THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST
COLONEL GATES, POPEYES KOCH, AND THE EDUCATION RECESSION THEY COOKED UP
The billionaire menu of "reform" has been served. America's children are the ones who got food poisoning.
Bill Gates is the Colonel Sanders of charter schools — a folksy franchise operation that promised finger-lickin' educational transformation, plastered his face on every bucket, and left the actual cooking to underprepared twenty-two-year-olds with five weeks of training and a plane ticket to somewhere they'd never heard of.
Charles Koch is the Popeyes of vouchers — spicier, more ideological, crunchier at the edges, and somehow always available in neighborhoods where the public school across the street has been systematically starved of resources until it looks like a failure by design.
And the menu they've been serving America's children for thirty years? It's long. Teach For America. TNTP. Common Core. Race to the Top. High-stakes standardized testing. "Disruptive innovation." Charter school "bounties." Disaster capitalism in New Orleans. Goldman Sachs deferment programs dressed up as civic virtue. The menu goes on, item after depressing item, and the bill has finally come due.
The chickens, my friends, have come home to roost — and they are not free-range.
The Learning Recession Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here's the number that should be seared into every billionaire education philanthropist's overpriced consciousness: eighth-grade reading scores currently sit at their lowest levels since 1990.
Not since the pandemic. Since 1990.
Between 1990 and 2013, American public school students made massive, historic gains in reading and math — improvements equivalent to more than two full grade levels in mathematics. Then, right around 2013, the trajectory didn't just stall. It reversed. And it reversed right at the exact moment the corporate reform playbook hit full saturation — when Race to the Top had finished its high-stakes testing push, when Common Core was rolling out nationwide with all the grace of a first-year corps member trying to manage a seventh-grade classroom in November, and when the TFA-to-charter pipeline was at maximum operational velocity.
Researchers from Stanford, Harvard, and Dartmouth have described the pandemic not as the cause of the current crisis, but as "the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion." The erosion was already well underway before a single school went remote.
But the billionaire class and their foundation proxies would prefer you look only at 2020. Because 2013 is when their chickens hatched.
Teach For the Billionaire Oligarchy
Let's talk about Teach For America — or as its critics might more accurately brand it, Teach For the Billionaire Oligarchy, the preferred human resources vendor of the corporate reform movement.
The premise was always seductive: recruit bright, ambitious Ivy League graduates, give them five weeks of training in the summer, drop them into the nation's most under-resourced schools, and watch the magic happen. The magic, such as it was, mostly happened on the résumés of the recruits. Goldman Sachs famously offered elite undergraduates the ability to defer their Wall Street jobs for two years to do a TFA stint first — a deal so nakedly transactional that it became a public relations catastrophe and confirmed every suspicion critics had about the program's actual purpose.
That purpose, it turns out, wasn't primarily about kids. It was about building a network.
TFA's funding model — roughly 71% private, 29% public — has been underwritten by the exact roster of billionaires you'd expect: Walton, Gates, Arnold, Broad, and the Doris & Donald Fisher Fund (the Gap founders who also heavily back KIPP). MacKenzie Scott dropped an unrestricted $25 million on the organization. And in 2025, Ripple — a cryptocurrency firm — pledged $10 million specifically to scale up TFA's virtual tutoring arm. Because apparently the same people who brought you algorithmic volatility want to fix American reading scores.
The ProPublica investigation that rocked TFA's credibility revealed that the Walton Family Foundation was paying TFA a 50% funding premium for every corps member placed in a charter school over a traditional neighborhood public school. They weren't funding a teacher pipeline. They were funding a charter school staffing agency — with a finder's fee built into the grant.
Move Fast and Break Things (Children Edition)
The Silicon Valley gospel of "move fast and break things" was never designed for classrooms. It turns out that when you apply it to schools, the things you break are children's academic trajectories — and they do not ship hotfixes.
Traditional university teacher preparation programs have lost more than 33% of their enrollment since 2010, even as overall undergraduate enrollment grew by nearly 30% over the same period. In Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, the collapse exceeded 65%. The number of bachelor's degrees in education conferred annually has fallen below 90,000 — a historic low.
What filled the gap? For-profit, online, self-paced alternative certification programs. Commercial operators with no selective admission, no cohort model, no community investment — just modules, a certificate, and a new emergency hire filling a vacancy in a school that's been perpetually under-resourced for twenty years.
