LA Times’ ‘Independent’ Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backer
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Times () announced an initiative called Education Matters, “an ongoing, wide-ranging report card on K-12 education in Los Angeles, California and the nation.” The project will cover educational issues, including “the latest debate on curriculum or testing” and “how charter schools are changing public education.”
The Times, owned by Tribune Publishing, will fund Education Matters with donations and grants from philanthropic organizations like the Baxter Family Foundation and the Broad Foundation. “These institutions, like the Times,” publisher and CEO Austin Beutner writes, “are dedicated to independent journalism that engages and informs its readers.”
The problem with Education Matters’ promise to create “independent journalism,” however, is that several of the organizations funding it have a direct stake in a very specific . Education reform, as a project, is far from value-neutral: Reformers promote specific policies, ranging from firing teachers based on their students’ test scores to replacing public schools with privately run charter schools. Their rhetoric often directly attacks teachers unions and even public education as an institution, in favor of “market-driven” “school choice” solutions. And the organizations funding theLA Times’ new project are no exception.
The Broad Foundation, in particular, has a prodigious record. According to its, Broad currently invests in organizations that invest in charter-school expansion, including Aspire Public Schools (whose goal is to “expand its network of public charter schools in the Los Angeles area”), the California Charter School Association, the Charter School Growth Fund, charter loan provider Excellent Education Development, Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, Green Dot Public Schools (a charter network), the KIPP Foundation, New Schools Venture Fund, Pacific Charter School Development, Silicon Valley-based charter management organization Rocketship Education, Success Charter Network and Uncommon Schools. It funded the popular pro-charter documentary Waiting for Superman. It also invests in the US Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” grant program.
Two of the other three donors that the Times lists have also invested in charter school expansion and an education reform agenda. The Wasserman Foundation, which its education-related giving as “focused on transforming our public schools,” has with Broad and the Gates Foundation to fund senior staffer positions in the LA school district. As reported by the LA Times itself (), it gave $6 million to a local charter network; it’s also to Teach for America.
And the Baxter Family foundation its mission is to “restructure the present system to create effective competition in the market for educational services.” It promises to “sponsor and/or undertake research that will analyze alternative solutions to the problems plaguing our public schools, including private and charter schools.”
The other foundation, the California Endowment, primarily on health initiatives in schools and communities.
While it won’t be Broad or Wasserman themselves writing the new stories at theLA Times, it’s dubious that “independent journalism” will be funded, in part, via foundations so powerful in the education reform movement. Just like all journalism, education coverage must be adversarial to those in power–and right now, in education, reformers have a great deal of power.
The reform movement itself should be covered thoroughly and critically. In the past few years, news outlets like the New York Times have begun to investigate disciplinary practices at the popular Success Academy network (), charters’ disproportionately low numbers of students with disabilities and English Language Learners (), and their high suspension rates ().
What will Education Matters’ approach be to covering Los Angeles education stories that involve projects currently funded by those paying for the coverage? LA Times’ ‘Independent’ Education Project Bankrolled by Charter School Backers — FAIR:
The Wasserman Foundation, one of the funds behind the LA Times‘ new education initiative, advertising its involvement in the education debate.
