Report Card is “a veritable wish list for privatization advocates and a recipe for failure for everyone else”:
1. Ironically, It Ignores The Needs of Students
2. It Opposes Personalized and Student-Centered Learning
3. It Argues That We Don’t Have Enough Quality Teachers… While Advocating That We Lower the Bar for Teacher Preparation
4. It Continues the Disastrous High-Stakes Testing Drumbeat
5. It Advocates “Equal Funding” and “Equitable Access” for Charter Corporations and Private Schools, Not Students
The DeVos Family
In May of 2011, Rachel Tabachnick wrote an article for AlterNet about the DeVos family, a wealthy family that has “remained largely under the radar, while leading a stealth assault on America’s schools” that has the “potential to do away with public education as we know it.”
Quoting Tabachnick:
Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But “school choice,” as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.
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.
According to Tabachnick, the Devoses, who are big contributors to the Republican Party, spent millions of dollars “promoting the failed voucher initiative in Michigan in 2000.” Following that defeat, Tabachnick claims that the family decided to alter its strategy.
Tabachnick:
Instead of taking the issue directly to voters, they would support bills for vouchers in state legislatures. In 2002 Dick DeVos gave a speech on school choice at the Heritage Foundation. After an introduction by former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett, DeVos described a system of “rewards and consequences” to pressure state politicians to support vouchers. “That has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible,” stated DeVos. He described how his wife Betsy was putting these ideas into practice in their home state of Michigan and claimed this effort has reduced the number of anti-school choice Republicans from six to two. The millions raised from the wealthy pro-privatization contributors would be used to finance campaigns of voucher supporters and purchase ads attacking opposing candidates.
Dick DeVos advocates “stealth” strategy, Heritage Foundation, December 3, 2002
Last April, Daniel Denvir wrote an article for City Paper about the push for a school voucher program in the state of Pennsylvania. He said that names on the fliers of “legislative hopefuls” sounded like the names of “homegrown” candidates. He said that a “different picture” emerged when one followed the money:
…that of a statewide campaign, funded by wealthy donors, to stack the Pennsylvania primary battles on April 24 in favor of those supporting school vouchers, which allocate taxpayer funds for private and religious school tuition. The pro-voucher political action committee (PAC) Students First — funded by Pennsylvania hedge-fund managers and American Federation for Children, a Washington, D.C., pro-voucher group headed by Amway heiress and major right-wing donor Betsy DeVos — emerged on the state’s political scene with a bang for the 2010 elections. And they are back to spend big in 2012.
Lawrence Feinberg, co-chairman of the anti-voucher Keystone State Education Coalition, said, “I see a move by essentially a handful of very wealthy people who want to privatize public education for a wide variety of reasons. Not the least of which has to do with crushing labor unions, but they also want tax dollars going to private and religious schools.”
School Reform and The Profit Motive
In his Salon article The Bait and Switch of School “Reform,” David Sirota writes about the profit motive behind some of the reforms being advocated by “Big Money” interests.
Sirota:
As the Texas Observer recently reported in its exposé of one school-focused mega-corporation, “in the past two decades, an education-reform movement has swept the country, pushing for more standardized testing and accountability and for more alternatives to the traditional classroom — most of it supplied by private companies.”
A straightforward example of how this part of the profit-making scheme works arose just a few months ago in New York City. There, Rupert Murdoch dumped $1 million into a corporate “reform” movement pushing to both implement more standardized testing and divert money for education fundamentals (hiring teachers, buying textbooks, maintaining school buildings, etc.) into testing-assessment technology. At the same time, Murdoch was buying an educational technology company called Wireless Generation, which had just signed a lucrative contract with New York City’s school system (a sweetheart deal inked by New York City school official Joel Klein, who immediately went to work for Murdoch.
Such shenanigans are increasingly commonplace throughout America, resulting in a revenue jackpot for testing companies and high tech firms, even though many of their products have not objectively improved student achievement.
At the same time, major banks are reaping a windfall from “reformers’” successful efforts to take public money out of public schools and put it into privately administered charter schools. As the New York Daily News recently reported:
“Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction. The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years…
“The credit can even be piggybacked on other tax breaks for historic preservation or job creation. By combining the various credits with the interest from the loan itself, a lender can almost double his investment over the seven-year period.
