More on Canada's "war" on unions
Geoffrey Canada's "war " on teachers union with Rhee, Klein, Home Depot, hedge-funders, and Robin Hood Fund, gets a WSJ (Murdoch) pat on the head. *"We are very worried that the teachers unions are really pushing that this time period, the Bloomberg time period, be thought of as over, and now we…get back to business as usual," said Mr. Canada, head of the Harlem Children's Zone, which won fame in the 2010 documentary "Waiting for 'Superman.'"* All the usual suspects are bellying up to the anti-union feeding trough, including DFER's Joe Williams. *"They're going to be running this l... more »
Geoffrey Canada declares war on teacher unions
Rhee & Canada lead the war on teacher unions. *“Folks are genuinely looking for opportunities to make peace and not war,” Mr. Canada said. “And I think that’s terrific. But someone has to make war.” * -- Geoffrey Canada Canada's war declaration comes at the end of a Times story announcing the formation of a well-financed and politically connected alliance aimed at nothing less than smashing teacher unions. The new Officers in the anti-teacher army include (as you might expect) Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee. Klein left his post as NYC schools chancellor to pimp for internation... more »
Edelman: It's all about $$$
Joanne Barkan has this great quote in her excellent piece in Dissent Magazine: *Jonah Edelman, CEO of Stand for Children ($5.2 million from Gates, 2003-2011), sums up the thinking: “We’ve learned the hard way that if you want to have the clout needed to change policies for kids, you have to help politicians get elected. It’s about money, money, money” (Wall Street Journal, November 3, 2010).*
Who's behind 'Stand Your Ground' and school privatization? -- ALEC
KrugmanNew York Times columnist Paul Krugman shines his light on the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the force behind the so-called "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida and other states. The law is now being used as the basis for the defense in the murder of Trayvon Martin. When you turn the rock over on the current wave of union-busting, anti-immigrant, and school privatization legislation being pushed in states like Virginia and Arizona, there you will find ALEC. Writes Krugman: *Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining e... more »
New manifesto for corporate school reformers
Klein and Rice offer their manifesto the Council on Foreign Relations Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice are the authors of the latest in a long string of Ownership Society Manifestos dating back to *A Nation At Risk*. They presented their report, U.S. Education Reform and National Security to, of all people, the Council on Foreign Relations. It portrays public schools as a threat to our national security and sonds the national security alarm as a scare tactic to push their school privatization agenda. The report supposedly represents the findings of a task force of "prominent educati... more »
If anyone had doubts... TFA reveals itself in deal with Imagine Schools, Inc.
Imagine Prep in Sunrise, Arizona *"The major problem with our government-operated public schools is best understood by comparing the government monopolies that operate public elementary and secondary schools in this nation and our public university systems." *-- Dennis Bakke, founder of Imagine Schools, Inc. I'm sure Wendy Kopp will say, it's "all about the kids." But some think it's more about real estate. WaPo's Valerie Strauss thinks it's about expansion of the TFA empire. Whatever it's really about, Teach for America is partnering with the nation’s largest for-profit charter... more »
Stand for Children back in Chicago flush with cash
Best antidote to Stand For Children, Rudy Lozano, Jr.Union-busting school reformers Stand For Children, are back in Illinois with deep pockets. This time around SFC is bankrolling a gaggle of Republican (and a few anti-union Dems) in local elections. In a letter to the Chicago Tribune, SFC's director, Mary Anderson lauds the conservative paper's endorsed, mainly Republican candidates list. Most importantly to Chicagoans, Stand tossed $70,000 behind anti-teacher candidates running in opposition to CTU-backed progressives, *Rudy Lozano *(21st District) and *Kenny Johnson* (26th Dis... more »
How P.S. 261 ran-off Success Academy charter school hustlers
From an opinion piece in the New York Times, "How charter schools can hurt", written by public school parent, Lucinda Rosenfeld: *A few weeks ago, for three days in a row starting at 3 p.m., a representative from the Success Academy charter school that is scheduled to open this fall in adjacent Cobble Hill stood outside the doors of P.S. 261, handing out fliers and attempting to recruit its students. On day two, outraged teachers asked the man to leave. He refused. On day three, a loose group of teachers, parents and students occupied the sidewalk next to him. Heated words were exch... more »
Gates uses funding to force privately-run charters on school districts
*Last spring, as the Texas Legislature debated massive cuts to public schools—one of many desperate measures to close a $27 billion biennial budget deficit—10,000 protesters massed in Austin for a “Save Our Schools” rally. In the end, the damage to the state’s already-underfunded schools added up to $5.4 billion, forcing districts to lay off tens of thousands of teachers and staffers*. -- American Prospect The Gates Foundation moved on Austin and and other districts, forcing them to sign a pledge to promote privately-run charter schools in exchange for funding. Gates calls it thei... more »
Anschutz makes Koch Bros. "look moderate..."
