Last night’s stunning Bill Moyers Journal

There were two segments on the April 2^nd program. Please take time to watch them or read the transcripts.

Part One featured Bill Moyers’ interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander. Part Two was Moyers’ essay on the growing income inequality.

Thank you, Bill Moyers.

Excerpts from Part One:

BILL MOYERS: With me now is Bryan Stevenson, one of the country's leading advocates for justice. He lives in Alabama, where he founded and leads the Equal Justice Initiative, whose mission is defending the poor and people of color. He's won wide recognition, including the MacArthur "genius" award, for his efforts to end the death penalty. He teaches clinical law at New York University.

Michelle Alexander is also an expert in civil rights advocacy and litigation. The former director of the civil rights clinics at Stanford Law School in California, she teaches law now at Ohio State University. You're going to hear a lot about her powerful new book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.”…

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: …individual black achievement today masks a disturbing, underlying racial reality. You know, to a significant extent, you know, affirmative action, seeing African Americans, you know, go to Harvard and Yale, become CEOs and corporate lawyers, you know, causes us all to marvel what a long way we have come.

But, you know, as Bryan just indicated, much of the data indicates that African Americans today, as a group, are not much better off than they were back in 1968. When Martin Luther King delivered his, you know, "The Other America" speech. Talking about how there are two Americas in the United States…

BRYAN STEVENSON: Other countries that have confronted historic problems of racism and gross ethnic conflict have recognized that to overcome that, there has to be a period of truth and reconciliation. In South Africa, they had to go through truth and reconciliation. In Rwanda, there had to be truth and reconciliation. In this country, we've never had truth and we've never had reconciliation. And so, the day to day reality for the clients where I work, the people I work with is one that's still hurt, angry, broken…

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, you know, just a couple decades after the collapse of the old Jim Crow system, a new system of racial control emerged in the United States. Today, people of color are targeted by law enforcement for relatively minor, nonviolent, often drug-related offenses. The types of crimes that occur all the time on college campuses, where drug use is open and notorious. That occur in middle class suburban communities without much notice, right?

Targeted, often at very young ages, for these relatively minor offenses. Arrested, branded felons, and then ushered into a parallel social universe, in which they can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in many of the ways in which African Americans were discriminated against during the Jim Crow era.

So, when I say that we have a new racial caste system, what I mean is that we have a system of laws, policies, and practices in the United States today that operate to lock people of color, particularly poor people of color, living in ghetto communities, in an inferior second-class status for life. Now, most people think the drug war was declared in response to rising drug crime or crime rates.

But that is not the case. The current drug war was, you know, was officially declared by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. A couple years before crack hit the streets and became a media sensation…

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: The drug war was part of the Republican Party's kind of grand strategy, now known as the Southern strategy, to use racially coded political appeals on issues of crime and welfare in order to appeal to poor and working class white voters who were resentful of and disaffected by many of the gains of the Civil Rights Movement.

Folks who were upset by bussing. Desegregation and affirmative action. The Republican Party strategists, you know, openly talked about the need to use racially-coded political appeals on crime and welfare in order to get those voters who used to be part of the Democratic New Deal coalition, to get those folks to defect to the Republican Party.

BILL MOYERS: You have a quote in your book from President Richard Nixon's White House Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman: "The whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to."…

Here’s a previous P.P. post about Michelle Alexander’s work.

Excerpts from Part Two:

BILL MOYERS: As we just heard, we have a long way to go to fulfill the dream of a multi-racial democracy, with equal justice and opportunity for all. Our Declaration of Independence spoke eloquently of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable rights, but those rights did not extend to slaves. Abraham Lincoln, the "Great Emancipator," may have been the first of our leaders fully to grasp the meaning of the American promise. In this small but significant book, "The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth," the economist Norton Garfinkle writes that Lincoln believed this country's defining characteristic was economic opportunity. He believed that through hard work, over the course of a lifetime, every American -- including black people --could achieve a decent standard of living.

In Garfinkle's words, "America was the first nation on earth to offer this opportunity of economic advancement to all, even to the humblest beginner, and this was what made the nation unique and worth preserving. Ultimately, it was the largest reason for Lincoln's willingness to fight the Civil War."

