Eli Broad -- stick to golf

Teacher retirement funds being crushed

“Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams, on Eli Broad: “He thinks our schools can learn a lot from a well-run business and all it takes is leadership from the top down.”

Eli Broad, as in Ed in '08, the Broad Foundation, and the Broad Prize, played a big role in the collapse of AIG. But he, along with venture philanthropist Bill Gates, might still be the most powerful force currently pushing the so-called business model on public schools.

Broad helped negotiate some of the biggest pay and severance packages for failed AIG CEOs, in history. This should give educators plenty of food for thought about the hypocrisy of the Broad/Gates push for merit pay as part of business-model reform. If merit pay is so great, why didn't it begin with AIG?

The AIG collapse may also cause school boards to think twice about the top-down leadership model being pushed at Broad's own Superintendent's Academy, which offers special fellowships for military officers interested in running school districts. We all should consider the unwarranted influence these giant venture philanthropists are having over public education in general.

Broad co-founded Kaufman & Broad and later acquired Sun Life Insurance (renamed SunAmerica) in 1971 and sold the company to investment bank AIG in 1998 for $18 billion. Instead of retiring on his billions, Broad saw an opportunity to make billions more in the retirement business as millions of the baby-boom generation approached retirement age. As a director of AIG Retirement (VALIC), he was able to keep one foot in real estate and one foot in retirement—two legs planted deep into the sub-prime mortgage scandal.

To give you an example of what the AIG collapse will mean for teachers, in California alone, teacher retirement funds held more than 20 million shares of tumbling AIG stock. Teachers in Louisiana, California and other states, have settled suits against AIG trying to recover a portion of their losses. But many teachers are now going to have to rethink their retirement plans. In Georgia, the teachers retirement fund took a $180 million loss yesterday, when they were forced to dump 3.5 million shares of AIG from their portfolio.

As my teacher/brother Fred points out in yesterday’s comments section, most Illinois teachers aren’t familiar with either AIG or Eli Broad.

But when I mentioned VALIC, their eyes opened wide. VALIC is one of the 10 district approved annuity companies. Many of our teachers have their entire pensions in VALIC and VALIC is owned by AIG. Suddenly Wall Street didn't seem so far away.

Broad smiles and says: “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life at a country club playing golf. I want to do something that makes a difference and I think trying to improve public education will make a big difference.”

Mr. Broad, with all due respect, you’ve already “made a difference.” Golf’s not such a bad game.

McCain campaign too dirty for KARL ROVE!

"McCain has gone, in some of his ads, similarly gone one step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100% truth test."—Karl Rove on Fox News

Now the media is confirming what my insider Republican friend, Sid told me 2 weeks ago—that Karl Rove had a falling out with Steve Schmidt over the campaign’s selection of SarahPalin.. “Believe it or not”, said Sid, “Schmidt and the boys have moved to the right of their mentor”. When Rove has to speak out publicly to save his own reputation, you know things have gotten low.

“Maverick” did flip-flop on killing the DOE

Somebody needs to start fact-checking Edweek’s fact-checker. Alyson Klein tries to play gotcha with the Obama campaign for running an ad which says: McCain, “even proposed abolishing the Department of Education.”

Fact-checker Klein can’t find anything false about the statement, but is still critical because the information in the ad (like McCain, strike that) is “fairly old.” McCain did advocate abolishing the department back in 1999 (that’s no so long ago, Alyson) but then flip-flopped when the Republicans took over the department. By 2001, McCain like Bush/Cheney and the rest of the neo-cons, dropped their liquidation demand after they figured out that the DOE was potentially a multi-billion-dollar cash cow. Over the past two Bush administrations, they were able to funnel billions to their favorite contractors, after-school programs, and school management companies. Suddenly McCain and his friends became big fans of the DOE, No Child Left Behind, and a scandalized $4-billion Reading First program.

So the Obama ad was completely factual. It’s problem was, it didn’t go far enough in exposing “Maverick” McCain’s lack of principles and his no-so-Maverick, following-the-party-line mentality.

Did Noonan say "it's over?" -- She meant, "Rover"

Report from my friend Sid at the RNC:

While Palin was speaking, the entire crowd was chanting, “DRILL BABY, DRILL!”

Scary. In fact, anytime you have thousands of white conservatives chanting anything in unison, it’s pretty scary.

