The Broad Foundation: A Parent Guide

A Parent Guide to the Broad Foundation’s training programs and education policies

The question I ask is why should Eli Broad and Bill Gates have more of a say as to what goes on in my child’s classroom than I do? – Sue Peters, Seattle parent

In recent months, three prominent school district superintendents have resigned, after allegations of mismanagement, autocratic leadership styles, and/or the pursuit of unpopular policies. All three were trained by the Broad Superintendents Academy: Maria Goodloe-Johnson (class of 2003) of the Seattle school district, LaVonne Sheffield (class of 2002) of the Rockford, Illinois school district, and Jean-Claude Brizard (class of 2008) of the Rochester New York school district. Brizard resigned to take the job as CEO of Chicago schools, but his superintendency in Rochester had been mired in controversy. Another Broad-trained Superintendent recently announced his resignation: Tom Brady (class of 2004) of Providence, Rhode Island.

Three more Broad-trainees have been recently placed in new positions of authority: John Deasy (class of 2006), as Superintendent of the Los Angeles United School District, John White (class of 2010), Superintendent of the Recovery School District in New Orleans,  and Chris Cerf (class of 2004), New Jersey’s Acting Education Commissioner. Tom Boasberg was appointed Denver’s Superintendent in January 2009, shortly after taking an “Intensive” training at the Broad Academy.   (See this map at the Broad website which shows where until recently their trainees served.)


This summary is designed to help parents and other concerned citizens better understand the Broad Foundation’s role in training new superintendents and other “reform” activities, and how the foundation leverages its wealth to impose a top-down, corporate-style business model on our public schools. It is time for communities to become aware of how this major force works.

What is the Broad Foundation?

The Edythe and Eli Broad Foundation engages in venture philanthropy in four areas: education, medical research, contemporary art, and civic projects in Los Angeles. The foundation was established in 1999 by billionaire Eli Broad (b. 1933) who made his fortune in real estate and the insurance business.

A closer look at the Broad Foundation’s “investment” in education

The Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Broad Foundation form a powerful triumvirate. The combined net worth of the three families who operate these foundations is $152 billion. By strategically deploying their immense wealth through training school leaders, financing think-tank reports, and supporting “Astro Turf” advocacy groups, these three foundations have been able to steer the direction of education reform over the past decade.

The Broad Foundation is the least wealthy of the three, but has still spent nearly $400 million on its mission of “transforming urban K-12 public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition.” But what does that actually mean?

The signature effort of the Broad Foundation is its investment in its training programs, operated through the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems and the Broad Institute for School Boards. The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems is the larger of the two and consists of two programs: the Broad Superintendents Academy and the Broad Residency in Urban Education.

The Broad Superintendents Academy runs a training program held during six weekends over ten months, after which graduates are placed in large districts as superintendents. Those accepted into the program (“Broad Fellows”) are not required to have a background in-education; many come instead from careers in the military, business, or government. Tuition and travel expenses for participants are paid for by the Broad Center, which also sometimes covers a share of the graduates’ salaries when they are appointed into district leadership positions. The foundation’s website boasts that 43 percent of all large urban superintendent openings were filled by Broad Academy graduates in 2009.

The Broad Superintendents Academy’s weekend training course provides an “alternative” certification process which has come to supplant or override the typical regulations in many states that require that individuals have years of experience as a teacher and principal before being installed as school district superintendents.

The Broad Residency in Urban Education is a two-year program, during which individuals with MBAs, JDs, etc. in the early stages of their careers are placed in high-level managerial positions in school districts, charter management organizations, or state and federal departments of education. The Broad Center subsidizes approximately 33 percent of each Resident’s salary.

For financially struggling school districts, the Broad Foundation’s offer of trained personnel or services for a free or reduced cost is extremely appealing, and creates a “pipeline” of individuals with the same ideology who can be installed in central office positions.

The Broad Institute for School Boards provides three training programs for elected school board members and non-Broad-trained superintendents conducted in partnership with the Center for Reform of School Systems (CRSS). The Institute trains new board members at a one-week summer residential setting. Its Alumni Institute is an advanced course for experienced school board members. The third program, Reform Governance in Action, is by invitation only and provides “a long-term, training/consulting partnership program to selected large, urban districts.” The Broad Foundation underwrites 80 percent of all program costs through a grant to CRSS.

The “Broad Prize for Education” is an annual monetary award which is designated for college scholarships; it is given to the urban school district which the foundation deems as the most “improved” in the country. The selection process is sometimes seen as more political than based on actual results.

The Broad Foundation also supports a broad range of pro-charter school advocacy groups, as well as alternative training programs for non-educators who want to work as teachers and principals (Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools).

In addition, the foundation offers free diagnostic “audits” to school districts, along with recommendations aligned with its policy preferences.  It produces a number of guides and toolkits for school districts, including a “School Closure Guide,” based on the experiences of Broad-trained administrators involved in closing schools in Boston, Charleston, Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Miami-Dade County, Oakland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Seattle.

The foundation finances the Education Innovation Laboratory, run by Harvard economist Roland Fryer, which carries out large-scale experiments in schools districts, focused on teacher pay for performance and rewarding students for good test scores and grades. So far, these trials have failed to demonstrate positive results.

The foundation provided start-up funding for Parent Revolution (formerly the Los Angeles Parent Union), the group which developed the “Parent Trigger” legislation, designed to encourage the conversion of public schools to charter schools. Broad has also has given large amounts of money to Education Reform Now, a pro-charter school advocacy organization.

Eli Broad has said he “expects to be a major contributor” to Students First, former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s organization that advocates for the expansion of charters, vouchers, and an end to seniority protections for teachers. And journalist Richard Whitmire, author of “The Bee Eater,” an admiring biography of Rhee, expressed his gratitude in the book to Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-charter lobbying organization, for serving as the “pass through” for funds from the Broad Foundation which allowed him to “invest everything in book research.”

The foundation provided start-up funds to New York City’s Leadership Academy, which trains individuals to serve as principals in the city public schools, several of whose graduates have been accused of financial misconduct, as well as  arbitrary and dictatorial treatment of teachers, students and parents.

The foundation also helps sponsors media events (a PBS series on the “education crisis” hosted by Charlie Rose, the series Education Nation on NBC, etc.). These programs help promote for Eli Broad’s vision of free-market education reform.

