Colorado vote this weekend: does it signal that DFER is on the decline and the Democratic Party has regained its soul?

Amidst the bad news of abusive state testing and stagnant student achievement, a ray of sunshine broke through the clouds yesterday when the news broke that members of the Democratic party in Colorado voted by a huge margin to dissociate themselves from Democrats for Education Reform and demand they take the word "Democrats" off their name.

After booing down the head of the education reform organization, who described herself as a lifelong Democrat, delegates voted overwhelmingly Saturday to call for the organization to no longer use “Democrats” in its name. While it’s unclear how that would be enforced, the vote means a rejection of DFER is now part of the Colorado Democratic Party platform.

Even though the Los Angeles County Democratic Party demanded DFER "remove all reference to the Democratic Party...from your name" in 2012 and the California Democratic party passed a similar resolution denouncing the organization the next year,  this is a far more momentous event since Colorado for many years has been a stronghold of corporate education reform. Senator Michael Bennet, Rep. Jared Polis and State Senator Michael Johnson are all true-believers, adhering to the tenets of charter school expansion, school closings and high-stakes testing with near-religious obeisance, and until recently, the Denver school board has been made up of members who unanimously supported these policies and were elected with the help of DFER "dark money."

In a speech quoted by Chalkbeat, Vanessa Quintana, a political activist and a fromer student at Manual High School, described her experiences as a victim of school reform.  The school was restructured and broken up into three separate high schools with funding and a push from the Gates Foundation, and then closed by Michael Bennet when he was Denver superintendent:

She said that before she finally graduated from high school, she had been through two school closures and a major school restructuring and dropped out of school twice. Three of her siblings never graduated, and she blames the instability of repeated school changes.

“When DFER claims they empower and uplift the voices of communities, DFER really means they silence the voices of displaced students like myself by uprooting community through school closure,” she told the delegates. “When Manual shut down my freshman year, it told me education reformers didn’t find me worthy of a school.”

Since its founding in 2005 by NYC hedgefunder Whitney Tilson, DFER has been very influential.  Led by former Daily News reporter Joe Williams, the organization was an early supporter of Barack Obama when he was running for Senator in Illinois, and directed Wall Street money to candidate Andrew Cuomo when he was a candidate for Governor of New York.  The organization had a strong hand in developing the pro-privatization, market-base agenda of both men, as well as the positions of far too many other Democratic officials across the country.  Here is the story of the marriage of convenience between DFER and Cuomo, as recounted in the NY Times:

When Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo wanted to meet certain members of the hedge fund crowd, seeking donors for his all-but-certain run for governor, what he heard was this: Talk to Joe.

That would be Joe Williams, executive director of a political action committee that advances what has become a favorite cause of many of the wealthy founders of New York hedge funds: charter schools.... Hedge fund executives are thus emerging as perhaps the first significant political counterweight to the powerful teachers unions, which strongly oppose expanding charter schools in their current form.

Perhaps the vote in Colorado this weekend results from the fact that the battle lines are clearer in the age of  pro-privatization Trump and Betsy DeVos.  Or perhaps the corrosive damage done to our public education system by charter expansion, high -stakes testing and school closures has become even clearer with the passage of time.  Joe Williams himself left DFER in 2015, and now works for the Walton Family Foundation, funded by the conservative billionaire heirs to the Walmart fortune. The NAACP passed a well-publicized resolution in 2016 and again in 2017, calling for a moratorium on charter expansion. Popular support for charters has fallen precipitously in the polls.

Yet Andrew Cuomo, running for a third term as Governor, still gets big contributions from the the charter lobby ($30,000 from Coalition for Public Charter Schools PAC and $50,000 from the Walton family in 2018 alone ) and predictably retains his political preference for charter schools.  Daniel Loeb, head of the board of Success Academy charters, and his wife have donated more than $170,000 to Cuomo in recent years, according to the NY Times.

In any event, let's remember how Whitney Tilson explained the founding of DFER in a film called "A Right Denied"  (reported previously on this blog):

“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”

Lets hope that the Colorado vote is a turning point, and that it is no longer politically or ethically acceptable for progressive Democrats to act like Republicans when it comes to education policy.

Is the tug of war on education policy between liberal "reform proponents" and the unions, as the NY Times argues, or the 1% and nearly everyone else?

NY Times ran a front page article on Wednesday, focused on the tug of war for Hilary Clinton’s soul, supposedly between the teacher unions and the big donors, mostly hedge fund operators, who want to privatize public schools and ramp up high-stakes testing, weaken teacher tenure and base their evaluations on student test scores. Value-added test based teacher evaluation has proved to be highly unreliable, and many expert groups, including the American Statistical Association and the National Academy of Sciences, have concluded that it could have damaging impact on morale and the quality of education.   

In the article, the hedgefunders make it clear that they will threaten to withhold their contributions if Hillary does not adopt their positions:

“This is an issue that’s important to a lot of Democratic donors,” said John Petry, a hedge fund manager who was a founder of the Harlem Success Academy, a New York charter school. “Donors want to hear where she stands.”

Yet in the process of writing about this ideological battle, the reporter, Maggie Haberman, characterizes Democrats for Education Reform, one of the principle hedge fund-backed lobby groups as a “left of center group,” which is absurd.  For some reason, DFER has managed to persuade reporters that it has any liberal credentials, despite the fact that as Diane Ravitch pointed out, the California Democratic Party has repudiated it.  

Parents Across America wrote an open letter to the NPR ombudsman in 2011, objecting to the fact that Claudio Sanchez, the NPR reporter, had called DFER a “liberal” organization, while quoting their criticism of the progressive participants in the anti-corporate reform Save Our Schools march in DC.   

We also pointed out that DFER’s founder, hedge fund operator Whitney Tilson, admitted that the only reason he put “Democrats” in the organization’s title and focused on convincing Democrats to adopt their pro-privatization agenda was that GOP leaders were already in agreement with most of their positions.  The following is an excerpt from a film made by Tilson called “A Right Denied”:

“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”

In addition, by characterizing the struggle on education policy as being a conflict primarily between the teacher unions and big donors, the reporter misses the boat.  Indeed, the only mention of parents in the piece implies that they are allied with the DFER privateers: “Reform proponents include donors, but also a cross section of parents and business advocates.”   

Hopefully NY Times readers and especially Hillary will smart enough to reject this claim, if they merely looked at Governor Cuomo’s plunging popularity.  Cuomo’s poll numbers are dropping like a stone, largely because his positions on education are in thrall to his big donors in the DFER/hedgefund crowd.  He has pushed hard on test-based teacher evaluation and other favorite talking points of the corporate reform contingent.   

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, Cuomo’s approval ratings on education are at a tepid 28% - while 63% of voters reject his views on school reform.  65% of voters reject the notion that teacher tenure should be based on student test scores; 71% reject the idea that teacher pay should be based on scores, and 55% trust the teacher unions on education, compared to 28% who trust Cuomo. 

And the overwhelming rejection of Cuomo's views is shared among rural, suburban, urban voters, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Interestingly, instead of citing any of the many polls that show voters overwhelmingly reject the corporate reform/hedgefund education agenda,  the NY Times article uncritically links to a leaked “memo” from Joe Williams of DFER, to “Board members and Major Donors,” citing polling results that supposedly show that “voters agree with our policies.”  

But in the memo, Williams fails to reveal the actual questions – or what it might actually mean that 69% of voters feel that education is on the “wrong track”.  After a decade or more of increasingly severe test-based accountability, many voters are indeed weary of the focus on testing and test prep, and the disruption and damaging cycle of closing neighborhood schools, and so reject the DFER agenda that is based on more of the same.

Another recent poll from GBA Strategies, conducted for In the Public Interest and the Center for Popular Democracy went unmentioned by the NY Times. Unlike the DFER survey the full questions and answers were released, revealing that most voters do indeed reject the corporate reform agenda. Voters see lack of parental involvement as their biggest education concern, followed by too much testing, funding cuts and overly large class sizes. School choice came in last on a list of their priorities.

Let’s hope for more accurate and less biased education reporting from the mainstream media in the future.  The tug of war on education is not primarily between liberal reformers and the teachers union – but between the 1% and nearly everyone else.

What the NY Post left out: how Sharpton was persuaded to ally himself with Joel Klein & stay mum on term limits

Today, the NY Post ran a story about how Al Sharpton accepts money from corporations in exchange for shielding them of accusations of racism.  It contained nothing very new to report, except for Sharpton having met with Amy Pascal of Sony after the company's embarrassing email breach – though the article offered no evidence Sony has paid him a dime.  

Presumably the Post is targeting Sharpton because of his association with the Mayor: “Sharpton, who now boasts a close relationship with Obama and Mayor de Blasio, is in a stronger negotiating position than ever.”  Yet the main example cited in the article happened years ago, during the Bloomberg administration:

In 2008, Plainfield Asset Management, a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund, made a $500,000 contribution to New York nonprofit Education Reform Now. That money was immediately funneled to the National Action Network [Sharpton’s organization].

The donation raised eyebrows. Although the money was ostensibly to support NAN’s efforts to bring “educational equality,” it also came at a time that Plainfield was trying to get a lucrative gambling deal in New York.

Plainfield had a $250 million stake in Capital Play, a group trying to secure a license to run the coming racino at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Capital Play employed a lobbyist named Charlie King, who also was the acting executive director of NAN.

Left out of this account is the most interesting part of the story.  It's not just that the money for Sharpton was ostensibly for “equity” and funneled through Education Reform Now, the non-profit arm of Joe William’s pro-charter Democrats for Education Reform. The larger context is that ERN was merely a pass-through, and the money was directed to Sharpton through the Education Equity Project, founded by then-Chancellor Joel Klein, in exchange for Sharpton agreeing  to co-chair the group and adopt Klein’s aggressive anti-teacher, pro-charter stance.  Juan Gonzalez extensively reported the tangled story of how these funds went to benefit Sharpton in 2009, and how they helped him stay out of jail when he owed millions in taxes to the IRS.  

Also left out of the Post article is how Bloomberg, the Gates and Broad Foundations also put big money into EEP to Sharpton's benefit, though the DOE flack, David Cantor denied any involvement of either Bloomberg or Gates in emails he sent to our NYC Ed list serv, when I speculated about the involvement of both.  Perhaps he was lied to as well.  See my timeline of events here. In fact, Sharpton’s organization directly received a big portion of the $250,000 donation Mayor Bloomberg gave EEP, the day Bloomberg announced he would try to overturn term limits.  As a result, Sharpton never said a word against Bloomberg’s successful coup. 

Despite big infusions of cash and the coupling of Klein and Sharpton, EEP didn’t last long.  It held a  rally in DC on MLK day in January of 2009, at which Sharpton spoke.  After joining forces with Newt Gingrich, he and Klein met with President Obama.  The organization folded in 2011 when it merged with the similar corporate reform group, Stand For Children.  Sharpton had already left EEP by then, replaced by two Gates grantees, United Negro College Fund President Michael Lomax, and Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza. 

Perhaps the Post reporter's omissions are understandable, given that Klein now works for the Post’s owner, Rupert Murdoch, who is also a member of the Billionaire’s Boys Club, pushing for more charters along with his old friend and ally Bloomberg.  But the story should have been told nonetheless. In his new memoir, I highly doubt  Klein explains the full circumstances surrounding his cynical and mutually exploitative partnership with Sharpton.  I certainly didn't read this mentioned in any of the reviews.

How DFER and the charter lobby hijacked our politicians, who are allowing them to hijack our public schools in an "inside job"

Today, hundreds of parents and teachers stood in the rain, protesting the first day of Camp Philos conclave, at the aptly named Whiteface Lodge.  This shindig was organized by Democrats for Education Reform, with Governor Cuomo the honorary “host” for a meeting of deep-pocketed hedge funders and other financiers who support charter expansion, test based accountability, and other privatization schemes. 

Though at the last minute Cuomo cancelled his plans to attend, presumably because of the protests, several  bloggers have written about how ridiculous and insulting is DFER’s spiel, comparing this meeting to the “philosopher’s retreat” that took place in the 19th century between Ralph Waldo Emerson, Russell Lowell, and Horatio Woodman.  While the website says that the nation’s “thought leaders in education reform” will be there, instead they cite M. Night Shmayalan, movie director, and others of a less luminary stature.  Check out the inspired critiques of Prof. Daniel Katz and teacher Patrick Walsh.

The schedule for the gathering features panels with absurd names like  “Rocketships, Klingons and Tribbles: Charters' Course to Where No Schools Have Gone Before” and “Adequacy, Fairness and Equity: School Finance in the Age of Austerity” – a fitting discussion since Gov. Cuomo has made sure that NY public school funding is neither adequate nor equitable, and is instead steering more funds into the charter schools backed by his hedge fund contributors.  

In the latest state budget, Cuomo engineered one of the biggest corporate giveaways in history – to require NYC provide free public space to all new or expanded charters going forward or pay for their private space.   This is despite the fact that NYC already has the most overcrowded schools in the state – and the most expensive real estate.  No doubt Cuomo’s generosity on their behalf (while making NYC taxpayers foot the bill) and his willingness to host this shindig was influenced by the fact that DFER has given him at least $65,000 since 2010. DFER board members have also given him another $100,000, including those who also serve on charter boards like Success Academy, which will profit the most from the new law.   

Mayor de Blasio was re-elected overwhelmingly on the need for a moratorium on co-locations and charging charter schools rent.  But when he reversed three of the decisions pushed through in the last months of the Bloomberg administration, to give Success Academy free space in already public school overcrowded buildings – decisions made by Deputy Marc Sternberg just weeks before he left to work for the Walton Foundation, which helps fund these charters, the charter lobby went mad.   

Then, the Walton Foundation as well as some of these same hedgefunders helped pay for a $5 million ad campaign to push them through.  Because of the new law, the DOE is now being forced to rent three parochial schools for Success Academy charters, and pay for renovations to suit the specifications of their CEO, Eva Moskowitz. Yet the Success chain has more than $30 million in assets and raised more than $7.5 million in one night a couple of weeks ago, with headliners like Jeb Bush and Campbell Brown, and lots of Wall Street financiers like Dan Loeb, as well as  Erik Prince, the disgraced former owner of the mercenary company Blackwater in attendance.  

At this event, Eva Moskowitz, the CEO of the Success chain made the risible claim her schools had “faced an existential threat to our existence" and then praised Cuomo for his support of "the most historic package of pro-charter legislation not only that New York State has ever seen but, I would argue, the country has ever seen."  The latter claim is indeed true.  Now she is engaged in yet another fundraiser to raise more, a dubious scheme with the trading company Jefferies, in which “Participating asset managers will pay Jefferies an ordinary commission expense which would not be treated as a charitable donation. Jefferies will match the designated net commission revenue with a charitable donation to Success subject to a tax deduction.” 

How did this happen?  How did our electeds of both parties enable corporate interests to hijack our public schools?  Today, in honor of the Camp Philos conclave, a new website was born called Democrats in Name only For Education Reform, outlining all the connections between DFER and various right-wing and Republican groups such as the organizations run by the Koch brothers and Betsy Devos.  The truth, though, is that DFER has been amazingly successful in hijacking Democratic Party officials as well, through an “inside job”, as DFER founder and hedgefunder Whitney Tilson put it.   

In a self-financed movie called “A Right Denied,” Tilson described how he learned from John Walton of the Walmart billions, that they should focus on the Democrats because Walton and company had already successfully persuaded GOP politicians to adopt his privatization ideology  via big cash donations to their party:

The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year,  that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…

So this is how we got here.  A small band of Wall St. billionaires decided to convert the Democratic party to the Republican party, at least on education -- and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams – or our worst nightmares. And now we have electeds of both parties who are intent on helping them engineer a hostile takeover of our public schools, which has nothing to do with parent choice but the choice of these plutocrats.  Their plans to do will be facilitated in NYC, unless this depraved law requiring the inequitable giveaway of public space to charters  is overturned.

Two leaked memos showing how desperate corporate reformers are to retain failed status quo policies after the election

Two leaked memos show how desperately the corporate reformers in the administration and in the private sector want the mayor's failed policies to be

retained after the mayoral election – despite the huge public disgust with the status quo.

The first is a  memo from the Parthenon group, available at the GothamSchools website; showing how the DOE is avidly trying to strategize as to how to keep the network structure in place, and prevent geographically-based district structure to be restored.  Nearly all the Democratic candidates have said the networks make no sense, and parents unanimously agree.  

To this end, DOE has hired Parthenon as consultants for $375,000, paid for by private funds.  FYI, Parthenon is also one of Gates Foundation’s favorite consulting companies, and it is quite possible they are footing the bill for initial phase of project.  

However, as GS notes: “A longer-term phase of the project that Parthenon pitched involves managing the implementation of its vision during the 2013-2014 school year. That phase would cost more than $400,000, but Polakow-Suransky said he anticipated that part of the project being completed in house.”  

This means that the DOE is prepared so spend half a million dollars to make sure this incoherent and pointless management structure remains in place past the elections – one that NO ONE likes, outside of Tweed and the PSO’s , which of course benefit from the steady revenue stream of taxpayer money. The fact that even the principals, who according to DOE are supposed to benefit from the system, detest the networks was evident when Quinn responded at the CSA forum that she was still considering keeping them in place, and was met with boos. 

I have spoken to network staff, who themselves say that they don’t think the system makes any sense and that the districts should be restored – especially as they have to spend most of their time driving from one part of the city to another, wasting time and contributing to global warming.

One of the projects envisioned in the Parthenon strategy to protect the network structure : “Internal communications: Increasing Principal support of the networks to bolster their defense of the aspects of the structure that are most valuable.” 

Expect statements of support to be released with principals pressured to sign on, especially those principals at New Visions schools. New Visions would dearly like to be kept on the gravy train and  was "caught" in 2007 (from another leaked memo) pressuring schools that they had started with Gates money to select them as their PSO. (h/t Lisa Donlan) 

Note also how in the Parthenon memo that conversations with "key stakeholders" exclude parents, teachers, and students. A better example of Bloomberg's oppressive reign of “Educrats first” is hard to imagine.  Why does DOE so intent on keeping the networks?  Going back to districts would allow the connection between neighborhoods, local electeds and schools to be strengthened, diminish their autocracy and their ability to close and privatize schools.  Some of the same thinking is at play in their last inning attempt to dezone elementary and middle schools in many districts throughout the city.

The other leaked memo, reported in Crain’s, from Joe Williams of Democrats for Education Reform, reveals that he doesn't think any of the GOP mayoral candidates  can win, and among the Democratic candidates, he believes that Thompson, Quinn, and Weiner could be expected to be charter-friendly and continue to co-locate charters in DOE buildings.  He asks his hedge fund supporters to “hedge” their bets, and “continue to quietly work with these candidates” behind the scenes.  Here is an excerpt; the full memo is below.

“What is worth noting… is how careful several of the candidates -- including Quinn and Thompson -- have attempted to play nicely with the UFT while not closing the door to being able to work with the education reform coalition later on down the road [what DFER calls the privatizers/hedge funders.]  There has been some serious parsing of words with regard to “moratoriums” on co-locations, for example, or allowing “community input” with regard to the same.  Without specifics, those comments and positions mean little.  The door has been left open to continued relationship-building here….

In the current field, both Quinn and Weiner appear to support co-locations and Thompson and deBlasio have offered adequately confusing responses on the issue….The key objective is …making sure that the run-off election is between Quinn and Someone Good, or at least Someone Not Bad…This hedge … is entirely do-able if we galvanize enough support behind this strategic deployment of effort….”

DFER memo by ahawkins8223

Say it Ain't So, Hakeem! Jeffries flip-flops on charters and school closings

Below is a press release from Mona Davids of the NYC Parents Union.  Just a few months ago, Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries from Brooklyn sponsored legislation in Albany that would require a one year moratorium on closing schools in NYC; he also opposed a charter co-location in his district.  Today, just hours after the Judge Feinman ruled that the school closings and co-locations could go forward, Jeffries co-authored an oped for the Daily News, along with AM Karim Camera, attacking the NAACP for suing to stop these same closings and co-locations. 

What happened? As the press release notes, Jeffries has recently been put on the candidate "hot-list"  by Democrats for Education Reform, a pro-charter group run by deep-pocketed hedge-fund operators, soliciting donations for his run for Congress.  As DFER puts it, Jeffries "has the potential to be a solid education reform vote in Washington. ...but he'll need to show a strong fundraising filing in order to make that decision."

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, July 22, 2011

Contact: Mona Davids, (917) 340-898

NYC Parents Union Sounds Off Against Charter School Industry's Political Influence Through Money

                            Hakeem Jeffries:  Another politician, another flip-flop

The New York City Parents Union is sounding the alarm against ambitious politicians seeking money from the charter school industry.  A few days ago, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio decided that co-locating charter schools with public schools was acceptable -- after standing with parents to oppose a co-location.  It is rumored that Mr. de Blasio wants to live in Gracie Mansion.

Now, a Daily News opinion piece has been co-authored by New York State Assemblymember Hakeem Jeffries regarding the co-location of charter schools and it has left the New York City Parents Union and parents in Mr. Jeffries' 57th Assembly District puzzled and very concerned.  It is rumored that Mr. Jeffries would like to go to Washington.

Mr. Jeffries' support of the charter industry's attacks on the public school parents, NAACP and the United Federation of Teachers lawsuit for challenging school closures and charter co-locations comes as a surprise, since Mr. Jeffries recently made impassioned remarks against a school closing and a co-location just this past February.

At a meeting of the Department of Education's Panel for Education Policy (PEP) on February 3, 2011, Assemblymember Jeffries opposed the closing of Middle School 571 and the co-location of a charter school within Public School 9 -- where MS 571 was already located.  Mr. Jeffries testified:   "Many of our schools remain separate and unequal".  At that time, parents and community members were impressed and grateful.

Specifically, in calling for a "time-out" for the Department of Education, Mr. Jeffries said:    "The Department of Education needs to be put on time out...They have refused to hear our voices, the school closure policy of the Department of Education is out of control.

 In a March NY Daily News interview, Mr. Jeffries said:  "The Department of Education has been on a school closure binge for the last several years without any meaningful evidence that this policy benefits students."

The NYC Parents Union and local parents are wondering what has happened to Mr. Jeffries and to Mr. de Blasio.  Mr. de Blasio is clearly desperate for campaign funds in pursuit of the Mayoralty and is hoping to hook big donors in the charter school field.  It would be most unfortunate if Mr. Jeffries thinks that his road to Congress needs to be paved with gold from the charter school money players hotlist  rather than with votes from the people in his Assembly District.

The NYC Parents Union is keeping score of politicians' behaviors and positions.  All elected officials will be held accountable if they choose to abandon their previous commitment to quality public education for all children.

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