By Thomas Ultican 4/22/2021
Twenty years of studying education policy, politics and practices has been awakening. Seeing billionaires inflict their often misguided and unpopular beliefs on our nation’s public schools has made it clear how undemocratic and dangerous extreme wealth is. They have established voucher programs routinely sending taxpayer money to religious schools even though these programs have lost decisively whenever submitted to voters. In her book Slaying Goliath, Diane Ravitch labeled these 0.1% of Americans as disrupters. She asked and answered the question “what do disrupters want?” They want:
- Inexperienced teachers with little or no training from organizations like Teach For America.
- To replace teachers with machine teaching (“blended learning” – “personalized learning”).
- To move fast and break things including school systems, historic schools and communities.
- To eliminate local democratic control over schools.
- To eliminate teacher tenure and seniority rights.
- To eliminate teacher defined benefit pensions.
- To eliminate teachers unions.
- To evaluate teachers and schools with standardized test scores.
- To lower taxes and reduce spending on education.
Controlling the Political Process
In 2018, the Network for Public Education (NPE) produced a masterful report detailing how school board elections are being stolen from local residents. In the introduction to “Hijacked by Billionaires: How the Super Rich Buy Elections to Undermine Public Schools,” the authors state, “This report provides some insight into how the very wealthy insert themselves into local elections through direct contributions, Independent Expenditure Committees and even non-profit organizations.”
The Billionaires Cited in “Hijacked by Billionaires”
In my post-election analysis of three elections, “School Board Elections 2020: CONTINUE READING: Why Tax Billionaires Out of Existence | tultican