Like lambs being led to the slaughter

Newsflash! Bill Gates has now been publicly heckled. Watch the July 9 video here.

And just three days after being subjected to that humiliation in his hometown of Seattle, the Washington Post rushed in to his defense. Bright and early on the morning of Monday, July 12, WaPo readers opened their papers to find the following: “Gates Foundation playing pivotal role in changes for education system.”

Of course, it is especially important to note that both Melinda Gates and Warren E. Buffett, who is a major donor to the Gates Foundation, sit on the board of directors of The Washington Post Co.

The reason Bill Gates was heckled by a group of teacher protesters during his appearance at the AFT convention is because they oppose the enormous role which the Gates Foundation is playing re the privatization of public education and the weakening of the teachers' unions. Among other efforts, the foundation has poured millions of dollars into supporting mayoral control, dismantling neighborhood schools, and expanding charter schools. These teachers labeled Gates as a "Trojan Horse in the AFT House.”

The day following his AFT appearance, Leonie Haimson called Gates “The most dangerous man in America,” a Huffington Post piece which widely circulated in the edu-blogosphere.

A Monday post by Norm Scott (a retired teacher, reporter, and activist in NYC) discussed AFT President Randi Weingarten’s reaction to the anti-Gates protest, as well as the way in which other teachers at the convention ridiculed and shunned the protesters.

I placed a comment on Norm’s post which contained the following:

If the teachers at the convention had any idea how much money Gates has put into developing non-unionized charter schools, and that his vision includes an extreme reduction in the membership -- and power -- of their union, they might not have been so willing to cheer for him…

As a follow-up to that comment, I've collected a few facts that might help to enlighten some of those Gates teacher-fans. I think they should be aware that, as a direct consequence of Bill Gates' decisions, a number of them who were cheering for him will likely be saying goodbye to their jobs in the not-too-distant future. If they're lucky and not too old, they might get re-hired by some non-unionized charter school.

The Washington Post article informs us that the Gates Foundation gave “More than $81 million to charter schools and related initiatives” in the 29-months between January 2008 through May 2010.

This figure does not include the $4 million dollars that Gates secretly paid to Learn-NY from his own pocket to bankroll the campaign to extend Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral control. From the NY Post, August 2009:

“The donation helped pay for Learn-NY's extensive public-relations, media and lobbying efforts in Albany and the city. The effort include [sic] advertisements, parent organizing and canvassing -- including a five-borough bus tour and trips to the state capital.”

Michael Bloomberg is strongly pro-charter and anti-union. As the Gotham Gazette explained in February 2010, “Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Schools Chancellor Joel Klein envision doubling the number of charters in the city to 200 schools accommodating for 10 percent of city students --more than 100,000 kids.” Learn about the master plan to eliminate public school districts at the end of this piece (as outlined in 2008 by Andy Smarick of the Fordham Foundation).*

It is important to realize that the big venture philanthropists like Bill Gates and Eli Broad are using their wealth to advance charter schools on a number of different levels simultaneously; it’s a collective strategy where efforts potentiate each other. Janelle Scott describes the strategy in her paper, "The Politics of Venture Philanthropy in Charter School Policy and Advocacy", and informs us that foundations are being used as the philanthropists' vehicle in order to fund a wide range of:

1. charter advocacy groups
2. pro-charter research organizations
3. alternative teacher, principal, and superintendent training programs
4. charter school development organizations

If you study the Gates Foundation grants, you’ll notice that many of them can be categorized into one of the four above groups. Read more about Scott’s investigation here.

Now for a quick, but incomplete, look at the destinations to which Bill Gates is funneling his money.

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided The Washington Post with this spreadsheet of its grants since January 2008 related to elementary and secondary education.” Here are some examples relating to the expansion of charter schools:

• $75,300 to the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence (City Based Proposal for What Works Fund - NYC Charter Center)
• $224,030 to the President and Fellows of Harvard College (Charter School Initiative)
• $500,000 to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (General Operating Support)
• $950,000 to the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (PRI Guaranty To Unlock Facilities Financing for High Quality Charter Schools)
• $2,605,527 to the National Alliance For Public Charter Schools (NAPCS Industry Development)
• $2,979,186 to the National Association Of Charter School Authorizers (National Impact Initiative grant)
• $1,891,265 to the New Schools Fund dba NewSchools Venture Fund (CMO Research Study Project Management) Note for newbies: CMO means Charter Management Organization
• $246,070 to the New Schools Fund dba NewSchools Venture Fund (Support access to ARRA funds for strong CMOs)

That sub-total comes to $9,471,378. Without any doubt, the Gates Foundation is a primary supporter of a wide range of organizations which are working in unison to replace unionized public schools with non-unionized charter schools.This effort has been going on for some time.

