Did You Know I Am “Funded by the Teachers Union”?
I did not know so myself.
Not until Julie Stroud Trivitt, assistant professor of economics at the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas wrote as much on Facebook by way of advising another person to “follow the money” on me for my position on charters.
Trivitt draws her paycheck from a “college of business” that advertises itself as “We Are Walton”… When we say “WE ARE WALTON,” we mean it.”
The same page also alludes to its “corporate sponsors.” In 2013, the Walton Foundation paid $1.2 million to the University of Arkansas Foundation.
The Walton Foundation is big on charters and vouchers. The Waltons footed the bill for New Orleans’ OneApp process for applying for admission to New Orleans’ less than impressive, embarrassingly low ACT-scoring charter school system.
The Walton family also has an established, anti-union history.
Given a hefty, Walton-privatizing presence in Arkansas, it should come as no surprise that education privatization should move into Little Rock in the form of a bill to take over any “failing” school district and hand it over to a charter operator.
The Walton Foundation funded the bill. As the Arkansas Times notes:
[Author of the bill] Cozart chairs the Education Committee. His bill is the work of Walton Family Foundation-funded lobbyists and has the apparent backing of Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who’s promised wealthy Arkansans such as the Waltons and Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter Hussman who back the so-called “reform” movement, to do earthshaking things, beginning in Little Rock.
The Waltons are keen on charter operators. One of their favorites is KIPP. Walton gave the KIPP Foundation $8.8 million in 2013.
Some individuals object to a privatized Little Rock school system. In registering her objection, one such person happened to post a piece I wrote in December 2014, entitled, A Walton’s Plan to Fix Public Education. Uh. Huh.
But Walton-backed economics professor Trivitt was there to set the record straight on the likes of me and my distaste for multi-billionaire-purchased “choice.” Here is what Did You Know I Am “Funded by the Teachers Union”? | deutsch29:
