Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In a 2010 New York Times article titled Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers, reporters Tripp Gabriel and Jennifer Medina wrote the following about what was going on in the state of New York:
Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm…
Although the April 9 breakfast with Mr. Cuomo was not a formal fund-raiser, the hedge fund managers have been wielding their money to influence educational policy in Albany, particularly among Democrats, who control both the Senate and the Assembly but have historically been aligned with the teachers unions.
They[hedge fund managers] have been contributing generously to lawmakers in hopes of creating a friendlier climate for charter schools. More immediately, they have raised a multimillion-dollar war chest to lobby this month for a bill to raise the maximum number of charter schools statewide to 460 from 200.
That same year—2010—Juan Gonzalez believed that he had uncovered one of the reasons why hedge fund managers, some wealthy Americans, and the executives of some Wall Street banks had become such big proponents of charter schools and had gotten involved in their development. Gonzalez said the banks and other wealthy investors had been making “windfall profits” by taking advantage of “a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.” That little know tax break, the New Markets Tax Credit, can be so lucrative, Gonzalez said, “that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.” He added that the tax break “gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities, and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools.”
Gonzalez focused his research on the city of Albany—which, he wrote, “boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments.” He provided an explanation of how lucrative investments in building new charter schools can be:
What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.
The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money. The problem is, that the charter schools end up paying in rents, the debt service on these loans and so now, a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt service–their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year or–huge increases in their rents as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. The rents are eating-up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state.
Brighter Choice Foundation
According to Gonzalez, “a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation had employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.” By 2010, many of those charter schools were struggling to pay escalating rents, which were “going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.”
Gonzalez gave examples of the escalating rents:
The Henry Johnson Charter School saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 in 2009.
The Albany Community School‘s went from from $195,000 to $350,000.
Green Tech High Charter School rent rose from $443,000 to $487,000.
Gonzalez reported that a number of Albany’s charter schools have fallen into debt to the Brighter Choice Foundation. He wondered why the schools’ financial problems hadn’t raised eyebrows with state regulators or caused concern for the charters’ school boards. He noted that the powerful charter school lobby had “so far successfully battled to prevent independent government audits of how its schools spend their state aid.” He added that “key officers of Albany’s charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.”
Gonzalez said that the city of Albany is “exhibit A in the web of potential conflicts that keep popping up in the charter school movement.” It appears Gonzalez is correct about Albany being just one example of what’s going on in the movement. Brighter Horizons isn’t the only “foundation” or company making profits off of charter schools.
Imagine Schools Inc.
There is a national charter school company called Imagine Schools Inc., one of the biggest for-profit charter school management companies in the country. Matthew Haag of the Dallas Morning News wrote about Imagine Schools in 2008:
A national charter school company that plans to open new schools in Texas, including one in McKinney, has run afoul of an education official in Nevada and two of its former principals, and they all pose the same question.
Does Imagine Schools Inc. force its charter schools to spend too much money on complex real estate deals and not enough money on teachers and academic programs?
Virginia-based Imagine Schools has emerged as one of the largest for-profit charter school management companies, running several dozen schools in 12 states. It plans to open Imagine International Academy of North Texas in McKinney next year.
Charter schools house their students in Texas in a variety of ways, according to the former Charter Resource Center of Texas, from renting space in a shopping center to doing complex property transactions such as Imagine’s.
Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine’s real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse.
The charter school eventually sends rent payments – in one case upward of 40 percent of the school’s entire publicly funded budget – to two for-profit companies.
“The arrangement is very lucrative because it’s a direct conduit to public funds. The school [property] is paid off with public funds,” said Gary Horton, who oversees charter school funding for the Nevada Department of Education. Nevada’s charter schools include Imagine’s 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas.
Haag added that charter schools in Texas are generally exempt from the kind of financial oversight that “state education officials give school districts. The agency annually grades how school districts spend their money, but not yet for charters.”
Haag explained what happened with 100 Academy of Excellence in Nevada:
In Nevada, the state awarded 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas a charter, and the school hired Imagine to run its educational services. Schoolhouse Finance, the Imagine subsidiary, paid for the school’s property and building construction. Schoolhouse Finance then leased the property to the charter school for $1.4 million a year.