In our time, this idea of universal opportunity is once again under assault for working people of every race.

Even before the Great Collapse of '08 destroyed the value of their homes, robbed their pensions, and took their jobs, American families were slipping behind, and are worse off now than they were thirty years ago. Over these past three decades, workers actually increased their productivity but did not share proportionately in the rewards of their labor. Those went largely to the top.

Since 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected president, the incomes of people at the top have doubled while those in the middle and at the bottom have remained flat.

Let me throw some more statistics at you. You'll find their sources at our site online. Keep in mind that each of these numbers represents lived human experience.

In this richest of countries, more than 40 million people are living in poverty.

At some point in their childhoods, half of America's children will use food stamps to eat.

Some 30 million workers are unemployed or under-employed, and for those still working, the median wage today is about $32 thousand a year, which is why so many people are working two jobs trying to make ends meet.

Meanwhile, as the economist Robert Reich recently reminded us, in the 1950's and 60's, the CEO's of major American companies took home about 25 to 30 times the wages of the typical worker. By 1980 the big company CEO took home roughly 40 times the worker's wage. By 1990, it was 100 times. And by 2007, executives at the largest American companies received about 350 times the pay of the average employee. In many of the top corporations, the chief executive earns more every day than the average worker gets paid in a year.

And then there's the financial world. Case in point: Ken Lewis, who at the end of 2009 retired as CEO of Bank of America. Only recently did we learn that, not long after his company received $45 billion in taxpayer dollars from the big bailout, Lewis raked in more than $73 million in pension benefits and stock, and was given an insurance policy worth $10 million to his beneficiaries.

But compared to some people, Ken Lewis is a piker. Hedge fund managers, who bet that taxpayers -- you -- would pay to keep the banks from collapsing, hit the jackpot. Last year, one of them alone made a cool four billion dollars. The top 25 scooped up a total of 25.3 billion.

Dear America, Something is terribly wrong and it’s time for you to wake up.

“The Broad Effect”: Part Two

Read Part One here.

Because of his immense wealth and interest, billionaire Eli Broad is one member in a very small set of non-elected, extremely wealthy individuals who have acquired the power to determine U.S. public education policy and the future of our public education system. Most of the masses are not aware that public schools are being dismantled by the coup. For those who have caught on and are reading this, I offer you some information about him, all easily accessible on the internet. Just consider "The Broad Effect": Part Two my variation of the popular TV show, ""Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."

The Inauguration Party thrown by Broad for President Obama

Broad, a longtime Democratic supporter, was so thrilled at the election of Barack Obama that he threw what was described as “the most exclusive dinner of the week” to salute his friends who are members of the new president's cabinet. As the New York Times reported:

Anyone who is anyone in Washington was at Tuesday night’s pre-ball dinner, thrown by the California billionaire Eli Broad at the Park Hyatt Hotel to honor members of the new Obama administration.

The guest list looked like a who’s who list of Washington old and new: Hillary Clinton, Mr. Obama’s choice for secretary of state and her husband, former President Bill Clinton; Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and new White House chief economics adviser; Paul Volcker, former chairman of the Federal Reserve; Arne Duncan, Mr. Obama’s pick for Education Secretary, Leon Panetta, the nominee for director of the C.I.A.; Vernon Jordan, the power lawyer, as well as media celebrities like Larry King and Charlie Rose.

Jim Horn at Schools Matter expressed the feelings of betrayal felt by many when Obama selected Arne Duncan:

While many of us were out busting our humps to gather up a few dollars and votes for the change we thought we could believe in, the Harvard boys were cutting backroom deals with the multi-billionaire oligarchs to fully engage their plan to corporatize American public education, beginning with the urban schools.

(If you clicked on Horn's link, did you enjoy looking at the photo of Arne Duncan hanging out with Broad at the party?)

Eli Broad’s living quarters, lifestyle, etc.

Eli Broad’s primary residence is on Oakmont Drive in Los Angeles. (Brentwood, zip 90049). This would give Broad a 5 mile & 11 minute commute to the Broad Foundation’s headquarters located at 10900 Wilshire Blvd. (at the corner of Westwood and Wilshire, zip 90024).

