Astroturf Organizing 101: Walton Family Gives $6.3 Million to Parent Revolution

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Parent Revolution (the Los Angeles organization behind many of that city’s Parent Trigger charter conversion attempts) has a radical, populist-sounding name. Its stated goal is to empower poor parents to transform their low-performing neighborhood schools into successful ones. Everyone from politicians and right wing demagogues to teachers and their unions pay lip service to empowering parents (or at least getting them more “involved” in their children’s education).

In reality, though, Parent Revolution is a front group for private charter school operators and their wealthy allies in the Education Reform movement who support weakening and ultimately abolishing the teachers’ unions, tenure and seniority; increasing testing, online learning and the deskilling of the teaching profession; lowering overall costs to increase charter school profits and lower state spending on education.

Parent Revolution’s executive director, Ben Austin, is a millionaire former state school board member and Los Angeles Deputy Member (under Mayor Riordin), who earns over $200,000 per year from the organization. He also earned over $94,000 in 2008 as a consultant for the private charter school organization, Green Dot, according to Schools Matter. It should come as no surprise that Parent Revolution, which advocates for the conversion of traditional public schools into charter schools by way of California’s Parent Trigger law, was created by Green Dot’s founder, Steve Barr, quite likely in hopes of winning some of the contracts to run the soon to be converted schools.

A recent investigation by Frying Pan News has found that the Walton Family Foundation has pumped $6.3 million into Parent Revolution since 2009. (An interactive infographic from Frying Pan News can be seen here). The Gates Foundation has donated $1.6 million, and a host of other wealthy donors (including Eli Broad) have also kicked in more than $1 million each. In total, 18 different foundations have provided the organization with over $14.8 million since 2009. The Emerson Collective Education Fund (started by the widow of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs) has also donated $1.2 million.

Not long after California’s Parent Trigger law was approved in 2010, similar legislation started to pop up across the country, thanks to model legislation created by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Commission) and the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute, in Chicago. The movement for Parent Trigger laws received additional support from the Hollywood propaganda flick, Won’t Back Down, which was produced and funded by Walden Media, which is owned by reactionary billionaire Philip Anschutz, a longtime supporter of free market education reform.

Parent Revolution’s succeeded in converting Desert Trails Elementary school in San Bernardino County, but not without controversy (the conversion was originally rejected by the school board because of irregularities in the petition process, as well as doctored signatures). However, even many of the parents who voted for the conversion ultimately felt duped. According to Alternet, Desert Trails parent Lori Yuan said Parent Revolution organizers tricked parents into thinking they were merely trying to improve conditions at the school, rather than turning it over to a private charter operator: “Our community was misled. . . Parents didn’t know they were signing for a charter takeover.”

Story Time’s Over Kindergartners—Time To Write Expository Essays!

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The testing mania that has dominated education reform for the past decade has only indirectly affected kindergartners (the federal and state tests do not start until second grade). However, because the stakes for schools are so high (low test scores can mean reconstitution, mass firings of teachers, forced take over by a charter school), curriculum development and implementation at all grade levels are now influenced by the tests. At some schools, this means a reduction or elimination of arts, music, physical education and even science to make room for math and English support or for test preparation. It may also include practice bubble-in tests at the kindergarten and first grade levels.

At virtually all levels of K-12 education it has reduced the potential for learning activities that are spontaneous, fun, creative and rooted in students’ interests and experiences. While this may prepare children for a future life at a desk in a cubicle (perhaps one reason why the Gates Foundation has spent millions of dollars to promote the Common Core Standards (CCS), it also contributes to their alienation from and disdain for school and learning, as well as the increased stress and anxiety many teachers are noticing in their students.

Presently, despite the testing mania, kindergarten still retains some of the games, song, dance and other playful, lighthearted activities we remember from our own kindergarten experiences. This may soon change with the adoption of Common Core (CCS), which will supposedly put all children on the same learning track as others at their grade level, including the lower elementary grades.

On the surface this might seem like a common sense way to raise the bar and improve learning outcomes (based on the bogus assumption that teachers across the country do whatever they damned well please in the classroom and that there is little or no standardization across grade level). However, as Susan Ohanian shows in her recent critique of the video “From the Page to the Classroom: Implementing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in English Language Arts and Literacy,” the CCS are incredibly rigid and stultifying and could have a detrimental effect on teaching and children’s attitudes toward school and learning. For example, even at the K-5 grades, the CCS require a 50-50 mix of fiction and nonfiction reading, with writing grounded in the texts, with no narrative writing or personal opinions permitted.

Here are just a few of Ohanian’s comments (you can read her full article at the Daily Censored):

The New York Post ran a piece  Playtime’s Over, Kindergartners: Standards stressing kids out, explaining that the city Department of Education wants 4- and 5-year-olds to forget the building blocks and crayons and get busy writing “informative/explanatory reports.”  This includes writing a topic sentence.

When my favorite group of second graders were studying a caterpillar’s transformation, some of the kids wrote me exuberant notes along with drawings about what they were learning. I didn’t check these notes for text complexity or topic sentences. Yes, some kindergartners are ready to read. But  many children are harmed when, in the name of rigor and complexity, what was once second grade is now kindergarten.  We don’t expect all babies to walk or talk at the same age. Why do we think five- and six-year-olds should be standardized in their learning—and shoved as a pack into more rigor? (Look up the definition and ask yourself if that’s what you want for a child you love.)

Professor of Curriculum and Teaching at Hunter College and author of numerous books on children’s literacy development, Sandra Wilde worries about the pressures on kindergartners. She suggests, “Read the book, watch the butterflies develop, act it out, but skip the close reading of long sentences. Fingerpaint butterfly pictures instead. What’s the hurry?”

Gates Buying Candidates for Teachers Unions

United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) just had one of its most contested elections ever for its decision-making body, the House of Representatives. 396 candidates fought for 209 positions, with 100 seats taken by rookie representatives, according to the LA Times. Many of these new delegates were sponsored by outside groups, like Educators 4 Excellence and Teach Plus. Another sponsoring organization, Teachers for a New Unionism, is headed by Mike Stryer, former activist with NewTLA, a conservative opposition movement that formed within UTLA a few years ago.

Each of these groups receives funding from free market education reform nonprofits, including the Gates Foundation and each wants to make the union focus more on the “interests of students” (weakening teachers’ job protections and working conditions). They have also been strong backers of Value Added evaluations and abolishing or weakening seniority.

On the one hand, serious union activists and teachers should be concerned that corporate money is being used to undermine their organizing efforts. On the other hand, this really isn’t anything new. Employers routinely interfere in organizing efforts, harass organizers, punish or fire employees who engage in union activities, and bombard them with misinformation about unions. The bosses just hadn’t been so effective at fielding their own candidates in union elections.

At the same time, UTLA veterans and other union bureaucrats and dinosaurs should consider why so many young teachers are either disillusioned with their unions or allying themselves with corporate Ed Deformers. A union that effectively fights for the interests of all their members should have no problem winning younger teachers over to their side or convincing them of the naiveté and self-destructiveness of these corporate alliances. It is true that UTLA must counter an effective anti-union propaganda machine. However, UTLA, like most other teachers unions, has contributed to its own negative image by making so many compromises with the enemy while doing little to support young teachers, who are often the first to go during layoffs.

Charter School Enrollment Rising Rapidly

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Between the 2010-11 and 2011-12 school years, the number of students enrolled in charter schools rose by nearly 13%, to just over two million students nationwide, according to a new report from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. 110 school districts across the nation have at least 10% of their students enrolled in charter schools, 16 more than last year.

New Orleans leads the nation with 70% of its students enrolled in charter schools, the New York Times reported last week. Detroit, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, each have more than 30% of their public school students attending charter schools. New York City saw a 24% jump in charter school enrollment over the past year. California currently has the highest total number of charter schools, according to the WSWS.

The rise of charter schools has come primarily as a result of a highly effective and well-funded PR campaign financed by billionaires like Bill Gates, the Waltons, Eli Broad and others, that has painted the entire traditional public school system as a complete failure and charter schools as their best salvation. They have spent millions of dollars propping up fledgling charters that could not possibly have survived or thrived without private donations. They have bought politicians and initiatives in many states, resulting in laws that facilitate the creation of new charter schools and that defund traditional schools (like NCLB and Parent Trigger laws, which have been used to foist charter schools upon communities). Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers have also jumped into the charter school circus, recognizing the large profits to be made in public education (see here and here).

Proponents have even created their own reality with bogus studies that “prove” that charter schools are far more effective than they actually are. In reality, charter schools are no better than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. Also, many of the studies that have found superior outcomes at charter schools were based on dubious or misinterpreted data.

Furthermore, charter schools are far more segregated than traditional public schools. 70% of black charter school students attend schools with 90-100% minority students, 75% of whom are also black, yet black students make up only one-third of all charter school students. Half of Latino charter students also attend racially isolated minority schools. Charter schools are also segregated by class. While, poor students make up 40% of public school students, they make up only 17% of private religious and 10% of private secular school students. (For more on charter school segregation (see here, here and here.) Additionally, many push out or block special education students and English Language Learners from enrolling. In contrast, traditional public schools must accept all students, regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnicity or physical or mental ability.

Rich Getting Richer, Still—Forbes 400’s Wealth Rose 13% in 2012

The majority of Americans may still be suffering from declining wages, unemployment, speedups, downsizing, foreclosures and a drop in personal wealth, but the richest Americans had another banner year in 2012, with their net worth rising 13%. The richest 400 had an average net worth of $4.2 billion, according to Reuters. Together they had a cumulative net worth of $1.7 trillion. In stark contrast, the median net worth of the average American household dropped 40% between 2007 and 2010, according to the WSWS, while the net worth of those on the Forbes 400 list has grown 15-fold since 1982.

However, it was not all peaches and cream for the nation’s oligarchy. Poor Mark Zuckerberg saw his net worth cut in half, from $17 billion in 2011 to $9.4 billion in 2012, as a result of his company’s lackluster IPO. Other social media moguls also saw their net worth decline from really obscene to obscene levels. Groupon chair Eric Lefkofsky and Zynga’s chair Mark Pinkus fell off the Forbe’s 400 list entirely (though they won’t be joining the Occupy movement any time soon).

Together, the net worth of the 400 wealthiest Americans is equal to one-eighth of the entire U.S. economy—though their 13% increase in wealth last year far outpaced the growth of the U.S. economy, which rose an anemic 1.7%.

Bill Gates topped the list for the 19th year in a row. His net worth is now $66 billion, up $7 billion from last year. His total net wealth, the WSWS reports, is just a little less than half the entire U.S. budget for the Department of Education and 100 times more than the estimated $700 million deficit facing the Chicago Public Schools, where his foundation has been pushing for the expansion of charter schools.

Warren Buffett, chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, came in second at $46 billion, followed by Larry Ellison, head of Oracle Corp, with $41 billion. Ellison, California’s wealthiest resident, now has a total net wealth that is nearly equal to the amount budgeted by the state of California for health and human services for 2012-2013, according to WSWS, and more than its entire education budget.

The Koch brothers were tied for fourth with $31 billion each. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg rose to the number 10 slot, with a personal wealth of $25 billion, a fortune equal to the entire annual budget of New York City’s public schools. There were also 45 women who made the list, up from 42 last year. California topped the list again, with 87 billionaires, up from 80 last year, while New York had the most billionaires of any city with 53. (The entire list can be seen here).

While Mitt Romney and other Republicans have tried in vain to paint Obama as a socialist who wants to redistribute the wealth of the country, it is actually the richest of the rich who have been succeeding at it by paying their employees less and by demanding greater tax breaks and government subsidies that help them earn greater profits or that bail them out of their failed gambles. 60% of their income comes from capital gains, which is taxed at the extremely low rate of 15% (comparable to the income tax rate on some of the lowest-wage workers). This is income that does not come from hard work (or any work, for that matter), but from being fortunate enough to possess the preexisting wealth necessary to speculate on stocks and real estate.

Survey Finds Teachers Don't Trust State Tests (And This is News?)

Earlier this week, USA Today published the results of a recent survey of 10,000 teachers in which only 16% believed that linking student performance and teacher pay was "absolutely essential" or "very important" in retaining good teachers, down from 28% in 2010. Barely half of the teachers felt like the policy would make any difference at all, down from 65% in 2010. Only 26% believed the tests were an “accurate reflection of student achievement.”

The survey was conducted by the educational publisher Scholastic, and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

What’s Worse: Being Exploited by Capitalism or Not Being Exploited by Capitalism?

Sadly, the number of teachers who thought that higher pay was necessary to retain good teachers also declined from 86% in 2010 to 75% in the recent survey. This does not necessarily mean that they have given up on decent wages. Rather, it probably reflects their own insecurity about the economy and the fact that most have taken pay cuts over the past three years, either actual or de facto through wage freezes, but nonetheless continued to teach because the job prospects elsewhere were so dismal.

Gates Right For Once? Of Course Not!

A new study released last week by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation found that rating teachers by watching them teach is possibly the best way to help them improve, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. It also found that observing teachers infrequently (once a year or less) is insufficient, and that the observers, generally school administrators, often don't know what to look for.

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 Both findings should come as no surprise to teachers (except for the seeming about face by the Gates Foundation, which has been at the forefront of merit pay, value-added, and other attempts to undermine teachers’ job security). Not surprisingly, Gates is still calling for the use of student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, along with a host of other measures.


The Times article highlighted Memphis, which uses a new evaluation system (supported by Gates to the tune of $90 million), in which teachers are observed four to six times annually by more than one evaluator, each of whom must pass a certification program. Teachers supposedly get detailed feedback on observations within seven days. However, only 40% of their evaluation is based on observations, while 35% is based on a value-added formula, 15% on other measures of achievement, 5% on student surveys and 5% on the teacher's demonstrated content knowledge. Thus, contrary to the his Foundation’s own findings, Gates is funding a program that weights the best method for evaluating teachers—direct observations (40%)—lower than student achievement (35% + 15%).

Observing teachers or most other workers, for that matter, is often the best way to determine how well they do their job. Ensuring that the evaluator is well-trained and knows what to look for (and how to observe it) and provided ample time to make several observations also seems pretty obvious. However, the evaluators’ objectivity is seldom questioned and this, too, has considerable influence on the accuracy of the observations and the effectiveness of the evaluations and feedback. Administrators have the power to hire and fire and are therefore biased and should not be doing the observations, even if well-trained. For example, if they want to get rid of a troublesome teacher who is too outspoken or active in the union, but who is otherwise a good teacher, they can still observe and write whatever they like in their evaluations.

Training and hiring sufficient outside evaluators would be expensive and time consuming and, under current economic conditions, very unlikely to occur, which is one reason for the popularity of value-added assessments. Since districts are mandated to give the high stakes tests anyway, it costs them little to crunch the numbers and determine if a teacher’s scores are improving. The problem is that the test scores are correlated more with students’ socioeconomic backgrounds than any other factor, including the quality of their teachers. Furthermore, a student’s ability to improve on the tests is also correlated with familial wealth. Thus, teachers in low income schools are less likely to see substantial improvements in their students’ scores, even if they are exceptional at their jobs. Also, no one has yet come up with a reliable and reproducible value-added formula, with the consequence that some teachers rate well one year and poorly the next (see here, here and here).

The demand for value-added assessments of teachers is also a giveaway to the test manufacturers, the proponents of NCLB and the “Teacher-Effectiveness” Industry (see here, here and here). As long as administrators are required to use student test data to evaluate teachers, students will be required to take high stakes tests, instructional time will be sacrificed to test prep and testing, and electives and other courses will be dropped to make room for more test prep.

Scab Teachers Undermining Their Own Colleagues

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Teachers, like all other workers, must sell their labor to earn a living. Like all workers, they must make considerable compromises and sacrifices in order to ensure that they get a paycheck each month. The primary difference between teachers and other workers is that the public (and many teachers themselves) believe that teachers’ rights and working conditions should be subordinate to the needs of their students.

Image from Teamster.net

Workers who cross the picket line, thus undermining their coworkers’ solidarity and their struggle to improve working conditions, are known as scabs. The term could accurately describe any worker who deliberately undermines working conditions or solidarity. An example would be teachers who relinquish their contractual rights by volunteering to work longer hours (see here, here and here). They are scabs because they weaken the standing of their coworkers who still want their hard won protections. They are scabs because they are giving away their labor to the bosses for free or at a discounted rate compared to their peers. They are scabs because they deliberately aligning themselves with the bosses and against their own interests and those of their coworkers.

Unfortunately, in education, such behavior is relatively common. This is due, in part, to the fact that many teachers are willing to try anything, regardless of how much extra work is required if they are told it will help their students. Ed Deformers exploit this weakness by bombarding teachers and the public with a plethora of ill-conceived reforms that lack credible evidence of efficacy, (but which show strong likelihood of increasing their profits) under the guise of improving student outcomes.

One way the Ed Deformers do this is through astroturf organizations that masquerade as real grassroots organizations (see here, here and here), creating the illusion that regular people are empowering themselves to create change. The New York City-based Educators 4 Excellence (E4E) is an example of this. Ostensibly a grassroots movement made up of innovative young teachers willing to challenge the orthodoxy of the stodgy old unions, E4E has been funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to the tune of $1 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

E4E has now opened shop in Los Angeles teachers, calling for the linking of teacher evaluations to student test scores and ending seniority protections. Because the group is made up mostly of young teachers, it could be argued that their demands to end seniority have more to do with creating job security for themselves at the expense of their veteran colleagues, than serving the interests of their students.