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)
Bruce,
I thought you’d find this article interesting:
How George Orwell might explain school reform
Posted by Valerie Strauss on March 4, 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/03/04/how-george-orwell-might-explain-school-reform/
Excerpt:
Here’s a piece that looks at school reform through the eyes of George Orwell by teacher Chris Gilbert. He has written for the Language Experience Forum Journal, the National Council of Teachers of English’s English Journal, and this blog. He teaches English at a high school and community college in North Carolina.
By Chris Gilbert
While discussing George Orwell’s novel “1984″, I asked my students why we read books written many years ago.
Breaking the silence, one student said that such works offer a glimpse of the past and a contrasting reference point for the present. This response excited me, as I had chosen this classic novel for this very reason: the old would provoke an examination of the new. My students learned that scrutinizing current paradigms is an essential, yet difficult, process; familiarity with surroundings frequently creates cognitive blind spots. Orwell spoke of how the past could be utilized to combat this critical blindness, but he also warned that the controlling majority knew this as well. History is malleable, and those who access and shape it possess power.
This idea is relevant because corporate education reformers deliberately mask history. In fact, their reforms require a forced forgetting, as the public will only embrace irrational notions if opposing ideas are concealed. Orwell’s words (in italics) are used here, as they were in my classroom, to expose misguided narratives and the history they obscure.
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
Market-driven reformers know that history can challenge their agendas, so they disavow past evidence testifying to the significance of poverty and the importance of out-of-school educational factors. The ultimate goal of this “amnesia” is to promote ideologies that weaken public education and create profit opportunities.
Orwell: Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
Reformers such as Jeb Bush and Michelle Rhee relentlessly downplay the educational obstacles resulting from poverty, and they promote the mythic view of impoverishment as something that good schools and teaching can likely overcome. In a recent interview with TIME, Bush was asked, “What’s the role of poverty in education?” He responded, “I would reverse the question: education impacts poverty, not the other way around.” Michelle Rhee has consistently promoted a similar view, saying,
As a teacher…you have to be willing to take personal responsibility for ensuring your children are successful despite obstacles…You can’t say, ‘My students didn’t get any breakfast today,’…or ‘Their electricity got cut off in the house, so they couldn’t do their homework.’
These comments reveal a desire to minimize poverty’s effects, as deprivation is characterized here as an easily surmounted obstacle.
Unfortunately, this is false; poverty matters greatly. While numerous studies have shown that socioeconomic status profoundly influences student achievement, this body of scholarship is crushed under the weight of a new mythology that masks poverty’s importance; additionally, this mask conceals the inequitable funding of schools from property taxes, downplays the physical and emotional consequences of impoverishment, and disregards the interplay of social class, literacy skills, and educational outcomes. This mythmaking shifts the public’s gaze from history to fiction, and an erroneous “truth” is gradually created.
Orwell: Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful…and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
School reform players, politics: A view from the left
http://www.ednewscolorado.org/voices/27156
Editor’s note: This piece was submitted by Angela Engel, the author of the book, “Seeds of Tomorrow; Solutions for Improving our Children’s Education” and the director of Uniting4Kids a new national non-profit promoting quality neighborhood schools through parent, teacher and student leadership.
National interests are investing heavily in Colorado’s school board races. The players are many, the politics ugly, and the possibilities well…
Excerpt:
The players
Stand for Children established a Colorado Chapter in 2010 in order to push legislation that tied teacher evaluations to test scores. Their investors include The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and New Profit Inc. – a “national venture philanthropy fund.” Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, is a newer organization that promotes charter schools, alternative certification training, and performance pay, and in addition promote mayoral control. ACE Scholarshipsoriginated in Colorado in 2000. ACE members made significant campaign contributions to the Douglas County school board responsible for directing private dollars away from some of the most high-performing public schools in the state. Several other funders have also joined the ranks, and the one thing they all have in common are trustees and board members with corporate connections and very deep pockets.
The politics
So why are corporate executives and wealthy entrepreneurs suddenly interested in public education? Because they like to make money and recent education reforms along with “new tax credits” and Education Management Organizations, EMO’s, have provided ample opportunity to make a dollar. Here’s how they do it:
Private charters and online schools – Under the guise of failing test scores, Education Management Organizations co-opt community schools or aggressively market for online students. COVA, Colorado Virtual Academy managed by the Virginia based company K12 projected growth in excess of $100 million last year. It’s fair to note that many charter schools are district managed and publicly controlled. Still, Colorado policy makers have created a double standard favoring charter schools. Education News Colorado reported that nearly half of online student enrollments leave before finishing the year. The majority of programs are low performing and operating outside of the accountability mandates required of public schools. Online and charter schools can hire non-licensed and non-certified employees.