Next, Schoolhouse Finance sold the $8 million property to a real estate investment trust, Kansas City, Mo.,-based Entertainment Properties Trust. The trust then leased the property back to Schoolhouse Finance at a lower rate than the charter school pays.
Money remaining after Schoolhouse Finance pays its lease to the trust goes to Imagine Schools Inc. This tiered lease system has led to 10 percent returns on investment for owners and investors in the two companies, Sharp said.
But 100 Academy of Excellence’s annual rent, which represents 40 percent of its annual state-funded budget, leaves the school struggling to pay for textbooks, according to Nevada Department of Education records.
“My concern is that I have to make payments [to the charter school], and I know the payments aren’t going to the kids,” said Horton, a persistent critic of Imagine’s operations.
Stephanie Strom reported in the New York Times in 2010 that soon after 100 Academy of Excellence opened in 2006, the school board began documenting problems. Its bookkeeping practices were lax and it lacked a sufficient number of licensed teachers. The school had also violated regulations requiring competitive bidding when it paid Imagine “for necessities like furniture and computers.”
Strom added that the school had had three principals in four years. She said that two of the principals had been “pressured to resign after complaining that there was not enough money for essentials like textbooks and a school nurse.”
In addition, Strom reported that regulators in a number of states had found that Imagine Schools had “elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.”
The regulators claimed that Imagine’s arrangements allowed it to use “public money with little oversight.” Marc Dean Millot, a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, said, “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions.” He added, “Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction.”
White Hat Management
In a 2011 Pro-Publica article titled Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Results, Sharona Coutts wrote about charter schools run by White Hat Management in Ohio:
Since 2008, an Ohio-based company, White Hat Management, has collected around $230 million to run charter schools in that state. The company has grown into a national chain and reports that it has about 20,000 students across the country. But now 10 of its own schools and the state of Ohio are suing, complaining that many White Hat students are failing, and that the company has refused to account for how it has spent the money.
The dispute between White Hat and Ohio, which is unfolding in state court in Franklin County, provides a glimpse at a larger trend: the growing role of private management companies in publicly funded charter schools.
Coutt reported that about one third of the charter schools in this country are now run by management companies, which can be either for-profit or non-profit, and not run locally. These companies not only have the right to hire and fire staff—they can also develop curricula and discipline students. She added that while the “shortcomings of traditional public schools” have been under scrutiny in recent years—“a look at the private sector’s efforts to run schools in Ohio, Florida and New York shows that turning things over to a company has created its own set of problems for public schools.” She said that government data on charter schools suggest that those with “for-profit managers have somewhat worse academic results than charters without management companies, and a number of boards have clashed with managers over a lack of transparency in how they are using public funds.”
The Ohio Department of Education joined the lawsuit in the fall of 2010. It asked the court to help the “group of public schools break free from dominance by private interests.” The department argued in a court motion that things had not gone well under White Hat’s management. It said, “Most of the schools have received the equivalent of D’s and F’s on their State report cards and their performance has declined during the term of the agreements.”
James D. Colner, an attorney representing the schools, said, “A big part of the argument here is being able to follow the money. We have no idea whether they’re earning a reasonable profit or not. We have no idea whether the money is being efficiently or effectively spent for our students.” That should be of great concern to citizens of Ohio. Coutt contends that oversight of the industry has lagged. She added that it has resulted “in a patchwork of state and district regulation, which experts say is failing to safeguard the interests of children and taxpayers.”
Closing
Laura Clawson (Daily Kos):
In short, education reform is a good cause. Experimentation is good — and some of the best charter schools today have experimented in what could be valuable ways. But the push, coming from Wall Street and the extremely wealthy, for this specific form of charter schools, for this specific way of funding them, is part of both short-term and long-term drives for profit that will accrue to the wealthiest while weakening the middle class. The question is not whether we should back away from the cause of education, or the cause of education reform. The question is in whose interests it should be done and who should most strongly influence the outcomes.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Juan Gonzalez: Big Banks Making a Bundle on New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost (Democracy Now!)