In June 2009, Broad threw a party at his home in honor of the 40th anniversary of Art Basel, an international contemporary art exhibition ("the Olympics of the art world") held each year in Basel, Switzerland, and in Miami, Florida. W Magazine describes the event:

Almost everything about a recent dinner at Eli Broad’s Los Angeles home in honor of the 40th anniversary of Art Basel was outsize, starting with the estate itself. Visitors approached the mansion—designed in part by Frank Gehry—through a private sculpture park, then entered a sitting room the size of a hotel lobby before descending a stairway into a series of double-height galleries. “This is bigger than the Gagosian Gallery,” said fashion-world fixture Richard Buckley as he arrived at the first subterranean white cube, with its cranelike Calder sculpture and pair of giant Chuck Close portraits.

High-end art collectors like Eli Broad pursue collecting as a financial investment. The article continues:

Throughout the evening, Broad loomed almost as large. “Times are tough,” he allowed, when he rose to address his guests. “But we got a lot of great things in the early Nineties, which were also tough times.”

Look at a slideshow of the amazing art party here.

As an aside, Broad’s Brentwood residence is only about 10 minutes from the Getty Center, a stunning and relatively new major art museum. J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) was an American industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company, making him one of the world’s richest-ever men. He was an avid art collector.

Incidentally, the Getty Center was designed by Richard Meier, the same architect who Broad commissioned to design a Malibu beach house in 1999. On Meier’s Web site, scroll down near the end to see several photos of the house which is located on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu (zip 90265) along the famed Carbon Beach, “…the highest value beach neighborhood on Pacific Coast Highway…” where:

Homes here tend to be carefully designed by leading architects and adhere to very tasteful standards. Privacy has a high value along with insulation from PCH noise. Money, of course, is no object. When billionaire entrepreneur Eli Broad planned his Carbon Beach house he employed Getty Center architect Richard Meier to design a home on two adjoining parcels. Broad paid $2.5 million for one lot, then owned by Freddy DeMann, Madonna's former manager. It had 45 feet of beach frontage -- the 1952 three-bedroom 3,000-square-foot house was demolished. Next door was another 55 feet of beach frontage Broad bought for $2.6 million, including an 1,800-square-foot house built in 1955, also demolished.

But back in Brentwood...

In 2002, Barry Munitz sold a piece of Getty Trust-owned land to his close friend Eli Broad at a substantial discount. The LA Times reported the story:

The J. Paul Getty Trust sold a valuable piece of Brentwood real estate in 2002 for $700,000 less than its appraised value to billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, a close friend and professional associate of Getty Chief Executive Barry Munitz, according to trust documents and officials.

Munitz directed his aides to delay listing the property so that he could discuss a transaction directly with Broad, despite what Getty records call "many requests to purchase the property," which is adjacent to Broad's hilltop estate.

and

Not long after Munitz took the Getty's helm, Broad invited Munitz to sail along the coast of southern France on his yacht, mixing recreation with visits to a string of small museums.

" 'Don't you think it would be nice if you actually knew something about what you are about to get into?' " Munitz recalled Broad, a noted art collector, teasingly asking him. Munitz came to the Getty with no background in the art world.

It was Munitz's first invitation to join Broad's "boat trip summers" and travels to such places as Croatia, Greece and Cuba with a circle of entrepreneurs and philanthropists. The group sometimes included then Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan and billionaire investor Ronald W. Burkle.

Back in Los Angeles, Munitz and Broad's collaborations in the arts, education and politics continued.

Did you notice Richard Riordan’s name popping up?

Riordan (b. 1930) is a longtime and good friend of Eli Broad (b. 1933). They have a strong common interest in LA civic and business affairs. Both are also strong promoters of charter schools and school choice, and, in particular these days, with supporting the candidacy of State Senator Gloria Romero for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Riordan served as Mayor of Los Angeles (1993–2001) and as the California Secretary of Education (2003–2005). Originally trained as a lawyer, he had become wealthy by founding a series of private equity firms which focused on venture capital investments and leveraged buyout transactions. Riordan ran for Governor of California unsuccessfully in 2002. The funding priorities of his foundation are listed as “…technology, school choice, and leadership development programs.”

Ravitch (p. 197) reminds us that, “Foundations exist to enable extremely wealthy people to shelter a portion of their capital from taxation...”

It is important to mention, that when Riordan was mayor, he employed Ben Austin as one of his Deputy Mayors. Austin, also once employed by Green Dot, has been serving as the Executive Director of the Parents Union (aka LAPU/aka Parents Revolution, a phony grassroots organization) for nearly two years. All those connections are reviewed here and here. (Maybe someday I'll write a book!)

In addition to yachting together in exotic locales, Riordan once owned a house next to Broad’s beach house along Malibu’s Billionaires Beach (aka Carbon Beach). It seems to now be officially owned by Riordan’s estranged wife, Nancy. At times, residents in this neighborhood have been annoyed with noisy, paparazzi-attracting parties thrown by the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton at beach houses which they've rented:

"On any given Monday morning, Eli Broad would be calling city hall with a list of what he'd had to put up with the previous weekend," said Jay Marose, a PR guru who worked alongside Fingerprint Communications in developing the Polaroid Beach House.

Billionaires Beach residents have also been annoyed by members of the masses who have demanded public beach access. That particular conflict seems to have been resolved:

Last Monday, two white wooden doors swung open for the first time onto Carbon Beach, courtesy of David Geffen, the DreamWorks co-founder, who owns a large shingled compound on the ocean and has the option of borrowing suntan lotion from billionaire neighbors like Eli Broad and Haim Saban. The mile-and-a-half-long beach, among the first glimpses of Malibu on the drive up from Los Angeles, is public by law, but to get to it, visitors must find a way to penetrate a wall of multimillion-dollar homes. [Here’s the solution to that puzzle, just in case you're in the area and feel like going for a beach stroll.]

Lastly, Broad has a New York City residence located on the 33rd floor of the Sherry-Netherland Hotel on 5th Avenue (zip 10022), adjacent to the bottom of Central Park on the east side. He had been trying to sell it and had even reduced the asking price, but ended up taking it off the market last June. Of course it is lovely, with a view of Central Park. Photos of the interior can be seen here.

Eli Broad’s wealth was most recently listed at $5.2 billion. Imagine that you are a person with a net worth of $50,000, and you happen to drop a penny and watch it roll away. No big deal, right? Broad would have the same relative mental response as you did, if he tossed $1040 up in the air and watched it blow away.

By this comparison I am just trying to describe the degree of relative wealth; it's nearly incomprehensibly vast, which is why Broad is winning, and public school devotees are loosing.

Hopefully, the picture I’ve now painted sufficiently illustrates the nature and lifestyle of Broad, the man. It doesn't seem right to me that this unelected individual should get to control so much of the direction of the future of our city’s, my state’s, and my country’s public education, education for which ALL taxpayers, each of them as hard-working as Eli Broad, are paying their fair share, and know about the realities and needs of the public schools much more than he ever will. Does it seem right to you?

Is there anyone with political power who would be willing to stand up and stop this anti-democratic force?

“The Broad Effect”

This is "The Broad Effect": Part One
Read "The Broad Effect": Part Two here.

“The Broad Effect” is behind the recent events in Rhode Island (the Central Falls firings ), and in Detroit, where the Detroit Public School Board has just unanimously voted to file a second lawsuit against Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb, saying the extra $145,000 in private foundation support he receives is an unlawful conflict of interest. Bobb's base salary is $280,000. The Detroit News reports:

“Bobb's supplemental income from private foundations increased from $84,000 last year to $145,000 this year, under a one-year contract extension signed by the governor and state superintendent this month. The only philanthropic donor publicly identified is the Broad Foundation, whose support of charter schools has stirred controversy among some members of the DPS community.”

Naturally, Robert Bobb (or Bob Bobb, as he was known in Oakland when served as the City Manager under former Mayor Jerry Brown) is a member of the Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2005.

When the Broad Foundation plants one of its elements in a school district, it is highly likely that another element will be planted along with it, in order to maximize the Effect.