Alternative Licensing Programs – have become big business. Teach for America (TFA), reported earnings in 2009 of more than $269 million. Their tax documents list their net assets at $261.5 million. This past July the Walton Family Foundation committed $49.5 million to double the number of Teach For America candidates throughout the United States; $3.1 million was designated for Colorado. Senator Michael Bennet, DFER “Reformer of the Month” and recipient of nearly $500,000 in DFER campaign contributions, is sponsoring the GREAT Act, which calls for taxpayer dollars to fund private revenue generating alternative certification models. In a “Statement of Principles to fix the Elementary Secondary Education Act,” the Senator stated: ”We also must support programs like Teach for America…” TFA prepares college graduates in a five-week summer training program. While their results are mediocre at best, TFA candidates are attractive to budget strapped districts. The majority of candidates don’t last and the two year revolving door of cheap labor keeps costs associated with salaries and benefits low. The two year contracts and building transfers allow TFA candidates to maneuver around teacher effectiveness mandates and the accountability required of real teachers.
Tests, text books, and more tests – While education experts and innovators call for personalized learning and differentiated models of schooling, groups like Stand for Children and DFER, support national standards (Common Core is also funded by Gates), and punishments and sanctions tied to test scores. The McGraw Hill (publishers of CSAP) financial fact book mirrors the national education platform. Pearson and McGraw Hill, the largest testing companies in the nation holds a monopoly over all curriculum and assessments. The failed No Child Left Behind Act based on standardization and high-stake testing has cost taxpayers billions and delivered zero in terms of return on investment. Unless of course you are a publishing company – McGraw Hill listed revenues at $2.3 billion in 2009 and Pearson posted $652 million in profits.
The Faces of School Reform
By John Tarleton
January 29, 2010
http://www.indypendent.org/2010/01/29/faces-school-reform
Excerpt:
Led by a band of billionaires, the school-reform movement has gained increasing momentum during the past decade, spreading its reach into urban communities across the country. But instead of truly transforming public schools, private funders want to restructure them. They insist running schools like a business is the solution. At stake is not only control over hundreds of billions of dollars in local, state and federal funding, but also the future of the next generation of schoolchildren.
Bill Gates
Net Worth: $50 billion
Using the Gates Foundation as his instrument, the Microsoft co-founder has channeled tens of millions of dollars into transforming large high schools through the schools-within-a-school model. Critics say boutique public schools tend to enroll (or “cream”) the best students while receiving more per-pupil funding than their large-school counterparts. Gates has also allocated large sums of money to help fuel the growth of charter schools.
During the 2008 presidential election the Gates and Broad foundations teamed up to spend $24 million to influence public education policy. Their shared message: Expand charter schools and tie teacher pay to student performance on standardized tests. President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has tapped top Gates Foundation officers to be his chief of staff and to head the agency’s Office of Innovation and Improvement. Foundation officers are also spearheading the $4.35 billion Race to the Top program, which promises aid to cash-strapped states that eliminate caps on charter schools and agree to place even greater emphasis on standardized testing. “It is not unfair to say that the Gates Foundation’s agenda has become the country’s agenda in education,” says Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Arne Duncan
Secretary of Education
A former professional basketball player and veteran of many pickup basketball games with Obama, the Harvard-educated Duncan has no formal experience as an educator. As CEO of the Chicago school system from 2001 to 2008, Duncan oversaw more than 60 school closings primarily in people of color neighborhoods while rapidly opening charter schools. The Gates Foundation funneled $63.2 million into the Chicago schools during Duncan’s tenure and now Duncan is taking the “Chicago model” nationwide with the help of top aides recruited from the Gates and Broad Foundations.
Spencer Robertson
The son of a hedge-fund billionaire who has donated $10 million to Mayor Bloomberg’s school projects since 2003, Spencer Robertson opened the PAVE Charter Academy in 2008 inside P.S. 15, a successful elementary school in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Tensions further escalated when the DOE recently announced that PAVE would be allowed to expand inside P.S. 15 over the next five years, even though Robertson has received $26 million from the DOE to build his own school. Robertson’s wife Sarah, the head of the board at Girls Prep Charter School, was at the center of a similar controversy when the school recently sought to expand inside public school facilities in the Lower East Side.
James Shelton
Assistant Deputy Director of Education, Director of Office of Inn ovation and Improvement, DOE
Following Obama’s election, Shelton moved seamlessly from deputy director of education at the Gates Foundation to a post at the DOE as assistant deputy director overseeing a variety of grant programs that assist charter schools. Operating at the nexus of the public, private and nonprofit sectors, Shelton previously worked at Knowledge Universe, where he launched, acquired and operated education-related businesses. Shelton’s former Gates Foundation colleague Margot Rogers now serves as Duncan’s chief of staff.