Albany charter cash cow: Big banks making a bundle on new construction as schools bear the cost (New York Daily News)
Show us the money: “Master Class” for private equity investors in public education (Parents across America)
“New market tax credits” and charter schools (Parents across America)
Cashing in on the charters: Petrino DiLeo exposes a new attempt by Wall Street to make money off our schools (Socialist Worker)
Charter school company with plans for McKinney is criticized (Susan Ohanian)
The big business of charter schools (Washington Post)
Evil Ed, inc: the Wall Street-charter school connection (Open Left)
Corporations Advise School Closings, While Private Charters Suck Public Schools Away: As charter proponents aim to cash in on major investment returns, Philly braces for a massive schools shakeup. (AlterNet)
Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers (New York Times)
For School Company, Issues of Money and Control (New York Times)
Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Results (Pro Publica)
Education: follow the money (Daily Kos)
Wall Street Hearts Charter Schools, Gets Rich Off Them (FireDogLake)
Wall Street Behind Charter School Push (Huffington Post)
Cuomo, Common Core and Pearson-for-Profit
By Alan Singer, Social studies educator, Hofstra University
Posted: 02/28/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/cuomo-common-core-and-pearson_b_1293465.html
Excerpt:
It will probably take more than a billion dollars in the bank to run for President of the United States in 2016. It looks like New York State Governor is already lining up corporate support. My concern is that he will sell out the education of New York State’s children to for-profit companies, particularly Pearson, to position himself for the run.
Pearson is one of the most aggressive companies seeking to profit from what they and others euphemistically call educational reform, but which teachers from groups like Rethinking Schools and FairTest see as an effort to sell, sell, sell substandard remedial education programs seamlessly aligned with the high stakes standardized tests for students and teacher assessments they are also selling. Pearson reported revenues of approximately $9 billion in 2010 and generated approximately $3 billion on just digital revenues in 2011.
If it has its way, Pearson will soon be determining what gets taught in schools across the United States with little or no parental or educational oversight. Pearson standardized exams will assess how well teachers implement Pearson instruction modules and Pearson’s common core standards, but not what students really learn or whether students are actually learning things that are important to know. Pearson is already creating teacher certification exams for eighteen states including New York, organizing staff development workshops to promote Pearson products, and providing school district Pearson assessment tools. In New York, Pearson Education currently has a five-year, $32 million contract to administer state test and provides other “testing services” to the State Education Department. It also recently received a share of a federal Race to the Top grant to create what the company calls the “next-generation” of online assessments.
Pearson, which claims to be the “world’s leading learning company,” is in the process of designing mind-numbing “multimedia textbooks… designed for pre-schoolers, school students and learners of all ages” for use on Apple’s iPad so school systems will have more products to purchase instead of investing in quality teaching and instruction. In case you are not already worried about children seating dazed in front of computer screens for hours on end, Pearson promises its “respected learning content” will be “brought to life with video, audio, assessment, interactive images and 3D animations.”
According to the New York Times, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is “investigating whether the Pearson Foundation, the nonprofit arm of one of the nation’s largest educational publishers, acted improperly to influence state education officials by paying for overseas trips and other perks.” Since 2008, state education officials have been treated to trips to London, Helsinki, Finland, Singapore, and Rio de Janeiro.
Rupert Murdoch Wins Contract to Develop Common Core Tests
By Diane Ravitch
March 17, 2013
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/17/rupert-murdoch-wins-contract-to-develop-common-core-tests/
Amplify, the company owned by Rupert Murdoch, won a $12.5 million contract to develop formative assessments for Common Core tests. The award was made by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two groups funded by the Obama administration to create national tests, administered online. Joel Klein runs Murdoch’s Amplify division.
When Murdoch purchased Wireless Generation in the fall of 2010, he said:
“When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching,” said News Corporation Chairman and CEO, Rupert Murdoch. “Wireless Generation is at the forefront of individualized, technology-based learning that is poised to revolutionize public education for a new generation of students.”
If There Remains Any Question
MAY 01, 2011
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/01/971884/-If-There-Remains-Any-Question
Let’s do some truly basic math.
