Let white leaders defend institutional racism; let black leaders defend black lives

Let white leaders defend institutional racism; let black leaders defend black lives:

Let white leaders defend institutional racism; let black leaders defend black lives

Black educators cannot best serve their communities by doubling as shields for white organizations and institutionalized racism

  
If one looks and listens closely, black reform advocates and charter leaders are responding to the mythology that black people don’t want charter schools or reform in general.

For most black folk, however, not liking reform equates to not liking institutional racism, which impacts our communities no matter how many black and brown people an organization hires. When black people say they don’t like education reform, they mean the trade-offs of institutionalized oppression are patently unacceptable.

Some may call it an untruth that black people and charter critics resist positive change; I call it a lie. Black folk have never been in a position to accept the status quo, and most black people applaud black people in our communities who teach, open charter schools or lead district-run schools. In addition, black educators have always excelled in spite of systems. We are never surprised and are always encouraged by black educators who make systems work—including those in charters. Therefore, any idea that not liking reform is somehow a refutation of black educators in charter schools is a terrible interpretation in the face of history.

When black people say, “I don’t like education reform,” they don’t mean individual black charter leaders are bad. They aren’t saying change isn’t needed. For many people, not liking education reform is really not liking the perfunctory rolling out of black educators who speak on behalf of white organizations. Instead of intentionally dismantling systemic and institutional oppression, black faces are placed at the helm of a crooked ship to convince us it’s smooth sailing.

The weight must be distributed effectively and equitably. White charter proponents must carry the burden of disenfranchised voters, fired teachers, supplanted black businesses and expelled students. Black educators cannot best serve their communities by doubling as shields for white organizations and institutionalized racism.

Hillary Clinton’s silence on K-12 education seemingly corresponds with a new chorus of criticisms. News21 recently put out a report on how school takeovers disproportionately affect poor, black communities. The NAACP called for a moratorium on charter schools, and the Black Lives Matter Collective issued its own rebuke. All of which echoes concerns within black communities, and rightfully so.

Black folk know too well that no matter how well-meaning white establishments are, they are not black ones. The hiring of black Let white leaders defend institutional racism; let black leaders defend black lives:

Say a Big Thank You to John Oliver! - Network For Public Education

Say a Big Thank You to John Oliver! - Network For Public Education:

Say a Big Thank You to John Oliver!

 On Sunday night, John Oliver did a brilliant job exposing the abuses of the charter school industry and the problems associated with charter schools. If you have not seen it, you can watch it here.  Charter supporters are livid, and they are bombarding Oliver with emails.

Please take a moment and send John Oliver your thank you. We've created a sample letter you can quickly send. Share it with others to send as well. We also have "thank you" tweets that link to recent charter scandals for you to tweet to John. Your participation is important and Diane needs your help with this campaign. Please send your letter today.Say a Big Thank You to John Oliver! - Network For Public Education:

Tweet Your Thanks to John Oliver! - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/p3bR9v-1Ox

Jersey Jazzman: The Sick Consequences of "Competition" in Education

Jersey Jazzman: The Sick Consequences of "Competition" in Education:

The Sick Consequences of "Competition" in Education

ADDING: Big props to @pippi longstocking for guiding me to this story.

 There are two ways to get you to buy my product:

1. Convince you my product is good.
2. Convince you the other guy's product sucks.

Sure, there are plenty of companies that base their marketing strategy around a positive message. But if my product isn't really that good to begin with, it's going to be hard to convince you to fork over some cash for my stuff. It's probably easier, and more effective, to just bad-mouth my rivals.

Now, we are currently living in the golden age of competition in public education. Milton Friedman's dream of pubic schools having to compete for students has finally come true. Which means charter schools have to go out and make their case for enrollment, either by extolling their virtues, or by denigrating the public schools with which they compete.

The problem is that when you're opening a brand new charter school, it's hard to prove to people you're better than the local public school district -- the same school system that has been at the heart of the community for generations. The same district that brings America Friday night football games and kindergarten Halloween parades and high school spring musicals and all the other traditions tightly tied to our nation's identity.

That pretty much leaves you only one choice:

This is an actual mailer sent to families in the Bethlehem, PA area, recruiting for the Innovative Arts Academy Charter School. Sara K. Satullo, reporting forlehighvalleylive.com, picks up the story:

A promotional mailer claiming to be from a new Catasauqua charter school paints Liberty High School students as drug users, sparking outrage among many Bethlehem residents. 