Got Dough? Public School Reform in the Age of Venture Philanthropy
Thursday 06 January 2011
by: Joanne Barkan | Dissent Magazine | Op-Ed
http://archive.truthout.org/got-dough-public-school-reform-age-venture-philanthropy66598
Excerpt:
The cost of K–12 public schooling in the United States comes to well over $500 billion per year. So, how much influence could anyone in the private sector exert by controlling just a few billion dollars of that immense sum? Decisive influence, it turns out. A few billion dollars in private foundation money, strategically invested every year for a decade, has sufficed to define the national debate on education; sustain a crusade for a set of mostly ill-conceived reforms; and determine public policy at the local, state, and national levels. In the domain of venture philanthropy—where donors decide what social transformation they want to engineer and then design and fund projects to implement their vision—investing in education yields great bang for the buck.
Hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children (only religious organizations receive more money). But three funders—the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad (rhymes with road) Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation—working in sync, command the field. Whatever nuances differentiate the motivations of the Big Three, their market-based goals for overhauling public education coincide: choice, competition, deregulation, accountability, and data-based decision-making. And they fund the same vehicles to achieve their goals: charter schools, high-stakes standardized testing for students, merit pay for teachers whose students improve their test scores, firing teachers and closing schools when scores don’t rise adequately, and longitudinal data collection on the performance of every student and teacher. Other foundations—Ford, Hewlett, Annenberg, Milken, to name just a few—often join in funding one project or another, but the education reform movement’s success so far has depended on the size and clout of the Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate.
Every day, dozens of reporters and bloggers cover the Big Three’s reform campaign, but critical in-depth investigations have been scarce (for reasons I’ll explain further on). Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that the reforms are not working. Stanford University’s 2009 study of charter schools—the most comprehensive ever done—concluded that 83 percent of them perform either worse or no better than traditional public schools; a 2010 Vanderbilt University study showed definitively that merit pay for teachers does not produce higher test scores for students; a National Research Council report confirmed multiple studies that show standardized test scores do not measure student learning adequately. Gates and Broad helped to shape and fund two of the nation’s most extensive and aggressive school reform programs—in Chicago and New York City—but neither has produced credible improvement in student performance after years of experimentation.
To justify their campaign, ed reformers repeat, mantra-like, that U.S. students are trailing far behind their peers in other nations, that U.S. public schools are failing. The claims are specious. Two of the three major international tests—the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the Trends in International Math and Science Study—break down student scores according to the poverty rate in each school. The tests are given every five years. The most recent results (2006) showed the following: students in U.S. schools where the poverty rate was less than 10 percent ranked first in reading, first in science, and third in math. When the poverty rate was 10 percent to 25 percent, U.S. students still ranked first in reading and science. But as the poverty rate rose still higher, students ranked lower and lower. Twenty percent of all U.S. schools have poverty rates over 75 percent. The average ranking of American students reflects this. The problem is not public schools; it is poverty. And as dozens of studies have shown, the gap in cognitive, physical, and social development between children in poverty and middle-class children is set by age three.
Ravitch blasts corporate “school reform”
12/7/12
http://www.peoplesworld.org/ravitch-blasts-corporate-school-reform/
Excerpt:
CLEVELAND – At forums here last week Diane Ravitch , author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” and a national leader of the fight to defend public education, sounded the alarm about concerted efforts by corporate and right-wing forces to undermine democracy and destroy public education in our country. At events held by the Cleveland Teachers Union Feb. 2 and the next day at the Cleveland City Club, Ravitch blasted the well-financed “school reform movement” that seeks to bust teachers unions and privatize the schools.
In her speech to 150 teachers and supporters at Pilgrim Church, Ravitch said major foundations, such as those run by the Gates and Walton families, Wall Street hedge fund groups, Fox News and the Republican Party, are behind the attack which has created “an existential crisis” for public education.
Unfortunately, she added, the movement has the support of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, although President Barack Obama made a contradictory statement, both supporting and opposing the movement’s aims, in his recent State of the Union speech.
The movement got official sanction with the No Child Left Behind law, enacted by President George W. Bush when he took office in 2001. Ravitch called the measure, mandating 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014, “a crazy, irresponsible law” that “delegitimized the public school system” and is “the death star of public education.”
The law was aggravated by the Race to the Top program under the Obama administration which has increased sanctions against teachers and principals and pressure to privatize, she said.
Privatization, including vouchers for private and religious schools, charter schools, home schooling and cyber-schools, operates under the innocuous-sounding name of “school choice” and is a major goal of the reform movement, Ravitch charged. While these measures are highly profitable for entrepreneurs and in many cases operating licenses are “payoffs for contributions to politicians,” she said, there is no evidence that they improve school performance or test scores. On the other hand there are many examples of financial corruption, score inflation, debased standards and non-accountability in these enterprises.