First, consider that Bill Gates, a billionaire whose wealth and success have been built on computer innovation and entrepreneurship, has been an education reformer for many years now–stretching back to a small schools focus:
Bill Gates used to believe that one of the solutions to failing schools was to create smaller ones with 500 students or fewer. His foundation spent $1 billion toward this; seeing the opportunity to bring in private dollars, districts started shifting to smaller schools. Small schools became the big new trend. But then the foundation conducted a study that found that, by itself, school size had little if any effect on achievement. The foundation dropped the project and moved on to teacher reform, but by then some urban districts throughout the nation had changed to small–and more expensive to operate–schools.
So the first formula is:
Gates’ initiative + Gates funding = abandoned schools in the wake of failure (with no consequences for Gates)
As the Los Angeles Times reports above, Gates is now focusing on teacher quality–including calls for teacher evaluations tied to test scores measuring student achievement against the common core standards.
This suggests a new formula:
Gates money + common core standards + testing industry = profit for Gates and testing industry at the expense of students, learning, and public education.
If there remains any question if Gates should be driving education reform, if there remains any question why Gates is focusing on education, let me suggest there shouldn’t be.
This formula is obvious, as reported by Education Week:
The announcement today by the Pearson Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation marks yet another entry into the increasingly crowded marketplace of curriculum creation sparked by the common standards. All but six states have adopted those learning guidelines.
In a conference call with reporters, officials from the Gates and the Pearson foundations said the project will create 24 courses: 11 in math, for grades K-10; and 13 in English/language arts, for grades K-12. Four of those courses will be available for free online through the Gates Foundation. The full 24-course system, with accompanying tools including assessments and professional development for teachers, would be available for purchase, likely through Pearson, the for-profit company that operates the Pearson Foundation, in New York City.
Each course will serve as a 150-day curriculum and will harness technological advances such as social networking, animation, and gaming to better engage and motivate students, Judy B. Codding, the managing director of the Pearson Foundation, told reporters.
The current and historical claims that public education is failing are more often than not political and corporate hyperbole that serves not to address education reform or to fulfill the promise of universal public education, but instead masks the political and corporate failures that allow swelling poverty among children and an ever-widening equity gap among the American public.
If there remains any question about Gates, testing corporations, and politicians driving education reform, then whoever continues to wonder is simply ignoring why the wealthy and powerful invest their money and time. . .
Common Core Corruption: Pearson Publishing Investigated for Payoffs
By Bill Korach
3/8/13
http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2013/03/common-core-corruption-pearson-publishing-investigated-for-payoffs/
Excerpt:
We recently did an article about a petition authored by Paul Horton, State Liaison Illinois Council for History Education, and History Instructor at the University High School The University of Chicago Laboratory Schools demanding an end to curriculum decisions made among Common Core, and Race to the Top power brokers in back rooms and out of public view. Mr. Horton is clearly committed to excellent educational standards and prefers to teach history from history books not textbooks.
Mr. Horton stated:
“The president of the College Board’s recent announcement that a new SAT will be created to measure Common Core Standards skills proficiency also alarms us. In addition, the Secretary of Education’s former press secretary has recently used the “revolving door” of public office to acquire a job with a company that is related to Pearson LLC.
We demand transparency and public accountability for decisions that are being made on the above issues without open hearings or public debate on the influence of corporate lobbying and marketing at local, state, and federal levels. We strongly suspect the existence of quid pro quo understandings between the current Secretary of Education and Bill Gates, The Bill and Melina Gates Foundation, The College Board and David Coleman, The Educational Testing Service (ETS), and Pearson Education LLC that amount to collusion between a Federal Public servant(s) and corporate interests that appear to be working together to limit competition in an open marketplace.”
A recent Pearson fully paid junket to Australia for school officials suggests that Mr. Hortons suspicion has supporting facts according to this January New York Times story:
In the summer of 2010, Lu Young, the superintendent of schools in Jessamine County, a Lexington, Ky., suburb, took a trip to Australia paid for by the Pearson Foundation, a nonprofit arm of Pearson, the nation’s largest educational publisher. Ten school superintendents went on the trip, which cost Pearson $60,000. While the foundation described the visit as a way “to exchange ideas on creating schools for the 21st century,” there was ample time for play. “Everybody’s highlight of Canberra was to get to see the kangaroos,” Ms. Young said on a video produced by the foundation.