In addition to using his foundation to effect change to American public education, Eli Broad has made personal campaign contributions to candidates who are favorably disposed to his preferred policies, even down to the local school board level. In this way, he has helped influence the selection of superintendents who are aligned with him ideologically, even though they may not be Broad Academy graduates.

For instance, Broad contributed to the campaigns of school board candidates who supported former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Alan Bersin’s appointment as superintendent of San Diego’s school district. A 2006 Vanity Fair article by Bob Colacello reported that “Broad believes reform must come “the top down” and that his foundation “plans to virtually take over the Delaware school system in 2007, pending approval from that state’s legislature.”

In 2003, Joseph Wise (class of 2003) was installed as superintendent of Christina School District, Delaware’s largest. In 2006, Wise was succeeded by Lillian Lowery (class of 2004), who served until 2009 when she was appointed as the state’s Secretary of Education. Two Broad Residents work under Lowery at the state level. Another Broad superintendent, Marcia Lyles (class of 2006), replaced Lowery as superintendent of Christina School District.

Along with Bill Gates, Broad contributed millions of dollars to the campaign to extend mayoral control of the public schools in New York City under Michael Bloomberg. Among the leaders he is close to and has personally advised behind the scenes are former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein, former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, AFT President Randi Weingarten, and US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

How the Broad Foundation affects public school families

Broad and his foundation believe that public schools should be run like a business. One of the tenets of his philosophy is to produce system change by “investing in a disruptive force.” Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation to create chaos or “churn” is believed to be productive and beneficial, as it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.

As Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, a proponent of this philosophy has said,  

“…we can afford to make lots more mistakes and in fact we have to throw more things at the wall. The big companies that get into trouble are those that try to manage their size instead of experimenting with it.”

A hallmark of the Broad-style leadership is closing existing schools rather than attempting to improve them, increasing class size, opening charter schools, imposing high-stakes test-based accountability systems on teachers and students, and implementing of pay for performance schemes. The brusque and often punitive management style of Broad-trained leaders has frequently alienated parents and teachers and sparked protests.

Several communities have forced their Broad-trained superintendents to resign, including Arnold “Woody” Carter (class or 2002), formerly of the Capistrano Unified School District; Thandiwee Peebles,( class of 2002), formerly of the Minneapolis Public School District; and John Q. Porter (class of 2006), formerly of the Oklahoma City Public School District.

A number of other Broad-trained superintendents have received votes of “no confidence” from the teachers in their districts, including Rochester’s Jean-Claude Brizard (class of 2008), Seattle’s Maria Goodloe-Johnson (class of 2003); Deborah Sims (class of 2005) while Superintendent of the Antioch Unified School District (CA); Matthew Malone (class of 2003) while Superintendent of the Swampscott School District (MA); and most recently, Melinda J. Boone (class of 2004) Superintendent of the Worcester Public Schools (MA).

The Oakland Unified School District (CA) experienced a series of three consecutive Broad-trained, state-appointed administrators over a period of six years. The first, Randolph Ward (class of 2003), aroused huge protests with his plans to close schools and even hired a personal bodyguard for the duration of his tenure. Ward was followed by Kimberly Statham (class of 2003), and Vincent Mathews (class of 2006), all of whom left the district in financial shambles. A civil grand jury found that

“….the district was hampered by continuous staff turnover, particularly in the area of finance, numerous reorganizations and a succession of state administrators…After nearly five years of state management, OUSD’s budget remains unbalanced and the district’s future is unclear.”

Joseph Wise (class of 2003), formerly Superintendent of the Duval County Florida Public Schools, was found to have spent thousands of dollars on personal purchases while a superintendent in Delaware, before being fired by his Duval post in disgrace. While a finalist for the post of Superintendent in Washoe County in Nevada, Kimberly Olson (class of 2005) pled guilty of having engaged in war profiteering when she was a colonel in Iraq.

Chris Cerf (class of 2004), the acting New Jersey Education Commissioner, has been criticized for not identifying his involvement in a consulting firm which developed an secret plan to turn many Newark public schools over to charter operators. The Broad Foundation acknowledged that it put up $500,000 to pay for the plan.  Deborah Gist (class of 2008), Rhode Island Commissioner of Education, has supported the firing of all teachers in Central Falls and more recently in Providence, and is aggressively fighting seniority protections for teachers.

General Anthony Tata (class of 2009), has been embroiled in controversy for dismantling Wake County’s desegregation plan. John Covington (class of 2008), Superintendent of Kansas City Schools, has announced his intention to close half the schools districts in the city. Robert Bobb (class of 2005),  the Emergency Financial Manager of the Detroit Public Schools, recently sent layoff notices to every one of the district’s 5,466 salaried employees, including all its teachers, and said that nearly a third of the district’s schools would be closed or turned over to private charter operators. At a recent town hall which Bobb had called so he could go over his plan, angry students, parents, and teachers drove him from the meeting. He was escorted out by his six bodyguards.

Conclusion

Eli Broad is a wealthy individual, accountable to no one but himself, who wields vast power over our public schools. Parents and community members should be aware of the extent to which the he and his foundation influence educational policies in districts throughout the country through Broad-funded advocacy groups, Broad-sponsored experiments and reports, and the placement of Broad-trained school leaders, administrators and superintendents.

Parents Across America considers Broad’s influence to be inherently undemocratic, as it disenfranchises parents and other stakeholders in an effort to privatize our public schools and imposes corporate-style policies without our consent. We strongly oppose allowing our nation’s education policy to be driven by billionaires who have no education expertise, who do not send their own children to public schools, and whose particular biases and policy preferences are damaging our children’s ability to receive a quality education.

For more information on the Broad Superintendents and Residents

Maps showing where some of the Broad superintendents and residents are currently employed can be found on the Broad Foundation’s website: Broad Superintendents Academy Fellows and Broad Residents, as well as links to more information about them.

The only complete list of Broad Superintendent trainees is here, on The Broad Report website, which was created by Sharon Higgins, a founding member of Parents Across America.

See also our video: “Parents Across America speak out about corporate interests in education.”