Bankrolled L.A. mayor's corporate school reform & 'Waiting for Superman"Robert Skeels posts on Dissident Voice about *Philip Anschutz*' connections with *Mayor Vilaraigosa's* corporate school reform initiative in L.A. Anschutz has donated at least $100,000 to the Mayor's Coalition for School Reform — a slush fund to elect privatization friendly school board candidates for Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). *Anschutz, a reactionary that makes the fascist-friendly Koch Brothers look moderate in comparison, also funded Waiting for Superman, the poverty pimping propaganda pie... more »
Keeping an eye on the power philanthropists
The Walton Family Foundation "invested" about $160 million last year in so-called Education Reform Grants. That's an increase of about $2 million from a year ago. The foundation is one of the three biggest and most powerful ed philanthropies, along side the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the one most focused on promoting vouchers and charter schools. According to WaPo's Valerie Strauss, the foundation gave $49.5 million to Teach for America over five years to double its teaching corps and $25.5 million over the same period to the KIPP c... more »
Pearson's edu-testing profits soar
London-based Pearson Publishing, the standardized testing giant, reports a 72% "surge" in profits during 2011. But the profit picture in the U.S. is not as rosy as it looks. Most of the profits are coming from Penguin's ebook marketing. But it's Professional testing operation and its International Education unit, which includes Pearson schools and universities overseas., were also among the strongest performers, each increasing revenues by 15%. However, Pearson's North American division actually saw a 2% dip in revenues because of what Dame Marjorie Scardino, chief executive, calls... more »
U.K.'s version of Duncan in bed with Murdoch, Klein
Brit Ed Sec. Michael Gove *"I'd expect in the next [few] months we'd be making some acquisitions," Klein told the Financial Times. "There's the willingness to put in significant capital." * The most corrupt and the most powerful media man in the world is *Rupert Murdoch*. His criminal acts -- bribing cops, spying on innocent victims, tapping phones-- have cause great harm and have threatened his empire which is now under scrutiny both in Britain and in the U.S. Murdoch's strategy has been to reinvent himself as an education/technology organization. He hired former N.Y. schools cha... more »
The "Big Enchilada"
*"Trying to make a killing in the charter school business"?! Yeah, that's right, the charter school business is so profitable that I'm telling all my friends in the hedge fund business that they're in the wrong business. My message: "If you really want to make a lot of money, start a charter school!" LOL!* -- Whitney Tilson LOL! indeed. In 2007, hedgefunder and charter school maven, *Whitney Tilson* chided me for implying that there was a profit to be made in the charter school market and that he and his group DFER were pursuing exactly that course, under the banner of *school ref... more »
Even Gates doesn't like shaming teachers in public
N.Y. Times graphicPublicly shaming teachers in N.Y. and L.A. is too much even for Bill Gates. In a NYT opinion piece, ("Shame is Not the Solution")he continues to defend the use of inaccurate, misleading, and now widely discredited, value-added formulas, as "one important piece" of ranking individual teachers. But the most powerful of the power philanthropists wants these evaluations kept out of the press. He's at least got that right. *Unfortunately, some education advocates in New York, Los Angeles and other cities are claiming that a good personnel system can be based on ranking t... more »
Town says, "frack you" to Anschutz
* Phillip Anschutz*, bankrolled the anti-public school propaganda film, *Waiting for Superman*. Now he's financing another film glorifying the so called, "parent trigger", a law which gives a group of parents the power to fire all their school's teachers and hand it over to a private management company. 20th Century Fox is preparing a September release for “Won’t Back Down” starring Viola Davis and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Anschutz is a far right-wing, evangelical billionaire who inherited his fortune from his father's oil business. He is also media mogul, publisher of the Weekly Stan... more »
Koch Bros., Gates back Heartland Inst. attack on science teaching
Leaked documents, from a nonprofit organization in Chicago called the Heartland Institute, outline plans to promote a curriculum that would undermine the teaching of science and in particular, the well-established scientific determination that fossil fuel emissions endanger the long-term welfare of the planet. The papers were published earlier this week on the DeSmogBlog website. That's not all. The leaks reveal that Heartland, which benefits from its tax-exempt status as a non-political organization, is also involved in anti-union activities as well as defending of right-wing Wis... more »
Times editorial reveals legislative power of ALEC
An editorial in Sunday's New York Times exposes the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) founded in 1973 by the right-wing activist Paul Weyrich; its big funders include Exxon Mobil, the Olin and Scaife families and foundations tied to Koch Industries. Many of the largest corporations are represented on its board. *Lawmakers who eagerly do ALEC’s bidding have much to answer for. Voters have a right to know whether the representatives they elect are actually writing the laws, or whether the job has been outsourced to big corporate interests. *
The privatization of war parallels education trends
I don't think soThe erosion and selling off of public space isn't limited to public education. This loss of public decision making and government transparency and accountability is the biggest threat to any democratic system of government. The latest news from the Afghan killing fields should do the privatizers proud. This from today's New York Times: *Many American generals and diplomats have private contractors for their personal bodyguards. And along with the risks have come the consequences: More civilian contractors working for American companies than American soldiers died in ... more »
AUSL's clout-heavy "turnaround" schools among city's worst
Clout-heavy banker David Vitale, former AUSL board chairman, now runs the Board of EducationFounded and run by Chicago venture capitalist, Martin Koldyke, the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUS) has used its connections and political clout to become a powerhouse in the school * turnaround* business. Despite its schools ranking at or near the bottom of the system, AUSL has benefited from backing from former mayor Daley, current mayor Rahm Emanuel and Sec. of Ed Arne Duncan. Emanuel even selected a former AUSL top executive to oversee CPS' finances and named AUSL's previous boa... more »