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[News] [Rival] Diane Ravitch Warns About Gates and "the Thrall of the Billionaire Boys Club" Hijacking the Public Sector

  • Subject: [News] [Rival] Diane Ravitch Warns About Gates and "the Thrall of the Billionaire Boys Club" Hijacking the Public Sector
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 23:59:55 +0100
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In the Thrall of the Billionaire Boys Club

,----[ Quote ]
| Iâm no expert on public education either, 
| but I know an expert when I see one. Diane 
| Ravitch has been the nationâs preeminent 
| historian of education since her book The 
| Troubled Crusade: American Education 
| 1945-1980 appeared in 1983. She served as 
| assistant secretary of education under 
| George H. W. Bush. For forty years she has 
| pondered each new proposal for 
| restructuring schools as it has come 
| along, often with considerable sympathy: 
| vouchers, charter schools, curriculum 
| reform, standardized testing, punitive 
| teacher accountability.
| 
| In her new book, The Death and Life of the 
| Great American School System: How Testing 
| and Choice are Undermining Education, 
| Ravitch describes the evidence that has 
| changed her views of strategies that once 
| seemed promising to her. (Her titleâs echo 
| of Jane Jacobsâ great 1961 book on urban 
| life is intentional: she began her career 
| in Manhattan in 1968, at a time when 
| Jacobs was leading her epic battle against 
| highway-planner Robert Moses.) The 
| nostrums that school districts, Congress, 
| and federal officials are pursuing, that 
| mega-rich foundations are supporting, that 
| editorial boards are applauding, are 
| mistaken, she says, fundamentally flawed 
| because they are built on a market 
| metaphor. Schools donât work like 
| businesses, she says Public education 
| should be preserved âbecause it is so 
| intimately connected to our concepts of 
| citizenship and democracy and to the 
| promise of American life.â  To that end 
| she offers a series of prescriptions:
| 
| [...]
| 
| Ravitch is especially good on the 
| influence of what she calls the 
| âBillionaire Boyâs Clubâ â the Bill and 
| Melinda Gates Foundation (the Microsoft 
| fortune), the Walton Family Foundation 
| (Wal-Mart), and the Eli and Edythe Broad 
| Foundation (home-building and finance) â 
| that have eclipsed the older foundations 
| long associated with education policy 
| (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and 
| Annenberg) as the powerful big givers. 
| Sometimes described as âventure 
| philanthropiesâ or exponents of 
| âphilanthrocapitalism,â meaning their 
| methods are borrowed from start-up finance 
| and management, the Gates, Walton and 
| Broad foundations see their grants as 
| investments, designed to produce 
| measurable results. And though they preach 
| accountability to teachers, they receive 
| relatively little scrutiny themselves â or 
| even much dissent, given the power of 
| their interlocking grants to exclude 
| critics. All that money buys a lot of 
| silence, Ravitch says, not to mention 
| admiring friends. The Teach for America 
| program, with its youthful cadre of 24,000 
| veterans, in one of the fruits of 
| philanthrocapitalism; the Race to the Top 
| is another. 
`----

http://www.economicprincipals.com/issues/2010.05.30/1146.html

This and that: Are two MnSCU personnel changes related to credit-transfer issue?

,----[ Quote ]
| The MnSCU vice chancellor whoâs had her 
| hands full with the systemâs credit-
| transfer issues â a sore subject for 
| students and some legislators â is taking 
| a job at the Bill & Melinda Gates 
| Foundation.
| 
| Linda Baer, vice chancellor for academic 
| and student affairs for Minnesota State 
| Colleges and Universities, will become a 
| senior officer with the Gates Foundationâs 
| Post-Secondary Success Initiative. The 
| Gates Foundation has been spending a lot 
| of money on college readiness and post-
| secondary efforts across the country â 
| unlike the budget-slashing in public 
| higher education â so it stands to reason 
| such a job would be attractive.
`----

http://www.minnpost.com/nextdegree/2010/06/04/18674/this_and_that_are_two_mnscu_personnel_changes_related_to_credit-transfer_issue

Here We Go Again: Private Foundations Have A Place (And Have To Be Kept In Their Place)