For instance, an element might be:

• The presence of a Broad-trained superintendent
• The placement of Broad Residents into important central office positions
• An "invitation" to participate in a program spawned by the Foundation (such as CRSS's Reform Governance in Action program)
• Offering to provide the district with a free "Performance Management Diagnostic and Planning" experience

The Broad Foundation likes to infiltrate its targets on multiple levels so it can manipulate a wider field and cause the greatest amount of disruption. Venture edu-philanthropists like Gates and Broad proudly call this invasive and destabilizing strategy "investing in a disruptive force."To these billionaires and their henchmen, causing massive disruption for families with school aged children in (disadvantaged) communities (primarily of color) across the nation is no big deal.

“The Broad Effect” has been playing out in Rhode Island, where State Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist, a 2008 Broad Superintendents Academy graduate, worked in tandem with Frances Gallo, the district’s superintendent, to fire 93 teachers and staff members at Central Falls High School. Learn much more about the whole story here.

The April 2009 press release announcing Gist’s appointment as the new R.I. Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education stated:

“We are thrilled that Rhode Island is the first state to attract a Broad Fellow as not only the superintendent of its largest schools system, with Tom Brady in Providence, but also a Broad Fellow as a State Commissioner who can partner in addressing the challenges of transforming the state's educational systems to a position of international leadership."

As we learn from a March 2005 press release:

“The Mayor [Cicilline of Providence] today met with the School Board Monday night to discuss a plan that installs Fran Gallo as Transition Superintendent and calls for the formation of a search committee by next week. The plan is informed by counsel from the Broad Foundation (pronounced “brode”), a nationally-recognized consultant for superintendent searches.”

And as Providence Public School District eventually acquired Thomas M. Brady (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2004), he was joined by Sharon Contreras (Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2010) as his Chief Academic Officer. Gallo took a position at Central Falls, an impoverished community 5.7 miles north of Providence. Read more about the Broad-in-Rhode-Island synergy here.

So now do you understand how it all works?

MORE EVIDENCE OF “THE BROAD EFFECT”

ANTIOCH, CALIFORNIA: Deborah Sims (BSA 2005) was asked to resign. The previous year, their school board had started in the Reform Governance in Action program via the Center for Reform of School Systems (CRSS) which is very heavily funded by Broad. After Sims' exit, the CRSS terminated its ties with the district. It was , "...a blessing in disguise," as one board member stated.

BUFFALO, NEW YORK: This city was targeted early on, now they are land-o-the-charters.

CAPISTRANO, CALIFORNIA: In March 2009, this school district terminated its superintendent, Arnold Woodrow "Woody" Carter (BSA 2002), for material breach.

FRANKLIN COUNTY, OHIO: It seems that Bart G. Anderson (BSA 2006), Superintendent of the Franklin County Board of Education was calling himself “Dr. Bart Anderson” years before he earned a legitimate doctorate degree in 2006. He also got mixed up with a diploma mill called St. Regis University, which issued him a bogus doctorate in 2002.

JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA: Joseph Wise (BSA 2003) was given a four-year contract as the superintendent of Duval County Public Schools in the fall of 2005. Twenty-three months later, his spending habits were being questioned. He and the school board parted ways in October 2007, but not before he implemented a controversial reorganization plan. Read local community opinions here. In February 2008, he became the new Chief Education Officer for EdisonLearning. Legal problems persisted even after he left DCPS. Trouble had followed Wise from Delaware, where he had been the superintendent of Christina School District, the largest in Delaware. This is what he's doing now.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: As you would suspect, all sorts of intertwining connections are here. Read this report about Broad taking Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to dinner.

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE: More suckers in Memphis (or are the school district officials just sucking up?). As usual, parents are pissed off but have little idea about what has hit them. As usual, New Leaders for New Schools is right in the midst of things.

OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA: In January 2008, twenty-one allegations of improper behavior were made against John Q. Porter (BSA 2006), who had been serving as the superintendent of OKCPS for only six months (more here). He was suspended and then resigned in March amid accusations of financial mismanagement and poor job performance. Porter's spending habits were questioned during his previous work for Montgomery County Public Schools. I've looked for him online, but he seems to have disappeared. His Wikipedia page was deleted in 2008.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA: In the summer of 2003, Jack O'Connell, the State Superintendent of Instruction (the recipient of a large campaign contribution from Eli Broad), assigned Randolph Ward (BSA 2003) as State Administrator of OUSD. Ward appointed Arnold Woodrow "Woody" Carter (BSA 2002) to be his Chief of Staff (see Capistrano above). Ward's slash-and-burn actions produced so much anger from the community, he hired a full-time body guard. Barak Ben-Gal (Broad Resident 2004-2006) implemented a controversial system called Results Based Budgeting in OUSD, then went into the private sector in Silicon Valley. Kimberly Statham (BSA 2003) hopped from job to job for years and is now at the NewSchools Venture Fund. Statham departed after only one year, and arrangements were made for Vincent Matthews (BSA 2006), who used to work for SF's (now failed) Edison school, to fill the State Administrator position. These three Broad Superintendents within five years left the district in a bigger mess, and in considerably more debt, than in which they had found it. The district regained full control in 2009, but since the district is still in debt to the state, Matthews was assigned as State Trustee.

NEW YORK CITY: Broad Foundation press release states that Broad "played a key role in former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Joel Klein's appointment as New York schools chancellor." And here's Broad schmoozing with another N.Y. billionaire.

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, MARYLAND: This troubled school district thought it was finally going to get a long-term superintendent when they hired John Deasy (BSA 2006) in May 2006, but by September 2008 he was being investigated for having improperly received his doctorate. He resigned in short order and went to work for the Gates Foundation. Deasy's replacement was William R. Hite Jr. (BSA 2006) who appointed Bonita Coleman-Potter (BSA 2008) as his deputy superintendent.

ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: Jean-Claude Brizard (BSA 2007) is alienating people there. People are catching on.

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON: This group isn't too pleased with Maria Goodloe-Johnson (BSA 2003).

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: Arne Duncan invited Broad Residents into his department so they can be in control at the the top.

WASHINGTON D.C.: Reporting that Michelle Rhee meets with Broad on a regular basis, including making multiple visits to his Fifth Ave. apartment in NYC.

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: A 2006 article stated that Broad "plans to virtually take over the Delaware school system in 2007, pending approval from that state's legislature." He backed the winning slate of candidates for the local board of education in 1999 and helped hire the new superintendent. His energy was focused on the Christina School District. Their first Broad superintendent was installed in July 2003 ( see Joseph Wise under Jacksonville above). This is what he's doing now. In April 2006, Wise was succeeded by Lillian Lowery (BSA 2004) who served until May 2009. Lowery walked into her position and shortly discovered a huge district deficit. This is what she's doing now. Her replacement was Marcia Lyles (BSA 2006). This district is home to the incident with six-year old Zachary. His sentence was later reversed.

Note: Not all Broad Superintendents Academy graduates (called Fellows) are included on the Academy's Web site as "Featured Alumni."

This map will show you where the Effect has spread, and will link you to its players. More information is available at The Broad Report. Doing a perfect job of keeping track of “The Broad Effect” would be a full-time job!

I now share with you an excerpt from the Billionaire Boys' Club chapter of Diane Ravitch's book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education":

But the offer of a multimillion-dollar grant by a foundation is enough to cause most superintendents and school boards to drop everything and reorder their priorities.

And so it happened that the Gates, Walton, and Broad foundations came to exercise vast influence over American education because of ther strategic investments in school reform. As their policy goals converged in the first decade of the twenty-first century, these foundations set the policy agenda not only for school districts, but also for states and even the U.S. Department of Education.

Before considering the specific goals and activities of these foundations, it is worth reflecting on the wisdom of allowing education policy to be directed or, one might say, captured by private foundations. There is something fundamentally antidemocratic about relinquishing control of the public education policy agenda to private foundations run by society's weathiest people; when the wealthiest of these foundations are joined in common purpose, they represent an unusually powerful force that is beyond the reach of democratic institutions. These foundations, no matter how worthy and high-minded, are after all, not public agencies. They are not subject to public oversight or review, as a public agency would be . They have taken it upon themselves to reform public education, perhaps in ways that would never survive the scrutiny of voters in any district or state. If voters don't like the foundations' reform agenda, they can't vote them out of office. The foundation demands that public schools and teacher be held accountable for performance, but they themselves are accountable to no one. If their plans fail, no sanctions are levied against them. They are bastions of unaccountable power.