Meanwhile, TFA corps members — only 25% of whom are still in a classroom at year five — cycle through the highest-need schools in America at a rate that research consistently identifies as one of the greatest obstacles to student achievement: teacher instability. The students who most need experienced, community-anchored educators are the same students who've been systematically assigned to a revolving door of novice practitioners on two-year civic tourism visas.
Compare that to Urban Teacher Residencies — longer, deeper, locally anchored programs — which retain 70% to 80% of teachers at year five. The model that works is not the one that got the billion-dollar marketing budget.
The Recovery That Isn't
What does the aftermath look like? It looks like a "U-shaped" recovery that's really just a map of inequality with different fonts.
The wealthiest school districts have bounced back, drawing on private capital and community social networks that no amount of policy disruption could strip away.
The poorest districts have seen a partial, artificial rebound — because federal pandemic relief money (ESSER funds) temporarily propped them up. Those funds are now running out.
The middle-income districts? Stuck. No private wealth to cushion the blow, not poor enough to qualify for the emergency federal infusion. Just steadily declining in the trough of a recession that started in 2013 and has never really ended.
The goal of "getting back to 2019 levels" — still cited by some officials as the benchmark — is not a recovery plan. It is a plan to return to the middle of a slide.
The Noise Machine
The billionaire foundations, their policy front groups, their TFA-alumni legislative networks, their 50CAN chapters and Stand for Children PACs — they are very, very loud. Donor-advised funds flow through Fidelity and the National Philanthropic Trust, obscuring the private equity managers behind the anti-union lobbying. Foundations fund the advocacy groups; the advocacy groups lobby statehouses for charter and voucher expansions; the charter networks funnel revenue back into the advocacy groups. A perfect, self-reinforcing loop — noisy, well-capitalized, and utterly insulated from accountability.
Meanwhile, parents are trying to explain to their kids why the school library closed. Teachers are paying for classroom supplies out of their own pockets in schools that lost veteran staff to mass layoffs a decade ago and replaced them with beginners who were gone by year three. Students are sitting in the trough of a learning recession that the people most responsible for it are still insisting was caused by something else.
So here we are. Colonel Gates sold America a franchise built on a five-week recipe and called it a revolution. Popeyes Koch spiced it up with vouchers, wrapped the whole thing in "school choice," and handed the bag to state legislatures who didn't read the ingredients. Thirty years later, eighth-grade reading scores are at their lowest since 1990, the teacher pipeline is gutted, and the poorest kids in America are still being used as the test kitchen.
The chickens came home. The biscuits are stale. And the drive-through window is closed — because they couldn't keep anyone staffed past year two.
The Big Education Ape has been tracking the billionaire reform agenda since before "disruption" was a compliment. We're still here.
Sources & Further Reading
The Learning Recession (Pre-Dating COVID)
Education Scorecard — Harvard, Stanford & Dartmouth Collaborative
The foundational source for the "learning recession began in 2013" finding and the "mudslide after seven years of erosion" framing.
🔗 https://educationscorecard.org/
Harvard Center for Education Policy Research — Education Scorecard Press Release (May 2026)
Official release: 8th-grade reading at lowest since 1990; the U-shaped recovery data; middle-income district data.
🔗 https://cepr.harvard.edu/education-recovery-scorecard
Education Week / The 74 — "Anatomy of a Learning Recession: Academic Losses Began in 2013"
Detailed breakdown of the 2013 inflection point and the debate over causes.
🔗 https://www.the74million.org/article/anatomy-of-a-learning-recession-academic-losses-began-in-2013-report-finds/
Harvard GSE News — "New Education Scorecard Finds U-Shaped Recovery" (May 2026)
Specific findings on district-level inequity in recovery.
🔗 https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/news/26/05/new-education-scorecard-finds-u-shaped-recovery
The ProPublica TFA/Walton "Bounty" Investigation
ProPublica — "How Teach For America Evolved Into an Arm of the Charter School Movement" (2019)
The definitive investigation: Walton paid $4,000 per corps member in a traditional public school, $6,000 per corps member in a charter school.
🔗 https://www.propublica.org/article/how-teach-for-america-evolved-into-an-arm-of-the-charter-school-movement
Project Censored — Walton Family Foundation Donation to TFA Served the Charter Movement
Secondary analysis of the ProPublica findings with full context on grant terms.
🔗 https://www.projectcensored.org/walton-family-foundation-donation-to-teach-for-america-served-the-charter-school-movement/
TFA Teacher Retention Data
EdWorkingPapers / Annenberg Institute at Brown University — "The Effects of High-Performing, High-Turnover Teachers on Long-Run Student Achievement: Evidence from TFA" (2022)
The longitudinal NYC study documenting the 25% TFA vs. 43% non-TFA five-year retention gap.