Six months later, in Frankfort, Ky., Ms. Young sat on a committee interviewing executives from three companies bidding to run the state’s testing program. While CTB/McGraw-Hill submitted the lowest bid, by $2.5 million, Ms. Young and the other committee members recommended Pearson.
In April, Kentucky’s Education Department approved a $57 million contract with Pearson. And then, over the next six months, the commissioner who oversees that department, Terry Holliday, traveled to both China and Brazil on trips underwritten by — that’s right — the Pearson Foundation.
Last month, the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, issued subpoenas to the Manhattan offices of the Pearson Foundation and Pearson Education. Mr. Schneiderman is looking into whether the nonprofit, tax-exempt foundation, which is prohibited by state law from undisclosed lobbying, was used to benefit Pearson Education, a profit-making company that publishes standardized tests, curriculums and textbooks, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
Mark Nieker, president of the Pearson Foundation, wrote in an e-mail, “Our practice is not to comment about the existence of government investigations.” He added, “It just is not true that the Foundation’s support of conferences attended by education officials has the purpose of helping Pearson corporate to win contracts.”
Lotta,
I thought you’d find this article interesting:
The Symbiotic Relationship of Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and Pearson…and the Takeover of American Education
December 6, 2011
Missouri Education Watchdog
http://www.missourieducationwatchdog.com/2011/12/symbiotic-relationship-of-bill-gates.html
Excerpt:
Arne Duncan has embraced Bill Gates’ vision of education. Bill Gates has had a hand in crafting the common core standards and has provided grant money to advance the implementation in schools around the country. It doesn’t apparently matter to Arne Duncan these standards are unproven, untested and unconstitutional. It also apparently doesn’t matter that Mr. Gates’ previous dalliances into the education arena proved unsuccessful.
Bill Gates has his vision and billions of dollars to start the wheels turning for common core and the data that accompanies the assessments critical to the common core plan. If he can get this implemented, his companies will make even more billions of dollars once the system is operational. He faces some hurdles such as changes in the law regarding student privacy, but Secretary Duncan is doing his best to relax privacy information the Department of Education can share with outside agencies and private companies.
If Bill Gates has the vision and the money for his educational plans, and the Department of Education is acquiescing its unconstitutional authority to set educational mandates for the states, then who or what is developing the standards and assessments to be used in the Common Core standards? One company’s name keeps popping up and there is a direct involvement with Bill Gates: Pearson.
What is Pearson? From its website:
Pearson is the global leader in integrated education and technology publishing, offering educational products for children, schools, universities, adults, and corporations. To purchase any of these products online, please visit one of our e-commerce sites below.
Like Bill Gates , Pearson operates a business (Pearson Textbooks) and a foundation (Pearson Foundation). With the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pearson Foundation has had significant input into crafting the Common Core standards for public educated students. From May 2011:
Two education foundations said Wednesday they are working to develop 24 new online reading and math courses that will be aligned with the common core national standards. The courses will be developed by the Pearson Foundation — associated with the major textbook company — and will include video, social media, games and other digital materials. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will provide $3 million for four of the courses to be offered free to schools. The initiative appears to be the most ambitious effort so far to align textbooks — online or otherwise — with the new standards and may position Pearson as a leader in the market.
That last sentence says it all and folks who have been following this trail of Gates and Pearson taking over education have been joking that buying Pearson stock would be a wise bet and make you quite wealthy. The Gates and Pearson Foundations “donate” courses to schools, hook them into using them since they are aligned with the new assessments, and then the schools will have to pay for them in the future. It’s similar to unfunded mandates set forth by the Department of Education. The states and schools have to pay for the mandates from the Department of Education crafted by Bill Gates and Pearson.
Elaine, your link and excerpt above:
“Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools
By Joanne Barkan – Winter 2011
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/got-dough-how-billionaires-rule-our-schools”
is eye opening and a must read on the subject.
