IPS Ferebee Joins Billionaire Eli Broad Academy
A few months ago, unknown to or unreported by the Indianapolis public media, IPS supt. Lewis Ferebeejoined the school reform movement in a major way, landing a fellowship at the Broad Academy founded by California billionaire Eli Broad, a former Obama supporter and close friend of the Clintons who was behind a recent $490 million plan with other reformers to charterize Los Angeles, hoping to place half of the city’s students in charter schools.
The Broad Academy is notorious for training CEOs to become school superintendents nationwide to dismantle school districts.
According to a Broad Academy press release on April 12, 2017, Ferebee was chosen as a Broad Academy Fellow because since he has led the district, “IPS is more agile and more capable of responding quickly to each school’s specific needs,” now offering “innovation and autonomous schools additional flexibilities in organizing school-level resources for maximum benefit to students.”
Even though he has worked to eliminate traditional public education across the country, giving to Teach for America, Teach Plus, and hundreds of other reform groups, Eli Broad is best-known in Indiana for donating $50,000 to Tony Bennett’s campaign for state school superintendent in 2012, as I note inHoosier School Heist.
The Broad Foundation, in 2015, also handed the Tony Bennett and Jeb Bush-founded Chiefs for Change Schools Matter: IPS Ferebee Joins Billionaire Eli Broad Academy:
