Advocacy philanthropy and the leveraged buy-out of public schools — Part 2
by Danny Weil
[Note: This piece concludes the two-part essay. For Part 1, please see: Link]
Ted Forstmann and private advocacy philanthropy as a social movement
When there is an obvious financial pay-off for those promoting public policy changes through ‘advocacy philanthropy’, it behooves citizens to critically examine those advocates, their agendas and the implications of their claims. Sadly, this is not the case in America today nor was it at the time the leverage buy-out of public schools was being driven by those who posed as charitable individuals but whose real agenda was and is the incessant accumulation of profits. However, in the spirit of critical examination, let us begin with entrepreneur, Ted Forstmann.
Forstmann was not an unfamiliar face at the time he was first advocating for the privatization of education. Besides being a multimillionaire venture capitalist, Forstmann considered himself, “a pioneer of the leveraged buy-out” [1]. This is not surprising. He served on the boards of, or was a spokesperson for, many conservative