Read more about Eli Broad, the man behind the Broad Effect. Find out what makes him chuckle. Learn why he is described as a “billionaire philanthropist whose beneficence comes with not just strings but with ropes.” My previous postings with additional information are here.

IF YOU HAVE KNOWLEDGE ABOUT “THE BROAD EFFECT” IN YOUR COMMUNITY, AND CAN OFFER ANY LINKS TO THE READERS HERE, PLEASE SHARE THAT INFORMATION IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. THANK YOU.

(The Broad Foundation regularly monitors this blog, both directly and, more recently, via services provided by BurrellesLuce. When it occurs, I post the confirmation in my comments.)

And as eighth-grade students have learned at a public middle school here in Oakland, "Jefferson believed in the People. They can make good decisions when given enough information."

Why Urban School Districts Make Easy Targets

In Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (2003), Annette Lareau compares the parenting styles of middle-class families to that of working class and poor parents. I’ve written about her work before.

According to Lareau, one characteristic of working class and poor parents which would make them easy targets for the school privatization movement is that this group does not have the same type of social competencies as middle class parents. Lareau describes how these different competencies affect the types of interactions which the parents have with their children’s schools, for instance, working class and poor parents:

• are less likely to customize interactions to suit their preferences
• accept actions of persons in authority, but at times covertly resist them
• are sometimes not as aware of children’s school situation
• may resist school rules as unreasonable
• have trouble getting “the school” to respond to their needs
• give a lesson in powerlessness and frustration in the face of an important institution
• are generally unable to make the rules work in their favor when they confront the institution

Because middle class parents rear their children in a “concerted cultivation” model, succeeding generations are instilled with a sense of entitlement. Working class and poor parents rear their children according to a “natural growth” model, which perpetuates a sense of constraint in their succeeding generations.

Nearly completely absent in education reform discussions is how schools could be improved by building stronger ways to foster a greater sense of entitlement in working class and poor families, as well as to guide them in ways to effectively implement it. This would be especially challenging to do with those who have experienced living under a weak or non-existent democratic model, or who have limited English-speaking abilities, but it would not be impossible and this is what the venture philanthropists should be spending their money on. Increased civic engagement on the part of parents would certainly provoke a greater bureaucratic response on the part of their school districts. Parents who feel empowered and competent who are advocating for change can accomplish a lot. Remember the Chinese fishing proverb?

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.

Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

But because building a greater sense of mastery for parents has not been sufficiently nurtured, and has even been sabotaged and discouraged by school bureaucracies, a door has been opened wide for the outside privatization forces to insert themselves into those communities. This is evident in the expansion of “we want your child, but we don’t need your input" charter schools. And as this feature is getting more and more firmly rooted in the ground, any and all remaining levels for an opportunity for true community engagement is being entirely wiped out. With school boards being abolished, no elections will be held, and no meetings will be conducted to invite public input. School enrollment is depending more and more on how successfully schools can market themselves to working class and poor parents, with pretty imprinted pencils, glossy color brochures and glowing promises.

The popular explanation of how it this all going to sort itself out is that parents “will vote with their feet.” This method causes an awful lot of disruption, as unhappy parents who don't have a say in how things are run, yank their kids out mid-year and wander over to the next school. Most parents would be perfectly happy if their children could stay put, if their input was regularly solicited, if their comments actually listened too, and if they were made to feel that they were respected and that their views were considered to be valid. This doesn’t happen enough in today’s school bureaucracies, and it hasn't for years. But it is entirely excluded when there is a top-down regime operating from afar, such as is the case with Oakland’s largest charter school provider, Aspire Public Schools. The members of its board of directors hail from far reaching communities, big businesses, and venture capital organizations, and none of them have anything to do with the People of Oakland. A middle class community would never permit its public schools to be run this way.