“No wonder JPMorgan Chase announced this week it was creating a new $325 million pool to invest in charter schools and take advantage of the New Markets Tax Credit.”
SOURCES
Ravitch: A primer on the group driving school reform (Washington Post)
Activist targeting schools, backed by big bucks (Reuters)
5 Ways Michelle Rhee’s Report Puts Students Last (National Opportunity to Learn Campaign)
Right-Wing Campaign to Privatize Public Ed Takes Hold in Pennsylvania (AlterNet)
Big corporate money in support of school vouchers hits primary races statewide. Will it tip the scales in Philly? (City Paper)
The bait and switch of school “reform” (Salon)
The Deep Pockets Behind Education Reform (Forbes)
Privatizing Public Education, Higher Ed Policy, and Teachers (The Center for American Democracy)
Pro-Voucher Astroturfing: Campaigns Across Nation Coordinated by DeVos, Funded by a Few Mega-Donors
Rachel Tabachnick
Sun Apr 24, 2011
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/24/22559/1547
Excerpt:
Part Two – Indiana
In addition to the millions spent in Pennsylvania, over $4.6 million dollars was raised by the Indiana affiliate of the Betsy DeVos-led pro-voucher organizations prior to the 2010 elections, all from 13 mega-donors ($5.8 million for the year). The Indiana PAC money also funded campaigns in Florida, Georgia, Wisconsin and other states.
The Indiana state senate passed a sweeping school voucher bill on Thursday, April 21, following an intensive crusade by the Betsy DeVos-led American Federation For Children and affiliated organizations. The blitz campaigns in Indiana and other states are similar to the one in Pennsylvania (described in detail in the previous report). A small core group of donors, ideologically opposed to public education, contribute millions of dollars to the pro-voucher movements in states across the nation. The massive funding and distribution of the funds around the nation is a classic case of astroturfing, creating the illusion that there is a spontaneous wave of grass roots and bipartisan support for vouchers.
Borrowing the definition from Sourcewatch, astroturf lobbying “refers to apparently grassroots-based citizen groups or coalitions that are primarily conceived, created and/or funded by corporations, industry trade associations, political interests or public relations firms.”
The pro-voucher astroturf model is being repeated throughout the country:
— DeVos-led organizations fund a local entity and political action committee (PAC) in the state.
–Funding comes from a few mega-donors who make contributions in one location. These funds are then moved to non-profits and PACs in other states, obscuring the identity of the small group of original donors. (This report focuses on the affiliated PAC in Indiana which had over $4.6 million in receipts from 13 donors prior to the 2010 election, and sent most of the funds to six other states.) The pro-voucher 501(C)(3) nonprofits across the nation, which do not directly fund candidates, are also largely funded by the DeVos-led entities.
–Contributions are made primarily to candidates in state and local campaigns, and for advertising, direct mail, and canvassing, helping to promote the illusion of a surge of grass roots support. Funding is spent to commission a poll prior to the legislative vote which shows majority support in the state for school vouchers.
–Funding and advertising support is provided to small group of Democrats who become the face of the movement, promoting the illusion that there is significant bipartisan support.
–Teachers who have spent years in the classroom, teachers’ unions, and opponents of vouchers, are demonized as not caring about urban children and accused of obstructing the altruistic efforts of pro-voucher supporters. The radical privatization agenda of DeVos and wealthy backers is not revealed.
In Pennsylvania millions of dollars were raised from a few donors, and contributed to Students First PAC, an affiliate of American Federation for Children. In turn, this money was donated to the Democratic gubernatorial primary campaign of vocally pro-voucher supporter Anthony H. Williams. Contributions, some as much as $100,000, were also made to other candidates’ campaigns. Attack ads have demonized teachers’ unions as big money “special interests” and claimed legislators opposed to vouchers are being influenced by union contributions. However, the campaign contributions from the DeVos-led entities and affiliates in Pennsylvania dwarfed that of teachers unions, who represent hundreds of thousands of educators. The pro-voucher funding across the nation, on the other hand, can be tracked to a few wealthy individuals and family foundations.
