How Eli Broad alumni are greatly involved in the corporate takeover of education.

Eli Broad's Superintendents Academy is paying big dividends for the corporate takeover of American education and the crushing of the teaching profession. In Kansas City a plan developed by Broad's lawyers and Broad Alum, John Covington, will close half of Kansas City Schools with large numbers of corporate charter replacements.

The Kansas City School Board was enthused when they hired John Covington (Broad Class of '08) as Superintendent. So was the Kansas City Star's Editorial Board:

"Covington earned good reviews for his work as superintendent of Pueblo City Schools in Colorado over the last three years. He also is a 2008 graduate of the Los Angeles-based Broad Superintendents Academy, a program aimed at improving education in urban school districts.

School Board President Marilyn Simmons said the Broad experience, which includes continuing support and advice, was a plus for Covington.

Yes, that continuing support and advice from Eli and the Boys. Now with half the schools empty by this coming Fall, they will be ripe pickings for the property-hungry corporate welfare charters that will likely kill off most of the remaining public schools. The Board voted 5-4 to support the Broad plan to pull the Kansas City Public Schools into the bath tub for drowning.

And in Detroit, Broad star, Robert Bobb, has a plan developed by the Skillman Foundation, and dismantling of the public system is underway. The public money will continue, of course, even though public voice or public oversight will be a thing of the past.

- The Detroit Board of Education and community groups say private foundations are paying the head of the city's ailing public school system $145,000 a year in exchange for his support of charter schools - a glaring conflict of interest. The board says that Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager of Detroit Public Schools, is violating Michigan laws and its constitution by accepting the privately funded portion of his $425,000 annual salary.

Bobb is the only defendant in the complaint in Wayne County Court, Detroit. The board, two community groups and 26 people say the Los Angeles-based Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, which "aggressively promotes the spread of charter schools nationwide," pays Bobb $56,000, with the remaining $89,000 coming from "undisclosed private sources. Last year Bobb made $84,000 in such "supplemental compensation."

As proof that the Broad Foundation expects something for its money, the plaintiffs cite a 2009 Wall Street Journal article in which Eli Broad said he was in the "venture philanthropy business."

"Because Bobb has sole and virtually unreviewable control over the $1.4 billion DPS budget, it is especially dangerous to allow the Broad Foundation and similar 'venture philanthropists' to fund one-third of his salary," the complaint states.

The Broad Foundation disagrees. The foundation gave Bobb the money at the request of Gov. Jennifer Granholm, and it "comes without requirement or restriction," Broad spokeswoman Erica Lepping said in an e-mail.

If the Broad Foundation plants one of its elements in a school district, it is highly likely they will plant another one along with it, so their influence is maximized.

For instance, an element might be:
- The presence of a Broad-trained superintendent
- The placement of Broad Residents into important central office positions
- An "invitation" to participate in a program spawned by the Foundation (such as CRSS's Reform Governance in Action program)
- Offering to provide the district with a free "Performance Management Diagnostic and Planning" experience

The Broad Foundation likes to infiltrate its targets on multiple levels so it can manipulate a wider field and cause the greatest amount of disruption. Venture edu-philanthropists like Gates and Broad proudly call this invasive and destabilizing strategy "investing in a disruptive force." To these billionaires and their henchmen, causing massive disruption in communities across the nation is not a big deal.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM 2002 PRESS RELEASES, ETC.:

Participants in the academy will not need to leave their current jobs immediately. They will attend trainings for a number of weekends over a ten-month period in locations across the country. Fellowships, including tuition, travel and all program-related expenses, will be fully covered by The Broad Center. At the end of the training, The Broad Center will help place participants in urban school districts as administrators and superintendents.

The Fellows received guidance from leaders in business, education and the non-profit sectors. Faculty at the Academy included:

* Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education
* Henry Cisneros, CEO, American CityVista
* William Cox, Managing Director, 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, 2WAY Corporation Hugh B. Price, President and CEO, National Urban League
* Paul Ruiz, Principal Partner, Education Trust
* Adam Urbanski, Director, Teacher Union Reform Network
* Randi Weingarten, President, United Federation of Teachers

Everyone who has followed Weingarten's ascendancy to her position as AFT President knew that she had been the pick of the Oligarchs. Her earlier sweet talk about gutting the teaching profession with pay per score plans had earned her the Business Roundtable's seal of approval, and now she is returning the favor by shifting her tepid endorsement of weakening ethical teaching into a full-blown advocacy for busting her own union. Randi Weingarten should be recalled by the AFT membership, and she should be put out to pasture with the other nags.

At a time when the greed merchants and uncharged felons of Wall Street burrow into the system once more to plan another financial catastrophe a few years hence, Obama's man in charge of deciding how many millions the CEO criminals should get has just been subcontracted out by Weingarten to create a plan to fire teachers for their "misconduct." The scourge of the nation--teacher misconduct!! Misconduct will surely include refusing to go along with educational genocide that is occurring in urban schools, where cognitive decapitation in segregated environments is the order of the day for the poor and the brown.