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The Lines of Influence in Education Reform
A Seattle parent connects some dots on Gates money. For starters, she asks an interesting question: Did Bill Gates buy his podium at the American Federation of Teachers’ Convention in Seattle?
by Dora Taylor
After working on this off and on for a few months with input from several other parents, Sue and I sat down this weekend and started to hammer out a bubble diagram of the flow of money and influence in this ed-reform movement that is taking a stranglehold on this country and our children. The above link is to a hand drawn diagram that we completed. We have tried Visio to put it in some form of an electronic format but it doesn’t work well for this. If someone has an idea on software that would work, please let us know.
Anyway, let's get down to the nitty-gritty.
When several of us began to discover the Broad Foundation’s influence in Seattle, one parent said to follow the money. At first I thought, yeah sure, it’s always about the money but as we delved further into this, we found out just how much money was being paid to various organizations to influence communities, towns and cities. It was quite remarkable. All of this information, by the way, can be found on the web. Because these organizations are non-profit, they must publicly divulge their financial information.
In some places on the chart we note certain amounts of money. The reason for that is that some of the sums that we discovered were finite and some were not. For instance, the Gates Foundation is basically the Alliance for Education's bank. Whatever the Alliance needs, it seems that the Gates' Foundation just cuts another check by providing a grant for a specific purpose. I suppose that it helps that the Gates’ Foundation’s headquarters are located in Seattle and not far from the Alliance for Education offices, just a stone's throw away.
The other reason that total sums of money are not shown for most of these transactions is because as with Teach for America, several foundations and individuals give a certain amount of money each year for three to five years. There are three-year plans and five-year plans making it more problematic to give you a specific number. Let's just say that it"s a lot of money and all you have to do is Google their financial statements and you will have all of the numbers that you are curious about.
Another example is the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, where Bill Gates gave AFT $3.4M for "teacher quality initiatives" and $217, 200 for AFT conference expenses. See: Did Bill Gates Buy His Podium at the AFT Convention? Sometimes a breakdown of the numbers provides a more clear picture of the power and influence of money.
Then there is money "with stipulations” that the Gates Foundation provided to NPR. The purpose of that money is "to support coverage of education issues on NPR programs, including the Morning Edition and All Things Considered." The amount provided was $750,000. I don’t feel comfortable with that on many levels.
There was also $301,768 given to Minnesota Public Radio. The purpose stated was to "strengthen the quality and quantity of reporting on issues related to the nation’s low college completion rates" which plays into the Gates agenda. The sad part is that NPR felt the need to take the money and potentially provide a skewed viewpoint on issues in education or report on some aspects of ed reform and not others.
Then there is the Gates$3.5M to the Broad Foundation’s Center for the Management of School Systems in June of this year. (Doesn’t Broad have enough money?) In the Gates’ statement they say "to build capacity in Hillsborough, Memphis, Pittsburgh, and the College Ready Promise, we are partnering with The Broad Residency to place each IPS organization to directly support teacher effectiveness initiatives, while leveraging our accelerator grant to Tulsa and secure a multi-year investment from local Tulsa foundations."
There is $40,000 to the League of Education Voters Foundation in Seattle “to support a series of education-related speakers in Seattle”. And that they have done. The all-star list includes Kevin Johnson formally involved with Teach for America and a scandal regarding certain relationships with some of the recruits. He also happens to be Michelle Rhee’s (Broad Board of Directors and former Teach for America recruit) fiance who has been defending him on what could be unethical if not legal charges. As far as I’m concerned, they deserve each other. The other speakers in the line up are Barth with KIPP and Barr with Green Dot charter schools. LEV is also involved with trying to persuade the public here in Seattle that merit pay and other elements of SERVE are good and that teachers and unions are bad as teachers are in negotiations with a Broad Director and our superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson.
Then there is the pocket-money for the Alliance for Education under the heading “general operating support” for $3,000 and the junket to Denver for $6,000 “to support a delegation of Seattle Public School district officials to meet with Brad Jupp and the administration in Denver for “best practices” on teacher labor agreements”. Denver, by the way, is being converted to all things ed-reform. Gates is financing much of that effort.
The list goes on but by now you're probably starting to get the big picture. Broad and Gates have decided what is best for our children based on no experience in education and none of their own children or grand children in public schools. There has been no dialogue between parents and teachers. It's all top down as has been the case here in Seattle where our superintendent tells the board what she is doing and they rubber stamp it. What the school board doesn’t understand is that if they keep that up they will no longer be directors of any school board because the next thing down the pike will be mayoral control and mayor appointed school board directors. By the way, our school board has had “retreats” bought and paid for by the Alliance with books and speakers provided by Broad. Hmmm.
— Dora Taylor
Seatle Education 2010
2010-08-23
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/the-lines-of-influence-in-education-reform/
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