,----[ Quote ]
| I often felt frustrated, however, by how 
| most (though not all) foundations who 
| sought public policy change would decide 
| that they knew what the problem was; they 
| knew how it should be fixed; and they knew 
| how long it should take to fix it. 
| Community groups, desperate for funding, 
| would then often tailor their priorities 
| around the fundersâ agenda and the funders 
| would become the groups de facto 
| constituency. The groupsâ genuine 
| constituency â low and moderate income 
| residents â would then be âbrought 
| alongââ.sometimes, and often for the 
| short-term.
| 
| Of course, this strategy is contrary to 
| how many major policy changes have often 
| been made. In many instances, people who 
| are most affected by the problem take a 
| primary role in developing a solution and 
| the political power to make it a reality 
| (Iâll write more about this history in a 
| future post). The foundation-driven 
| strategy is the antithesis of how long-
| term effective community organizing works.
| 
| But many well-meaning foundations just 
| donât seem to see this.
| 
| [...]
| 
| We feel that the best way to respond to 
| the research findings in this report that 
| highlight how poverty issues affect 
| student academic achievement is by helping 
| parents, schools, and other community 
| residents participate more in public life 
| and develop the self-confidence and life 
| skills to do so effectively. Funders 
| should support schools and community 
| groups who want to engage residents and 
| local institutions like religious 
| congregations, business groups, 
| neighborhood associations in conversations 
| about how these problems affect their 
| local communities and what they think 
| should be done about it. Funders should 
| support those schools and community groups 
| who want to listen and work with residents 
| as partners. Funders should leverage the 
| relationships they have with public and 
| corporate officials so these community 
| groups can develop their own relationships 
| with them.
| 
| [...]
| 
| In the education field (and Iâm sure in 
| other areas, too), Iâd suggest that there 
| are a sizable group of funders who go 
| further, and who can be even more damaging 
| to the long-term public good. This is how 
| Diane Ravitch describes them:
| 
| âThe Billionaires Boys Clubâ is a 
| discussion of how weâre in a new era of 
| the foundations and their relation to 
| education. We have never in the history of 
| the United States had foundations with the 
| wealth of the Gates Foundation and some of 
| the other billionaire foundationsâthe 
| Walton Family Foundation, The Broad 
| Foundation. And these three foundationsâ
| Gates, Broad and Waltonâare committed now 
| to charter schools and to evaluating 
| teachers by test scores. And thatâs now 
| the policy of the US Department of 
| Education. We have never seen anything 
| like this, where foundations had the 
| ambition to direct national educational 
| policy, and in fact are succeeding.
| 
| Iâd characterize their attitude as being 
| closer to neocolonialism, which a 
| dictionary describes as âdominance by 
| economic and cultural influence.â
| 
| Many might say that Iâm overstating the 
| case. But it seems to me that Eli Broad 
| doesnât hide that perspective when he 
| tells the Wall Street Journal:
| 
| âhe is enthusiastic about all the change 
| that is possible when urban school 
| districts go bankruptâas Oakland, Calif., 
| did a few years agoââor what happened in 
| New Orleans, which is the equivalent of 
| bankruptcy.â
| 
| What do you think? Am I being too harsh?
`----

http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2010/05/19/here-we-go-again-private-foundations-have-a-place-and-have-to-be-kept-in-their-place/

Tampa Bay districts make their mark at state education summit

,----[ Quote ]
| But it was Hillsborough's reforms with the 
| Gates Foundation that prompted the largest 
| number of comments from the crowd. 
| Superintendent Elia said her district 
| hopes to pave the way for similar changes 
| across Florida and the nation.
`----

http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/tampa-bay-districts-make-their-mark-at-state-education-summit/1099210

It's over: Wild school year comes to a close in Palm Beach County

,----[ Quote ]
| August: Only one day into the school year, 
| district officials learned they lost their 
| bid for the Gates grant to improve teacher 
| effectiveness and a system where fewer 
| than 25 percent of high school graduates 
| were deemed ready for higher education.
`----

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/fl-palm-schools-year-in-review-20100602,0,2947955.story

Foundations Are Free to Innovate

,----[ Quote ]
| Third, foundation resourcesâand this will 
| sound almost sanctimoniousâare a uniquely 
| precious resource for society at large. 
| Not, in general, by dint of their size, 
| because most philanthropies are not of the 
| Bill Gates or Ford Foundation scaleâthey 
| tend to be quite small in terms of assets. 
| Nor can they be seen as a replacement for 
| the federal purse in paying for social 
| programs. Their enormous value lies in the 
| versatility and adaptability of their use.
`----

http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000191

Michael Green interview. On Philanthrocapitalism, Thatcher and why globalisation is a good thing.

http://frostmagazine.com/2010/05/michael-green-interview-on-philanphrocapitalism-thatcher-and-why-globalisation-is-a-good-thing/1074

Education conversation and the Gates Foundation 

,----[ Quote ]
| Meanwhile, Professors, Learned Societies & 
| commercial schools, and some painfully 
| self-serving non-profit foundations and 
| Universities never even address the need 
| for solid pedagogic content. The current 
| crop of in-charge âLeadersâ dangerously 
| resembles the Investment Bankers who 
| remain in charge of the economic systems 
| that they nearly bankrupted. A leveraged 
| operation like a major newspaper, teacher 
| organization or more ideally the US 
| Department of Education should hold an 
| ongoing âconventionâ of the nationâs 
| leading educators to consider and endorse 
| a covenant of principles and more 
| importantly prescriptive practices. This 
| should be done on a website that 
| transparently allows entries to be 
| challenged, tweaked and further specified 
| for different age-grade-situational 
| conditions. Sadly there is no free market 
| in which monitored packaged bids & buys 
| help to identify the best ideas and 
| practices (Sound familiar?).
`----

http://teacherprofessoraccountability.ning.com/main/invitation/new?xg_source=msg_wel_network Andâhttp://bestmethodsofinstruction.com/? 

More monopolies.


Recent:

Bill Gatesâs risky adventure

,----[ Quote ]
| But in âThe Death and Life of the Great
| American School Systemââ Ravitch writes
| that Gates and other so-called venture
| philanthropists, including Eli Broad, are
| experimenting thoughtlessly. There is no
| proof, she writes, that Gates is on the
| right track now any more than he was from
| 2000-2008, when he pumped about $2 billion
| into a campaign to restructure large
| American high schools into smaller
| schools. That effort, writes Ravitch, was
| marginal at best.
|
| Ravitch argues that high-flying,
| unaccountable philanthropists are
| dictating the countryâs public school
| agenda through their grant-making instead
| of listening to the field. The âcurrent
| obsession with making our schools work
| like a business,ââ writes Ravitch,
| âthreatens to destroy public education.ââ
|
| Gates may be innovation-happy, but he is
| hardly laying waste to the nationâs public
| education system. If anything, he is
| seeding it for future success in ways
| similar to his funding of biotechnology
| research to improve the yields of crops in
| developing nations. Of course, his
| agricultural effort has its share of
| critics, too.
|
| As for his limitless power, Gates says his
| charter school work is possible only in
| states where the public and lawmakers are
| willing to support experimentation. His
| home state of Washington, he adds, has
| blocked the creation of charter schools.
|
| âThe education system is always decided
| politically,ââ said Gates. âIf she
| (Ravitch) thinks foundations are
| dictating, I donât see it.ââ
|
| Itâs not quite so simple. The pressure is
| mounting on school systems to conform to
| the foundationsâ visions, especially when
| the current trend is to fund projects with
| measurable outcomes, not discretionary
| grants. And pushing back against the big
| foundations, or modifying their
| requirements based on local knowledge, was
| a lot easier a decade ago when the
| foundations were smaller and less
| bureaucratic.
`----

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/27/bill_gatess_risky_adventure/


Ravitch on Obama's scary ed reform agenda

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/charter-schools/ravitch-on-obamas-scary-ed-ref.html


