Frank Cagle: Beware the money behind vouchers
The school voucher bill isn't dead, but it is lying in a coma on the clerk's desk, unlikely to rise for the rest of this session. The pros and cons of public school money being given to private schools aside, the fate of the bill is a hopeful sign for our state House of Representatives.
The out-of-state special interest groups trying to get their hands on taxpayer money are still lurking out there, assembling a war chest from the eccentric idle rich, with which to threaten House members with thousands of dollars if they don't toe the line. House members are to be commended for not running scared and, instead, following the wishes of constituents back home.
Legislators are wising up to the fact that there are forces out there who realize America spends billions on education and they want a big chunk of it.
During the upcoming legislative races, if your representative is being hammered with hundreds of thousands of dollars in negative ads, consider where the money is coming from. Well-meaning education reformers have had various of these groups latch onto them — parasites who see a pot of gold in taxpayers' pockets. Not to mention well-meaning people with a lot of money who are being led around by smooth-talking charlatans who have convinced them to give up on public education.
I'm sure Students First will be around this campaign season spending money and trying to dictate educational policy through fear and intimidation. But at least we don't have to put up with Michelle Rhee anymore. When Rhee got run out of the District of Columbia, she decided to come down here and help us reform education, I suppose because her ex-husband, Kevin Huffman, was our education commissioner and their children were in a suburban Nashville private school. She has moved on to "reform" Sacramento, California.
Rhee married NBA star Kevin Johnson, who is now mayor of Sacramento. (Fun factoid: They got married at Blackberry Farm.) She has turned over the reins of her non-profit to Johnson and joined the board with fellow members that include Bill Cosby. Johnson was such a success as president of the National Conference of Black Mayors that the organization went out of existence at the end of his tenure.
Pearson, a company that has had state contracts, is a billion-dollar conglomerate based in London that sold off its media properties to invest in textbooks, testing and other education activities – 'cause that's where the money is.
A lot of these pressure groups are being funded by Betsy DeVos, who married the heir to the Amway fortune. The Walmart heirs have taken Sam Walton's money and have spent $700 million to "transform" education. (You reckon Sam Frank Cagle: Beware the money behind vouchers:
