California Democratic Party “Rejects” Corporate Reform Agenda

Democrats in the California state legislature approved Resolution 13-04.47 last week—also known as “SUPPORTING CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND DISPELLING THE CORPORATE “REFORM” AGENDA.” The resolution, sponsored (and probably written) by the California Teachers Association (CTA), California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and the California Faculty Association (CFA), the three largest unions representing teachers and university professors in the state, specifically criticizes two corporate reform organizations—Democrats for Education Reform (DfER) and Students First (Michelle’s Rhee’s organization)—because they

“see public schools as potential profit centers and children as measureable commodities . . . [support dismantling] free public education . . . and replace it with company run charter schools, non-credentialed teachers and unproven untested so called ‘reforms.”

However, the resolution makes no concrete commitment to do anything to actually curtail the growing power of billionaire philanthropists, investors and hedge fund managers, let alone increase funding for public education, protect teachers’ job security and academic freedom, or even improve learning outcomes for students. It merely “reaffirms” the Democratic Party’s

“commitment to free accessible public schools for all which offer a fair, substantive opportunity to learn with educators who have the right to be represented by their union, bargain collectively and have a voice in the policies which affect their schools, classrooms and their students.”

This resolution might be encouraging if it had any teeth, or even any credibility. However, the Democratic party (and the teachers unions) have continually watched idly (and in many cases encouraged) all the things they criticize in the resolution, including the growth of private, for-profit charter schools and online, digital and distance learning schemes; the erosion of teacher’s collective bargaining rights and the deterioration of student learning opportunities. Even the criticism that the reformists are reducing children to mere commodities rings hollow when virtually every politician, regardless of party (as well as most teacher and student advocates), has been calling for more STEM graduates, and for all students to graduate career- or college-ready—which is to say all students have a price on their heads and a value to employers. Never mind that there is currently a glut of STEM graduates and thousands of jobless science PhDs, while pretty much the only people getting jobs at all are those willing to accept low wage work in the service sector. Children are a commodity, and the less employers have to pay to educate them now, the more they save on their taxes and the less they’ll have to pay to employ them later.

The implication that the “reformists” are solely responsible for dismantling public education is also an obfuscation of the facts. California, which ranked 46^th in per pupil spending in 2010-2011, spent $2,856 less per student than the rest of the U.S. and would have had to increase education spending by $17.3 billion to reach parity with the rest of the country (less than the $20 billion the state had slashed from its education budget between 2008 and 2011). California also fell to 50^th in ratio of students per teacher and per librarian and 49^th in ratio of students per counselor.

During the past decade the gap in per pupil spending between California and the rest of the nation grew each year, yet most of this was the result of cuts to state funding (often bipartisan), not because of policies of the reformists.  This has been exacerbated by California’s increasing reliance on state taxes, rather than local property taxes—a consequence of Proposition 13, which passed in 1978, decades before Students First or DfER were even gleams in the reformists’ eyes. Prop 13 allowed businesses and wealthy homeowners to keep their property tax rates at 1978 levels, thus reducing revenues available for schools and shifting more of the burden onto the state. Prior to Prop 13, California’s schools received 53.7% of their funding from local property taxes and only 35.3% from the state. By 2010-1, they received only 29.8% from local taxes and 56.8% from the state. (Data from the California Budget Project)

If the Democrats truly cared about providing quality “free accessible public schools for all,” they could dramatically increase revenues by raising taxes on the wealthy and their businesses, increasing royalties on oil extraction (California is currently the 3^rd largest onshore producer of oil in the U.S., yet it is the only oil producer with no severance tax and has a far lower overall tax rate for its oil producers than either Texas or Alaska), taxing marijuana sales and abolishing the death penalty and Three Strikes law. Democrats currently hold a super majority in both houses of the state legislature, giving them the power to raise taxes and override the governor’s veto, the first time they have had this power in 120 years. Instead, they gave us Prop 30, which imposes an infinitesimal tax increase on the wealthy and increases the regressive sales tax (which disproportionately affects lower income people), but barely holds education funding steady, thus maintaining California’s status at the bottom in per pupil spending (and restoring none of the $20 billion the schools lost over the past few years).

They could also reverse Prop 13 and dramatically raise the portion of education funding coming from local property taxes, thus reducing schools’ current dependence on the whims of state legislators and greed of the state’s business owners. Instead, they have made another nonbinding resolution and even this only proposes closing one of the initiative’s loopholes. If the lawmakers were to convert their Prop 13 resolution into law (something they so far have not attempted), property taxes on businesses would be reassessed “regularly” instead of being locked into their 1978 values. While this would certainly increase revenues, it still allows millionaires to maintain artificially low tax rates on their multiple multi-million dollar homes.

The notion that Democrats are opposed to privatization and the influence of millionaires is also patently false. Governor Jerry Brown, arguably the head Democrat in the state, created two of his own charter schools in Oakland when he was mayor there and used his powers as mayor to divert city staff members to charter school duty. Both charters were heavily funded by wealthy donors. Furthermore, Prop 30, which was pushed by Brown, initially permitted the funneling of tax dollars away from the free public K-12 system and into the pockets of private charter schools. He also proposed killing California’s transitional kindergarten program, which helps low income children catch up to their affluent peers by the time the reach kindergarten.

The resolution is nothing more than window dressing, an attempt by the unions to make their buddies in the Democratic Party appear to be pro-union, pro-teacher, and pro-education. The unions need this window dressing because they have done virtually nothing to resist the reform agenda. For example, when New York, Illinois and Los Angeles imposed Value Added Measures as part of their teacher evaluation plans, the unions whined and complained, but eventually rolled over and accepted it without a real fight. They argued that they couldn’t strike because it had been imposed by state law, in Illinois and New York, or by court order, in Los Angeles. 

This is ridiculous and pathetic on several levels. First, when the state or courts dictate how teachers are evaluated—something that has historically been negotiated between the teachers’ unions and their school districts—they are shredding teachers’ collective bargaining rights. The unions have accepted this attack on collective bargaining in the name of democracy (or, more precisely, in order to not offend their patrons in the Democratic Party). Second, workers have a long history of striking despite injunctions, vigilantes, police violence and even armed suppression by the military or national guards, risking beatings, imprisonment, deportation and death. Indeed, most strikes were illegal during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The 1936-7 Flint Sit-Down Strike was declared illegal. Sympathy strikes and General Strikes were made illegal in 1947 by the Taft-Hartley Act. The 1981 PATCO strike was declared illegal by President Reagan, resulting in the mass firing of air traffic controllers. Many of the strikes and protests in support of the 8-hour work day were declared illegal. Many of the Civil Rights, women’s rights, gay rights and anti-war marches were declared illegal.

Ultimately, if teachers and other workers want to retain their right to collective bargaining, let alone improve their working and living conditions, they need to be willing to engage in strikes and other forms of collective action, even if it sometimes involves civil disobedience. The same is true for changing the tax structure, increasing education funding, and keeping public education under the control of local communities rather than corporate boardrooms.

Let Them Eat Ballots: Unions’ Obsession With Political Action

California’s Proposition 32, on the November ballot, has been dubbed the Stop Special Interests initiative. In reality, it is targeted at the state’s unions, with the goal of preventing them from using payroll deductions to fund their political campaigns and lobbying. The bill would have virtually no effect on private businesses or corporate lobbying, as private businesses do not raise political funds through payroll deductions.

The campaign in support of 32, not surprisingly, has been heavily funded by corporate interests that hope to stifle unions’ political involvement, which is already miniscule compared with theirs. Yet even their small involvement in politics is unacceptable to the wealthy, who would like to see the unions, as well as any workplace and environmental protections, disappear completely.

One of the major funders of Prop 32 is the American Future Fund, a Super PAC affiliated with the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove, which recently contributed $4 million from secret donors to the campaign. Prop 32 is also backed by Democrats for Education Reform (DfER), an anti-union and anti-teacher organization that is funded by hedge fund managers and Wall Street brokers.

While the backers of 32 have been very deceptive in their promotion of this legislation, inaccurately suggesting that the bill would stop all special interests from influencing politics, the unions themselves have engaged in a deceptive, top down and undemocratic campaign to defend themselves. For example, representatives of the California Teachers Association (CTA) have told members the bill would end collective bargaining rights for them. However, Prop 32 says nothing about unions’ right to collectively bargain and if it passes it would have no direct effect on collective bargaining. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that the bill’s backers would like to end collective bargaining, and that passage of the bill would facilitate this goal by stifling unions’ ability to lobby in defense of collective bargaining.

