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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System? | The Nation

Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System? | The Nation:


Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?

Louisiana school board elections

Last fall, a coterie of extremely wealthy billionaires, among them New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, turned the races for unpaid positions on the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) into some of the most expensive in the state’s history. Seven pro-education “reform” candidates for the BESE outraised eight candidates endorsed by the teacher’s unions by $2,386,768 to $199,878, a ratio of nearly twelve to one. In just one of these races, the executive director of Teach for America Greater New Orleans-Louisiana Delta, Kira Orange Jones, outspent attorney Louella Givens, who was endorsed by the state’s main teacher’s unions, by more than thirty-four to one: $472,382 to $13,815.

To support Orange Jones’s campaign against Givens, Eli Broad,