It was the total lack of evidence for improved education that caused Ravitch, an initial supporter of “school choice,” to break with the movement. Charters, including cyber-charters, actually do worse than public schools and, after 21 years, the voucher program in Milwaukee has not improved test scores, she said.
The most reliable predictor of scores on standardized tests, she said, is family income.
Walmart, ALEC unite on another school ‘reform’ bill
Posted by Max Brantley on Tue, Aug 14, 2012
http://www.arktimes.com/ArkansasBlog/archives/2012/08/14/walmart-alec-unite-on-another-school-reform-bill
There’s an Arkansas angle in this story about Walmart’s promotion of a new ideological film, “Won’t Back Down,” aimed at supporting “trigger laws” that give school parents a vote to convert a conventional public school (preferably one with a union workforce) into a non-union charter school. The movie is misleading. It suggests a majority vote of teachers is also needed for school conversion. That’s not what the existing laws provide.
The legislation is being doled out at cookie-cutting sessions by the American Legislative Exchange Council, the go-to Koch lobby for Arkansas Republican legislators in need of corporate movement bills. Conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz is also promoting the movie.
Walmart, in Arkansas alone, finances wholly or in part an anti-union lobby group, a similarly inclined nonprofit, a nonprofit that provides advice to charter schools, a new “reform” lobby headed by a former Chamber of Commerce executive who doesn’t like the Little Rock School District, charter schools and most of the key members of legislative education committees. 2013, many think, will be the year it moves to take over the direction of education in Arkansas. (Oh, and I forgot to mention the Walton-financed (with an assist from the equally conservative Windgate Foundation) Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas which churns out a steady diet of corporate movement education tracts, and whose financial arrangements the UA refuses to fully reveal despite the state Freedom of Information Act.)
Walmart’s hostility to unions and collective bargaining is well-known so its support for a message in favor of stripping teachers of that is not surprising. From Hollywood to a school district near you.
Backed by State Money, Georgia Scholarships Go to Schools Barring Gays
By KIM SEVERSON
Published: January 20, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/21/education/georgia-backed-scholarships-benefit-schools-barring-gays.html?_r=0
Excerpt;
ATLANTA — As the nation works its way through the debate over vouchers and other alternatives to traditional public education funding, a quieter battle over homosexuality, religious education and school tax money is under way in Georgia.
At issue is an increasingly popular tax credit program that transforms state money into private school scholarships, some of them used at religious-based schools that prohibit gay, lesbian or bisexual students from attending.
The policies at more than 100 such schools are explicit.
The 400 students at a private school in Woodstock, for example, must adhere to a policy that states, “Homosexual behavior, whether an ‘immoral act’ or ‘identifying statement,’ is incompatible with enrollment at Cherokee Christian Schools and is a basis for dismissal.”
A male student at the Shiloh Hills Christian School in Kennesaw, who utters “I like boys” or “I am a homosexual” will be expelled.
And at the 800-student Providence Christian Academy 20 miles north of Atlanta, a student who is gay, lesbian or bisexual or supports people who are could be kicked out.
At least 115 religious-based schools in Georgia have severe antigay policies, according to a report issued this month by the Southern Education Foundation. Public information about the scholarship program is limited by law, so the number is probably much higher, according to the foundation, which was founded in 1867 to improve education for poor children in the South.
Steve Suitts, the vice president of the foundation and the author of the report, said that as many as a third of the schools in the scholarship program have strict antigay policies or adhere to a religious philosophy that holds homosexuality as immoral or a sin.
Bruce,
We can thank Frank Luntz for much of the language used/abused in politics today.