Innovative Arts Academy Charter School denies it had anything to do with 

Jersey Jazzman: The Sick Consequences of "Competition" in Education:

CURMUDGUCATION: Should We Close Schools for Low Performance?

CURMUDGUCATION: Should We Close Schools for Low Performance?:

Should We Close Schools for Low Performance?

Over at Rick Hess's EdWeek blog, guest blogger Deven Carlson (Poli Sci, Oklahoma U) considers the question of whether or not schools that show low performance. In the process, he illuminates some of the deeply flawed premises under which reformsters operate.

He opens by noting that school closure has been a popular policy approach since the days of No Child Left Behind.

The logic of closing low-performing schools is clear: Shutting down bad schools will remove students from these contexts and facilitate their transition to a better school. Improved academic outcomes will follow. In addition, the resources that had been devoted to the closed schools can be reallocated to those that remain open, which may contribute to their improvement.



The path of that logic is clear. But clarity doesn't equal correctness. I can take nice clear pictures of a KKK rally; they're still wrongheaded dopes.

Skipping past, for a moment, the fact that we are currently using unreliable methods and bad data to identify bad schools, moving students to "a better school" is neither easy nor simple, nor does it necessarily follow that the student will do better in a new school. Carlson is also skipping over the issue of capacity-- if we close a 500-student school, where are the 500 new seats? What Carlson is not noting here is that eliminating low-performing schools has not been nearly as popular as replacing them-- but that usually means replacing the students as well.

What Carlson does clearly get is that while this conversation is easy for policy-makers to have in the abstract, it's a whole other thing to implement it on "specific districts and schools, affecting actual teachers, students, families, and neighborhoods." In fact, when the rubber meets the road, very few schools have actually been closed down under the modern era of school reform, and when the issue is raised, local pushback is strong. Well, yes. This is why reformsters need disasters to thrive-- you can't convince people to give up their schools unless something "great" like a hurricane comes and flattens them.

Carlson suggests there is some support for closures, citing some research (including his own) that suggests students from bad schools do better when their school is closed and they are relocated-- though he skips over the finding of one of those studies, which also says that students at the receiving school do worse (which makes me wonder how much the study depends on averages, but I'm not going to pay $36 to see). Carlson's own "research" is some data crunching for the Fordham Foundation showing that closing schools in Ohio and sending those students to charters makes CURMUDGUCATION: Should We Close Schools for Low Performance?:

A southern city wants to secede from its school district, raising concerns about segregation - The Washington Post

A southern city wants to secede from its school district, raising concerns about segregation - The Washington Post:

A southern city wants to secede from its school district, raising concerns about segregation

A view of the large posters of last year’s football and cheerleading squads at Bragg Middle School in Gardendale, Ala., on Aug. 3, 2016. City voters have decided to break away from the surrounding county’s school district, saying they want more local control. Opponents have said that it’s a move by a largely white population to isolate itself from a county with a far higher proportion of black students. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

GARDENDALE, ALA.— The school board in this small Birmingham suburb meets monthly, debates district policies and pays a superintendent’s salary. But the Gardendale Board of Education oversees no schools, employs no teachers and enrolls no students.

City officials in this predominantly white town appointed the board in 2014 as part of a years-long effort to secede from surrounding Jefferson County — where there are more African American than white students — and form their own independent school system.

Opponents argue that the secession effort is laced with racial overtones and amounts to a push for segregation. But supporters say that it has nothing to do with race and that they are motivated by a desire for local control of public education — and the tax money that pays for it.

“It’s keeping our tax dollars here with our kids, rather than sharing them with kids all over Jefferson County,” said Stan Hogeland, mayor of Gardendale, a town that no one would call rich but is better off than some of its neighbors. “My focus is on Gardendale, not the county as a whole.”

Five decades after black families first sued over segregation here, Jefferson County schools are still bound by a federal desegregation court order, which means a federal judge will have the final say over whether Gardendale will be allowed to secede.

+-

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It is a case that not only illustrates courts’ continued authority over dozens of the nation’s school systems still under desegregation orders, but also highlights an American reality: The lines drawn around school districts do not just determine who gets to vote in local school board elections; they also serve as walls that define communities and drive property values, separating black from white and poor from affluent.