Kenneth Libby tracked destinations of the foundation’s largess and reports some of his findings at the Gates Education Report. Among other things, there we learn that the Gates Foundation gave:

• $22 million to the NewSchools Venture Fund in 2003 for charter school expansion
• $30 million to the NewSchools Venture Fund in 2006 for charter school expansion

Diane Ravitch writes about the venture philanthropists like Bill Gates in her now-famous chapter “The Billionaire Boys’ Club” (Chapter 10 of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”). In discussing how the Gates Foundation has blanketed think tanks and education advocacy groups with its wealth, she writes (p. 210):

In the fall of 2006, Erik W. Robelen reported in Education Week that the foundation had increased its giving to advocacy groups from $276,000 in 2002 to nearly $57,000,000 in 2005. Writing about the foundation's efforts to "broaden and deepen its reach," Robelen noted that almost everyone he interviewed was getting Gates money…Beginning in 2000, Gates supplied nearly $100 million to charter management organizations…

Ravitch points out the immense and publicly unaccountable power of the Gates Foundation to which those cheering AFT teachers stood on chairs, snapped photos and applauded:

But never in the history of the United States was there a foundation as rich and powerful as the Gates Foundation. Never was there one that sought to steer state and national policy in education. And never before was there a foundation that gave grants to almost every major think tank and advocacy group in the field of education, leaving almost no one willing to criticize its vast power and unchecked influence.

The teacher protesters in Seattle and a few assorted individuals aren't the only ones alarmed by the power and influence of Bill Gates and his foundation. A number of people involved with world health are also deeply concerned about the nature of the impact which the Gates Foundation is having in their arena. It would behoove those who pooh-pooh and ridicule the Gates' critics to read the 2008 report by Global Health Watch.

Occasionally I’ve mentioned these types of issues to teachers I know, most recently on a morning last April as I joined them on a picket line in front of my daughter’s school for a one-day OEA strike. I must confess that I'm consistently stunned at teachers' lack of awareness and interest in these matters, even those who are more heavily involved with the union. The reaction of those AFT members to the Gates' protesters in Seattle only confirms that, at this point, there is no reason to think that teachers – unless they do some cramming to learn about the issues – will catch on to what's happening and rise up to become the primary voice that speaks out in defense of public education.

Our public education system, its schools, and the profession of public K-12 teaching are intentionally being eroded by Bill Gates and others, in the name of "helping" children. And, as as far as the teachers go, a huge group of them has no good reason to believe that their leader is protecting them.

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*The Master Plan to eliminate urban public school districts, as clearly outlined by the Fordham Institute's Andy Smarick in "Wave of the Future" (Winter 2008):

First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent.

Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). [Smarick's suggests the "potentially fertile districts" of Albany, Buffalo, Denver, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.]

Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas.

Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundation to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed.

Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.

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Video added on June 17, 2010

Grannan: Is firing bad teachers really the solution?

Guest post by Caroline Grannan

Education historian/commentator Diane Ravitch points out that the states with non-union teachers (who thus have little or no job security) tend to have lower academic achievement than the states with strong teachers' unions.

That should put to rest the myth that bad teachers with ironclad job security are the cause of the challenges facing public education.

As Ravitch adds, the state reported to have the consistently highest academic achievement is Massachusetts -- a strong union state. (It’s also widely called "Taxachusetts" by the right -- could there be a connection?) Ravitch emphasizes that she's not necessarily saying that unionization and job security LEAD TO higher academic achievement, but the facts show that unionization and job security clearly don't work AGAINST higher academic achievement. They are correlated.

I thought it was worth looking for some data. But not officially being a statistician, I wasn’t really sure of the best measure of state-by-state academic achievement.

So I decided to look at one measure that interests me. That's the list of "cut scores" for National Merit semifinalists. National Merit recognition is based on the PSAT scores of 11th-graders. The cut score for recognition varies from state to state. That's explained this way on Wikipedia:

"The minimum Selection Index for recognition as a Semifinalist … is set by the NMSC [National Merit Scholarship Corporation] in each state at whatever score yields about the 99th percentile."

The organization FairTest has posted a list of the cut scores for the high school graduating class of 2010, which range from 201 (Wyoming) to 221 (Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey). California's is 218.

The National Right to Work Legal Foundation posts a the list of Right-to-Work states (which don't allow workplaces to require union membership, meaning unions are toothless) and what the Foundation calls Force Unionism states. I took those lists, added each state’s Class of 2010 National Merit cut scores and averaged.

The results:

• Right-to-Work states: average cut score 208.4545
• Forced Unionism states: average cut score 213.6897

That result seems to show that unionized teachers correlate with higher academic achievement, and non-union teachers correlate with lower academic achievement.

If I’m missing confounding factors, I can’t see what they would be. It's true that not all 11th-graders take the PSAT, and the culture probably varies state by state as to whether taking the PSAT is more widely encouraged or less. But that wouldn’t seem to confound the basic finding.

