Should Billionaire Ed Reformers Buy State Superintendent Race?
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.
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?: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.
What Ed Reform Wants from Our Next President
- 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