Why I Do Not Support Mayor Pete
There are many reasons why I would like to support Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He’s young, he is well-educated, he is smart, he has an admirable record of service to his country, he’s brimming with ideas. I find him very attractive on many levels.
But on education, he is a stealth corporate reformer.
I had an inkling of this when I read a review of his autobiography, which described his formative years at McKinsey and his data-driven, technocratic approach to solving problems. But I didn’t reach a judgment.
Then I learned more when a friend sent me an invitation to a fundraiser for Mayor Pete, hosted by Reed Hastings. Hastings is the billionaire founder of Netflix who is a charter school zealot. He served on the California State Board of Education where he used his influence to minimize any regulation of charters. Since then, he has given many millions to charters as well as to the charter lobby, The California Charter Schools Association. He created a fund of $100 million to promote privatization of public schools by charter expansion. Hastings has said he looks forward to the day when all schools are run by corporations, not elected school boards.
I tweeted the invitation and it got a lot of attention. Carol Burris heard from Pete’s National Political Director, Stephen Brokaw. He wanted to correct any misperception we at the Network for Public Education had about where Mayor Pete stands on education. He is against vouchers. He is against for-profit charters. He (or his team) visited Roxbury Prep in Massachusetts and was very impressed with their high test scores. Brokaw cited Roxbury Prep as the kind of nonprofit charter that offered lessons to public schools.
Carol responded that the issue is not whether charters CONTINUE READING: Why I Do Not Support Mayor Pete | Diane Ravitch's blog
