"Democrats For Education Reform"

Follow the money:

http://www.dfer.org/list/about/board/




http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/article.asp?article=1468&cat=139

Democrats for Education Reform
A new grassroots lobbying group plans to shake up its party's positions on education
Justin Torres
June 19, 2007





http://www.dfer.org/list/about/staff/
http://www.dfer.org/2007/09/the_dfer_staff.php#more



Joe Williams

Articles in this list link back to phony education website hosted by three RW think tanks:
http://educationnext.org/

The Hoover Institution
http://www.hoover.org/

Program on Education Policy and Governance
Harvard University
http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/

Thomas Fordham Institute
http://www.edexcellence.net/template/index.cfm

Our Funders:

http://www.edexcellence.net/index.cfm/our-funders




http://edreform.blogspot.com/2010/03/speaking-of-union-hypocrisy-heres.html
(Whitney Tilson's blog)

Friday, March 19, 2010
Speaking of union hypocrisy, here’s a message from DFER’s Joe Williams:



O rly, Joe?

It's the new Us-Them!

:think:

the wholesale dismantling of the teachers' unions and the destruction of the public school system? There is no bottom to this tub...

This is no surprise to me at all, though I am very angry about it.

It's a plan no Republican would be bold enough to embark on.

Watch out, Social Secuirty and Medicare -- you're next. :scared:

Bush did as much damage as he could but he couldn't go there. Takes a Democrat to destroy a Democratic constituency.

k&r

I used to search these things out to find crap about Republicans. Looks like I'm going to get to stay in practice on the Dems.

omg...

http://edreform.blogspot.com/



http://www.2mminutes.com/films/a-right-denied.asp




I note that they left out the fact that he's a popular and well-known hedge fund manager too.
http://www.tilsonfunds.com/bio_w.html

Panels to be led by the Usual Suspects

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/new-education-documentary-featuring-whitney,1235375.shtml

Barf.



http://edreform.blogspot.com/2010/03/diane-ravitch-changed-her-mind-to-what.html
Whitney Tilson has a link on his website to this article praising it so this must be in line with his views:

Peter Murphy of New York Charter School Association makes this braindead statement:
http://blog.nycsa.org/2010/03/diane-ravitch-changed-her-mind-to-what.html



Oh yeah, gods forbid we should mention the elephant in the room. The poor kids in the poor communities are suffering from lack and want, but this is just a "golden oldie". I'm glad we have rich guys around to tell us that poverty is not really that big of a problem.

And who is the films producer? Some scrappy little indy production house called 2MM. Or so they'd like for you to think. Let's meet this intrepid fellow.


Call me Bob



He has an initiative on his website
http://www.2mminutes.com/petition/

Children 4 Change

Since we have a four paragraph limit here, I will only list four:

3. Pay For Performance - use rewards and incentives to keep talented teachers in the schools that need them the most and demonstrate we value their skills.

4. Recruit Best and Brightest to Teaching - support efforts to fast-track private sector professionals with advanced degrees into teaching and push for expansion of Teach For America.

5. Remove Poor Performing Teachers - challenge State and school districts to quickly remove ineffective teachers from the classroom. A child has only one chance at an education - they deserve the best teachers.

6. No Restrictions on Charter Schools - This means that school boards should not limit the number of charter schools; should allow charter schools to create their own rules regarding hiring, curriculum, tenure and unionization; and per student funding should be equal to that of other public schools within the same district. High-quality charter schools give children and parents the option to find the school that best fits their needs.

His blog:
http://2mm.typepad.com/usa/2010/03/teachers-unions-block-states-from-applying-for-race-to-the-top-funds.html

Article from 2007 from Elizabeth Green. I haven't checked yet, but I'm pretty sure it's the same Ms. Green who wrote the notorious NYT article we discussed here recently. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/how-new-generation-of-reformers-targets-democrats/55537/



What happens when the Charters turn into the Toyota of today? :(

And what happens when these rich guys get bored and take their toys and go home?

http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/article.asp?article=1616&cat=149

Patrick Byrne, son of Geico insurance rescuer John J. Byrne, today owns Overstock.com which I'm sure we've all heard of. He's a disciple of Milton Friedman and is a "venture philanthropist" in schools here and abroad. Here's him talking about what he did with a school in Calcutta.




Yeah, he really cares about them kids. edit to add: er, perhaps I wasn't clear, but abandoning this school when he got bored with it was probably really detrimental to the school and is what will probably happen in this country. This whole movement is founded on right wing principles by libertarian and conservative think tanks. I think that's stupid.

of some of the responses I hear now....



MR. BYRNE: Yes. I used to support a school for orphans and kids with physical disabilities in India. It had about 600 kids from the slums of Calcutta—as poor as you can get. All of the instruction was in English, and the students were performing at an amazingly high level. Well, soon enough, some middle-class families began to see that these poor kids from the slums were speaking better English than their children. Before you knew it, middle-class and even wealthy families were trying to get their kids into this school that was originally set up for the poorest of the poor.

Now, in India you need a special license to run a school that teaches in English. And what started happening? The government schools in Calcutta began putting pressure on the state bureaucrat who issues that license. They wanted him to revoke the license of the school I was funding because the parents in the government schools were starting to ask, “Why aren’t our kids getting as good an education?” Of course, the response of the government schools wasn’t to say, “How do we improve our schools?” It was, “Let’s take away their license.”

Thanks for posting! ;)


DEMOCRATS For Education Reform:
Statement of Principles

A first-rate system of public education is the cornerstone of a prosperous, free and just society, yet millions of American children today - particularly low-income and children of color - are trapped in persistently failing schools that are part of deeply dysfunctional school systems. These systems, once viewed romantically as avenues of opportunity for all, have become captive to powerful, entrenched interests that too often put the demands of adults before the educational needs of children. This perverse hierarchy of priorities is political, and thus requires a political response.

Both political parties have failed to address the tragic decline of our system of public education, but it is the Democratic Party - our party - which must question how we allowed ourselves to drift so far from our mission. Fighting on behalf of our nation's most vulnerable individuals is what our party is supposed to stand for.

Democrats for Education Reform aims to return the Democratic Party to its rightful place as a champion of children, first and foremost, in America's public education systems.

We support leaders in our party who have the courage to challenge a failing status quo and who believe that the severity of our nation's educational crisis demands that we tackle this problem using every possible tool at our disposal.

We believe that reforming broken public school systems cannot be accomplished by tinkering at the margins, but rather through bold and revolutionary leadership. This requires opening up the traditional top-down monopoly of most school systems and empowering all parents to access great schools for their children.

We know that decisive action today will benefit our children, our party and ultimately our nation.

http://www.dfer.org/about/principles/

What We Stand For

* We support policies which stimulate the creation of new, accountable public schools and which simultaneously close down failing schools
* We support mechanisms that allow parents to select excellent schools for their children, and where education dollars follow each child to their school.
* We support governance structures which hold leaders responsible, while giving them the tools to effectuate change. We believe in empowering mayors to lead urban school districts, so that they can be held accountable by the electorate.
* We support policies that allow school principals and their school communities to select their teams of educators, holding them accountable for student performance but allowing them flexibility to exercise sound, professional judgment.
* We support clearly-articulated national standards and expectations for core subject areas, while allowing states and local districts to determine how best to make sure that all students are reaching those standards.

This is from a year ago, but it seems even more significant this year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-vander-ark/eli-finally-won_b_174152.html



From the Perimeter Primate in 2007 about the Broad circus in my old hometown of Oakland, CA:
http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-broad-report.html





"Temporary Opportunity"?? Nice language! Shitty way to refer to takeover of the schools in a struggling community

edit to add: link to PP's analysis of the Joe William's "report" on the Oakland Broad Experiment--

http://perimeterprimate.blogspot.com/2009/02/national-model-or-temporary-opportunity.html



Appalling.

Fantastic finds here! So when do we hit the streets, general teachers' strike and rally? on edit, K&R of course!!!

This is all out war. :grr:

seem willing to wait...I'm on the constant lookout!

they will continue to flock to colleges and universities to get certified.

But eventually the college graduate requirement will be gone, and teachers will be nothing but "technicians" making minimum wage and won't even need college.

People need to AVOID teaching, period.

scaife. if you seem any of the scaife foundations funding something, bradley will usually be there too.

:shrug:

At the time I wasn't sure if I had tinfoil on about this stuff, but they do seem to be what I feared. They've been oddly busy at work in (big surprise) Milwaukee:

http://blogs.artvoice.com/avdaily/2010/05/03/education-reform-nows-hedge-fund-buddies/

Of course he is.

http://www.benzinga.com/trading-ideas/long-ideas/10/06/321298/whitney-tilson-says-he-is-long-bp-shares-bp#

"Hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson said that he is long BP (NYSE: BP) shares, saying that the stock is "just too cheap" at this point. He said that this is not a short term position for his firm, T2 Partners, and he fully expects for the BP headlines to be terrible for some time to come. He said that his long BP position amounts to only about 4% of his portfolio, which is a smaller percentage than many of his other holdings.

Tilson said that he does not expect for BP's dividend to be cut, citing the fact that such a development would be detrimental to U.K. pensioners and retirees. He said he did not think that either the U.S. or U.K governments will take the step of forcing the company to cut the dividend at the expense of shareholders. The hedge fund manager said that BP is one of the most profitable companies in the world, and that while the oil spill was inexcusable, he thinks that the price of BP is very compelling at current levels."


I feel like this completes some circle. Ruining education is just his hobby. Rolling the dice on the stocks of the country's biggest disaster is really what he gets up in the morning for. Oh wait! He JUST CARES SO MUCH!!!1111

''I am sorry. Raise my taxes.''

and maybe, ''Your honor, I plead guilty and request the maximum sentence.''