Connecting the Dots: How the heirs of the Walmart fortune fuel the charter school movement

http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/CTDWalton.pdf


p. 4:

In 2004, the Walton foundation gave $66 million to education, mostly to charter & other "choice" initiatives.


p. 5:

It spent $150+ million "incubating 600 charter schools" since 1998.


It's developed a network of initiatives to promote & support charter growth:

p. 6:

Funds organizations that manage or develop networks of charter schools under brand names: KIPP, Achievement First, Aspire Public Schools, Leadership Public Schools, Lighthouse Academies, Propel Schools.

p. 6:

Funds intermediaries that invest in management co's, e.g. NewSchools Venture Fund, “venture philanthropy” which itself funded Aspire, Lighthouse, Green Dot Public Schools, High Tech High, Partnership to Uplift Communities.

p. 6:

Founded & financed the Charter School Growth Fund, a nonprofit seeking to assemble $100 million to develop networks of charter schools.

p. 7:

Funds support organizations, e.g. California's Charter Schools Association & similar organizations in Colorado, Florida, New York, and Illinois.

"Walton hasn’t hesitated to influence the organizations it has helped to create. The foundation,
for example, has required state-level charter-support organizations to engage in strategic planning as a condition of Walton financial support, and the planning often has been facilitated by consultants hired by the foundation.

In California, Walton has shaped the nature of statewide charter school support. There were two statewide charter support organizations in the late 1990s, a membership association and a university-based Charter Schools Development Center (CSDC)....the new Walton-backed association is by far the more influential voice for charters in the state today."


p. 8:

Builds a national charter school infrastructure, e.g. funding the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a research and advocacy group...

p. 8:

Funds leadership, e.g. "Building Excellent Schools (BES)", which recruits and trains “fellows” to start charter schools in Massachusetts, Cleveland, Denver, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, New York City, and Washington,

Fund New Leaders for New Schools (NLNS), which "cultivates" administrators for traditional public schools and charters.

p. 8:

Funds facilities via its Educational Facilities Financing Center.

p. 8:

Funds charter school authorizing bodies: $2.5 million to the National Association of
Charter School Authorizers (NACSA).

p. 8:

Funds advocacy: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the national “voice” of the movement, which lobbys for pro-charter policies & responds to critics.

Choice advocates more generally, e.g. Black Alliance for Educational Options, Center for Education Reform.

Pro-charter political initiatives and other charter advocacy organizations; e.g EdVoice, Washington State charter initiative.


p. 9:

Funds pro-charter research: e.g. $500K/yr to the University of Washington’s Center on
Reinventing Public Education, an education research center sympathetic to charter schools, for the National Charter School Research Project; web rating sites, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes.



Why do rich people & slave-wage, manufacturing-exporting pirates like Walmart get to direct US Education policy?

Oh, that's right: they own the country, we are their livestock, to be herded into pens of their devising.

http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/CTDWalton.pdf

Thanks for this.

Posting so I can find it tomorrow and to K and R.

She was caught and was forced to give back her degree from USC.

her private secondary schools "failed" to prepare her for college, it seems.

The charter school movement has made tremendous strides with funding from the Walton Foundation. Why is that a bad thing? Or am I missing something here? Charter schools ARE public schools, so I don't understand the consternation.

When private industry gets involved, it is no longer "public" on the most fundamental and critical level.

I'll have to use the google to find out the percentage. But thanks for your comments, I agree that education shouldn't be based on profit motives.

Vouchers, charter schools, outsourced food service, corporate sponsored educational materials, merit pay - all part of a comprehensive and relentlessly pursued agenda by the right wingers to destroy public education. If we are "open" to their "ideas," rather than presenting an equally comprehensive and powerful front in defense of public education, that allows them to get a foot in the door.

The "it is still kinda sorta public education" arguments we are hearing now from Democrats miss the point. We waffle, they attack relentlessly. This happening in all areas. The Republicans have a definitive agenda and pursue it aggressively, while we are "open to ideas" and bicker with each other, and endlessly compromise and back down.

Every progressive reform from the last 100 years or more is under assault from the right wingers, and they have rolled most of it back. Now they are going after our teachers and our children. It is time to draw the line and fight back. Otherwise, let's spare everybody a lot of grief and stop pretending to be anything but a sort of "progressive-y" auxiliary wing of the Republican party.

Public education. Social Security. Labor unions. Regulation. Public infrastructure. Progressive taxation. If we keep caving on these, I can't see what claim we have to the name "Democrat" any more, nor what it means to be a Democrat.


...

They can be nice (tax-free) vehicles to channel money into high salaries, (for-profit) business contracts or management fees to one's friends, relatives, etc.

Why is walmart pushing & funding charters & why do they get to direct educational policy?

Kaiser is non-profit and fucks us over daily. Many politician's family members start up non-profits to as a conduit to pocket public funds. Non-profits are private institutions. Many of them are corporations.

Non-profit does not mean that there is not a lot of money to be made.

financed an ECO (Electioneering Communications Organization) called "All Children Matter" to sabotage our Democratic primary process by putting out POSITIVE mail pieces on Democrats they perceived to be the easiest to beat in the General - we caught them because the ads all used the same graphics and nearly identical copy.

Of course their idea was to create a pushover Dem to beat in the primary but it didn't work!

:rofl:

Their ECO is all about home schooling, school vouchers and privatizing the schools - of course their fluff pieces didn't say anything about that to the Democratic voters OR that the people paying for it were a bunch of uber-righty fundy Republicans.

ECO's need to be outlawed.

Doug D.

Including some supposedly liberal foundations.

dupe

BTW, do you have a link to the story about this?