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| Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons |
Michelle
Rhee’s organization, StudentsFirst, has contributed $250,000 to support the
campaigns of incumbent Los Angeles school board president Monica Garcia, as
well as those of Kate Anderson and Antonio Sanchez. The donation comes on the
heels of a $1
million donation to the same candidates by New York Mayor Bloomberg, and
several $100,000
donations by L.A. billionaires Eli Broad and A. Jerrold Perenchio.
According to
the Los
Angeles Times, Rhee believes her involvement in Los Angeles could advance her
school reform agenda statewide. This agenda includes the conversion of public
schools into charter schools, increasing reliance on high stakes tests, and
tying teachers’ evaluations to student test scores.
Rhee is not
unique in this belief. All the big outside money is intended to influence the
free market school reform agenda statewide and even nationwide. One of their
goals is to weaken teachers unions, both as a voting bloc and as an impediment
to their money-making scams. Garcia and Anderson, for example, are outright
union busters and the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) has indicated it
would spend millions of dollars to defeat them. (Garcia said that if she were
president of UTLA she would go on a rampage and fire
all “ineffective” teachers and eliminate seniority). Sanchez has been more
subtle. Consequently, he was won the support of UTLA, despite having made
comments that suggest he intends to bully the union into submitting to the will
of the free market reformers. For example, he said he wants
to “break” the divide between unions and school choice and accountability
advocates, which is just a politically strategic way of saying he wants the
union to accept harmful concessions.
All three of
the candidates supported by Rhee, Bloomberg and the Coalition for School Reform
are backers of privatization and charter school conversions. LAUSD
already has one of the largest numbers of charter schools of any district in
the nation, as well as its own sordid history of charter school scandals
(see here
and here).
Considering
LAUSD’s history of budget shortfalls, low student achievement and administrator
scandals, it would seem politically irresponsible to give away even more
oversight and revenue to private education management organizations which can
run charter schools with only minimal district oversight and which have a track
record that is no better (and often worse than traditional public schools. Then
again, it should be obvious by now that promoters of charter schools, vouchers
and parental “choice” have no interest in improving educational outcomes.
Rather, their motivations are purely financial: increase profit-making
opportunities for themselves and for the funders of their political careers.