“It’s important to be really critical anytime new boundary lines are drawn,” said Erica Frankenberg, a professor at Penn State University who has studied desegregation in Jefferson County and nationwide. “They’re in­cred­ibly powerful.”

[On the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, new evidence that U.S. schools are resegregating]

Alabama state law allows cities of more than 5,000 residents to form their own school systems, replacing what was once legal segregation with a different kind of division that also effectively has separated children by race and class, Frankenberg said.A southern city wants to secede from its school district, raising concerns about segregation - The Washington Post:

Mexico’s Striking Teachers Stand Firm Against State Repression-Privatization | The Nation

Mexico’s Striking Teachers Stand Firm Against State Repression | The Nation:

Mexico’s Striking Teachers Stand Firm Against State Repression

The government refuses to negotiate, heightening the danger of further bloody confrontation.

Teachers marching against education reform in Mexico City. (David Bacon)

Oaxaca—Since the killing of 11 demonstrators at a street blockade in the Oaxacan town of Nochixtlán on June 19, Mexico has been in an uproar over the use of force against teachers resisting corporate education reform. As the Mexican school year is starting, teachers and supporters in four states have refused to return to classes until there is a negotiated agreement to change the government’s program, and until the perpetrators of the Nochixtlán massacre are held responsible.

The government says it will not negotiate, and Mexico’s corporate leaders are demanding that the government use force to suppress the teachers and reopen the schools. The danger of further bloody confrontation is greater than ever.

The resisting teachers are concentrated in a highly organized network, the National Coordination of Education Workers (CNTE), within the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), the largest union in Latin America. The CNTE now controls the union in four states: Oaxaca, Guerrero, Chiapas, and Michoacán. In other states, especially Mexico City, it has a large base of support. Teachers in assemblies in those four states voted on August 18 not to start classes on the 22. As of August 23, the government was claiming that over 90 percent of schools had opened. The CNTE says that over half of the schools in Oaxaca and Chiapas remain closed. Adelfo Gómez Alvarez, of the Chiapas teachers’ union, told the Mexico City daily La Jornada that “there were strikes and demonstrations in 28 states, including in Mexico City itself.”

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto declared: “There will be no more dialogue if we don’t guarantee beforehand that children can receive an education in their classrooms, which today are closed. First education, then dialogue.” Enrique Enriquez Ibarra, general secretary of Sección 9, Mexico City’s teachers union, responded that for a year teachers had tried negotiating with the government while continuing to stay in their classrooms, but the government didn’t budge. “Today we no longer believe in classes first and then dialogue. The teachers strike will continue,” he warned.

Mexican business interests began proposing changes to the country’s education system over a decade ago, as part of a series of economic reforms that have privatized much of the country’s economy and rolled back rights and protections that workers and farmers won decades ago. Supported by education reform groups in the United States and by the US Agency for International Development, these corporate reforms concentrate on standardized testing for students, and especially teachers. Testing is then used to eliminate educators’ job security and punish militant resistance.

“The real goal is privatizing education,” said Tranquilino Lavariega, a classroom teacher and general secretary of his union chapter in Santa Cruz Ocotlán, in Oaxaca. “These corporations see education as a business. And because our union has been part of the opposition to their growing power in Mexico’s Striking Teachers Stand Firm Against State Repression | The Nation:

 

Memorial to the disappeared students of Ayotzinapa in the teachers’ plantón in Oaxaca.(David Bacon)

FBI's Don't Be a Puppet game targets Muslim youth, teachers' union says | US news | The Guardian

FBI's Don't Be a Puppet game targets Muslim youth, teachers' union says | US news | The Guardian:

FBI's Don't Be a Puppet game targets Muslim youth, teachers' union says

Counter-terrorism program meant to dissuade teens from being radicalized leads to racial profiling and bullying, American Federation of Teachers argued

 The main screen of the FBI’s Don’t Be a Puppet online game on extremism, which was launched in February. Photograph: FBI

 A controversial FBI program targeting Muslim teenagers has drawn criticism from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), claiming it leads to bullying and profiling.

The union, which represents 1.6 million teachers in the US, sent an open letter to FBI director James Comey earlier this month to call for an end to the agency’s Don’t Be a Puppet program which aims to prevent youth from being radicalized.

“What we saw with the Don’t be a Puppet program, was that it created this broad based suspicion of people based upon their heritage or ethnicity,” AFT president Randi Weingarten said.