Additional Reading

Barkan, Joanne. “Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule our Schools,” Dissent Winter 2011. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3781

Colacello, Bob. “Eli Broad’s Big Picture,” Vanity Fair 01 December 2006. http://broadartfoundation.org/press/0612_VanityFair_EB039.pdf

Forbes Staff. “The World’s Billionaires.” Forbes Magazine 09 March 2011.
http://www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires

Foundation Center. “Top 100 U.S. Foundation by Asset Size.” http://foundationcenter.org/findfunders/topfunders/top100assets.html

Gammon, Robert. “Eli’s Experiment.” East Bay Express 10 October 2007. http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/elis-experiment/Content?oid=1084299&storyPage=1

Higgins, Sharon. “The Broad Report” http://thebroadreport.blogspot.com/

Peters, Sue and Dora Taylor. “Seattle Education 2010” blog. http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/

Saltman, Kenneth. “The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.” Workplace, 16, 2009 http://m1.cust.educ.ubc.ca/journal/index.php/workplace/article/viewFile/65/saltman

Scott, Janelle. “The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy.” Educational Policy January 2009. http://epx.sagepub.com/content/23/1/106.abstract

Shafer, Jack. “Bully in Search of a Pulpit.” Slate 09 November, 2006; http://www.slate.com/id/2153362/

Tough, Paul (editor). “How Many Billionaires Does It Take to Fix a School System.” New York Times 09 March 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09roundtable-t.html?_r=2

View the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation grants on the IRS Form 990s at the National Center for Charitable Statistics or GuideStar. The foundation’s Federal Employer ID Number (EIN) is 954686318.

===============================================================

Added on April 20, 2011: AND be sure to read Sue Peter's new piece, "How to tell if your School District is infected by a Broad virus" at Seattle 2010.

To Rockford, Illinois: In solidarity!

This is a piece by David Stocker of Rockford, Illinois. He sent it to me to let me know what his city is experiencing, and I asked if I could post it here. Rockford residents are distraught and enraged at what is happening to their school district. Check out their Facebook page “Wanting a Resignation of LaVonne Sheffield” (“liked” by 2,993 people as of today). 

David is just one of several people from Rockford who have contacted me over the past several weeks after discovering my blog, The Broad Report. One person wrote this: “Lavonne Sheffield (2002 Broad graduate) is running Rockford Public Schools in Illinois into the ground.” Another wrote this: “Help!!In Rockford Illinois we are suffering the "Broad Effect" with Broad Graduate LaVonne Sheffield. Rockford already has the hihest [sic] Unemployment in the State and the Highest Poverty level for Children in our District - District 205. Our local newspaper Rockford Register Star has been her ally but thank goodness we have a small paper called Rock River Times that correctly reports the going ons of this destructor [sic] of Education. We are in dire need of help.”

Last week, the co-founders of Parents Across America had the opportunity to meet each other in person. In conversation, we learned that one major thing which most of us had in common (and which was sparking our activism) was our strong negative response to what Broad-trained superintendents and residents had done, and were doing, to each of our districts. 

Oakland was impacted from 2003 to 2009 during a state takeover. Some of that history is HERE and HERE. Oakland was ripe for the taking, as Joe Williams (of DFER) informs us in the report he wrote for the Center for Education Reform, "National Model or Temporary Opportunity: The Oakland Education Reform Story." As Williams writes, Oakland's first (of three successive) Broad-trained superintendents was a "strong leader who was [placed] in a position to push reforms past foot-dragging bureaucrats [= anyone who did not agree w/the Broad agenda] in a relatively 'politics free zone' [= authoritarian and undemocratic] created by state control of the district." 

So, to the communities of Rockford, Minneapolis, Seattle, Detroit, Pittsburgh, etc. etc. etc., please know YOU ARE NOT ALONE! You are experiencing an imposed, coordinated effort to break down your public school system so it can be "transformed" it to what a hiding-from-the-public, uber-controlling, billionaire septuagenarian, pseudo-philanthropist (Eli Broad of KB Homes and SunAmerica/AIG) wishes it to be. Everyone must read Joanne Barkan's piece, "Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The Dismantling of Public Education in Rockford, Illinois? A Meeting with the Pied Piper

A fable of old.

When I was a kid, I learned the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, Germany.  It was a legend set in the time of the bubonic plague that ultimately claimed 30% of Europe’s population.  People came to know that the plague was spread by rats.  Hamelin’s helpless townspeople wanted to get rid of the rats. They had heard about a guy who dressed funny and had a reputation for fixing rat problems with the sound of his magic flute. Pied, means ‘wearing colorful clothes’, a common medieval depiction of the agent of death. Hamelin-town signed a contract agreeing to pay on completion of the stated task. The piper fixed the rat problem by playing the rats into the river where they drowned. The townspeople of Hamelin said to themselves, “Why should we pay him now the problem is fixed, we can have our cake and eat it too.”  The Piper pleaded with them to pay him. They laughed.  Then he threatened. “They would be sorry.” They were too busy celebrating their good fortune and cleverness. Eventually, the Piper played his other magic song, the one that lured the children, who followed him into the gaping mountain cavern, which closed behind them. The children were lost forever.  There are plenty of European legends from the Middle Ages about lost children. Parents created the myth to explain to the few surviving children why there were missing generations of older siblings. The story also contains the moral directive about paying your bills. Hence we have the term, “time to pay the piper”. Here we are.

Surprises at District Open Houses

On Saturday February 5, I went to both District 205 Open Houses with a lot of questions. Representatives of the administration couldn’t seem to come up with clear answers for example; explanations, justifications, consequences and/or alternate items that had been considered but not offered for cuts at this time. I must have heard a dozen times “ I’m sorry I can’t answer that for you, it’s not my realm of expertise, but I’ll ask someone… if you can just wait here.”  

One person was both more frank and better informed. So I decided to follow this man all day and keep on asking my questions. His name is Shannon Bingham of Western Demographics Inc. a consulting firm based in Denver that, according to their website, specializes in both “developing and consolidation” (read; dismantling) school districts.  They have provided consulting services to more than 179 districts and communities including 5 years of work for Superintendent Sheffield while she was in Detroit. This would make Bingham and his company experts whose perspectives, however unpalatable, might be extraordinarily valuable to us. He does not need to protect an elected position or political patronage. His calendar is full of clients. He is not swayed by our passion or agenda. We (or say a Board) tell him what outcomes we (they) want, he studies the facts and figures and writes his recommendations on the wall. It is our choice to believe it or not.