So along these lines, there was an interesting segment on The World the other day (12/9/09). Anchor Marco Werman spoke with Christian Science Monitor correspondent Fred Weir in Moscow about the Russian culture of accountability. Weir has been living in Russia for 23 years. The story pertained to the Russia’s culture of corruption, indifference and fatalism in relation to the tragic nightclub fire:

I think it’s an age old problem, probably because people are disconnected, and always have been, from authority and the means of getting things done. You know it’s very common for people in Russian to say, “Well nothing depends on me.” I think that’s part of the story and the corruption comes also from just an unaccountable bureaucracy. They’re not elected, they’re not transparent, they’re not susceptible to public pressure and they tend to use their positions – and this is an age old thing in Russia again – to enrich themselves…

…Russia has never had a functioning democracy. It doesn’t have the civil society, the kinds of unity avenues by which people, say in the United States, do insert themselves in the process, again not perfect, but you have so many different ways if you are an individual in a Western country to express yourself, be heard, to at least take a shot rhetorically at an official who you feel has wronged you.

You have so many different ways [in the U.S.] that just don’t exist in Russia, and never did. And this, of course, leads to the sense of impunity on the part of bureaucrats and officials who just don’t feel any need to respond to public pressure.

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...[change] involves actually changing that bureaucracy, dragging them out into the open, making them publicly accountable, having elections that are truly competitive and which would allow opposition figures perhaps to come into power. You know, allowing people in their communities to show initiative runs the risk of them challenging authority, and this is where Russian reformers always tend to draw the line after they’ve made these wonderful speeches. They want the country to modernize, but they don’t want opposition to form. They don’t want real, independent initiatives to take place, and that’s the conundrum that we always see.

Urban areas don’t need more charter schools and more passivity; this is a wrong and dangerous direction to take. For our democracy to stay strong, we need to start building the capacity of people to become regularly and effectively engaged. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is alarmed at the loss of civics instruction in school over recent years. She said:

... public education is the only long-term solution to preserving an independent judiciary and, more importantly, to preserving a robust constitutional democracy,” she said. “The better educated our citizens are, the better equipped they will be to preserve the system of government we have. And we have to start with the education of our nation’s young people. Knowledge about our government is not handed down through the gene pool. Every generation has to learn it, and we have some work to do.

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One unintended effect of the No Child Left Behind Act, which is intended to help fund teaching of science and math to young people, is that it has effectively squeezed out civics education because there is no testing for that anymore and no funding for that,” she said. “And at least half of the states no longer make the teaching of civics and government a requirement for high school graduation. This leaves a huge gap, and we can’t forget that the primary purpose of public schools in America has always been to help produce citizens who have the knowledge and the skills and the values to sustain our republic as a nation, our democratic form of government.

Related concerns are also expressed by James Boyd White in Part one of his essay, “Law, economics, and torture”. White is a law professor, literary critic, scholar and philosopher who has been teaching at the University of Michigan since 1983:

As the government withdraws from the regulation of the economy, as it has been doing for decades now, its place is taken by private individuals or private organizations which have immense power over the lives of all of us.

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The rhetoric supporting this movement speaks of government as the enemy, and the market as freedom for us all. But the power that is created by the disparity of wealth is real power and, unlike governmental power, it is not shaped or guided by law and democracy. Corporate owners and managers are not elected by the people, not subject to the constitution, not supposed – or even allowed – to be motivated by any ideal other than the acquisition of wealth and power, and usually not responsive to argument or complaint.

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The consumer dream of our culture teaches us that we have no responsibility, no capacity for action, no right to demand meaning in our work and lives, and no obligation for the welfare of others. It induces the sense of learned helplessness I referred to earlier—which is exactly the opposite of the kind of vigorous independence and competence upon which democracy depends.

And in discussing propaganda and advertising, White says

…one characteristic of both forms is that nothing is meant, everything is said for the moment, all on the assumption that the people who make up the audience have no memory and no capacity for critical thought. A world is created where thought is not possible. In neither domain—the consumer economy or the world of politics and government—are we defined as responsible participants in a world of shared life and action. Rather, we are manipulated objects of an empire.

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…the reason we do not rebel at the immense and unfair transfer of wealth, and all that is associated with it…is that in some sense we do not believe that we really have democracy at all any more, at least in the sense in which we once thought we did.

With restricted autonomy and “learned helplessness,” calling ourselves a democracy is a falsehood. To make our public schools better and to keep our democracy strong, this is the situation we need to begin to reverse, and quickly.