🔗 https://edworkingpapers.com/ai22-675
Education Week — "TFA Teachers: How Long Do They Teach? Why Do They Leave?" (2011)
Independent longitudinal study confirming ~27.8% of TFA corps members still teaching at year five.
🔗 https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-tfa-teachers-how-long-do-they-teach-why-do-they-leave/2011/10
Education Next — "Teach For America's Fast Path to the Classroom Accelerates Performance Over the Longer Haul"
Pro-TFA framing of the same retention data, useful for balance and context.
🔗 https://www.educationnext.org/teach-for-americas-fast-path-to-the-classroom-accelerates-performance-over-the-longer-haul/
Urban Teacher Residency Retention vs. TFA
Learning Policy Institute — "The Teacher Residency: An Innovative Model for Preparing Teachers"
The core LPI report documenting 70–80% five-year retention rates for residency graduates vs. 25% for TFA.
🔗 https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-residency
Learning Policy Institute — "Teacher Residencies: Building a High-Quality, Sustainable Workforce"
Boston Teacher Residency data: 75% still teaching at year five vs. 51% for non-residency hires.
🔗 https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/teacher-residencies-building-high-quality-sustainable-workforce
Collapse of Traditional Teacher Preparation Programs
Center for American Progress — "What to Make of Declining Enrollment in Teacher Preparation Programs" (2019)
The definitive 50-state analysis: 43% decline in traditional university enrollment 2010–2018; 42% increase in non-IHE commercial alternatives.
🔗 https://www.americanprogress.org/article/make-declining-enrollment-teacher-preparation-programs/
Inside Higher Ed — "Access-Focused Prep Programs Proliferate Amid Teacher Shortage" (2024)
AACTE data: 45% drop in enrollment 2010–2021.
🔗 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/students/careers/2024/07/24/access-focused-prep-programs-proliferate-amid-teacher-shortage
Forbes — "Enrollment in Teacher Preparation Programs Down a Third in This Decade: Six Troubling Trends" (2019)
State-by-state breakdown of collapse, including 65%+ drops in Oklahoma, Michigan, Pennsylvania.
🔗 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2019/12/04/enrollment-in-teacher-preparation-programs-down-a-third-in-this-decade-six-troubling-trends/
New Orleans: Disaster Capitalism & the Firing of Black Educators
Verite News New Orleans — "'They Broke Us Down': New Orleans Teachers, Fired After Katrina, Reflect on Lives Upended" (2025)
First-person accounts from the 7,500+ teachers fired post-Katrina; shift from 73% Black teaching force pre-storm.
🔗 https://veritenews.org/2025/08/29/katrina-teachers-fired-new-orleans/
Schott Foundation — "Hurricane Lessons: What We've Learned from Post-Katrina Disaster Capitalism in NOLA Schools"
Framing of the New Orleans charter conversion as "disaster capitalism."
🔗 https://schottfoundation.org/the-latest/hurricane-lessons-what-weve-learned-from-post-katrina-disaster-capitalism-in-nola-schools/
CounterPunch — "Twenty Years After Katrina, the City's All-Charter School System Is Failing Many Families" (2025)
20-year retrospective on the post-Katrina all-charter conversion.
🔗 https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/01/twenty-years-after-katrina-the-citys-all-charter-schools-system-is-failing-many-families/
In These Times — "New Orleans' Post-Katrina All-Charter School System Has Proven a Failure"
Includes Diane Ravitch's widely cited critique: "These heavy-handed tactics require a suspension of democracy that would not be tolerated in a white suburb."
🔗 https://inthesetimes.com/article/10-years-after-katrina-new-orleans-all-charter-district-has-proven-a-failur
Background on TFA, Funding, and the Charter-Reform Ecosystem
Diane Ravitch's Blog — ProPublica TFA Investigation Summary
Ravitch's commentary and framing of the Walton/charter bounty system within the broader privatization argument.
🔗 https://dianeravitch.net/2019/06/19/propublica-how-teach-for-america-became-an-arm-of-the-charter-school-movement/
Arkansas Times — "Teach For America, With Walton Support, Helps the Charter School Movement"
Context on the Walton Family Foundation's $100 million+ total investment in TFA.
🔗 https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2019/06/18/teach-for-america-with-walton-support-helps-the-charter-school-movement