Bingham described himself as a “hatchet man” whose job it is “to make sure when the district writes a check to a teacher, the teacher can go to the bank and cash it.” It is not central to his concern if the teacher can or cannot make a living on the amount of the check. But it becomes his concern when our seasoned teachers with many years of experience are more costly to the district than younger teachers, based on health care costs and on seniority pay.  Implying that we have a more open process than elsewhere, Bingham offered that in some of his districts, “these kinds of cuts, implemented by appointed or elected Boards are not aired at public hearings at all.”  I guess we are lucky.

Among other services, Western Demographics offers strategies to help districts: redraw boundary maps, close schools, reduce, consolidate and present these changes to the public. These days, we hear the word ”efficiencies” repeatedly, that is because efficiency seems to be the premise of Western Demographic’s contract with District 205.

Yet, Bingham was quick to point out that whether anyone agrees with his statistical analysis is no longer the issue. The expected economic recovery is not happening.  Changes are here and will continue whether anyone likes it or not.  Present deteriorating trends in our state will continue, and are likely to worsen for 5 or more years. Items on the school district cut list that are not accomplished this year, will be back again next year and the next as Illinois races to the bottom. As parents, can we agree with a set of proposals that will certainly destroy the character of our school district?

Bingham told me. “Rockford is about the most unfriendly community I have ever visited.”  He said,  “While all Illinois districts are affected by the bankruptcy of the state, an historic lack of planning by this district is at the heart of the severity of Rockford’s circumstances.”  With a smile, he declined to comment when I asked whether the administration itself had compounded the divisive and polarizing climate here. He told me his year in Rockford has been marked by peoples’ attempts to malign his reputation, and alienate his other clients who had been contacted through his website.

An elementary teacher commented that lacking substance and rationale and a valid oral presentation, the display board effort would “rank below a C for a sixth grade project.”

Let’s take attendance.

I applaud Board Member, Jeanne Westholder's attendance and I appreciate her willingness to field tough questions, although she could only echo the stark realities facing kids, parents and teachers.  Our superintendent, LaVonne Sheffield was not present. Readers can check the Register Star blog for the list of meetings she has lately missed. Sadly, none of our state representatives were present to explain the failures of the State of Illinois in fulfilling its obligation to fund education for our children. The State of Illinois owes us more than $15 million for last year alone. US Congressman Donald Manzullo’s office recently wrote to me on this issue saying the ball for our education problem is not in Don’s court. Rockford’s Mayor? Not present.. Read; Big Fat Dirty Lie. Were any of our City Council present? No. Administrators?... Present but they apparently misunderstood the assignment.  Media: Absent, but for one TV station.

These people were all truant on Saturday as the community faced the extent of the collapse of our public education system.  I saw lots of teachers, parents and grandparents.  You might ask; were the REA leaders present? They were not. However it is an Excused absence, they were working on an independent audit of the ‘bogus” 205 budget. But amazingly in their absence, we were told by a district representative that REA helped to compile the list of cuts as part of the Education Committee.

And you, dear citizens of Rockford, you can be excused if you were filling out your unemployment forms, helping a sick child, or cooking dinner at a food pantry, or working a second shift, or if you missed the invitation.  Don’t worry. I was able to go.  And I took notes because I know you would want to know what I learned.

Concessions, Cuts and Consequences 101

Here are the notes I took for you. Spending the day with Bingham, I tried to reconstruct his comments as best I could. I’ll tell you what we and our children stand poised to loose:

Parents pleaded with administrators to tell them why 7 top performing schools and various programs of proven merit are slated for closure.  I saw parents in tears. A retired policeman said, “This is outrageous.” Bingham asserted, “Merit was not part of the criteria for closures.”  He said, “We are tasked here with removing all the lights and decorations from the Christmas tree. The future of public education will be a bare tree affair. Expect math, reading, social studies, to state standards, a bit of the arts and that’s it. And if you are not willing to walk to the nearest school, you will not get an education.”

Teachers learned this week, there is a further list of threatened cuts that includes the elimination of all district librarians, social workers, ACE, CAPA, language immersion, guidance counselors, assistant principals, and more….a total of 130 additional jobs will be cut, declares the superintendent in a January 28 email, if the community and teachers balk at any of the first tier cuts AND if teachers fail to yield contract concessions. This powerful lever threatening our teachers was not illustrated on the nifty display boards. There was not a list of expected concessions.  The second list was also a surprise to Bingham who said that the “second tier of proposed cuts was not revealed to me until two days ago.”  Wow!  District apologists were quick to say these are all still options being explored. Bingham was not so circumspect.

So let’s get it straight.

Remake all boundaries. Close 7 campuses. Unscramble the costly egg of bussing.  AND Teachers must agree to steep concessions or else the Board will strip from our district everything that might have given our children a leg up in life. Huh?  I thought I was supposed to bring my critical thinking skills to the meeting and I could not figure out how any of this could possibly be the teachers’ fault.

Language Immersion, Montessori, Gifted, CAPA, ACE, librarians, social workers, all day preschool, alternative campus for kids in crisis…these are now the Christmas tree decorations we cannot afford. What will become of our children? When pressed, Bingham acknowledged that under this plan, 2/3 of our district’s kids can expect to be moved to new locations, though he also said studies show that changing schools sets childrens’ success back. 

Attachment and Awakening?

A few people have been startled out of their complacency. Well-intentioned parents and teachers think that Save Our School petitions and school spirit tee shirts will forestall the inevitable. But, as Bingham characterized it, “this is a pattern I see a lot, people are still attached to their specialty programs that have a very limited place in the new financial reality of public education.” PTAs that enter the competition this week to see which program will survive one more year are also missing the point.  In a second letter I will share some of the stories illustrating the harm of these cuts and concessions, maybe you, dear reader, can send your stories to this paper as well. We know the state was supposed to help us and they didn’t.  How will this effect you and people you know?

Where does this lead us?

Guess what else I learned, Bingham’s firm also specializes in presenting Charter School implementation plans to districts, expecting a “market position of up to 30% within 5-10 years”. Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan believes privatization of the public school system is the remedy. Within the first year and a half of her tenure, Superintendent Sheffield opened three charter schools in Rockford… depopulating any of the seven schools slated for closure? More later on the charter school movement in America.

Toto pulls the Curtain: The Eli Broad Agenda

Okay, I took notes for you, and I also did some research and there’s more to share!