You know that OCD I mentioned? Well, I was up ’til dawn following trails on the site I found. Then got up today and got back to it. I started with the school mentioned in one of your links and just let it take me away, which ended up being very far afield of where I started.
One thing that quickly became apparent is that the whole private funding situation is so incestuous that it would be illegal in Arkansas and certainly be regulated or illegal if it was not hiding within charitable giving. At the lowest iteration a school is funded in part by various foundations (some of their names come up often) but when you start looking at who is funding those foundations and trusts and institutes, and who is funding them, the same names keep popping up. Some are limited by regional focus (a handful of ‘givers’ are majorly funding in a state or limited region) but many of them have nationwide reach. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into various states and regions by a wide but shallow donor base.
Names that are ubiquitous are Walton and Gates as funders of the funders and then their funders. There are some pretty interesting funders on regional levels too like the Kern Family Foundation, here’s their mission statement:
“The foundation is committed to preserving the traditions of free enterprise, technical leadership, ordered liberty and good character that have enabled the American nation to thrive intellectually, economically and culturally. Guided by this vision, the foundation supports two education programs that promote intellectual excellence and virtuous citizenship: 1) American History, Economics, and Religion: the mission is to build the moral and intellectual foundations of a free and prosperous society; 2) Education Reform: the mission is to broaden the national education reform conversation to incorporate a strong focus on the international achievement gap and character development. ….”
Concepts like “ordered liberty” (my emphasis above) scare the shite out of me. They seem to be local/regional donors.
The report you published has it right on who the principal players are but the B&M Gates foundation is the elephant in the room, a 34 billion in assets for s charitable trust with giving for charter schools in 2010 of (I added it up rounding down to the 10thousand of 681 million. $681,492,xxx.xx. The Walton Family Foundation was at 149 million and the E&E Broad Foundation gave 145 million. This illustrates to me why, as was asked of one of your other links/quotes ‘how come Bill Gates gets to write school curricula’? You fund something, anything, to the tune of almost 3/4ths of a billion dollars in one year (later figures weren’t available) and you can write whatever you want, make any demand you like.
I think the deal has gone down. It is ongoing but the privatization of the school system has taken place. Putting that genie back in the bottle is not a task to be undertaken in our political or economic climate. Education is now a profit center (the number of givers, ‘buyers’ actually, that are obviously corporate, banking and education management oriented is kind of amazing to me) and a means of controlling local governments. That doesn’t even begin to touch on how the future can be controlled by what and how children are taught.
Jake Gittes: “Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford?”
Noah Cross: ” The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.”
Elaine,
Eli Broad has been extremely to MSU…. For that I think we’ll of him…. But, with all the other malarkey I am aghast….you brought up another name I’m gonna have to check on…. Thanks…
philaken,
Thanks for the link.
*****
AY,
Gates, Broad, and the Walton family are the “big three” names in the school refom movement.
*****
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:
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.
Philaken, Exellant link, thanks for shining the light on the current, high level revolving door for me.
Phil,
I know Eli…. He has bern very generous to higher Ed…. I was unaware that he is doing this….
If you want to know how and why so many schools are being closed to make way for charters look at
“Who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education?”
http://www.defendpubliceducation.net/
Special Report: The profit motive behind virtual schools in Maine
Documents expose the flow of money and influence from corporations that stand to profit from state leaders’ efforts to expand and deregulate digital education.
By Colin Woodard
September 13, 2012
Maine Sunday Telegram
http://www.pressherald.com/news/virtual-schools-in-maine_2012-09-02.html?pagenum=full
rosienalbany,
Thanks for your input.
*****
A New Vision of School Reform
Pedro Noguera May 27, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/article/new-vision-school-reform#
Excerpt:
However, change in education cannot be implemented on a piecemeal basis. The administration needs a new vision, one rooted in the recognition that schools must provide equal opportunity for all children to learn if the schools are to fulfill their vital role as the cornerstone of our democracy. For this to happen, the administration must understand what was wrong with NCLB and the policies pursued by the Bush administration, and it must direct funds where change and innovation are most needed.
To begin with, Obama and Duncan would do well to exercise better judgment in the language they choose and the approach they take in addressing the politics of education. Duncan’s assertion that Hurricane Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans” because it gave the city a chance to rebuild and improve its failing public schools was particularly callous and misguided, given that the educational needs of many children in that devastated city still have not been addressed. It also wasn’t wise for Duncan to describe the mass firing of teachers in Central Falls, Rhode Island, as “courageous,” especially given that there is no reserve supply of highly qualified teachers waiting for their chance to replace those who have been dismissed. Furthermore, Obama and Duncan’s emphasis on narrowly framed pay-for-performance schemes that punish and reward teachers is insensitive to the needs of schools plagued by high failure rates. Educators were an important part of Obama’s base in the 2008 election; although this does not mean the administration should avoid shaking things up or refrain from adopting reforms that may anger some union locals, it makes no sense to inflame them with careless and accusatory rhetoric.
Second, while there is ample evidence that major changes and a new direction are needed, this will require more than a rebranding of No Child Left Behind. Rather than launch another set of Bush-type reforms (e.g., academic standards for preschools) or distributing funds through a competitive process that leaves out most states at a time when funding is scarce (e.g., Race to the Top), the administration must comprehend why the policies of the Bush years did not produce greater success. From the exceedingly high dropout rates in many urban school districts (more than 50 percent in cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis) to the hundreds of chronically underperforming schools that Duncan claims need to be shut down, signs of failure abound. Figuring out why NCLB failed to do more to improve schools in high-poverty communities requires rejecting simplistic approaches like those being taken by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, who have shut down ninety-one failing schools in the past eight years. It is important to note that these schools failed on Bloomberg and Klein’s watch and did not respond to their reforms. Closing troubled schools may sound like decisive action, but it does not amount to a reform strategy. When policy-makers are unclear about why their policies do not result in improvement, and are even less clear about what must be done differently to prevent failure in the future, closing schools is little more than a punitive shell game.
Third, the need for change is clear, but history has shown that change in public education does not come easily or quickly. The Obama administration deserves credit for its willingness to provide funds to promote reform, but it is far too impressed with quick fixes like mayoral control of urban districts and charter schools. Over the past forty years studies have shown that education policy must be devised in concert with health reform, poverty alleviation initiatives and economic development in order to address the roots of failure in the most depressed areas. From crime and unemployment to teen pregnancy and even racism, education—or the lack thereof—is implicated in many of our nation’s social and economic problems. Education can be part of the solution to these and many other problems if reforms are designed and implemented in concert with key constituents—parents, teachers, local leaders and students—and with an understanding of how they must be coordinated with other aspects of social policy.
The impact of charter schools on our tax bills and the Albany community has been immense. It is such an industry, if you raise any objection you are publically vilified. After the president of the district’s school board criticized the charter school movement of siphoning off educational funds his personal phone number was distributed to charter schools with instructions to call him personally to complain. And the taxpayers have no recourse at all. Catholic schools, typically the alternative to the publics are closed pretty much all their neighborhood schools with the buildings now renovated and operated by charters.The charter schools are all new, have longer hours, routinely return disruptive or failing students to the district, get reimbursed for uniforms and advertise heavily using my tax dollars. the district has to accept and plan for any student who might return on a day’s notice.They don’t have to report enrollment information or actual attendance numbers so the schools are overbuilt and can stay that way. Walmart also gives them grants and I still see Brighter Choice students outside of the local Walmart begging for money for their schools. The schools get an average reimbursement of all education even thought they operate less expensive school levels. The charters are virtually 100% minority students with a non-minority staff which has a huge turnover rate. And the schools have not improved and Albany still has a reputation for lousy public schools regardless of the charters. The same home in Albany is priced $100,000 less than neighboring suburbs of Guilderland or Colonie simply because of the schools. The people who are making these decisions for Albany do not live in Albany and have no investment in our community.