Report Exposes DeVos Plot To Destroy Public Education
4/21/11
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/21/968905/-Report-Exposes-DeVos-Plot-To-Destroy-Public-Education
Excerpt:
The Koch-funded war on labor unions is only part of a larger battle plan. Meet the DeVos-fronted war on public education.
Reasonable people can, of course, disagree over the wisdom of education voucher plans that pay for charter schools, but a new Talk To Action exposé traces financial and organizational ties to show that many of the people behind campaigns for voucher bills coming before state legislatures this Spring don’t want to improve public education; quite the opposite–they want to destroy it.
My colleague Rachel Tabachnick has just released a groundbreaking report that ties voucher initiatives in Pennsylvania, Florida, and elsewhere to right-wing Think Tanks–funded by the DeVos family but also the Koch brothers and foundations of the Scaife, Olin, Bradley, Smith-Richardson, and Walton families–whose leaders have publicly indicated their desire to completely eradicate taxpayer-financed public education.
As the report shows, a central part of the strategy is the use of considerable money to sway key Democratic Party figures to back voucher bills so that support for such bills appears bipartisan, and in Pennsylvania an organization called Students First has played a major role in promoting the push for vouchers, but the DeVos-backed group group is run by a Republican political strategist who served as an aide to President George W. Bush.
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Voucher Advocate Betsy DeVos, Right-Wing Think Tanks Behind Koch-Style Attack on PA Public Schools
Rachel Tabachnick printable version print page Bookmark and Share
Apr 20, 2011
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/4/20/232844/831
Excerpt;
The DeVos family crusade to eradicate public education has targeted Pennsylvania, and a voucher bill may come to a vote in the PA Senate as early as Tuesday. It’s 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.
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.
I don’t know how it happened but somehow I accidentally submitted the previous post before it was completed. Here is the rest of it.:-
There are also some vested interests who want to destroy public education not because it is too good but because they see all functions of government as things which rightly should be providing profitable opportunities for business.
The most powerful force preventing the accurate analysis of the problems that education has I call the single cause fallacy. This states that any serious problem has one and only one cause. To fix the problem one simply identifies this cause and then takes action to mitigate it. However in the case of most serious social problems there are many powerful causes acting in parallel. Supposing one were to take actions that completely suppressed any one of these causes it would make negligible difference. Unfortunately what usually happens is that different advocates only recognize the causes that match their political ideology and the partisans of different causes fight as much to prevent resources being used to target causes other than their favorite as to get resources directed to their choice.
In the anglophone nations, their is a problem with the status or lack of it of teachers represented by this demeaning quote:-
Those who can do, those who can’t teach and those who can’t teach teach others how to teach.
This widespread contempt for teachers makes scapegoating them only too easy. The reason for this contempt comes partly from the bad experience most have at school, so when they leave it it is with a desire to get back at their tormentors. The other cause in the USA at least is that status is based on wealth and earning power. Why would anyone have a vocation for teaching if they could earn more money managing a hedge fund? Teaching is seen by the parents and more importantly by the children as a job for losers. The feminization of the profession also has pernicious effects. I am a baby boomer and when I was at primary(elementary) school in the ’50s it was seen as necessary to avoid being sissy. However most of the teachers were male so that need to adopt masculine values did not interfere with value male students put on the things studied. But now most teachers in both primary and high schools are women and this male need to avoid being seen as girly means a need to treat academic subjects taught by females with contempt.
Some nations, such as those of South East and East Asia are conscious of the fact that they lag behind developed countries in wealth, and the ruling classes in these nations see maximizing the value of human capital as an imperative, thus they support public education that is free and of high quality. China and Taiwan come to mind, in these countries teaching is respected profession, unlike the situation in the UK, the USA and Australia where it is seen as a losers occupation for people too incompetent to find a higher paying job.
In other nations such as those where English is the language the elites see education policy as being about maintaining the privilege hierarchy and preventing upward social mobility that puts pressure on positional goods that are needed for the comfort of the elites. Upward social mobility is seen as a good thing only when it is restricted to the right people. There is in all the anglophone nations an agenda to destroy high quality public education and to make effective education something only available to those who can pay the fees. It’s about restricting access to the the professions to the wealthy and the upper layers of the middle classes.opportunities for private business.
