Seattle Schools Community Forum: Should Billionaire Ed Reformers Buy State Superintendent Race?

Seattle Schools Community Forum: Should Billionaire Ed Reformers Buy State Superintendent Race?:

Should Billionaire Ed Reformers Buy State Superintendent Race?

KUOW has a story on the spending in the state superintendent race and spending for Erin Jones' campaign is ahead of Chris Reykdal. 

One of the largest independent expenditures in Washington state elections this year has come in the race for schools chief: the education reform organization Stand for Children's PAC has bought $164,887 worth of mailers for the Erin Jones campaign for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The PAC spent another $12,809 yesterday on last-minute robocalls for Jones's campaign.

Stand for Children WA PAC is funded almost entirely by just a few players: Connie Ballmer, wife of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer; Reed Hastings, the California-based founder of Netflix; Washington State Charter Schools Association's WA Charter Action PAC, which is itself funded primarily by Connie and Steve Ballmer; and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen's company, Vulcan.

 As Reykdal notes (and I agree) that out-of-state money is troubling.  Reed Hastings, head of Netflix, has massively tried to change the course of public Seattle Schools Community Forum: Should Billionaire Ed Reformers Buy State Superintendent Race?:


What Ed Reform Wants from Our Next President

As we are coming to a close of our long national nightmare that is the 2016 Presidential election, here's some thoughts from Peter Greene at the Curmudgucation blog tries to explain what Bellwether Education Partners, a reliably reformy right-tilted thinky tank, believes the next president should do in public education policy. 

• Bellwether says that there are so many underperforming public schools in urban areas that instead of trying to turn them around, just open more charter schools.
• Bring the Blockchain to Education.  I myself wrote a thread about this "bitcoin" for teachers idea.  That's not proving teacher competency and the data privacy issues are huge.
• Charging high ed institutions a percentage on student loans that aren't getting paid back.  But as Greene points out, wouldn't that 

What Ed Reform Wants from Our Next President