Broad school bully?
ASSOCIATED PRESS
U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, second from left, and the Broad Foundation's Eli Broad, second from right, congratulate San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, center, at the Library of Congress Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005, in Washington, for winning $125,000 in scholarships as a finalist for the 2005 Broad Prize for Public Education. Ackerman is joined by Eric Mar, left, president of the SUSD Board of Education, and Dennis Kelly, right, president of the UnitedEducators of San Francisco. San Francisco Unified was one of four finalists for the prize, which recognizes the nation's top urban school districts. The Norfolk Public Schools in Virginia received the first place award, $500,000 in college scholarships,for showing consistent improvement by its students. (AP Photo/The Broad Foundation, Jennifer Goldstein)
IN 1939, a 6-year-old boy moved to Detroit with his working-class parents - Lithuanian Jewish immigrants - and walked into the remarkable engine that propelled so much of America's prosperity in the 20th century, his neighborhood public school.
That kid, Eli Broad, graduated from Detroit Central High School in 1951 and went on to become one of the world's richest people, a billionaire who made his fortune first in the post-World War II housing boom and later in insurance.
Today, the 79-year-old Broad (it rhymes with "road"), who lives in Los Angeles, is spending a good chunk of his fortune on education reform - steadfast in his belief that applying the same data-driven, free-market principles that made him so wealthy can also make U.S. schools great again.
Yet a small but growing band of critics say his Broad Foundation could actually destroy the kind of schools he's trying to save - the public schools that once trained first- and second-generation Americans like him.
"They run roughshod over communities, ignore data and local experiences . . . and promote a homogenized, nationalized agenda of short-term fixes in a top-down structure," Helen Gym, co-founder of Parents United for Public Education in Philadelphia, said of