Basically this the same argument that that Tony C has already made. However there may be some proponents of education “refor” who are simply misguided and trapped by sloppy thinking and poor analysis of what problems there are.
There are also some vested interests who want to destroy public education not because it is too good but because they see all functions of government as things which rightly should be providing profitable
Subscribe,
Impeach congress
Barkindog,
I would buy an impeach Scalia button!
The real economic competition between nation states is how fast tthe global corporations can drive their middle classes into subsistence living conditions. Mass public education is a hindrance to such designs. They want training centers, not schools.
Some select history from a former human now a dog who lived through this era in prior life as human.
1948. Harry Truman promoted Fair Labor Standards Act, Voting Rights, desegregation of schools. Strom Thurman led his crew out of the Democratic Convention and formed the Dixecrats. Southerners of his ilk, are no longer Democrats.
1950’s: Ike appoints Earl Warrent to be Supreme Court Chief Justice. “Worst mistake I ever made”, he later says to some RepubliCon savant and fund raiser. Brown v. Board of Education desegregates public schools with all deliberate speed. Ike moves with slow deliberate speed if at all and it takes the next real guy.
1960’s. First Kennedy. He did little in his One Thousand days before getting killed. 1964. LBJ. Lyndon Johnson. The real deal. He pushes through Congress the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In his secret recorded telephone calls revealed by his Library he can be heard lamenting to Senator Eastland, but proudly claiming credit for the reason, the shift in voting patterns in the South, whereby after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, the Republicons will go after and capture the bigot vote.
1968 onward. Republicons skillfully use nuance and code words to capture the white bigot vote in the South and the Northern rednecks by going after faux demons like forced busing. They start in 1963 or so with IMPEACH EARL WARREN. Lee Atwater invents the Southern Strategy. Nixon adopts it, Reagun personifies it. Atwater is Reaguns chief demogogue. Forced busing, all the code words.
Fast foreward to last week in the Supreme Court. Four minions of the Lee Atwater RepubliCon Party are sitting on the Court. Scalia is so dumb and so shallow he almost reverts to the N word. The Voting Rights Act is there to “perpetuate racial entitlements” he says.
Yeah, right, Mister Original Intentionalist.
We need to invoke turnabout is fair play. IMPEACH ANTONIN SCALIA and the Gang of Four. Bumper stickers everywhere.
BDog,
You provided a nice little history lesson. I remember it the same way you do.
Hubert,
It’s not the teachers who usually push the agendas. They are told what to do and which programs to implement by the powers-that-be.
Get rid of the teachers unions that have continually done damage to the whole educational system. Quit pushing so many social agendas in the school system – cut all of that out. Then begin teaching the basics again, which was the original intention of schools in the first place. Then maybe the public schools can get back on track.
Homeschooling and private schooling has been on the rise for a while, which is a clear indicator that the public school system is failing. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this out.
Bruce: How do you keep people in the dark …
Exploit your money. Maybe make the masses pay for schools, by denying public schools the funds to do a decent job. Promote ant-science religion, there is another way. Deny the masses the public infrastructure (like transportation) or anything else that would level the playing field. Make taking the rich to court an insanely expensive proposition, so nobody can do it except the already rich.
The point is to make what SHOULD be the typical experience so expensive that only the elite can afford it.
If you are rich, educating the masses only leads to more competition for your own progeny, that by the simple laws of statistics are typically of only average intelligence, and thus will be out-foxed, out-innovated, and out-worked by the smartest of that truly massive public school crowd.
There is more than just profits at stake, the rich do not want to democratize the opportunities for wealth, that necessarily increases the chances of their wealth legacy being a one or two generation phenomenon.
GOOD public schools are not in their interest, they want the country to raise workers and wage slaves, not people that will be checkmating their spoiled brats in their inherited businesses.
Tony: How do you keep people in the dark when “communication” (for the time being) is so extensive & intensive? Control information. The facts of life are that we are already working in a system of inequality not equality:
Wealth Inequality in America:
‘GOOD public schools are not in their interest, they want the country to raise workers and wage slaves, not people that will be checkmating their spoiled brats in their inherited businesses.’
Tony,
One of the bottom lines of this whole debate. The plutocrats want the public school system to be bad, since their kids go to the best of the private schools.
This is no different that what occurred in medieval times under feudalism.
Bruce,
There’s plenty of information available about this corporate-driven school reform movement. Yet, we hear so little discussion about it in the MSM.
So true Elaine, and the MSM is also under attack. Concentration is across the “boards” and the Newspaper (5th column of democracy) is all but captured by private equity:
http://newsonomics.com/dean-singletons-departure-marks-new-owners-want-for-faster-innovation/
The Demise of Lean Dean Singleton and the Rise of Private Equity
Jan 18, 2011
Dean Singleton worked the deals in corners of the U.S. for decades, building from scratch a major chain, that by circulation (though, not revenue) is probably the second largest in the country. If he was once dismissed by his more patrician peers as Lean Dean, for his lower operating cost philosophy and practices, he did okay for himself, serving as chair of the Newspaper Association of America and now as chair of the Associated Press board.
He expertly used OPM (Other People’s Money) to finance often complex deals, deals that the company’s 2010 bankruptcy filing only partially brought to light. If he was known as Lean Dean, he also became the Count of Clustering. Why not put together groups of contiguous newspaper titles, and then bring basic corporate principles of consolidation to them.”
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But I have deep respect for your work here, it is never too late! I am also hoping to see a communication base between the Educators and the health care community…especially the Nurses. The problem is that it is so insidious and everyone thinks it is a local crisis rather than a literal asset grabbing conquest by monetarists and power politics.
Thank you for your article and it is a breath of fresh air to find someone so truly communicating this demolition of democracy for profit!
Bruce
The Extended Picture:
—————————————————————————–
Published on Thursday, March 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Higher Education Under Attack
by Immanuel Wallerstein
[Excerpt] https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/01-1
…What privatization began to mean throughout the world was several things: One, there began to be institutions of higher education that were established as businesses for profit. Two, public institutions began to seek and obtain money from corporate donors, which began to intrude in the internal governance of the universities. And three, universities began to seek patents for work that researchers at the university had discovered or invented, and thereupon entered as operators in the economy, that is, as businesses.
In a situation in which money was scarce, or at least seemed scarce, universities began to transform themselves into more business-like institutions. This could be seen in two major ways. The top administrative positions of universities and their faculties, which had traditionally been occupied by academics, now began to be occupied by persons whose background was in business and not university life. They raised the money, but they also began to set the criteria of allocation of the money.
There began to be evaluations of whole universities and of departments within universities in terms of their output for the money invested. This might be measured by how many students wished to pursue particular studies, or how esteemed was the research output of given universities or departments. Intellectual life was being judged by pseudo-market criteria. Even student recruitment was being measured by how much money was brought in via alternative methods of recruitment.
And, if this weren’t enough, the universities began to come under attack from a basically anti-intellectual far right current that saw the universities as secular, anti-religious institutions. The university as a critical institution – critical of dominant groups and dominant ideologies – had always met with resistance and repression by the states and the elites. But their powers of survival had always been rooted in their relative financial autonomy based on the low real cost of operation. This was the university of yesteryear, not of today – and tomorrow.”
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/01-1
Thanks, Bruce!
http://peoplesworld.org/public-education-under-attack-say-michigan-school-superintendents/
Public education under attack, say Michigan school superintendents
by: John Rummel
December 6 2012
“ROYAL OAK, Mich. – Republicans are shamefully using the lame duck legislative session to ram through extremist legislation to overhaul public education in radical and dangerous ways. (They are also waging further class warfare by attempting to shackle the states workforce with Right to Work legislation, but that will be the subject of the next article).
How extreme are their bills? They force school districts to sell vacant properties to charter schools; allow charters to selectively cherry pick their students by gender, ethnicity, or other factors and initiate a “parent trigger” to prod parents into demanding their school be converted to a charter.”