Elaine: This stream epitomizes what education / communication is all about! You are so right about Frank Luntz, and it says a lot about American markets when deception becomes a high priced tool of business and politics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
Frank I. Luntz (born February 23, 1962) is an American political consultant, pollster, and Republican Party strategist.[1] His most recent work has been with the Fox News Channel as a frequent commentator and analyst, as well as running focus groups after presidential debates. Luntz’s specialty is “testing language and finding words that will help his clients sell their product or turn public opinion on an issue or a candidate.”[2] He is also an author of business books dealing with communication strategies and public opinion. Luntz’s current company, Luntz Global, LLC, specializes in message creation and image management for commercial and political clients.” Read all: ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz
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But more importantly, under doublespeak [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak] is important information that once again shows why the education system has been a threat to tyranny and divisive deceptions:
[excerpt] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak]
The NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak
[Main article: National Council of Teachers of English: [embedded link]
“The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Committee on Public Doublespeak was formed in 1971, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, at a point when there was widespread skepticism about the degree of truth which characterized relationships between the public and the worlds of politics, the military, and business. NCTE passed two resolutions. One called for the Council to find means to study dishonest and inhumane uses of language and literature by advertisers, to bring offenses to public attention, and to propose classroom techniques for preparing children to cope with commercial propaganda. The other called for the Council to find means to study the relations of language to public policy, to keep track of, publicize, and combat semantic distortion by public officials, candidates for office, political commentators, and all those who transmit through the mass media. Bringing the charges of the two resolutions to life was accomplished by forming NCTE’s Committee on Public Doublespeak, a body which has acquitted itself with notable achievements since its inception. The National Council’s publications on doublespeak have made significant contributions in describing the need for reform where clarity in communication has been deliberately distorted. Such structures can be applied to the field of education, where they could conceivably initiate an anti-pollution bandwagon in educational communication and educate people on how to counter doublespeak.[16]”
The summary review also states:
William D. Lutz, serves as the third chairman of the Doublespeak Committee since 1975 to the present. In 1989, both his own book Doublespeak and, under his editorship, the committee’s third book, Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four, were published. Lutz was also the former editor of the now defunct Quarterly Review of Doublespeak, which examines ways that jargon has polluted the public vocabulary with phrases, words and usages of words designed to obscure the meaning of plain English. His book, Beyond Nineteen Eighty-Four, consists of 220 pages and eighteen articles contributed by long-time Committee members and others whose body of work has made important contributions to understandings about language, as well as a bibliography of 103 sources on doublespeak. [14]
Lutz is one of the main contributors to the committee as well as promoting the term “doublespeak” to a mass audience so as to inform them of the deceptive qualities that doublespeak contains. He mentions:
There is more to being an effective consumer of language than just expressing dismay at dangling modifiers, faulty subject and verb agreement, or questionable usage. All who use language should be concerned whether statements and facts agree, whether language is, in Orwell’s words ‘largely the defense of the indefensible’ and whether language ‘is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.'” [15]
He also mentions that the NCTE Committee on Public Doublespeak and their works with regards to educating the public on doublespeak is responsible for “the rather awesome task of combating the advertisers, the politicians, and the major manipulators of public language in our society.” [15]
Lutz states that it is important to highlight doublespeak to the public because “language isn’t the invention of human beings to lie, deceive, mislead, and manipulate” and the “purpose of language is to communicate the truth and to facilitate social groups getting together”. Thus, according to Lutz, doublespeak is a form of language that defeats the purpose of inventing language because doublespeak does not communicate the truth but seeks to do the opposite and the doublespeak committee is tasked with correcting this problem that doublespeak has created in the world of language.[15]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak
(There is so much more information in this summary review of Doublespeak and related “deformities” and readers would do well read the entire site.
Thank YOU Elaine!
Interesting historic fact; perhaps an essential one in this discussion as it pertains to motives and incentives to control education:
“Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela’s western plains. He was the son of a schoolteacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was also a schoolteacher who met her husband at age 16.”
http://www.boston.com/2013/03/05/ebc-entry-cont/388y4JSkZQb4czkJP6JsnL/story-1.html
There’s still a bounty on rats in the city of Detroit Raff…..
Yep Elaine….
rafflaw,
A sewer rat.
You could be right AY. The Emergency Manager concept smells like a rat.
You know Elaine…. I forgot…. You’re absolutely right…. I hate to say this but its all about getting Detroit…… I will say that the DIA or the art museum in Detroit and the Detroit Pulic Library and School system have priceless works of art that have been donated through the years….. I’d say they are in the billions….. Are going to be up for grabs……
In the most recent years…. Arts have been loaned….. When I think of this…. It reminds me of the nazis looting just for the artworks….. It sickens me…. To think that not much has changed….
Why Are Walmart Billionaires Bankrolling Phony School ‘Reform’ In LA?
Posted: 02/28/2013
By Peter Dreier. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/why-are-walmart-billionar_b_2779211.html?utm_hp_ref=walmart
Excerpt:
For years, Los Angeles has been ground zero in an intense debate about how to improve our nation’s education system. What’s less known is who is shaping that debate. Many of the biggest contributors to the so-called “school choice” movement — code words for privatizing our public education system — are billionaires who don’t live in Southern California, but have gained significant influence in local school politics. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent contribution of $1 million to a political action committee created to influence next week’s LAUSD school board elections is only the most recent example of the billionaire blitzkrieg.
For more than a decade, however, one of the biggest of the billionaire interlopers has been the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, who have poured millions into a privatization-oriented, ideological campaign to make LA a laboratory for their ideas about treating schools like for-profit businesses, and treating parents, students and teachers like cogs in what they must think are education big-box retail stores.
As a business chain, Walmart has spent a fortune — in philanthropy and campaign contributions — trying to break into the Los Angeles retail market with its low-wage retail stores.