By the way, the lowest-cut-score state -- Wyoming at 201 -- is a Right-to-Work state, and the three that are tied for highest -- Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey --are strong labor states.

Bullying or witch hunt?

The extreme amount of hatred and venom being hurled at public school teachers these days has got to be some sort of misdirected expression of the deluded people who still think that all things are possible for all people in this country. Or, is it the result of manipulation by those who are fully aware of what is going on and decided to toss in a red herring?

This country’s social mobility has pretty much hit the wall and we are entering uncharted territory. The empire is in decline. The citizenry knows that things aren’t right, but still haven't completely computed it. They don’t know what else to do other than to join in the fun of blaming a whole class of workers.

Mind you, I am not a teacher and I don't belong to a union. I am a longtime urban public school parent observer who is monitoring events and sensing that something evil is afoot.

Diane Ravitch recently wrote:

Did you see Newsweek last week? What a stunning and uninformed attack on teachers and teachers' unions. The cover of the magazine told the story: The Key to Saving American Education, by Evan Thomas and Pat Wingert. It was printed on a classroom blackboard. In the background, on the same blackboard, was the handwritten phrase, repeated again and again, "We must fire bad teachers."

The story itself is a parody of a right-wing rant. It seems that the nation's classrooms are overrun with "bad teachers," pedophiles, "weak" teachers, ineffective teachers, dumb teachers, and others who remain in the classroom only because they have "lifetime tenure." Evil teachers' unions protect these people who are harming our nation's children. Researchers now know, the writers say, that if we could fire all these malingerers, the notorious achievement gap between the races would soon close and America would once again lead the world in education.

I submit to you that teachers have been targeted because their work symbolizes our nation’s uncertain future. It is easy to attack the nurturers and caregivers of our children because they are fairly ineffective with defending themselves and with retaliating against the attacks. Stressed public school teachers are too busy working on the daily tasks of trying to make 25-35 kids focus on class work and behave right, and at the end of the school day, their energy is drained. Add to that the fact that, these days, the teachers are increasingly demoralized. I believe this demoralization is one of the primary goals because it produces emotional breakdown and powerlessness.

It would be much harder for people to go after the higher status entities that function with an aggressive, masculine nature, like the business, legal, or warrior classes. What else explains why the nation’s response to what Goldman Sachs did (and is still doing) to us has been so muted?

So why go after the teachers? Because they’re easy targets and bullying is an adrenaline rush. It's also easier to bully and blame than to deal with the deeper, societal issues that eat away at this country.

The nasty scapegoating mentality is best revealed by the “no excuses” rhetoric. But the fact is that we will never be a society where everyone gets a college degree, where people at higher positions on the social ladder willingly sacrifice their spot to someone else, and where the poor and the less fortunate don’t exist.

As for the scene in urban areas, Michelle Alexander (author of “The New Jim Crow”) is telling the difficult-to-hear-truth: America now has a permanent under-caste. She writes:

Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

*There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

*As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

* A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

*If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.

Think any of this might impact the academic achievement of the children born into this caste? Of course, you will never hear anything significant about this theme acknowledged or uttered by the people now setting education policy and pushing for "reform." That such a stark admission is missing is either by intentional neglect, or because their heads are buried in the sand.

Either way, this country's approach is very dangerous stuff. It's a bit difficult to bring this up out loud, but is anyone else getting that slight sense that fascism and/or thoughts of genocide are lurking in the wings?

Of related interest is the commentary by James Boyd White (link found in this post). See also, A Real Crisis.

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Added 3/18/2010

Watch this interview with Michelle Alexander here (part 1) and here (part 2).

Bob Herbert (3/12/2010) wrote about Bloomberg's NYC "stop and frisk" policy:

...Blacks and Hispanics, and especially those who are young and those who are poor, are disproportionately singled-out for this peculiar form of police harassment. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Commissioner Kelly and other top leaders in this town would never tolerate this kind of systematic abuse of middle-class or wealthy, white New Yorkers.

The overwhelming majority of the stops yield no law-enforcement benefit whatsoever. An analysis of the stops in the first three quarters of 2009 showed that contraband, which usually means drugs, was found on just 1.6 percent of the blacks who were stopped, 1.5 percent of the Hispanics, and 2.2 percent of the whites (who are stopped far less often than the other groups).

Education For Change?

Education for Change is an Oakland charter management organization which was started under Randy Ward, OUSD’s first Broad-trained state administrator. EFC was given two traditional public school sites to takeover: Cox Elementary in East Oakland and Hawthorn Elementary in the Fruitvale district. EFC has one school at the old Cox site (Cox Academy) and two schools at the old Hawthorn site, World Academy (K-3), and Achieve Academy (4-5).

This is the total enrollment for the three schools:

• 0405 = 879
• 0506 = 1282
• 0607 = 1317
• 0708 = 1234
• 0809 = 1222

Charter management organizations are structured much like school districts. Controlling the schools are top managers and a non-elected board of directors, with sometimes an advisory board. EFC, with only three elementary schools so far, is like a “mini-district.” The CEO holds a position similar to OUSD’s superintendent.

Salaries and benefits (from EFC's available 990s, EIN 20-2204424, from NCCS). The other expenses our tax dollars are paying for (legal fees, computer support, architects, etc.) are listed in the 990s.

CEO

• 2005 – $174,586
• 2006 – $189,437
• 2007 – $194, 850

VP/Chief Operating Officer

• 2005 – $148,398
• 2006 – $147,317
• 2007 – na

Chief Academic Officer

• 2005 – $120,000
• 2006 – $137,478
• 2007 – $140,725

Controller

• 2005 – na
• 2006 – $109,124
• 2007 – $128,981

Site Director

• 2005 – $110,000
• 2006 – $124,487
• 2007 – $127,735

Top principal (one of three)

• 2005 – $107,198
• 2006 – $110,956
• 2007 – $113,663

In lieu of an elected school board, like OUSD's current Directors Yee, Dobbins, London, Kakishiba, Gallo, Spearman, & Hodge), Education for Change has a Board of Directors. Here are the four members:

1. Desten Broach, President of the Board, a group product manager at Sun Microsystems. He is responsible for the complete life cycle and business success of several Sun software products. Prior to joining Sun, he held similar positions at America Online, Netscape Communications, and Intuit, Inc.

2. Joanne Weiss, Vice President of the Board, Partner and Chief Operating Officer at NewSchools Venture Fund, where she oversees the organization's operations, as well as investment strategy and management assistance for many of NewSchools' ventures nationally and on the West Coast. As part of this work, she serves on the boards. Prior to joining NewSchools Venture Fund, Joanne was CEO of Claria Corporation, an e-services recruiting firm that helped emerging-growth companies build their teams quickly and well.

Of course, last May Arne Duncan appointed Joanne Weiss as Director of Race To The Top so she may be on a hiatus from her position at EFC.

3. Jonathan Garfinkel, member, Vice President at Texas Pacific Group, a private investment fund with $15 billion under management. Prior to joining Texas Pacific Group, he worked as a financial analyst at Newbridge Latin America and at Lehman Brothers. Mr. Garfinkel has also worked at NewSchools Venture Fund.

4. Harold Jones, member, the Deputy Director of External Affairs for the Port of Oakland. Prior to his appointment, he served as Manager of Government Affairs for the Port.

Below is EFC’s current management team. Keep in mind that this is the district level administration which oversees only three schools (= 1222 students). What a piece of cake!

1. Kevin Wooldridge, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, was most recently an Executive Director in the Oakland Unified School District supervising 13 elementary schools. He has been a bilingual educator for 26 years, working in three Bay Area school districts at school sites, including 12 years as a site administrator and several years as a senior central office administrator

2. Jessica Evans, Chief Academic Officer, was formerly the Director of Elementary Education for the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD).

3. Fabiola Harvey, Director of Finance & Operations, came to EFC after serving as the Area Financial Manager for the Las Vegas Cluster of Edison Schools. She led start-up and business operations for 7 schools with over 6000 students and 500 employees in Clark County School District. This was the first time that the district awarded a cluster of schools to be managed by one Charter Management Organization.

NOTE: EFC's former COO is James Willcox. Willcox is now the Chief Executive Officer of Aspire Public Schools (headquarters are in Oakland with schools in the Bay Area, Central Valley, and LA region). Prior to his appointment as CEO, Mr. Willcox was Aspire’s Chief Operating Officer. Willcox follows Founder Don Shalvey as Aspire’s second Chief Executive Officer. When Shalvey went to work for the Gates Foundation last spring, the Foundation gave Aspire $2.9 million.

"Mr. Willcox has also served as a Principal at NewSchools Venture Fund, where his work focused on the evaluation of investment opportunities, the on-going support of management teams within the investment portfolio, and the design and implementation of NewSchools’ charter school facility investment strategy. Prior to NewSchools Mr. Willcox was a nonprofit consultant with the Bridgespan Group, and served as a U.S. Army officer for over seven years."

As you can see, all of the players are in a very cozy and connected group.

FYI, this is a typical profile of the CMO/EMO model which is busy establishing charter schools that are steadily squeezing out the traditional American public schools (those overseen by public school districts and elected school boards), but only in the school districts in urban areas that are largely inhabited by low-income, brown-skinned kids. Also, none of the teachers, classified staff, or service workers of the replacing charter schools are members of unions.

The whole point of lifting the charter school cap is to make it inevitable for charter schools to claim a bigger and bigger share of the schools in any given area.