Don’t Be a Puppet: Pull Back the Curtain on Violent Extremism is an online game the FBI launched in February. It is set in a dingy basement where students compete a series of tasks to liberate a puppet on strings.

“Increasing ideological policing and surveillance efforts like the Don’t be a Puppet campaign will have a chilling effect on our schools and immigrant communities,” the letter said.

Nineteen civil rights and community groups signed the letter including the National Immigration Law Center and the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Several Muslim community leaders previewed the game last year and were instantly incensed.

“It was pretty bad,” said Abed Ayoub, legal director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee who was at the initial preview. “We felt that it really did target the Arab and Muslim community, and there was no room for it inside a classroom.”

ADC and other groups have actively spoken out against the game, which they say leads to bullying and profiling of Muslim students.

Following the meeting, the game’s release was pushed back but it was eventually rolled out in February, with some minor modifications.

It was met with ridicule and widely panned by gaming publications. In one game, users navigate a goat around virtual obstacles, and are rewarded with a sample text of the “distorted logic” foreign terrorists use to lure youth.

It remains unclear how many – if any – schools have adopted the program for use FBI's Don't Be a Puppet game targets Muslim youth, teachers' union says | US news | The Guardian:

In the eyes of the NLRB, charter schools are private, not public - Capitol Confidential

In the eyes of the NLRB, charter schools are private, not public - Capitol Confidential:

In the eyes of the NLRB, charter schools are private, not public 

Here’s an interesting item that touches on the semantics as well as labor issues surrounding New York’s charter school movement.

A recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), concludes that charter schools are private and efforts to start teachers unions in them should fall under their purview, rather than the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) which oversees the public sector.

The decision stemmed from efforts by the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) to unionize teachers at the Hyde Leadership charter school in Brooklyn.

PERB had asserted jurisdiction over the school, but the union ended up arguing that organizing efforts should be overseen by the NLRB which administers labor law in the private sector.

The NLRB in its decision, concluded that “Hyde was not established by a state or local government, and is not itself a public school.”

Being a federal agency, the NLRB would have precedence over the state PERB.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the charter operators would appeal to the courts.

But UFT’s affiliate, New York State United Teachers, on Thursday pointed out that the NLRB’s description of charters as private schools runs counter to the terminology that charter supporters often use in describing their institutions.

I don’t think anyone would bet that charter proponents will stop calling their establishments public charter schools. But this decision adds a new twist to this ongoing debate over the nature of charters.

NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn noted that charters tend to call themselves public schools when it’s convenient, such as arguing for more government funding.

But they see them as private when it comes to disclosure rules that apply to traditional public schools.

“The charter industry wants to have it both ways,” Korn said in an email.
“Charter management claims charters are public schools when they want taxpayers’ money, but use legal maneuvers to hide from public audits, seek to evade the rules that govern public pre-k programs and, in this case, claim they are private schools when it comes to union representational elections.”In the eyes of the NLRB, charter schools are private, not public - Capitol Confidential:

Here is the NLRB decision. The private/public discussion is on Page 8:

View this document on Scribd

In the eyes of the NLRB, charter schools are private, not public - Capitol Confidential:In the eyes of the NLRB, charter schools are private, not public - Capitol Confidential: 

Diane Ravitch to Readers: Don't Let Charter Industry Silence John Oliver | Common Dreams

Diane Ravitch to Readers: Don't Let Charter Industry Silence John Oliver | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

Diane Ravitch to Readers: Don't Let Charter Industry Silence John Oliver

Oliver was targeted by privatizers after criticizing charter schools in a segment of his HBO show

What do an education historian and a late-night comedian have in common?

Shared opposition to the fraud and abuse associated with charter schools and other privatization efforts, of course.

On Thursday, longtime educator and activist Diane Ravitch encouraged her readers to start a campaign of thanks to comedian John Oliver, who devoted a segment of his HBO showLast Week Tonight on Sunday to charter schools and fraud—and is now being targeted by privatizers and other corporate propagandists on Twitter.

Charter supporters are "saying that he 'hurt' children, he savaged children," she wrote, noting that this is "a familiar tactic" of intimidation that she faced after writing about dubious test-scoring methods in New York City school a decade ago.

