Powerful Koch network taking on school choice with new group
SEATTLE — Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch’s powerful network that’s known for influencing state policy is now targeting education issues like school choice as the movement battles a new wave of hostility from Democrats who oppose charter schools and private school vouchers that use taxpayer money.
Koch in June announced the Yes Every Kid initiative as the latest addition to his sprawling network of wealthy donors, political groups and tax-exempt advocacy organizations best known for pushing anti-regulation, small-government policies. Its political arm, Americans for Prosperity, has made waves supporting the tea party and fighting former President Barack Obama’s health care law.
The Yes Every Kid group is tasked with monitoring statehouses where it can be influential on school choice, said Stacy Hock, a Texas philanthropist who is among hundreds of donors each contributing at least $100,000 annually to the Koch network’s wide-ranging agenda.
Hock and officials with the Koch network said it’s too early to provide specifics about what policies the group is pushing.
“The priority is to go where there is a political appetite to be open to policy change and lean in there,” said Hock, who also leads the Texans for Education Opportunity advocacy group that supports charters and other education alternatives.
She cited Texas, West Virginia, Tennessee and Florida as priority states where school choice proposals have flourished.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers union, called Koch’s new effort a public relations stunt.
“To date, the Koch strategy has been to profit from and compete with public schools, while trying to ‘defund and defang’ anyone who got in their way,” Weingarten said in a statement.
Koch’s new education reform lobbying group comes as the conservative icon recalibrates his priorities, both CONTINUE READING: Powerful Koch network taking on school choice with new group - The Washington Post