Now the Walton family — which derives its fortune from the Arkansas-based Walmart — is trying to use that fortune to bring Walmart-style education to Los Angeles.
The Waltons have long supported efforts to privatize education through the Walton Family Foundation as well as individual political donations to local candidates. Since 2005, the Waltons have given more than $1 billion to organizations and candidates who support privatization. They’ve channeled the funds to the pro-charter and pro-voucher Milton Friedman Foundation for Education Choice, Michelle Rhee’s pro-privatization and high-stakes testing organization Students First, and the pro-voucher Alliance for School Choice, where Walton family member Carrie Walton Penner sits on the board. In addition to funding these corporate-style education reform organizations, since 2000 the Waltons have also spent more than $24 million bankrolling politicians, political action committees, and ballot issues in California and elsewhere at the state and local level which undermine public education and literally shortchange students.
In 2006, Greg Penner, who married Carrie Walton Penner (daughter of Walmart chairman Rob Walton and granddaughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton) and serves on Walmart’s board, spent $250,000 to oppose a statewide ballot initiative that would have created a universal preschool system to give California’s children a much-needed leg up in early education. It also would have created thousands of good jobs for preschool teachers.
In Los Angeles alone, the Walton Family Foundation has donated over $84.3 million to charter schools and organizations that support them, such as Green Dot Schools, ICEF schools, and the Los Angeles Parent Union, as well as $1 million to candidates or political action committees which support diverting tax dollars away from public schools. They believe in high-stakes testing, hate teachers unions, want to measure student and teacher success primarily by relying on one-size-fits-all standardized tests, but have an entirely different set of standards when it comes to judging charter schools.
You’d think that the Waltons would invest in ideas that would improve education. But there’s little evidence that private charter schools and vouchers — the Waltons’ two big obsessions — are effective at boosting students’ learning outcomes. A 2009 study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University discovered that only 17 percent of charter schools provided a better education than traditional public schools. Thirty-seven percent actually offered children a worse education. In other words, on balance, charters make things worse, even though many of those schools “cream” the best students from regular public schools. Just this month, the same Stanford center released a study that called for stronger monitoring and review processes for charter schools.
The inconvenient truth of education ‘reform’
Posted by Valerie Strauss on February 2, 2013
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/02/the-inconvenient-truth-of-education-reform/
Several important things happened in the education world in the last week. Here’s an analysis of why what happened matters, by Jeff Bryant, a marketing and communications consultant for nonprofits. He is a marketing and creative strategist with nearly 30 years of experience – the past 20 on his own – as a freelance writer, consultant, and search engine marketing provider. He’s written extensively about public education policy. This appeared on the Campaign for America’s Future website.
By Jeff Bryant
Events this week revealed how market-driven education policies, deceivingly labeled as “reform,” are revealing their truly destructive effects on the streets and in the corridors of government.
From the streets, we heard from civil rights and social justice activists from urban communities that school turnaround policies mandated by the Obama administration’s education agenda are having disastrous results in the communities they were originally intended to serve.
From the corridors of government, we were presented with irrefutable evidence that leaders driving the reform agenda are influencing public officials to write education laws in a way that benefits corporate interests rather than the interests of students, parents, and schools.
These events, in tandem, reveal an inconvenient truth of education reform that should make anyone who promotes these policies question, “Whose interests are being served here?”
The Message From The Street
This week, over 200 activists, community organizers, parents, and students from 18 cities across the US gathered in Washington, DC, to confront Secretary of Education Arne Duncan over widespread public school closures prompted by the Obama administration’s policies.
As reported by Huffington Post’s education reporter Joy Resmovits, “Members of the group, a patchwork of community organizations called the Journey for Justice Movement, have filed several Title VI civil rights complaints with the Education Department Office of Civil Rights, claiming that school districts that shut schools are hurting minority students.”
Although these school closures are often justified as necessary for budget reasons and declining enrollment, Journey for Justice activists unanimously placed blame for school closures on market-based “reform” polices.
Resmovits quoted Helen Moore, an organizer from Detroit, who called the current reform movement “tantamount to racism.” She said, “All the things that are happening are by design, by design, by design. They don’t want our children to have an education, but we’ll fight to the death.”
The “design” Moore likely referred to is the Obama administration’s “turnaround models” proposed for schools that don’t make sufficient growth in student test score results. These models, criticized from the get-go as lacking a research base and being too inflexible, became requirements for states and districts to receive federal grant money in the administration’s Race to the Top and School Improvement Grant programs.
The results of these punitive measures have been felt disproportionally in communities of underserved children – and especially among children of color.
In fact, the The New York Times article on the Journey for Justice confrontation referenced data from Action United, a Philadelphia-based group, showing that 80 percent of the students affected by the planned school closings in Philadelphia are black although the district’s enrollment is 55 percent black and 19 percent Hispanic.