Ravitch called on her readers to combat the hate by tweeting and emailing Oliver messages of support. "Don't let the charter industry intimidate him," she wrote.

Watch Oliver's segment below:

"Fraud is a feature of deregulation, not a bug," Ravitch added.

"When no one is looking, some people steal. Not everyone steals, but many do. That is why Ohio, Florida, Michigan, and California are scamming taxpayers. No one is demanding accountability. Politicians get paid off by charter friends, then cripple any effort to oversee them Ohio and Michigan spend $1 billion a year to subsidize charter schools, which are Diane Ravitch to Readers: Don't Let Charter Industry Silence John Oliver | Common Dreams | Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community:

A Brick In The Path (Promised Lands Are Never Promises Kept) | The Jose Vilson

A Brick In The Path (Promised Lands Are Never Promises Kept) | The Jose Vilson:

A Brick In The Path (Promised Lands Are Never Promises Kept)

“Originally a biblical reference to the land of Canaan promised to the descendants of Jacob, The Promised Land represented a new physical space where the old social order would be dissolved and from which opportunity would spring. The Promised Land was geographic, political, and simultaneously corporeal and non-corporeal.”

From the beginning of the book Inequality In The Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling, Professor R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy (Dumi Lewis, if you must) asks the reader to turn on their critical lenses and pick apart their assumptions about equity, specifically about the redeeming qualities of social class as a lever for anti-racism. He also asks us to suspend belief in a specific type of schooling and focus on the relationships between students and the various actors (and policies) that interact with the students. He asks us to use this suburban district case study as a model for any district where they ostensibly “have it figured out” but still show the same markers of inequity we see in more visible (i.e. urban) spaces.

He forgot to tell us to keep our feelings separate from the text. This book angered me, and I wish he told me sooner.

The book takes us through the inner workings of a district he dubs Rolling Acres Public Schools (RAPS), a suburban mixed-class school district where the population is mostly black and white racially. (NB: When I asked him which school district he was talking about, he said he hadn’t even told his wife. So, there’s that.) From the outset, he lays out the current research on school districts like these and disavows them at once. For example, he suggests that previous studies that just focus A Brick In The Path (Promised Lands Are Never Promises Kept) | The Jose Vilson:

Introducing NPE Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education

Introducing NPE Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education:

Introducing NPE Grassroots Education Network

Dear friend and ally in the fight to save public education,

We would like to invite you to participate in an exciting Network for Public Education (NPE) service initiative, called the NPE Grassroots Education Network. We believe that it is our obligation to better serve allied groups in the struggle to preserve, promote, improve and strengthen our public schools. We are reaching out to leaders of local, state and national organizations across the country in order to foster communications and connections among groups that share common interests and concerns.

Your participation in the NPE Grassroots Education Network will not only help your organization reach more people who care about your issues, but we are confident that it will also serve to strengthen the national movement to save our schools.

What does participating in the NPE Grassroots Education Network mean for your organization? First and foremost, this is a service initiative on the part of the Network for Public Education. If you participate you are fully autonomous; your group is not a member or chapter of NPE. We will not charge you and we are not receiving a financial benefit for creating this initiative. We want to help you amplify your voice and forge alliances as we fight together to strengthen and preserve our public schools.

Here’s what we will do to help:Introducing NPE Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education:

 Texas Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/p3bR9v-1O2

Virginia Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/s3bR9v-6951

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Tennessee Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/s3bR9v-6940

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Rhode Island Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/s3bR9v-6928

Oregon Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/s3bR9v-6921

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North Carolina Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education - http://wp.me/s3bR9v-6905

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Introducing NPE Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education:

Introducing NPE Grassroots Education Network - Network For Public Education:

Eight new questions parents should ask at back-to-school night - The Washington Post

Eight new questions parents should ask at back-to-school night - The Washington Post:

Eight new questions parents should ask at back-to-school night

It’s the back-to-school-night season. That means ringing cellphones during the teacher’s presentation (because so many parents are too important to turn them off), attendees breaking the rules and asking specific questions about their own child, parents talking belligerently as if they know more than the teacher, and other such annoyances.

Despite all this, this is no time for parents to be quiet. They just have to ask the right questions — and insist on satisfactory answers.

Yes, parents can still ask teachers old-time questions such as, “How much homework do you give every night,” and “What are your goals for your students in this class?”