(Read More):
http://peoplesworld.org/public-education-under-attack-say-michigan-school-superintendents/
Column – In the Trenches: Public Education Under Attack- A Response to Waiting for Superman
Written By: Susan E. Smith
http://www2.css.edu/app/depts/his/historyjournal/index.cfm?cat=6&art=32
“Is there no one left to defend public education? The attacks grow more ferocious, as the blood is in the political water, so to speak. Who will defend the purveyor of nascent democratic ideals, the socializing force of the rough American prairie frontiers, the facilitator of public, open-minded controversial discussion, and the bulwark of modern scientific advances? Even Secretary of Education Duncan seems to think that the American educational reform must follow an aggressive business-type plan or be doomed to failure. ”
(Read More):
http://www2.css.edu/app/depts/his/historyjournal/index.cfm?cat=6&art=32
Billionaire donors drive anti-teacher, pro-testing education reform agenda
by Laura Clawson
Daily Kos
5/20/12
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/05/20/1092800/-Billionaire-donors-drive-anti-teacher-pro-testing-education-reform-agenda#
Excerpt:
The faces that dominate the education reform debate today—where “education reform” means increased reliance on standardized tests, the results of which are then used to determine the fates of teachers whose job security has been weakened—are people like former Washington, D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee and Harlem Children’s Zone CEO Geoffrey Canada. They are, or can be packaged as, dynamic and visionary, educators who are passionate about kids. But lots of teachers could fit that bill, so why is someone like Michelle Rhee, who has spent very little time in the classroom, so prominent while the average teacher faces cutbacks and scapegoating? The answer, as in so many things, involves money. Not just any money. Billionaire money. Hedge fund money. Goldman Sachs money. Bill Gates money and Walton money. Michelle Rhee and Geoffrey Canada are prominent because they embody a set of ideas attractive to major philanthropists working to remake public education into their own vision of how the world works.
Privatizing Public Schools: Big Firms Eyeing Profits From U.S. K-12 Market
By Stephanie Simon
Reuters | Posted: 08/02/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/private-firms-eyeing-prof_n_1732856.html
Excerpt:
NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Reuters) – The investors gathered in a tony private club in Manhattan were eager to hear about the next big thing, and education consultant Rob Lytle was happy to oblige.
Think about the upcoming rollout of new national academic standards for public schools, he urged the crowd. If they’re as rigorous as advertised, a huge number of schools will suddenly look really bad, their students testing way behind in reading and math. They’ll want help, quick. And private, for-profit vendors selling lesson plans, educational software and student assessments will be right there to provide it.
“You start to see entire ecosystems of investment opportunity lining up,” said Lytle, a partner at The Parthenon Group, a Boston consulting firm. “It could get really, really big.”
Indeed, investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education.
The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors.
Traditionally, public education has been a tough market for private firms to break into — fraught with politics, tangled in bureaucracy and fragmented into tens of thousands of individual schools and school districts from coast to coast.
Now investors are signaling optimism that a golden moment has arrived. They’re pouring private equity and venture capital into scores of companies that aim to profit by taking over broad swaths of public education.
The conference last week at the University Club, billed as a how-to on “private equity investing in for-profit education companies,” drew a full house of about 100.
OUTSOURCING BASICS
In the venture capital world, transactions in the K-12 education sector soared to a record $389 million last year, up from $13 million in 2005. That includes major investments from some of the most respected venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, according to GSV Advisors, an investment firm in Chicago that specializes in education.
The goal: an education revolution in which public schools outsource to private vendors such critical tasks as teaching math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards, said Michael Moe, the founder of GSV.
“It’s time,” Moe said. “Everybody’s excited about it.”
Not quite everyone.
The push to privatize has alarmed some parents and teachers, as well as union leaders who fear their members will lose their jobs or their autonomy in the classroom.
Many of these protesters have rallied behind education historian Diane Ravitch, a professor at New York University, who blogs and tweets a steady stream of alarms about corporate profiteers invading public schools.
Ravitch argues that schools have, in effect, been set up by a bipartisan education reform movement that places an enormous emphasis on standardized test scores, labels poor performers as “failing” schools and relentlessly pushes local districts to transform low-ranked schools by firing the staff and turning the building over to private management.
President Barack Obama and both Democratic and Republican policymakers in the states have embraced those principles. Local school districts from Memphis to Philadelphia to Dallas, meanwhile, have hired private consultants to advise them on improving education; the strategists typically call for a broader role for private companies in public schools.
“This is a new frontier,” Ravitch said. “The private equity guys and the hedge fund guys are circling public education.”