It is also probably safe to assume that most union members would oppose 32 if educated about it and that they would support their unions’ efforts to resist it. However, the CTA’s decision to prioritize the anti-32 campaign (and the pro-30 tax increase campaign) over virtually all other activities was essentially made from the top-down, with very little input from the rank and file. This approach has the potential to alienate and anger members, rather than encourage their support and participation.

Furthermore, the way the CTA engaged the locals to participate in their campaigns has been autocratic and coercive. In my local, for example, our CTA representative told us we “had to” participate in the CTA activities around these two initiatives and we “did not” have a choice in the matter. To make matters worse, we were expected to carry out some of these activities during the same week we had to vote on a new contract, adding an unnecessary degree of confusion, anxiety and frustration to our members, who were already overburdened with their normal teaching responsibilities, and to our organizers and representatives responsible for carrying out these two unrelated union duties.

Of course it will be devastating to students and teachers if 30 loses and 32 wins. K12 and higher education will lose $6 billion in funding, while the corporate education reform movement will gain considerably more political power to further gut public education. Yet one the reasons why corporate interests have gained so much political power in recent years is that unions have relinquished their most powerful weapon—direct action—in favor of going toe to toe with the wealthy in the political arena. Even without Citizens United, corporations were able to outspend unions by large margins. And even without outspending them, policy will almost always come down in favor of the wealthy and their businesses because the politicians are members of the same class and their economic interests lie more with their corporate friends and allies than with the rest of us.

The unions argue that their funding of political campaigns and lobbying have led to important gains for teachers and this is partly true. However, this does not mean that political action is the only or even most effective tactic. And despite these gains, real wages and benefits have been declining steadily for decades. Class sizes have been soaring. Programs continue to be cut. Working hours have increased. And perhaps most devastating to teachers’ living conditions, the unions have completely failed to do anything substantive about rising health care costs, with the result that workers must pay more and more out of pocket for health coverage each year, a cost that further erodes take home pay.

Workers’ real power lies in their ability to withhold their labor, and this is only effective when workers are well-educated and organized. Ironically, a well-organized and educated membership can also easily be mobilized to engage in canvassing, phone banking, letter writing, fundraising and other political activities, potentially with greater effectiveness than can be achieved through union-hired lobbyists and campaign managers. However, the ultimate goal should always be job actions, including General Strikes, as these have the greatest potential to force bosses and politicians to buckle to workers’ demands. This sort of organizing  needs to be initiated from the bottom up and, to be effective, must empower workers, not make them feel like minions of their unions.

California’s Education Hall of Shame

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

California is quickly becoming the new front line in corporate Ed Deform. Many of the usual suspects have quietly begun to focus their efforts on State-wide and local efforts in California, while several lesser known accomplices have joined their ranks. Here is just a partial list:

Eli Broad needs no introduction for anyone following education issues and he is certainly not a new player in Ed Deform. He spends millions to train school-board members and principals how to govern school districts like large corporations. His Superintendents Academy trains CEOs to lead urban school districts, while his Residency in Urban Education program places recent business graduates into educational management positions. He promotes performance pay schemes and heavily funds charter schools, like Aspire and Green Dot, the latter receiving $10.5 million from Broad to run several charter schools in L.A. He was also a major funder of Waiting for Superman. He recently pledged $25 million to make Teach For America a permanent low quality teacher-training program and $500,000 to prop up ICEF Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter school companies, which was facing insolvency.

Michelle Rhee also needs no introduction after her reign of terror as head of D.C. schools. However, she has recently relocated her StudentsFirst organization to Sacramento after marrying Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento. Rhee plans to raise $1 billion and has already won a pledge from billionaire Eli Broad. Much of this money will be used to support school board members sympathetic to her agenda of charter schools, value-added teacher evaluations and the elimination of tenure, and to counter the influence of teachers unions.

Gloria Romero, anti-union and pro-privatization former state senator, is now head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) in California, an organization funded by hedge fund managers from NYC whose goal is to privatize and profit from public schools. Romero made the big-time of Ed Deform when she was invited to Obama’s Super Bowl Party this week, a major coup for the woman who lost a bid to become the California Superintendent, despite backing by charter school companies and nearly $800,000 in donations by EdVoice.  While Romero feigned surprise at the invitation to the president’s party, she did say she was “there to cheer on the reform team in education.” As a state senator, Romero had pushed hard to expand charter schools and to win Race To the Top funds from the Obama administration and was a strong supporter of the Parent Trigger law. Her presence at the party should be seen as a signal that she plans to work closely with Obama and Duncan to push through their Ed Deform agenda.

Philip Anschutz, right wing evangelical billionaire and media mogul, has donated at least $100,000 to the Coalition for School Reform in Los Angeles, a slush fund to elect privatization friendly school board members. Anschutz helped fund Waiting for Superman. (See Kenneth Libby’s Philip Anschutz and Walden Media: What Kind of Agenda?) The Anshutz Foundation donates to the Cato, Hoover, American Enterprise and Freedom Works Institutes as well as other right wing think tanks and foundations. They also fund Evangelical organizations, as well as school privatization favorites like KIPP. Anschutz was a big funder of proposition 8 in California, the anti-gay marriage law. He also funds the Discovery Institute, the main backer of Intelligent Design and young Earth lunacy.

Donald Fisher, billionaire founder and president of Gap (Old Navy and Banana Republic), was a big investor in Edison Schools (a for-profit Educational Management Organization (EMO). He donated heavily into the campaigns of pro-Edison school board members in San Francisco. He was also a major contributor to KIPP and was the chairman of the board of trustees for their foundation. He also contributed to Teach For America, GreatSchools.net, and EdVoice. Fisher died in 2009, however, his family and foundation continue to support his Ed Deform agenda.

Reed Hastings is the founder and CEO of Netflix. He also owns DreamBox Learning, an online education startup that makes math games for K-3 graders. He advocates for charter schools and has served as president of the California State Board of Education. He has been a KIPP board member and fought to lift the state cap on charter schools, citing a goal of getting 20% of California children enrolled in charter schools. He is also a founding member of NewSchools.org, Aspire Public Schools and EdVoice.net.

Kevin Johnson is a former basketball star, current mayor of Sacramento, hubby of Michelle Rhee and accused serial pedophile. (They should be an interesting family, considering Rhee’s history as a child abuser). Johnson is also president and CEO of the Kevin Johnson Corporation, which founded the St. HOPE Public Schools charter system. In 1995, he apologized to a 16-year old girl who has accused him of fondling her (though he never admitted guilt) and even proposed a settlement with the girl’s family. Similar accusations were made against Johnson by a student at one of his charter schools in 2008. The teacher to whom the student brought the complaint eventually resigned, claiming that she and the student had been intimidated and asked to change their story. The girl eventually recanted. St. HOPE also agreed to pay $423,836 in a settlement for misuse of AmeriCorp funds.

Democrats For Education Reform (DFER)

DFER plans to open two offices in California, one in Los Angeles, and one in the Bay Area. They are raising $1 million to support these two offices. DFER’s initial focus will be on large urban districts like LAUSD, SFUSD, Oakland and San Diego, and pushing pro-privatization candidates onto their school boards. A major goal of DFER is to provide a financial opposition to the teachers unions in local and state-wide elections. They will also fight for more parental choice, mayoral control, performance pay, and weakening of tenure and seniority rights. With these goals, Romero is certainly a good match. DFER has spent $17 million in the last three years in California, backing candidates like U.S. Rep. George Miller, of Martinez, a proponent of NCLB, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. According to John Fensterwald, DFER has many venture capitalists and fund managers on their board of directors and are likely to shake down Eli Broad and Reed Hastings, as well as EdVoice, for additional funding.

Ed Voice

Ed Voice is an Ed Deform advocacy group funded by wealthy California philanthropists and is closely allied with Eli Broad. They spent $100,000 to get Marty Block elected in San Diego. They raised nearly $1 million in 2007, including $94,400 each from Eli Broad, Gap chairman Don Fisher, Carrie Walton Penner (Wal-Mart heiress) and R.B. Buzz Woolley Jr., La Jolla investor and president of the Voice of San Diego.