February 24, 2013
IntroductionThe historically unprecedented
explosion of wealth
in recent decades for the top one percent of the American populace is
leading to a reshaping of the American economy in the interests of this
one percent. Having
more wealth than they know what to do with,
many of the corporate leaders, hedge fund managers, and bankers are
putting their wealth into “venture philanthropies”. They hope to advance
an unregulated, free market economy which requires the destruction of
the advances towards social equality made in American society during the
20th century due to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the
sixties and the labor movement in the thirties. Incubated in the
economic Wild West days of the G. W. Bush administration until the
financial crisis of 2008, these “venture philanthropies” continue to
seek to bring the business practices of the banking, corporate, and
hedge fund manager world to all sectors of the U.S. economy through
privatization.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the full-scale assault on public
education that has been escalating for the last ten years since the
Bush administration instituted the No Child Left Behind law in 2001.
Basing itself on rating schools by high stakes testing, combined with
declining federal support for education, NCLB has led to wide scale
vilification of public school teachers for social conditions over which
they have no control. This is being used all over the country as a
pretext for closing schools in mostly urban school districts with large
numbers of low-income families. As a result, we once again are faced
with an increasingly segregated educational system where the children of
middle class and slightly better off working class families are
transferred into charters which are given advantages in student
selection and funding, while the children of low income families are
increasingly being left behind in deteriorating public schools. These
ever worsening urban public school systems which, already having been
inequitably funded for decades compared to wealthy suburban school
districts, are being systematically starved of funding.
The promoters of the corporate reform of public education can be
divided into two major groups, conservative and liberal political action
committees which believe in an unregulated free enterprise market; and
“venture philanthropies” which pour money into various causes that
promote the free market and, not coincidently, the profits of the 1%.
Conservative corporate education reformThe major conservative political action committee is the
American Legislative Executive Council
(ALEC). ALEC’s membership is made up of rightwing politicians in
legislatures all over the country who propose ALEC created legislation
promoting tax benefits to corporations, banks, and the wealthy, and
advance the privatization of public institutions such as public
education, public transportation, public utilities, state lotteries, and
other municipal and state services. In education funding, these
legislators directly represent the interests of corporate and banking
institutions, introducing legislation promoting the privatization of
public schools through charters and vouchers.
Liberal corporate education reformThe
liberal political action committees that support corporate education
reform are various and ever changing. Wealthy philanthropists and hedge
fund managers fund them. Here are just a few:
• Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and state based affiliates,
funders include
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and hedge fund managers David Tepper
and Alan Fournier. The Laura and John Arnold Foundation, funded by hedge
fund manager John Arnold, has also pledged $20 million to Rhee's
organization over five years. The Broad Foundation
provided $500,000 in start up funding.
• Dozens of national charter management companies, funded by a combination of public funds and private donations.
"Venture" philanthropies
Of the “venture philanthropies” there is a triumvirate that make up
the major funders of the philanthropies of corporate education reform: the
Bill Gates Foundation (Bill Gates is currently worth $59 billion), the
Walton Family Foundation, established by the owners of Wal-Mart (The
Walton family is currently worth $16.3 billion) (
see Forbes for their ranking), and the Broad Foundation (Eli Broad is
currently worth
$6.3 billion) Of the three, the Broad Foundation is the smallest in
financial assets, but it has had a far-reaching impact in the assault on
public schools through a careful targeting of its resources.
According to their website,
the Broad Foundation claims to have spent $370 million on their
“education philanthropy” since 1999. Based on their level of activity in
local school districts, as this article will detail, it is probably
much higher.
Venture philanthropy treats schools as a “private consumable service
and promotes business remedies, reforms, and assumptions with regard to
public schooling. Some of the most significant projects involve
promoting charter schools to inject market competition and “choice” into
the public sector as well as using cash bonuses for merit pay for
teachers and to “incentivize” students. (See “
The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education", page 54
The Broad Mission StatementThe
2008 Mission Statement of the Broad Foundation (Page 4) states its goal is:
“Transforming K-12 urban public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition.”
Note the targeting of “urban public education”. Eli Broad considers
himself a liberal Democrat, as does Michelle Rhee of Students First, who
has been on the Board of the Broad Foundation since at least 2008; and
Bill Gates of the Gates Foundation. They claim their attempt to
restructure American education is the next civil rights movement. They
target urban school districts with the highest poverty by having
Superintendents from their Broad Superintendents Academy appointed who
are prepared to starve public schools in order to make charter schools
appealing to parents. The hemorrhaging of students from public schools
to charters has led to urban school districts closing public schools all
over the country due to “under enrollment”.
Strong American SchoolsIn 2007,
the Broad Foundation teamed with the Gates Foundation
to create Strong American Schools. Founded by Eli Broad, the Gates
Foundation contributed $60 million towards “a nonpartisan campaign aimed
at elevating American education to the top of the presidential campaign
agenda between now and November 2008. Strong American Schools is a
public awareness and action campaign designed to give a voice to every
American who demands strong leadership to improve our schools.”
With
the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, until then a
Broad Foundation Board member, was appointed Secretary of Education.
The 2009 Annual Report of the Broad Foundation (Page 5) states:
“The election of President Barack Obama
and his appointment of Arne Duncan, former CEO of Chicago Public
Schools, as the U.S. secretary of education, marked the pinnacle of hope
for our work in education reform. In many ways, we feel the stars have
finally aligned. With an agenda that echoes our decade of
investments—charter schools, performance pay for teachers,
accountability, expanded learning time and national standards—the Obama
administration is poised to cultivate and bring to fruition the seeds we
and other reformers have planted.”
Of Arne Duncan, the 2009 Broad Annual Report states (Page 10):
“Prior to becoming U.S. secretary of
education, Arne Duncan was CEO of Chicago Public Schools, where he
hosted 23 Broad Residents. Duncan now has five Broad Residents and
alumni working with him in the U.S. Department of Education.”
Since becoming Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan continues his
association with the Broad Foundation in venues such as, for several
years, presenting the annual
Broad Prize for Urban Education
that awards $1 million to five urban districts to be used for college
scholarships for graduating seniors. Prizes are awarded based on
criteria set by the Broad Foundation based on its goal of privatizing
public education. He is following in the footsteps of his predecessor,
Margaret Spellings, who was Secretary of Education in the second G. W.
Bush administration and also participated in the awarding of the Broad
Prize for Urban Education. (See the
2008 Broad Foundation Annual Report, pages 13 - 15.)
The Board of the Broad FoundationMembers of the Board of the Broad Foundation have included a veritable Who’s Who of corporate education reform. According to
the 2009 Broad Annual Report (Page 25), in 2008, they included:
• Joel Klein, Chancellor of New York City Schools
• Barry Munitz, board chair, trustee professor, California State University, Los Angeles
• Arlene Ackerman, Superintendent of Philadelphia Public Schools
• Richard Barth, chief executive officer of the KIPP Foundation
• Henry Cisneros, former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton Administration
• Arne Duncan, Chancellor of Chicago Schools until he became U.S. Secretary of Education in the Obama Administration
• Louis Gerstner, Jr., senior advisor to The Carlyle Group
• Maria Goodloe-Johnson, Superintendent of Seattle Public Schools
• Dan Katzir, board secretary/treasurer, managing director of the Broad Foundation
• Wendy Kopp, chief executive officer and founder of Teach for America
• Margaret Spellings, former U.S.
Secretary of Education in the second George W. Bush Administration
where she oversaw the implementation of No Child Left Behind
• Melissa Megliola Zaikos, Autonomous Management and Performance Schools Program Officer, Chicago Public Schools
• Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of the District of Columbia Schools
• Lawrence Summers, Chief economist for
the World Bank 1991-1993; U.S. Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton
Administration, later on the Broad Board until he became the Director of
the National Economic Council in the Obama Administration, rejoined the
Broad Board on July 25, 2012
• Mortimer Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the U.S. News and World Report; Publisher of the New York Daily News
Added to the Board in July, 2012 were:
• Andy Stern, former President of the Service Employees International Union
• Representative Harold Ford, five-term Congressman and former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council
• Paul Pastorek, former Louisiana state
superintendent of education and former president of the Louisiana State
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education who oversaw the
post-Hurricane Katrina privatization of New Orleans public schools.
As can be seen from this list, top management of the Broad Foundation
is overwhelmingly made up of people from the political community, the
business community, labor leaders, and only a very few from the
administrative end of education; who are reaching the end of their
career path. They take highly paid positions and bring their expertise
and connections from their prior careers into the world of corporate
education reform. Only a few have any actual teaching experience in K-12
public schools.
The Broad Residency program
The Broad Residency program
is part of the management of the day-to-day operations of the
Foundation that is carried out by the Broad Center for the Management of
School Systems. Broad employees are trained at the Broad Residency in
Urban Education which is a two-year management development program that
trains recent graduate students, primarily with business and law
degrees, who have several years of work experience in the business world
and places them immediately into managerial positions in the central
operations of urban school districts. As on the Board, almost all have
no training in pedagogy or child development, and no classroom
experience. Most are people in their 20’s and 30’s who see promoting the
corporate education reform agenda as a stepping stone in a career path
which they began in the business world. Some come from such
organizations as the Boston Consulting Group, a leader in corporate
downsizing, and
Harvard's Strategic Data Project
that is heavily involved, along with The Gates Foundation and Murdoch’s
Wireless Generation (headed by Broad Board member Joel Klein), in
the collection of student and teacher data.
According to the
2011-2012 Broad Foundation Annual Report (Page 34)
“Since 2003, the program has recruited
and placed early-career executives with private and civic sector
experience and advanced degrees into two-year, full-time paid positions
in urban school districts, state and federal departments of education
and top charter management organizations. More than 250 Broad Residents
have been placed in 39 school districts, 30 public charter school
management organizations, seven state departments of education and the
U.S. Department of Education.”
The Broad Superintendents AcademyThe other part of the Broad Center for the Management of School Systems is
the Broad Superintendents Academy,
begun in 2002. It trains eight to twenty-five candidates per year in
six intensive four-day sessions spread over 10 months. According to
the 2011-12 Annual Report (Page 24), from 2002 through 2011 there have been 144 Broad superintendent graduates.
A
key part of corporate education reform is to reshape public schooling
on the market model that involves remaking administrator preparation for
education like the corporate model. Of the Superintendents, about half
come from education, the other half come from business and the military.
The Broad Foundation frequently pays cash-strapped school districts
part of the new superintendent’s salary if the districts select a Broad
Superintendent Graduate.
Looking at the toolkit of resources for trainees on their website, you find such things as their 2009 "
School Closure Guide: Closing Schools as a Means for Addressing Budgetary Challenges".
This 83 page Guide gives a detailed breakdown and timelines of how to
manage school closures and community opposition to the closing of
community schools. A favored tactic in various cities has been to
announce a proposal for closing a large number of schools; hold
community meetings to give the appearance of democracy, but actually for
the purpose of using the information gained to hone their tactics for
carrying out a list of community schools to be closed despite community
opposition. Then they take a few schools off the closing list to give
the appearance that they are listening to the community. This is a form
of the common practice in labor negotiations where management proposes
some draconian cuts, and then, when a compromise is reached with the
union leaders, the rank-and-file is relieved that the cuts are not as
drastic as first proposed and votes to accept the contract even though
it is less than they deserve and need. The difference with school
closures is that there is no relief for the majority of communities
where schools will be closed if just a few schools are taken off the
closure list. This school closure method has been used in New York,
Chicago, and Detroit, where large numbers of community schools have
already been closed. The closings are done in phases to transform large
numbers of public schools into a private system run by charter
management companies over a period of years.
The criteria for
the selection of schools to be closed is a mystery to the community that
is trying to find what must be done to the keep their community school
open so their children do not have to walk or travel long distances to
school. Parents are told their schools are not cost effective because of
under enrollment (which are largely due to student transfers to
charters), the building is too old, or they are given no clear reason
for the community school being closed. At some point in the process,
charter schools are offered as an option to distressed parents.
In
cities where this process has begun, vacant closed schools are blight
in already impoverished communities, or they are turned over to
charters, or they are sold to real estate interests at bargain basement
prices. This is the script being followed by graduates of the Broad
Superintendents Academy all over the country.
Other
guides and toolkits
have been created by and “for school districts and charter management
organizations with support from The Broad Foundation to help with some
of the most pressing and complicated issues facing school systems.”
Most were written in 2009 and 2010.
These include
Administrative Career Path and Performance Evaluation Guide:
“This guide will help charter management organizations (CMOs) and
school districts – and their human resources staff and line managers in
particular – that are looking to develop a systematic approach to
evaluating and promoting employees.”,
Rubrics for Charter Evaluations, "
Bain Chicago charter school involvement summary: 2007-2009", and more.
In 2011, Parents Across America
described the management method of Broad Superintendents like this:
“Broad and his foundation believe that
public schools should be run like a business. One of the tenets of his
philosophy is to produce system change by “investing in disruptive
force”. Continual reorganizations, firings of staff, and experimentation
to create chaos or “churn” is believed to be productive and beneficial,
as it weakens the ability of communities to resist change.”
Many of their Superintendents last only a few years in their highly
paid positions until communities that want to be rid of them give them
six figure buyouts which the Broad candidates are careful to have
written into their initial contract. Frequently, other graduates of the
Broad Superintendents Academy replace them. The Broad Foundation does
not see the termination of a contract as a defeat for its overall
objective of privatization of public schools, but part of “churn.”
True
to the Broad Superintendent Academies undemocratic nature, the Broad
Superintendents prefer to operate in secrecy and stealth. Candidate’s
graduation from the uncertified Broad Superintendents Academy is not
listed on resumes. Usually only an inner circle of politicians and
school administrators know of their promotion of the Broad agenda. In
Philadelphia, for example, Dr. Arlene Ackerman
sat on the board of directors of the Broad Foundation
while she was Superintendent of the School District of Philadelphia
from 2008-2011. This was not known to the general public and only came
out after she came into conflict with local politicians over the
disputed selection of a charter operator for Martin Luther King High
School. Having poured money into charters and Renaissance Schools while
starving public schools, she left the District with a $1 billion deficit
over the next five years. On August 25th, 2011, she was given a $1
million buyout of her contract after threatening to reveal “secrets”.
Her replacement, Dr. William Hite (Broad Superintendents Academy Class
of 2005) took office in September 5th, 2012. During the yearlong interim
between Ackerman and Hite’s administration, private philanthropies
hired the Boston Consulting Group to develop the plans for the
reorganization of the School District. On July 18th, 2012, the School
Reform Commission, the state agency that has run the School District for
ten years, allocated $139 million for 5,416 new seats in existing
charters. On December 12th, 2012, Hite announced the proposed closing of
37 schools due to “under enrollment” at a “savings” of $28 million.
On February 19, 2013
this school closing list was revised
taking off ten schools, and adding two more which means 29 schools are
now slated for closure. However, it was announced a few days later that
nine schools, including two schools that had just been taken off of the
closing list, will be “transformed” into Renaissance charter schools,
three to be run by outside charter management companies.
The Broad Foundation and the unionsThe
Broad Foundation Mission Statement states that one of its goals is the
transformation of labor relations. The Broad Foundation is not
anti-union. Rather, it seeks to transform unions into a form of
company union.
A company union is a union located within and run by a company or a
national government, and the union bureaucracy is incorporated into the
company’s management. This opens up the workforce to unfettered
exploitation for profits of the owners. Many right-wing governments
internationally use company unions to suppress worker struggles against
low living standards. In 1935, during the labor struggles of the
Depression, the National Labor Relations Act was passed which outlawed
company unions in the United States.
Broad has found no shortage
of former or current union leaders who are willing to be bought and join
his venture philanthropy to foster labor/management “collaboration”.
Former President of the Service Employees International Union, Andy Stern, is just the most visible on the board. In education, the
Teacher Union Reform Network (TURN) fosters this collaboration.
American Federation of Teachers President Helen Bernstein
started TURN in 1996 with a grant from the PEW Charitable Trust. Leadership of TURN was taken over by current
AFT Vice President Adam Urbanski, when he was head of the Rochester, New York local in1999. By 2001,
TURN had formed a partnership with the Broad Foundation.
According to the Los Angeles Times,
on April 5, 2001, Eli Broad announced his Foundation was donating $10
million to TURN to foster labor/management “collaboration”. In 2009,
Broad invested $2 million in TURN, a “a network of National Education
Association and American Federation of Teachers locals”.
Broad's 2009 Annual Report (Page 15)
In the early days of this collaboration, labor leaders joined leaders
in politics, business and non-profit organizations in staffing the
faculty at the Broad Superintendents Academy, training the future Broad
Superintendents. According
a 2002 Broad press release (Page 2) participants included:
• Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education in the G.W. Bush Administration
• Henry Cisneros, Secretary of HUD in the first Clinton Administration and now CEO of American CityVista
• William Cox, Managing Director of Broad, School Evaluation Services
• Chris Cross, Senior Fellow, Center on Education Policy
• Chester E. Finn, Jr., President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
• Frances Hesselbein, Chairman, The Drucker Foundation
• Don McAdams, Founder, Center for Reform of School Systems
• Donald Nielsen, President, Hazelton Corporation, Chairman of the 2WAY Corporation
• Hugh B. Price, President and CEO, National Urban League
• Paul Ruiz, Principal Partner, Education Trust
• Adam Urbanski, Director of Teacher Union Reform Network
• Randi Weingarten, President, United Federation of Teachers.
In 2005 the Broad Foundation made a $1 million grant to help the
United Federation of Teachers in New York City, at that time headed by
Randi Weingarten, open two union-run charter schools in Brooklyn, the
first such schools in the country. In October, 2012, it was announced
these schools are in academic and enrollment trouble and will probably
close at the end of the school year. This became
another opportunity for another round of teacher bashing by the right-wing media. (Note: This column is written by Micah Lasher, executive director of StudentsFirstNY.)
In its
2009 Annual Report (Page 10), the Broad Foundation said,
“Teacher unions have always been a
formidable voice in public education. We decided at the onset of our
work to invest in smart, progressive labor leaders like Randi
Weingarten, head of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City
for more than a decade and now president of the American Federation of
Teachers (AFT). We partnered with Weingarten to fund two union-run
charter schools in Brooklyn and to fund New York City’s first
incentive-based compensation program for schools, as well as the AFT’s
Innovation Fund. We had previously helped advance pay for performance
programs in Denver and Houston, but we were particularly encouraged to
see New York City embrace the plan.” (See the picture in the
2008 Broad Foundation Annual Report, pages 14 and 15.)
On the same page the 2009 Annual Report also boasted of being one of
the earliest funders of Teach For America stating “our investment in
this innovative teaching corps has grown to more than $41 million.” The
same page also says, “Since 2000, our CMO (charter management
organization) investments have swelled to nearly $100 million, creating
54,474 charter seats in 16 cities. We provided early start-up capital
for charter operators like KIPP, Aspire, Green Dot and Uncommon Schools.
They have since become the models for other CMOs to emulate.”
In April, 2009, the AFT teamed with four venture philanthropies: the
Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation—to
create the Innovation Fund. The private-foundation contributions, in
addition to the AFT's down payment of $1 million, brought the fund's
total to $2.8 million. Weingarten said its funds were made available for
local affiliates to "incubate promising ideas to improve schools."
In an April 28, 2009 article, Education Week’s Teacher Beat
described the purpose of the Innovation Fund
this way:
“Both Weingarten and the foundation folks spoke a lot about
the importance of working together and collaboration...Both she and Adam
Urbanski, the president of the Rochester, N.Y., affiliate who will
serve as the fund's executive director, were quick to minimize the fact
that AFT's education-reform objectives haven't always been in line with
those of the private foundations. (Broad and Gates, for instance, were
said to be primed to offer financial support behind D.C. Chancellor
Michelle Rhee's two-tiered pay proposal, although as far as I know,
neither foundation ever confirmed that on the record.)”
On June 3, 2010, at their union leader’s urging, the Washington D.C.
Teachers Union ratified a contract with the Washington D.C. School
District, headed by Chancellor Michelle Rhee, which included performance
pay linked to test score growth, and a weakening of seniority and
tenure. Union President George Parker called the ratification of the
contract “a great day for teachers and students.” On November 10, 2010,
Parker was voted out of office by the union rank-and-file. On May 20,
2011, Michelle Rhee announced that Parker was joining her corporate
reform organization StudentsFirst. Rhee had resigned as Chancellor of
Washington D.C. schools on October 13, 2010, and started StudentsFirst
soon after. Rhee’s Deputy Chancellor and chief negotiator of the 2010
teachers’ contract, Kaya Henderson, replaced her. Henderson recently
announced the proposed closing of 20 schools due to “under enrollment”.
On July 8th, 2010, Randi Weingarten welcomed Bill Gates as the
keynote speaker at the national AFT convention. Subsequently, in April
17th, 2012, the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded $2 million to
five of the AFT’s TURN regional networks through the Consortium for
Educational Change, “an Illinois-based network of teacher unions, school
districts, and professional organizations that work to make school
systems more collaborative, high-performing organizations.” Of the
grant, Mary Jane Morris, executive director of CEC said, “There is clear
evidence that policies and programs that truly impact teaching
effectiveness result when teacher unions and management collaborate as
equal partners. Each stakeholder brings a unique understanding and
knowledge-base that must be considered.”
An article in Reuters,
right after the 2012 AFT convention reelected Weingarten to a third
term, began: “In the maelstrom of criticism surrounding America's
unionized public school teachers, the woman running the second-largest
educator union says time has come to collaborate on public school reform
rather than resist.” "
U.S. teacher union boss bends to school reform winds", Reuters, July 31, 2012
After the Chicago teachers strike in September, 2012, to which the
AFT gave tepid financial and verbal support (not rallying locals
nationally to support the CTU), ended on September 19th, 2012; on
September 22nd, Weingarten joined Secretary of Education Duncan, who was
on a bus tour through the Midwest to promote Race to the Top. She
joined Gayle Manchin, wife of West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, on
a panel to discuss “how to build public-private partnerships to support
educational improvement as the path to a brighter future.” The state
run McDowell County, West Virginia school system and the AFT had created
the philanthropy "
Reconnecting McDowell”
in 2011 to foster “collaboration between business, government and
nonprofit organizations to establish programs that address the
challenges faced by this community.” The AFT has given the fund
hundreds of thousands of dollars from the dues of the AFT rank-and-file.
On November 17th, 2012, Weingarten teamed with New Jersey
Education Secretary Chris Cerf (Broad Academy Class of 2004) to
successfully promote the ratification of a contract for Newark teachers
that included merit pay based on performance (including high-stakes test
scores). On December 13, 2012, the
New Jersey Education Law Center announced
it had found that Eli Broad was offering a $430,000 grant to New Jersey
contingent on the reelection of Governor Chris Christie. Terms of the
grant include a requirement that the number of charters be increased by
50%, requiring that all public announcements of the program by the state
have to be cleared with the Broad Foundation, and it contained a
lengthy provision about making documents, files, and records associated
with the grant the property of the Foundation. New Jersey bloggers
speculated that Broad’s real concern was the keeping Cerf as the New
Jersey Secretary of Education.
On December 13th, 2012,
Weingarten held a press conference with Bill Clinton and Obama’s housing
secretary Shaun Donovan to announce the AFT would invest $1 billion
from the NYC teachers pension fund for Hurricane Sandy relief for the
NYC area.
NYC Mayor Bloomburg criticized the investment
because taxpayers would have to bail out the pension fund if the
investment failed.
One month later the U.S. Congress allocated $50.5
billion dollars for Hurricane Sandy relief.
On January 29, 2013,
Weingarten was interviewed
on NPR’s All Things Considered. She continued her campaign for a
teacher’s “Bar Exam”. This year long campaign is an endorsement of the
corporate education reformers campaign against teachers that says the
problem with schools is “bad teachers” and tenure. Arne Duncan and New
York Governor Cuomo have been aggressively supporting this proposal.
Weingarten did this NPR interview at the same time as New York City
teachers are in a battle against an unfair and flawed teacher evaluation
system which Cuomo was threatening to impose through drastic cuts in
state funding for NYC public schools if not agreed to or dictatorially
imposing the teacher evaluation system outright.
On March 11, 2009, in an article in the NYC education website Gotham News, in the article "
Eli Broad describes close ties to Klein, Weingarten, Duncan",
Broad described his education philosophy and his collaboration with
Klein, Weingarten, and Duncan. The article did not state that
Weingarten’s relationship with Broad dates back to at least 2002.
Who is Eli Broad?So who is Eli Broad and why does he want to destroy public education?
The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Eli Broad was born in 1933 in the
Bronx and raised in Detroit where he attended the Detroit Public
Schools. He graduated in 1954 from Michigan State University, where he
majored in accounting with a minor in economics. He became the youngest
Certified Public Accountant in Michigan, which was his occupation for
two years before entering the home building business. He bought his
first plot of land at the age of 20.
In 1957, he co-founded Kaufman & Broad with Donald Kaufman, a
homebuilder related to his wife. They borrowed $25,000 from Broad’s
in-laws and became one of the nation's biggest homebuilders, supplying
baby boomers with affordable housing.
In 1971 he bought Sun Life Insurance, a family owned insurance
company for $52 million. This became the retirement savings powerhouse
Sun America. In 1999, he sold Sun America to American International
Group for $18 billion. He was CEO of Sun America, which is now a
subsidiary of AIG, until 2000.
Now largely dedicated to their venture philanthropies, he and his
wife Edythe Broad live in Los Angeles and oversee The Broad Foundation.
The foundation is not only dedicated to “reforming” public education,
but has used their fortune in the arts world and in medical research.
They have given an estimated $3.5 billion (more than 50% of his current
net worth) to their philanthropies, including $600 million to set up The
Broad Institute for biomedical research at Harvard and MIT. He and wife
Edythe created the Broad Art Foundation in 1984, which now holds more
than $2.4 billion worth of art that is lent to art institutions around
the world. Their influence in the Los Angeles arts community
has been as controversial as their role in American education, though far more localized.
Eli Broad sold Sun Life Insurance for $18 billion in 1999. He is
currently worth approximately $6.3 billion. Allowing for substantial
losses in the housing market collapse after the 2008 financial crisis,
there is still a large amount of money unaccounted for which makes the
claim of only $370 million to their “education philanthropy” since 1999,
as claimed on their website, highly suspect.
In 2012, Broad’s book The Art of Being Unreasonable: Lessons in
Unconventional Thinking was published. The inside flap of the book has
this quote from George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself
to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world
to him self. Therefore, all progress depends upon the unreasonable
man.” George Bernard Shaw was speaking of fighting for social justice.
As always, Eli Broad is speaking about what makes a good businessman.
ConclusionThe
Broad fortune is based on the speculative capital made possible during
the deregulation that began under the Reagan administration. Taking
public controls off of private capital set the stage for the wealthiest
one per cent in American society to amass enormous personal wealth and
use that wealth to lobby and legislate the radical redistribution upward
of wealth and income over the next thirty years. It is this ideal of
deregulation that Broad holds up as a metaphor for public education.
The
only way to do that is to hand over public institutions to the private
sector. As is being seen with the unfolding disaster of school closures,
applying private sector methods to public institutions ignores economic
and social reality. Downsizing a corporation to please Wall Street
investors is not the same thing as downsizing a public school district
because it is not turning out enough students ready for college. (For
further analysis see "
The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation"
The freewheeling deregulated market accelerated during the Bush
years, putting the financial sector on steroids, and leading to the
financial crisis of October 2008 for which Congress allocated $700
billion of taxpayer dollars to hedge funds, corporations and banks to
prevent them from defaulting on huge debts. Despite this lesson, venture
philanthropists like Eli Broad continue to try to use venture
capitalist methods to create an educational system after their own
image. They believe that privatizing schools will turn out a select
number of students for their business needs and also give them another
huge source of profit.
Just as the people of the world continue to suffer from the economic
tremors of the 2008 financial bailout, just like the collapse of the
housing bubble, the tremors created by corporate education reform will
cause an economic earthquake that will collapse corporate education
reform like the house of cards that it is. If supporters of public
education mobilize to support it, left standing, though battered and
wounded, will be the U.S. public school system that began after the
American Revolution…but what about the children growing up in this war?