“They went for this political bullshit…”

Sid says that his two friends, Peggy Noonan and consultant Mike Murphy, being caught off camera dumping on the Palin pick, should confirm what he’s been telling me about widening splits in the campaign and the fact that Alaskan separatist Palin was a last-minute, poorly-vetted desperation pick. “It’s over,” carped Noonan.

Conservative WSJ columnist Noonan sits on the board of the Manhattan Institute, as in Sol Stern and the racist Bell Curve theorists. She was one of the main attack dogs used against Hillary Clinton. She’s also Dick Cheney’s biggest fan and is buddies with Karl Rove (even sent him an email once, suggesting strategies for Bush butt-covering around the Pat Tillman killing).

Sid confirms that Rove hated the Palin pick and Noonan seconds that emotion even though in her WSJ column, the two-faced Noonan writes that Palin , "could become a transformative political presence."

Noonan off camera:

"The most qualified? No. I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives," she said. "Every time the Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it."

She tries to recover here, stumbling and bumbling. Did I say "over?" I meant, "Rover." You see, I was calling my dog, Rover.

How resolute was my desk?

I think that each and every teacher should have a resolute desk, just like the President. It should be written into the union contract. In his speech to the RNC the other night, Bush said:

“I know what it takes to be president. In these past eight years, I’ve sat at the Resolute Desk and reviewed the daily intelligence briefings, the threat assessments, and the reports from our commanders on the front lines.

To which Politics, Baseball and Cant responds:

I say: go for the gusto. Live in the Resolute House and take orders from Unbending Dick. Send them down to the aides in the Unwavering Wing. Fly on Staunch One and go to bed with the Unyielding Missus. Renaming only your desk makes you seem like you’re weak on home decoration. What a wussy.

Why wait?

San Antonio schools have an answer for increased student truancy. No it’s not making schools more interesting, smaller, more personalized, or any of that touchy-feely stuff. Rather, it’s making students wear ankle bracelets that emit GPS signals when they are absent. As one local official tells AP:

"We are at a critical point in our time where we can either educate or incarcerate," Penn said, linking truancy with juvenile delinquency and later criminal activity. "We can teach them now or run the risk of possible incarceration later on in life.”

By all means, incarcerate them now. Why wait?

Too poor to play

While Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan and board president, Rufus Williams continue to oppose coordinated actions on Sept. 4th which would call attention to inequitable funding for schools, inner-city students are paying the price. Duncan and Williams argue that the kids shouldn’t be involved in the struggle. But, 8 years into the district’s Renaissance 2010 initiative, these same students still sit in under-resourced schools and, according to the Sun-Times, are “too poor to play.”

The typical affluent school featured far more phys ed than the one period a week usually found at the impoverished schools. And both art and music were common at advantaged schools, while impoverished ones mostly offered art and no music...

Rove's Hand

While Bush hatchet-man, Karl Rove denies having a direct role in John McCain's campaign, his finger prints are all over it, especially since the hiring of Rove attack dog Steve Schmidt. Those prints include racist Muslim-baiting (see the PUMA interview with Chris Matthews below) and 50's-style McCarthyism and Swift Boating of Obama/Bill Ayers).

But tomorrow, we will see just how influential Rove is when McCain announces his VP pick. McCain and many of his biggest campaign donors want Lieberman. But Rove hates Lieberman and is closest to Romney. My prediction? I''ll bet on Rove/Romney.

Rove/McCain PUMAs to Matthews...

"I'm not going to tell you. So nah nah!"

Quotables

Shakin' his money maker

When Mitt Romney says that it was "hard work" that got John McCain all those houses that he got for marrying Cindy Hensley, what does he mean exactly? --Josh Marshall at TPM

From the Veep

"A child is more then a test score. So how can you expect our students to build a new economy if all they are doing is filling out bubbles? How can you expect them to think critically if all we are doing is testing their ability to memorize things?" --Joe Biden

Rothstein saw it in Park Ridge first…

PREAPrez shares some history as he welcomes teachers back to school.

The view from USA Today

Have Karl Rove’s boys, now running the McCain campaign, succeeded in making this election revolve around Obama’s “relationship” with Chicago educator and school-reform leader Bill Ayers? Probably not. But reading the front page of USA Today would certainly make one wonder. Here's some of the best quotes:

Tom Hayden, an anti-war activist who met Ayers in the 1960s and later was elected to the California Legislature, says Ayers' past should be forgiven:

"I have met and like John McCain, but he bombed, and presumably killed, many people in a war I opposed," Hayden says. "If I can set all that aside, I would hope that Americans will accept" that Ayers has changed, too.

McCain asked after April's debate how Obama can "countenance someone who was engaged in bombings." In May, McCain said his campaign "is not going to be about" Ayers nor other Obama associates.

LOL! I wonder who he’s referring to?

For a great analysis of the McCain/Rove Swift Boating campaign, complete with flow chart, see Media Matters Action Network.

Klein knows what's best to read

The chancellor is basing the district’s new reading program on the assumption that he—not the teachers-- knows what’s best. Forcing E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge program on schools will further enable Klein to teacher-proof the curriculum.

Core Knowledge will soon replace the BalancedLiteracy reading program which taps into student interest and which is largely responsible to recent increases in reading scores, claimed by Klein (disputed by many others). Teachers are getting the Reading First agenda without the scandal-ridden Reading First program. My assumption is that this change has little to do with the teaching of reading and much more to do with Ownership Society politics that have become hallmarks of the Bloombert/Klein era. Here he’s funneling $24 million in contracts to Hirsch’s consulting group for a pilot program.

Rove dredges up Floyd Brown, the Willie Horton guy

Karl Rove is pulling out all stops in his racist, slime campaign against Barack Obama. Rove and McCain have enlisted Floyd Brown, the man behind the racist 1988 Willie Horton ads. Brown’s latest video blames Obama for Chicago’s murder rate and according to the Tribune, plays on people's fears about race and crime. “Twenty years later, the racial dynamic remains,” says the Trib.

When he’s right—he’s right

Pat Buchanan is a shade to the right of Attila the Hun. But when he’s right, he’s right. He was right in bashing modern-day Attilas, Bush/Cheney for invading Iraq. He’s right this time in exposing Bush/Cheney/McCain for neo-con hypocrisy and blundering in the Russia/Georgia conflict. Can the world take another four years of the neo-cons in power?

Trigger-happy

Today’s NYT reveals McCain as a trigger-happy war monger who was not only ahead of the other neo-cons in pushing us into the war in Iraq, but was also hot to invade Syria and Iran as well, in the days immediately following 9/11.

Edwards? What about McCain?

From Politico:

"His marital history has been duly recorded," said Caldwell, referring to McCain, "and as recently as yesterday I think it is, our pastor from Saddleback, Rick Warren indicated that he would not feel comfortable voting for an adulterer and I don't know exactly to whom he was referring but I think the data speaks for itself, and again, at the end of the day, and I really appreciate you raising this because, at the end of the day again I think the American public deserves full revelation of the candidate's character and competency.

He’s back…

Notice how the tone of the campaign is rapidly changing? Yesterday’s NYT editorial explains why we’re back on the “Low Road Express.”

*****

Look who’s endorsing McCain’s education plan

Surprise, surprise! It’s the WSJ. But Phillisa Cramer, posting on her new Gotham Schools blog can't help buy be surprised by one part of their endorsement:

I was surprised to see that its editorial suggested that McCain cite Edison schools’ performance in Philadelphia as an example of a successful privately-run alternative to public schools — because no one, not even Edison’s leaders, disputes the company’s failure.

Can muscle philanthropy be “democratized?”

In chapter 4 of our book, we describe the role of the new muscle philanthropists. Now, Christine Ahn, senior fellow at the Korea Policy Institute and member of NCRP's board, calls on social- justice activists to engage the foundations more than we are doing now. But her exposes can’t make the big top-down muscle foundations very happy.

So let’s think about the super-rich and the tax benefits they get. In 2006, Warren Buffet donated $30 million to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Three trustees—Bill, Melinda and Mr. Buffett—along with Bill Senior and now the new President of the Foundation—will decide how to allocate $3 billion-plus that the foundation is required to payout each year (Plus because Buffet mandated that his funds be spent down). Mr. Buffet gets huge tax write-offs, the Gates Foundation a huge infusion, and the public? We get to see how the Gates Foundation will invest in solving social problems.

Well worth the read.

1,000 educators in Ky.—GONE!

The state of Kentucky, which only a decade ago was on the cutting edge of school reform, is now on a race to the bottom with budget cuts now pushing nearly 1,000 teachers and staff out of their jobs.

In Pulaski County, the budget crunch will mean larger class sizes. Somerset Independent Schools, which has 1,460 students in three schools, cut 16 teachers and district staff. As a result, the average class size will increase from 20 to 28 students, said Superintendent Teresa Wallace.

So much for reform.