Neo-liberalism: The Leveraging of Charter Schools with Public and Private Funds

,----[ Quote ]
| Unquestionably, the huge increase in charters
| has included a massive growth in private and
| philanthropic start-up monies to support them,
| as well as the growth of a burgeoning
| educational industry to distribute the grants
| and sell âeducational products and servicesâ
| while receiving tax dollars for their efforts.
| Yet for those wondering aabout âneo-
| liberalismâ and what it means in this context
| the answer is clear. None of this could have
| been done without the deregulation, favorable
| legal legislation and govern,ment intervention
| in the market. What we are seeing is the
| transfer of public funds into the private
| troughs of the handwringing elite who clothe
| their true agendas in the name of âchildrenâ.
| Unfortunately, this is true all over the
| nation now, and is being fueled by Arne Duncan
| and the billions of stimulus monies he uses to
| extort cities and states. All of this is now
| wrapped up in the noble lie and pious fraud of
| providing charter school innovation as
| competitive model that can raise the standards
| and levels of education. Is it true? Of course
| not, that is all sophistic rubbish and the
| alchemists that coin it know it, as do those
| of us who oppose it.
|
| [...]
|
| Charter benefactors have a vested economic and
| social interest in seeing the charter
| experiment work for it is profitable, and for
| this they will donate tremendous amounts of
| capital to help establish new charters in
| their attempt to dismantle traditional public
| schools. It is called priming the pump and
| with the government on its knees it is
| working. Itâs a great business opportunity as
| well as acts as good public personae for the
| pirates of Wall Street. They understand that
| charters provide a unique business opportunity
| for many financial players in the educational
| entrepreneurial industry, their buddies and
| cronies, and they also know that left by
| itself the charter movement would not be able
| to come up with the seed money, the start-up
| costs needed due to the way public funding for
| schools is presently confabulated. Yet
| ironically, much of the âsuccessâ of the
| charter movement is economic success and comes
| from both a toxic mixture of government as
| well as the private sector funds. For this is
| part and parcel of the new neo-liberal
| educational disorder that is now pillaging and
| prevailing over the wholesale dismantlement of
| public education in the United States. All in
| the name of the âkidsâ.
`----

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/11/neo-liberalism-the-leveraging-of-charter-schools-with-public-and-private-funds/


PTA grant by the Gates Foundation

,----[ Quote ]
| Amerika needs national learning objectives and
| this grant will allow the PTA to oppose
| teachers who don't like it.
`----

http://gateskeepers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2009/12/30/4415987.html


National PTA gets $1 million from Gates Foundation

,----[ Quote ]
| The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is giving
| the National PTA $1 million to teach parents
| about education reform.
|
| The three-year outreach program would focus
| first on an effort to create national learning
| objectives. Right now, most states have their
| own set of education standards. But the states
| are working together to create a new list of
| learning objectives they can all agree on.
`----

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010396512_apwaptaeducationreform.html


PPS and the philanthro-capitalists

,----[ Quote ]
| The free market approach to enrollment and
| funding is a demonstrable failure in
| Portland, when measured by access to
| educational opportunity. Unless the
| district is willing to significantly reduce
| opportunity for the white middle class,
| thereâs no way they can pay for equity of
| opportunity without balancing enrollment,
| that is, by curtailing school choice. This
| is a significant element of the high school
| plan. With it, the district appears to be
| forging a path independent of current
| trends pushed by Gates, at least for high
| schools.
|
| But the district appears unwilling to apply
| the same lesson to middle grades.
|
| Sara Allanâs contention that itâs not the
| structure of the school that matters, but
| what goes on in the classroom, also closely
| parrots the current line being sold by
| Phillips, now head of education for the
| Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
|
| Phillips was the keynote speaker at the
| Council of The Great City Schools
| conference held in Portland last month,
| attended by Allan and quite a few of her
| administrative colleagues. In her speech,
| Phillips promoted merit pay for teachers,
| the latest policy thrust of Gates.
|
| While superintendent in Portland, Philips
| was responsible for both the transition to
| K-8 schools  and the âsmall schoolsâ
| initiative, funded largely by the Gates
| foundation, which dismantled every
| comprehensive high school in Portland
| serving majority non-white students, and
| split them into rigid âacademies.â These
| academies forced students to choose a
| narrow field of study as freshmen, and
| didnât allow students to take electives
| offered in other academies in the same
| building.
|
| [...]
|
| Gatesâ quiet partner
|
| The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has
| grown to be the dominant voice in the
| national education dialogue, heavily
| influencing the federal education policy of
| both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But
| even as PPS appears to be taking a non-
| Gates path on high schools, the district
| continues to be enamored with  Gatesâ
| biggest private-sector education policy
| ally: Eli Broadâs education foundation.
|
| [...]
|
| âStudent performance,â entirely measured by
| standardized test scores, correlates highly
| to poverty. Broadâs scheme would almost
| certainly assure that teachers in poor and
| minority communities would make less than
| their colleagues in wealthier schools, only
| worsening the achievement gap. This puts
| the lie to Broadâs (and Gatesâ) stated
| mission of closing that gap.
|
| [...]
|
| âStudent performance,â entirely measured by
| standardized test scores, correlates highly
| to poverty. Broadâs scheme would almost
| certainly assure that teachers in poor and
| minority communities would make less than
| their colleagues in wealthier schools, only
| worsening the achievement gap. This puts
| the lie to Broadâs (and Gatesâ) stated
| mission of closing that gap.
`----

http://ppsequity.org/2009/11/30/pps-and-the-philanthro-capitalists/


Related:

Dark cloud over good works of Gates Found

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-gatesx07jan07,0,6827615.story?coll=la-home-headlines


Gates Foundation Revokes Pledge to Review Portfolio

,----[ Quote ]
| ...the Gates Foundation took down their public statement on this
| and replaced it with a significantly altered version which seems to
| say that investing responsibly would just be too complex for them
| and that they need to focus on their core mission: 'There are
| dozens of factors that could be considered, almost all of which
| are outside the foundation's areas of expertise. The issues
| involved are quite complex...
`----

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/12/1756212&from=rss


Gates Foundationâs Influence Criticized

,----[ Quote ]
| The chief of malaria for the World Health Organization has complained that
| the growing dominance of malaria research by the Bill and Melinda Gates
| Foundation risks stifling a diversity of views among scientists and wiping
| out the world health agencyâs policy-making function.
`----

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/16/science/16malaria.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- Truth Revealed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttq0IdULfjg


Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation- Truth Revealed Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVlnqnMHQ1c


Gates in charge of education?

,----[ Quote ]
| Since when was this country's educational system run by Bill
| Gates and his foundation? When exactly did he and those he's
| hired become the top educational experts in the country?
|
| As far as I can tell this (like much else) has to do with who
| has enough money to boss other people around. There are
| supposed to be other values in a democracy.
|
| And the irony of the man who was sued by the federal
| government for a monopoly now endorsing competition in public
| education hasn't escaped me, either.
`----

http://who-cester.blogspot.com/2009/12/gates-in-charge-of-education.html


Gates Foundation cash wields influence

,----[ Quote ]
| The Gates Foundation is offering up to
| $250,000 apiece to states that want to apply
| for $5 billion in federal grants to help
| reform our nation's school systems.
|
| [...]
|
| The Associated Press story noted that there is
| a joke going around that says the real
| secretary of education is Bill Gates. To us,
| that's no joke.
`----

http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20091028/OPINION/910280304/Gates-Foundation-cash-wields-influence


Editorial: School reform the Gates way

,----[ Quote ]
| The Gates approach may be radical, but in
| Memphis and beyond the circumstances call for
| a non-traditional approach and as much
| innovation as the system can muster.
`----

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/oct/27/editorial-school-reform-the-gates-way/


Gates in charge of education?

,----[ Quote ]
| Since when was this country's educational system run by Bill
| Gates and his foundation? When exactly did he and those he's
| hired become the top educational experts in the country?
|
| As far as I can tell this (like much else) has to do with who
| has enough money to boss other people around. There are
| supposed to be other values in a democracy.
|
| And the irony of the man who was sued by the federal
| government for a monopoly now endorsing competition in public
| education hasn't escaped me, either.
`----

http://who-cester.blogspot.com/2009/12/gates-in-charge-of-education.html


Gates Foundation cash wields influence

,----[ Quote ]
| The Gates Foundation is offering up to
| $250,000 apiece to states that want to apply
| for $5 billion in federal grants to help
| reform our nation's school systems.
|
| [...]
|
| The Associated Press story noted that there is
| a joke going around that says the real
| secretary of education is Bill Gates. To us,
| that's no joke.
`----

http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20091028/OPINION/910280304/Gates-Foundation-cash-wields-influence


Editorial: School reform the Gates way

,----[ Quote ]
| The Gates approach may be radical, but in
| Memphis and beyond the circumstances call for
| a non-traditional approach and as much
| innovation as the system can muster.
`----

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/oct/27/editorial-school-reform-the-gates-way/
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