That schools now being designated as “needs improvement” and targeted for closing on the basis of test data tend to be those schools struggling to teach high poverty children should not come as a surprise to anyone. The strong correlation of low test scores to low income is universally true in every country in the world. But that fact alone doesn’t explain why reform leaders chose closure – the harshest of the four turnaround models – as the remedy of choice.
What may be propelling that decision is another emphasis of the White House’s reform policies – the rapid scaling up of a competitive parallel system of charter schools.
Another representative from Philadelphia, Helen Gym, explained the role charter schools are having in school closures occurring in her city. On the website Common Dreams she is quoted, “Whatever your opinion may be of [charter schools], there’s no question that the District has failed to explain its inconsistent approach of allowing charter expansion without regard to expense or academic quality while insisting on draconian and widespread sacrifice among [traditional public] schools.”
In Chicago as well, parents and teachers have pointed out that districts are justifying school closures on the basis of budget and attendance as they lavish millions of dollars on brand new, unproven charter schools.
The damages of these reform policies are especially harmful to the individual lives of students. In a write-up of the Journey for Justice rally at The Washington Post, a student representative in the crowd, twelve-year-old Gavin Alston, whose Chicago school was closed last year, explained that he is having to be homeschooled because there is no longer a middle or elementary schools in his neighborhood, and he won’t cross gang turf lines to get to his reassigned school 22 blocks away. “I have been denied the right to a quality education,” Gavin said.
Elaine: it is critical for people to recognize that rhetorical “capture” of meaningful words by right wing [“counter-insurgency” (false flags lterally speaking)]… tactics are incestuously corrupting the narrative and controlling the outcome by decisively “packaging” the message in progressive terms. Capture the terms; deceive the receiver.
In that regard…”market-driven education policies, deceivingly labeled as “reform,” …” is part of the deceptive framing process. Right wing political arguments are rabid with this tactic…and once a term is ‘turned” and usurped it sounds very plausible to the general population.
“Reform” is one of the most commonly distorted terms that is now used to posture and present extreme ‘reactionary” programs under the cloak and dagger perspective (and its implications of corrections) of “Reform.”
Chris Christie uses this tactic pervasively to posture his political reactionary rhetoric in a favorable frame & format.
For the most part…the challenge is typically that these are NOT REforms but De-forms…and the presumption that they are progressive improvements must be (in each and every instance) challenged and the measures for those improvements scrutinized intensely and extensively across the spectrum of regressive policies that take from the many and reward the (same and same again) very few!.
AY,
It’s all part of “The Plan.”
Remember this post I wrote two years ago?
Hey! Who Stole My Democracy?…or What’s Going on in the State of Michigan?
http://jonathanturley.org/2011/03/12/hey-who-stole-my-democracy-or-what%E2%80%99s-going-on-in-the-state-michigan/
Excerpt:
Warning: You are about to enter the Twilight Zone.
Imagine, if you will, that you live in a state where a governor wields extraordinary power over its residents. Imagine, if you will, that your governor has the legal authority to appoint an “Emergency Manager” to oversee the local government in the town where you reside. Imagine that the monetary compensation for the Emergency Manager of your community has no cap. Imagine that your Emergency Manager declares that there’s a financial emergency in your town and then takes over control of it. Imagine that the Emergency Manager can break contracts, seize and sell assets, eliminate services—and can also fire duly elected public officials who serve your community. Imagine, if you will, that the Emergency Manager empowered by your governor to run your town has the right to dissolve your school district and to disincorporate your town. AND imagine that you and your fellow residents have no say about what is going on! Just imagine how you might feel if you lived in a state where that kind of thing was going on. Well, the people who live in Michigan may not have to imagine much longer.
Elaine,
Did you see how they are going about and making charter schools in Michigan now….. They are declaring financial emergency s….. Taking over the schools and making them charter….
David Brennan Caught Washing Money Through National Charter Front Group
Schools Matter
8/14/2007
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2007/08/david-brennan-caught-washing-money.html
Excerpt:
What happens when someone like charter school kingin, David Brennan, wants to buy more influence in Ohio elections than state law will allow? You do what Tom Delay did–you simply launder the money through an out-of-state outfit like All Children Matter that turns your cash into campaign contributions for your preferred stable of candidates. No fuss, no muss–well, maybe a little muss this time.
All Children Matter Fined for Illegally Funneling Campaign Money
From One Wisconsin Now
http://www.weac.org/news_and_publications/at_the_capitol/archives/2007-2008/all_children_matter.aspx
Excerpt:
All Children Matter, the pro-private school vouchers group founded by Michigan Republican billionaire Richard DeVos, was leveled with a $5.2 million fine Friday (April 4, 2008) for illegally funneling money into Ohio campaigns. All Children Matter remains under investigation in Wisconsin after the State Elections Board determined in November 2006 it violated rules about express advocacy in opposing John Lehman’s bid for the State Senate.