Our superintendent came to us as a graduate of the Eli Broad Superintendent’s Academy, (BSA) started in 2001. BSA is very interested in placing its graduates in urban areas where opposition to its goals is not organized.  (Careful now, do not confuse B-O-A-R-D with Eli B-r-o-a-d, rhymes with “road”)  BSA was started by one of America’s newest billionaires, Eli Broad who received $18 billion for his overvalued real estate development company from AIG (remember them?). This took place just a few years before a bankrupt AIG went to the US government for an $80 billion bailout to cover its issue of illegal and shady policies to derivative traders.  Many communities in America have become alarmed about the Broad Agenda and have been trying to throw off both the graduates of the Broad Academy and the consequences they bring. Here’s the link  www.thebroadreport.com.  Interested readers should visit the website to see Superintendent Sheffield’s and other graduates’ progress on the Broad Agenda. Do it now. It’s four clicks of a keyboard to get there, if you have any kids in high school have them do a senior project on this. If you are a riffed educator looking for a topic for a bestselling book, or any M Ed candidates who have not yet selected a thesis topic….you go!

Media and Board Smoke and Mirrors

The media have focused on personal sniping and teacher-blaming. This has taken our eyes off the more important issues.  Did you know that Sheffield’s Director of Information is a former manager hired from the Register Star? Did our Board understand the kind of things she might do?  Have they fully educated themselves about what has happened in other districts under Broad graduates in positions of power? Is our teachers union at risk? Is our confidence in our own public education under attack? Did the Board fully understand in the Broad Academy’s agenda. Should our education system become prey for venture capital the way homeowners were? Let’s find out. As the open houses showed, there have been efforts to misrepresent, mask the agenda and thwart opposition.  Does the position of our teachers’ union appear any different under this light? More about the union in an upcoming letter.

People Get Ready…

Our district is moving rapidly on a specific agenda. To the list of those community leaders who were absent from the open houses, okay, these notes are for you too and now you can help us all do the right thing.

We feel that our district moving rapidly on a fearsome agenda that seems to be led by outside forces beyond our control. Because we fear for our children, some of us are tempted to become combative, ready to flash at the sidebar issues, to be anonymously vulgar on the Register Star blog, and to point fingers everywhere. We must resist this. Resist targeting the teachers. Resist saying “my school, my PTO, my kids teacher” and say “our schools, our PTOs, our teachers and our community”. People who have targeted the consultant, merely a tool of the administration, are focused in the wrong place.  Resist efforts to polarize, divide and conquer. Resist anyone who plays the race card. Rockford paid that piper years ago.

Sending out glossy promos earlier in the year, Sheffield talked about our kids finding their place in the global economy, complete with a quote from Sam Walton. I wonder what kind of jobs we might be able to offer now that Rockford manufacturing can get the parts made more cheaply by child labor in China. Are we content if our kids just show up and manage to make it through high school with a bare tree of an education? Resist the degradation of Rockford education.

With cuts like these, who needs Rockford?

Okay, I gave you the notes. There will be a pop quiz. Do your own research, study the facts, find each other and come to meetings prepared. I know you are busy people so don’t waste time.  Contact those absentee persons and call them to accountability.

People of Rockford, when you address the Board, you should know this too. As Bingham told me, “Forums are useless. Hurt people get worked up and have their two minutes at the microphone and nobody listens. The Board reads magazines and waits for it to be over so they can go do what they were going to do anyway.”

What will keep those who can from fleeing the district and the city, leaving behind the impoverished, the unemployed, the aged and the incarcerated? What kind of jobs will our kids be looking at? To make this degraded system work, we will have to accept an education system that will teach kids to show up and do as they are told. They will be rewarded with access to enough consumer debt to remain enslaved in the game but never given the keys to the franchise that holds them down. That’s a fairly significant decay in our aspirations for our kids. How is this working for you?

Could it be that the disease infecting the educational system actually benefits some parties?  Are real causes so discomforting that we focus what outrage we can muster on symptoms, We should deal with the real reasons public education is dying?  I can tell you what it is not; if we consider for a second the public education spending per child in other developed nations, we can see that the problem in the US is not wasteful spending nor is it overpaid teachers. Our minds and our priorities should be refocused. How can the Board and the Education Committee claim legitimacy without risking accountability?  

My opening analogy fails here because unlike Hamelin of old, we in Rockford, have witnessed many pipers over the years, and in actuality it is the Board and the parents who have been led off in distraction, leaving our children at risk to plagues of ignorance, wage slavery and debt peonage.

Thank you for your frankness Mr. Bingham. I do not doubt your expertise at $1000 per day (www.educationunited.net). While our problem is not your fault, someone forgot to tell you what it is we really want for our kids. So your suggestions look more like chopping down the tree of life.

After Saturday, I suggest we pay off the piper and rise up.

Upcoming letters about:

The Local Union gets Set up.

Chartering a Course of Destruction for US Education

Marginalizing Behaviorally Challenged Kids and Outsourcing the Discipline Code

Why Obama wants the Military Back in Schools

Send me your thoughts at originsofmusic@gmail.com

David Stocker is songwriter and an independent teacher who has won arts grants in excess of $150,000 for district 205 students, and has presented in twenty three of Rockford’s schools. In spite of the collapse of the state arts matching funding his Origins of Music curriculum is active locally at Montessori Private Academy, Page Park School, and Haskell Academy. He is an event coordinator and co producer of the programming for International Day of Peace. This month, David received a Golden Apple grant for work at Page Park School. He is married to a 205 teacher in a school that is slated for closure. He has had children in district 205 for 17 years and presently has a son in an award winning school slated for closure. He wishes he had been kept busy as an artist and not given the chance to open his mouth.

Grannan: Charters want accountability? That's a new concept.

Guest post by Caroline Grannan.

The charter school industry and its supporters earnestly assure the public these days that they want problem charter schools held accountable.

If that’s true, it’s good news. It’s also a drastic about-face for the charter school industry, which has long fought efforts to hold charter schools accountable. A May 25 New York Times article pointed out the same thing. The charter industry has been waging successful court battles against efforts to hold charter schools accountable.

“…[C]harter schools have at times resisted tougher monitoring,” the Times wrote. “In 2007, a group of charter schools and advocates sued the [New York state] comptroller's office, challenging its right to audit the finances and academic performance of such schools. Critics said the comptroller's office had no expertise to assess academics. “Last year, the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, ruled that charter schools were in effect independent contractors and beyond the comptroller's reach.”

Not that I’m unsympathetic to those who change their minds. After all, I’m a big admirer of Diane Ravitch’s. She’s the former Bush administration education official and former booster of high-stakes-testing/choice/privatization education policies who announced her change of mind and heart in her book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Ravitch, who publicly described her soul-searching, now opposes the ideas she once championed, saying that in real life they have been shown to be not just ineffective but harmful to schools, children and public education.

It’s weird that (unlike Ravitch) the entire charter industry just changed its tune without missing a beat, though. There was no explanation and no discussion of the new philosophy or of renouncing the old philosophy. When did that new philosophy take effect?

Here in San Francisco a few years ago, our Board of Education (BOE) got beaten up by the charter world twice in a short period for trying to hold problem charter schools accountable. In one of those cases, the local, national and even international media eagerly, compliantly and unquestioningly leaped on the charter movement’s crusade, ganging up to blast the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) for its effort to hold controversial, for-profit Edison Schools Inc. accountable back in 2001. (More on that below.)

Then, in 2003, SFUSD had to deal with its own home-grown charter problem, a high school called Urban Pioneer that specialized in wilderness experience for disaffected students. In March 2003, two UP students died falling into a ravine at night on an unsupervised wilderness outing.

The ensuing scrutiny revealed that UP was also in financial chaos — “the budget allowed for just $2 per student per month and no janitors, testing or staff development,” according to the Chronicle. And UP was committing academic fraud, “graduating” students with far fewer than the required credits. The school’s test scores were rock bottom. Reportedly, the president of the school’s board of directors, a lawyer, had been intimidating would-be whistleblowers within the school into silence by threatening to sue them.

Yet when the SFUSD BOE began investigating the school, the charter lobby fought back hard, rousing the UP community and supporters to battle to keep the school open. Peter Thorp, best known here in San Francisco as founding principal of Gateway High School, our city’s most successful charter, spoke on behalf of the California Network of Educational Charters (now the California Charter Schools Association) against closing Urban Pioneer. I wasn’t present, but a friend who attended one of the public meetings tells me that the grieving parents of the deceased students had come to the meeting intending to speak, but were intimidated by the belligerent crowd and sat silently.

Meanwhile, despite its financial problems, UP somehow managed to scrape together the wherewithal to hire a high-priced damage-control PR specialist, David Hyams of San Francisco’s Solem & Associates. (Hyams had recently changed careers after many years as an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle.) The Chronicle quoted Hyams as likening SFUSD to the Taliban and its investigation to a “witch hunt.”

Urban Pioneer was ultimately shut down, though you can still find people in the community to this day who somehow managed to miss the whole story and who view it as an outrage that SFUSD shut down a “successful” charter school. I haven’t pinned down the source of that version of the story, though it’s easy to guess.

The UP controversy roiled our school district at a time when it had been recently battered by its bloody encounter with Edison Schools, the then-high-flying media darling that was being hailed as the solution for public education.

Edison was running one charter school in our district, Edison Charter Academy (ECA) at 22nd and Dolores on the border between San Francisco's Mission District and Noe Valley. Our wild and woolly superintendent of the ’90s, Bill Rojas, had brought Edison in, supported by a rubber-stamp Board of Ed majority.

Edison-friendly Rojas left in ’99 to run the Dallas school district (which later fired him), and by 2001, the BOE was no longer dominated by unquestioning Edison and Rojas supporters. The district was encountering the same problems with Edison that many other Edison client districts were reporting, including significantly higher costs than projected, low performance and “counseling out” of challenging students who then landed in district schools. Edison made burdensome demands on districts (one SFUSD central office bureaucrat who worked on contracts said she spent nearly half her time over several months just working with ECA), while adding insult to injury by issuing press releases touting itself as superior to the clients who had hired it.

Edison was founded and run by flamboyant entrepreneur Christopher Whittle, a non-educator who previously owned Esquire magazine. Whittle had obviously made some good high-level contacts in media, and when the SFUSD BOE started asking tough questions about ECA, he mobilized those contacts. Editorials criticizing SFUSD and praising Edison popped up all over, in places like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the London-based Economist and even random outlets like a Virginia newspaper that headlined its editorial “Dim Bulbs” (referring to the SFUSD BOE). The Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury News editorialized strongly in favor of Edison. The Chronicle editorial page worked itself into such a state of outrage at our BOE that one headline on an editorial about SFUSD used the word “goosestepping” (that particular editorial was not about Edison, but the Edison issue was the spark igniting a general frenzy of hostility at the Chron at that time).

News coverage, including a Page 1 story in the New York Times, portrayed ECA as a huge success and hinted at San Francisco’s leftist “land of fruits and nuts” image to claim that our BOE was opposing successful Edison for entirely “ideological” reasons. The press “forgot” to do a key piece of the research, which should have been to find out what was going on in other Edison client districts around the nation. (The insider term for that type of "forgetful" journalism is “check it and lose it.”)

The New York Times story addressed that issue by using a quote from Whittle: “None of the 44 other cities where we manage schools has ever done anything like this.” Reporter Edward Wyatt used the quote without checking it, challenging it or further commenting, letting it stand as a statement of fact.

But actually, Whittle was lying. Edison had already been kicked out by the Sherman, Texas, school district. Other clients at that time were looking into severing their Edison contracts too — among them Macon, Ga.; Lansing and Flint, Mich.; Goldsboro, N.C.; and Wichita, Kans., none of them generally vulnerable to “land of fruits and nuts” caricatures.

The bashing wasn’t limited to public school critics or mainstream media. Commentator Peter Schrag, normally a public school supporter, wrote a long piece for the leftist Nation magazine telling the same (inaccurate) story. Joan Walsh, now editor of Salon and a media star herself — and at the time an SFUSD parent, though not at ECA — did the same in a long Salon article. (To Walsh’s credit, she is one of the very few journalists who later corrected factual errors fed to her by Edison spokespeople — perhaps the only one.) When one Edison press release described ECA as “a successful school in a failing district,” variations on that line appeared in various media, including Schrag’s Nation article.

For the record, ECA’s achievement at the time (based on California’s Academic Performance Index compilation of test scores) ranked it close to the bottom among SFUSD schools for 1999-2000, the data available at the beginning of the media frenzy. And when the scores from spring 2001 testing were released, ECA’s were dead last in the district.

I helped other advocates research information about Edison, and we used the less-nimble technology of that time to create an e-mail press release list and a website, Parents Advocating School Accountability. At one point I wrote up an account of the situation to share with friends who weren’t versed in it, partly because if they came across my name (I was quoted in the Page 1 New York Times article), I wanted them to have heard my version first. A friend who was a Chronicle copy editor was amazed to learn from me that ECA wasn’t the highest-scoring school in the district. Though the Chronicle’s news coverage had mentioned that ECA’s actual test scores were low, the whole tone of the crusade had given her that impression — even though she was actually copy editing some of the coverage.

Meanwhile, Edison was fighting SFUSD in court too, and California charter PR man Gary Larson was mobilizing ECA parents to storm school board meetings in matching T-shirts, chanting “My child, my choice!”

Why did Edison mobilize against SFUSD — and mobilize the media on its behalf — while keeping a low profile about the numerous other client districts that had the same problems with Edison and were doing the same thing? At the time, Edison was making two ambitious bids in major districts. In New York City, it was trying to win five schools and a solid toehold. In Philadelphia, it was attempting to take over the entire district. My guess is that the thinking was that all this news coverage with a strong tone of disapproval aimed at one “land of fruits and nuts” district would divert everyone from checking into how Edison was doing with its various client districts. The strategy seemed to work.

What this all amounted to was a mass attack on SFUSD for attempting to hold Edison accountable for its commitments to its client school district (and its students). The fact that the media leaped gleefully into the fray provides a good view of the risks of trying to hold a charter operator accountable.

In the end, the outcome in San Francisco was a compromise. Edison and SFUSD severed their contract and the charter-promoting California state Board of Education took over chartering the school (the degree of oversight and accountability now is utterly unknown to the public). ECA is quietly operating in the same location, as a rent-paying tenant in an SFUSD facility. It’s an attractive facility in a great location, too, and a lot of young parents in trendy, family-friendly Noe Valley would like to get it back.

Edison lost its bid for the New York schools and ended up with just a couple dozen in Philadelphia. By now, Edison Schools Inc. has lost 29 of its client districts at last known count — and I am definitely not keeping up, so I’m sure there are more. Here’s an account of Edison Schools’ situation from the PASA website.

It’s easy to see why anyone who has followed the history of charter schools would be surprised to hear from charter advocates that they now believe in accountability for problem charter schools. We shall see.

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

From the P.P.:

Bay Area readers will be interested in Vincent Matthews’ ties to Edison Schools, the NewSchools Venture Fund, and the Broad Foundation. Noticing that Matthews’ job history was one in chronic flux, in 2007 a reporter wrote, “He’s got a five-page resume that lists about 10 jobs.”

Vincent Matthews

• pre-2001: Various teaching and administrative positions
• 2001: Principal of Edison Charter Academy in San Francisco
• 2003: Vice president for Edison Schools (regional director of Edison’s West Coast operations)
• Next: Educator in residence for the NewSchools Venture Fund
• 2006: Graduated from the Broad Superintendents Academy
• 2006: Appointed as a regional superintendent of San Diego Unified School District
• 2007: Appointed as chief of staff for the Oakland Unified School District state administrator, Kimberly Statham, another graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy (Class of 2003).
• 2007: Appointed as state administrator for the Oakland Unified School District
• 2008: Appointed as state trustee for the Oakland Unified School District (receiving an enormous salary as such)
• 2010: Appointed superintendent of the San Jose School District

Message for Vander Ark & the ed deform crowd

Tom Vander Ark is a participant on the National Journal’s Education blog. Recently he posted a comment on Crist's veto of the Florida teacher bill (SB-6) and called it “Putting the Brakes on Progress.” The bill sought to tie 50% of a teacher’s evaluation and pay to test scores, and to make it easier for them to be fired.

As an ed defomer mouthpiece responding to a defeat, here’s Vander Ark description of what happened in Florida: “…despite overwhelming public, philanthropic, and federal support for teacher effectiveness, the brakes have been applied by well organized and funded forces protecting the status quo.” Funny how he can put a negative spin on people in a democracy organizing themselves for a cause they believe in.

Indeed, Florida’s resistance forces became well organized, but the movement didn’t turn into a flood of opposition because of money. This movement was generated at the grassroots level using online social networking tools. Anthony Cody described how it worked in “From Facebook to YouTube: A Teacher Movement is Born.”

The large response in Florida may be an indication that a major pushback to the ed deform movement is finally getting underway. The drive is coming deep from people’s hearts and is emerging out of a sense of frustration and a desire for the truth to be told. It taps into anger that has been produced by one’s hard work being publicly insulted and disregarded for years.

People in the ed deformer crowd like to present themselves as supremely righteous warriors on a battleground where they are fighting for “teacher effectiveness” (their own personal view). They broad brush their opposition (= public school supporters) as an entity who never wants the public schools to improve, and doesn't mind if bad, lazy teachers are running the classrooms. And the ed deform propaganda constantly blurts that public school teachers ARE “bad, lazy” teachers who all deserve to be fired. The media and politicians have come to parrot and support their message.

But this oft-repeated, skewed outlook on teachers has never made sense, and, to me, has always been the main clue that something about their message just isn’t right. Anyone with a pinch of practical experience in an urban public school knows that the volume of teacher-bashing is turned up way too high. Any critical thinker can deduce that ulterior motives must be at work.

The presence of a tiny number of flawed employees – which will exist in any workplace – has been magnified and dwelled upon and talked about incessantly and loudly. What is being ignored is the fact that the majority of teachers in public schools are either perfectly okay or good, and some of them are even great.

If public school teachers were as bad as the ed deformers like to say, one would think that public school parents would be greatly dissatisfied. But as it happens, this is not the case.

In 2007, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted a Parent and Family Involvement in Education Survey (PFI) as a part of its National Household Education Surveys Program.* The final report, “Parent and Family Involvement in Education, 2006-07 School Year” was released in August 2008.

This study asked a large number of K-12 parents if they were 1. “very satisfied,” 2. “somewhat satisfied,” 3. “somewhat dissatisfied,” or 4. “very dissatisfied” with their child’s teachers. Interestingly, the report only revealed the first of the four possible responses. But it was produced under the Bush/Spellings regime, so it might have been intentionally written in such a way to make public school teacher satisfaction appear worse than it actually is.