Getting rich off of schoolchildren
Stop pretending wealthy CEOs pushing for charter schools are altruistic “reformers.” They’re raking in billions
By David Sirota
3/11/13
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/11/getting_rich_off_of_schoolchildren/
Excerpt:
National Public Radio was one of the few media outlets to even mention this profit motive as driving education politics. Setting an example for how education journalism should be conducted (but largely isn’t), it reported that Murdoch’s education technology push is about delivering “future revenues from his educational branch to help shore up the finances of his newspaper and publishing division.”
Of course, if the tech industry’s attempts to make money by technologizing the classroom was also a proven way to improve education, then the education “reform” movement’s for-profit scheme might seem a bit less odious. It might seem like an example of a laudable public-private partnership whereby an industry does well for itself by doing right for the greater good.
But that’s not the case in education so far. As the New York Times exhaustively documented, “reformers” have convinced schools to spend “billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.” As just one glaring example of that lack of proof, the Times points out that “a division of the Education Department that rates classroom curriculums has found that much educational software is not an improvement over textbooks” (this why Idahoans recently voted overwhelmingly to reject a plan in the Legislature that would have diverted money for teachers into classroom computers).
Education results, however, don’t matter to the moneyed interests behind the “reform” movement. Profits do — and the potential profits are enormous.
Citing a fact sheet from the for-profit education industry itself, the Washington Post recently reported that “the education sector now represents nearly 9 percent of the country’s gross domestic product” while the “for-profit education is valued at $1.3 trillion, and is one of the largest U.S. investment markets.” Likewise, NPR reports that as he’s launched an education technology division, Rupert Murdoch “has described education as a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.” This is why the tech site Geekwire predicts another full-scale tech industry bubble, thanks to “K-12 and other education segments now being chased by a mob of investment capitalists.”
Give “reformers” credit; they have successfully hidden a venal investment strategy in the veneer of idealistic political activism. Appropriating the poll-tested argot of change and mass movement, the Wall Streeters and tech moguls who finance the “reform” efforts have somehow convinced the political press to ignore one of the most powerful motivators of human action: the almighty dollar.
“Kids mean money.”
I have spent all morning reading the various links provided by Elaine and the tabs provided by lotta and although I have come across a few instances of genuine concern for improving the system, most of the info leads to one end … moneymaking.
The greed disease has reached such epidemic proportions that “taking candy from a baby” is now considered an acceptable and praiseworthy means to achieving or increasing individual adult wealth.
As I give thought to my own community and those immediately on its borders, I see public school systems that are strong and healthy. They all have high ratings within the state and the teachers’ unions work closely with their administrations in keeping the standards high. Rather than being content with this information, I am frightened. There’s lots of unprotected babies with candy in these systems and god only knows what the greed-infected charter school monsters are plotting as they salivate over this unplucked money fruit.
Bron,
There are also public magnet schools that focus on different disciplines/areas of study–fine arts, performing arts, math, the sciences. There are public technical schools.
Elaine:
One thing to be said for private education is choice, religious, secular, science, tech, the arts, special needs, etc.
Bron,
Many Democrats–including President Obama and Arne Duncan–support the type of corporate-driven school reform that relies too much on high stakes testing–a simplistic way to assess education and educators. Education should be about meeting the needs of students. Not all students are the same. They learn in different ways. We should not be spending billions of dollars and so much valuable class time each year on high stakes testing–while cutting money for the arts, school libraries, physical education. I’m glad I retired from teaching before I was put in an educational straightjacket.
Elaine:
“Too much reliance has been put on test scores to assess the progress of students and the effectiveness of classroom teachers.”
Bingo!
The teachers are forced by the state to teach to the Standards of Learning tests. It is a big problem. Students dont come prepared to learn and parents do not support the teachers in many cases. I am all for standards but I am not sure how you grade a teacher when the raw material refuses to yield to the process.
My wife is a teacher and I have seen you make the same observations she does. So I know it isnt a left right split but the truth. Not being a teacher, I dont think I have the knowledge to have an opinion. So I really dont know if private schools would be better.
One thing they [private schools] could do though is to kick out students who disrupted class or who were not there to learn. If public schools could posture a little more and tell parents it is not a right to send your child to school, maybe people would appreciate public education.