“This unanimous, bipartisan verdict in Ohio shows All Children Matter has little regard for the rules,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now executive director. “Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board should take strong action like Ohio to protect the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections and get to the bottom of how All Children operates to evade campaign finance disclosure laws.”
In its 5-0 decision, the Ohio Elections Commission ruled that All Children Matter illegally funneled $870,000 to Ohio through a Virginia PAC, allowing it to exceed the state’s $10,000 limit on PAC contributions. Similar allegations have been made about the organization’s actions in Wisconsin. Among those donating to this illegal effort was Akron’s David Brennan, Ohio’s largest operator of charter schools.
All Children Matter is affiliated with Alliance for Choices in Education (also involved in the Wisconsin Elections Board investigation), run by Wisconsin’s George and Susan Mitchell, who have donated thousands of dollars to Wisconsin political candidates. Its network of affiliated groups includes the Alliance for School Choice, which has employed convicted former Republican Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen.
Following the Charter Dollars – Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Who benefits financially from the pro-market charter school movement?
Louisiana School Boards Association
http://www.lsba.com/PressRoom/PressRoomDisplay.asp?p1=4508
Excerpt:
The charter school reform emerged in part out of a progressive effort to promote innovation that could be used to improve all public schools, and to open up discussion on the relationship between school and community, particularly in urban areas. It was a movement initiated by Ray Budde, a professor at the University of Massachusetts and envisioned as a school that would gain freedom to try different methods of teaching that could be transferred to all public schools.
However, a funny thing happened along the way. Free-market zealots (with riches) realized that over $600 billion is spent in the U.S. on public schools. A whole new frontier leading to stable profits was recognized. Everyone knows “it takes money to make money,” and the faces behind the voucher/charter “reform” movement are not bashful in stepping up to the bar.
The economic and political consequences of abandoning public education in the US are grave. Education has always been the gateway of opportunity for working people in America, and that gate is slamming shut. With market-based schools, children from wealthy families are being educated, while those from poorer families are being denied the opportunity. While affluent customers may be satisfied with the outcome for their children, rebuilding the economy in post-imperial America will depend on a large, well-educated labor force that can only be supplied by a free and universal public education system.
But in basing schooling on consumerism the free-market zealots overlook the cultural role of schools in communities. Essential services such as the military, police protection, and schooling have been accepted for many generations of Americans as too essential to be subject to the whims of corporate interests distant from the community.
Most education stakeholders see business oriented political figures and tycoons as being the instruments for converting classrooms into profit centers. Few are aware that there are faces unseen manipulating the movement. More importantly, the reality of the interlocking directorships of the front organizations is difficult to illustrate.
Names such as Dick and Betsy DeVos of the Amway founding family are large contributors to All Children Matter a group of non-profit organizations behind the pro-market charter school initiatives. They have contributed millions to the Republican National Committee and a wide variety of groups that back pro-market charter school expansion.
The DeVos are joined in the outspoken group of billionaires who proclaim publicly that they favor ending government involvement in education. Among the biggest contributors are Richard Mellon Scaife (owner of the Pittsburg Tribune Review), and the Koch family foundations. Other foundations include Olin, Bradley, Smith Richardson and the Walton family who join in the drive to eliminate public education.
The DeVos family also helps finance Family Research Council, and Focus on Family. Betsy DeVos is sister to the founder (Erik Prince) of Blackwater (now Xe Corp.) the private security firm that has become one of the largest supplier of mercenary soldiers in the world.
Much of the research supportive of vouchers and charter schools stems from the Foundation for Education Choice, a think-tank founded by the late Milton and Rose Friedman.
Betsy DeVos, who heads the Alliance for School Choice, founded All Children Matter in 2003, and the American Federation for Children Action Fund in 2010. These groups include Kevin P. Chavous, a former Washington D.C. council member who reportedly helped foster the D.C. and New Orleans charter school programs. Betsy’s All Children Matter in Ohio was fined $5.2 million for campaign money violations in 2006. The organization was also fined in Wisconsin. Due to such legal difficulties the All Children Matter marquee may now be changed to American Federation for Children.
Other DeVos advocates for charters include John F. Kirtley (a venture capitalist of Tampa), Boykin Curry (wealthy hedge fund investor), Joel Greenbers, and Carrie Penner. These folks are linked to Cato Institute, The Center for Education Reform, Heartland Institute, Heritage Institute, Institute for Justice, and State Policy Network. Ed Crane, founder and president of Cato, is also involved in the Alliance for Separation of School and State.