Overall, 64% of surveyed parents were “very satisfied” with their teachers. Here’s the breakdown:

· Public, assigned – 61% (representing 37,168 students)

· Public, chosen** – 68% (representing 7,951 students)

· Private, religious – 79% (representing 4,560 students)

· Private, nonreligious – 78% (representing 1,438 students)

· City dwellers – 65% (representing 16,195 students)

· Poor families – 64% (representing 10,012 students)

· Non-poor families – 64% (representing 41,487 students)

When a clear majority of parents are reporting that they are “very satisfied” with their child’s teachers, things are certainly not as bad as the ed deform camp has been trying to make it seem.

I wanted to see a breakdown of the remaining three possible responses for all school types, because if the truth was as bad as we hear about public school teachers these days, I'd expect to see at least 50% of the parents report that they were "very dissatisfied."

I inquired with a staff member at the National Center for Education Statistics who promptly and politely directed me to “Trends in the Use of School Choice.” (so much for 'dissing' federal government employees!). He suggested the variability seen in the figures (eg. 61% vs. 57%) might due to the fact that the second report used data for grades 3-12, while the other used K-12. (He's put out that query and if I get a response I'll post it in the comments).

So here is the data-based truth about what parents think about their child’s teachers.

TEACHER SATISFACTION

Public, assigned	1993	1999	2003	2007
Satisfied (very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)	91% (56+35)	92% (54+38)	91% (56+35)	91% (57+34)
Dissatisfied (somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)	9% (7+2)	8% (6+2)	8% (6+2)	10% (7+3)

Public, chosen	1993	1999	2003	2007
Satisfied (very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)	95% (62+33)	93% (62+31)	94% (65+29)	94% (64+30)
Dissatisfied (somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)	6% (4+2)	6% (5+1)	6% (4+2)	7% (6+1)

Private, religious	1993	1999	2003	2007
Satisfied (very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)	98% (75+23)	98% (76+22)	95% (72+23)	97% (76+21)
Dissatisfied (somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)	2% (2+0)	2% (2+0)	4% (3+1)	3% (2+1)

Private, nonreligious	1993	1999	2003	2007
Satisfied (very satisfied + somewhat satisfied)	97% (77+20)	97% (75+22)	94% (70+24)	97% (74+23)
Dissatisfied (somewhat dissatisfied + very dissatisfied)	3% (1+2)	3% (2+1)	6% (4+2)	3% (3+0)

The difference in overall satisfaction between the assigned public schools and other school types only ranges from 3% to 6%.

So, why would some people be working so hard to convince the public that 99.9% of the public school teachers are lazy, ineffective bums?

Because one of the things that the ed deform movement is after is to kill off the morale of public school teachers, and undermine any citizen support. They want to make the teachers weak, demoralized, and submissive, and they want to destroy their unions. This is the oligarchs' current national economic agenda.

And going back to Vander Ark’s original statement: “…despite overwhelming public, philanthropic, and federal support for teacher effectiveness…”

Well, “overwhelming” public support for his whatever-defined version of “teacher effectiveness” is pretty exaggerated. But I certainly know who he specifically means when he refers to philanthropic and federal support for the Florida bill. Naturally, this would be Eli Broad, Bill Gates and others, along with Arne Duncan and the Eli Broad and Bill Gates’ plants that Duncan installed as his senior staff members. These are Russlyn Ali, Assistant Secretary, Office for Civil Rights (former assistant director of policy and research at the Broad Foundation, and member of the review board of the Broad Prize), Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2006), Carl Harris, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Strategic Initiatives (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2002), James H. Shelton III, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement (former program director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who has strong ties to the NewSchools Venture Fund, a Broad/Gates, etc. supported, charter school start-up/financial support organization), and of course Joanne Weiss, who Duncan pulled from the NewSchools Venture Fund to become his Director of Race to the Top. And if you don't believe that some people who are working in government aren't there to fulfill other missions, just read here. So it does make sense that Vander Ark would consider these particular entities as the primary stakeholders in public education -- they are directly interested in its demise.

Broad, Gates, Bloomberg, the Waltons, the Dells, and other corporate malanthropies have poured billions of dollars into making their version of market-based ed deform happen. I hate that this country has become an oligarchy, as Simon Johnson defines as “political power based on economic power.”*** I hate that national education policy is now being dictated by a handful of wealthy, powerful forces who do their dirty work behind the scenes and never appear before the public for challenge or questioning. But enough about me.

Don’t forget that Teacher Appreciation Week & Day for 2010 are just around the corner:

• Teacher Appreciation Week is May 3-7
• Teacher Appreciation Day is Wednesday, May 4^th

The big foundations should send each of the nation’s urban school teachers a thank-you-for-your-hard-work note, a bouquet of flowers, and a box of chocolate. At least.

` ` ` ` ` ` `

*From the report:

The survey addressed many topics, including school choice, homeschooling, family involvement in children’s schools, factors affecting parent and family participation in school, parent support for and satisfaction with the school, parents’ communication with other parents, school efforts to involve families, parent involvement with children’s homework, parent and family involvement in activities outside of school, parent and family plans for postsecondary education, and child health and disability status.

The sample was selected using random-digit-dial methods, and the data were collected using computer assisted telephone interviewing technology. NHES:2007 was conducted by Westat, a social science research firm, from January 2 through May 6, 2007. PFI interviews were conducted with parents or guardians of a nationally representative sample of children enrolled in kindergarten through 12th grade including children who were enrolled in public or private schools or homeschooled. The total number of completed PFI interviews was 10,681, which represents a population of 53.2 million students in grades K through 12, when weighted to reflect national totals.

**Here’s something interesting about the “School Characteristics” definition in the glossary of the original report:

“Schools that are public are further classified using the variable SCHOICE according to whether the parent reported having chosen the school or whether the school had been assigned to the student by the school district. Students in public school whose parents reported that their assigned school is their school of choice are categorized as attending a chosen school.”

So, someone like me who is required to participate in my district’s “Options” program by filling out a form in which I list my neighborhood school as my first choice can be interpreted by the Department of Education as engaging in school choice. It just seems odd and a bit off.

***From Simon Johnson on the Bill Moyers Journal, April 16, 2010:

"Oligarchy is just- it's a very simple, straightforward idea from Aristotle. It's political power based on economic power… I know people react a little negatively when you use this term for the United States. But it means political power derived from economic power. That's what we're looking at here. It's disproportionate, it's unfair, it is very unproductive, by the way. Undermines business in this society. And it's an oligarchy like we see in other countries."