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

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

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.”

LA Teachers Drink Kool Aid, Trade Souls For Layoff Moratorium

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Los Angeles teachers have approved an initiative calling for a new teacher-evaluation system and a moratorium on layoffs, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. The initiative was approved by 56% of the vote. However, only 11,412 teachers voted, or roughly one-third of the membership.

The initiative was sponsored by Teachers for a New Unionism (TNU), who immediately claimed that the vote indicated growing support by teachers for using student test scores to evaluate them, despite the low turnout. TNU, it should be pointed out, is not a true grassroots opposition movement within UTLA, but an Astroturf opposition supported by the Future is Now Schools project—a spinoff of Steve Barr’s Green Dot charter management organization that receives funding from the Gates Foundation and New Schools Venture Fund—and by NewTLA co-founder Mike Stryer (see Our Place in History and  LA Teachers Seek to Put Evaluations to Referendum, for more).

Additionally, the initiative made no direct mention of student test data. The actual text was:

"Shall UTLA’s contractual negotiations with LAUSD include a moratorium on all RIFs (Reduction in Force—AKA layoffs) for all UTLA bargaining unit members through June 30, 2014, as part of a revised, phased-in, teacher-driven evaluation system mutually agreed upon by UTLA and LAUSD?"

United Teachers Los Angeles president Warren Fletcher endorsed the initiative and the union declined to submit a statement in opposition. Though Fletcher has opposed using student test scores to evaluate teachers, the union leadership has supported using such data to help teachers improve instruction—an irrational, copout position intended to mollify those who call the union an impediment to progress. Standardized test scores and improvement on the tests are dependent primarily on students’ socioeconomic backgrounds and provide very little data on the quality of teaching.

While it is true that teachers can sometimes help some students improve their scores, this cannot be considered “improved instruction.” On the contrary, the biggest gains in test scores can be made by teaching to the test and giving students repeated practice with standardized test questions. This does little to improve students’ critical thinking, literacy or mathematical skills. It takes away class time from other types of learning and curriculum. It is also tedious and mind-numbing and could contribute to students’ alienation from learning and school.

Several Important Unanswered Questions

---What will a “teacher-driven evaluation system” actually look like, especially one that is mutually agreed upon by a district that has been pushing for the use of student test scores and a union that is so conciliatory?

---If LAUSD lacks the funding to retain all its teachers (a prerequisite for the moratorium), how will it resolve its deficit? Pay cuts? Furloughs? Shortened school year? Benefits cuts?