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They can ask the teacher whether projects are assigned — and what happens if the teacher discovers that the parent, rather than the child, has actually put together 1,000 toothpicks in the shape of the Parthenon.

They can ask about useful education apps, whether their child can meet with the teacher after class, if there is differentiated instruction (assuming parents know what that is), whether students need to bring a computer to class and how to get in touch with the teacher.

And they can ask the following questions, courtesy of the Ohio BATS, a state affiliate of the national Badass Teachers Association, a group that started in 2013 to give voice to teachers tired of being made the scapegoats for problems in public education.

These questions reflect some of the main concerns that many teachers and parent activists have today, including standardized testing and student data privacy.Eight new questions parents should ask at back-to-school night - The Washington Post:

Shouldn’t Our Schools At Least be as Logical as Dental Floss? | gadflyonthewallblog

Shouldn’t Our Schools At Least be as Logical as Dental Floss? | gadflyonthewallblog:

Shouldn’t Our Schools At Least be as Logical as Dental Floss?

All my life I assumed flossing was essential to dental health.

It was safe, it was sound, it was normal.

Every day after brushing, I would stand before the bathroom mirror and carefully thread a mint-flavored filament through my teeth – like a chump.

And when I got to the dentist, I’d comfort myself that I had done the best I could to prevent cavities.

The hygienist would remove plaque and germs while scraping and sawing at my teeth with a specialized hook, and all the while I’d think, “At least I flossed every day!”

Yet now the federal government tells us that flossing is ineffective at best!

What!? After all these years!?

It turns out, there just is no evidence that flossing actually helps – never has been. So this summer for the first time in decades the good folks who compile federal dietary guidelines decided not to recommend the practice.

A total of 25 studies have concluded that the evidence for flossing is “weak, very unreliable,” of “very low” quality, and carries “a moderate to large potential for Shouldn’t Our Schools At Least be as Logical as Dental Floss? | gadflyonthewallblog:

New book: Obama’s Education Department and Gates Foundation were closer than you thought - The Washington Post

New book: Obama’s Education Department and Gates Foundation were closer than you thought - The Washington Post:

New book: Obama’s Education Department and Gates Foundation were closer than you thought

Megan E. Tompkins-Stange is an assistant professor of public policy at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan who has written a highly revealing book about the power and influence of four major foundations in education-reform policy in recent years.

She researched “Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence” over several years, in which she was given access to officials in four foundations — Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli and Edythe Broad, Ford, and W.K. Kellogg—  as well as permission to quote people without attribution.

It would, of course, be better to know exactly who said what, but Tompkins-Stange is able nonetheless to give enough context so that the power of the words she recorded from 60 interviews contributes to the overall narrative. “Policy Patrons” looks at the effect of the unprecedented philanthropic engagement in public education reform during the Obama administration and raises questions about whether democracy is usurped when private individuals use their fortunes to bend public policy to their own priorities.

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Regular readers of this blog know that some wealthy foundations — especially the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest, but also the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation — have in recent years taken unusually active roles in trying to align public policy with their education goals, such as the Common Core State Standards and charter schools.

Indeed, the involvement of foundations in corporate school reform — which, broadly, has been an attempt to change public education to operate like a private business rather than as a civic institution — has been unprecedented in the history of American public education. Tompkins-Stange wrote: “Arguably, no social sector in the United States is more heavily impacted by foundations than K-12 education.”

To understand just how influential the Gates Foundation has been with the Obama administration in terms of education policy, consider this passage from the book, which refers to Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary from 2009 to the end of last year:

Gates’s cultivation of relationships with elites extended beyond local and state contexts and into the federal government. Several interviewees cited the appointment of President Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, former superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, as a turning point. The reason was that Duncan’s staff appointments were often either former Gates officials or former Gates grantees. One respondent noted, “Once Obama was elected, I mean, Gates literally had people sitting at the Department of Education both formally and informally.” These officials included Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement and former Program Director for the Education program at Gates, and Joanne Weiss, director of the Race to the Top competition and a former partner at the NewSchools Venture Fund, a major Gates grantee that served as an intermediary funder for charter school management organizations. With President Obama in office, federal staff engaged current Gates officials in key discussion of importance regarding education priorities. As one respondent explained:

It gives you a notion of where the field is moving, because they have regular sessions or phone conversations between funds and the Department of 

New book: Obama’s Education Department and Gates Foundation were closer than you thought - The Washington Post: