Crisis and/of Leadership

"Don’t follow leaders
 Watch the parkin’ meters"
-- Robert Zimmerman

In '65, a prophetic Dylan must have had vision of Chicago which included Mayor Daley's notorious parking meter deal. But it's the first line that should generate the most reflection on our part.

Joshua Rothman might well be describing today's corporate-style school reformers when he writes in the New Yorker:

People who fetishize leadership sometimes find themselves longing for crisis. They yearn for emergency, dreaming of a doomsday to be narrowly averted...

...Elizabeth Samet writes, in the introduction to “Leadership: Essential Writings by Our Greatest Thinkers” (Norton). “If we live in a world of crisis, we also live in a world that romanticizes crisis—that finds in it fodder for an addiction to the twenty-four-hour news cycle, multiple information streams, and constant stimulation.” 

Many of today’s challenges are too complex to yield to the exercise of leadership alone. Even so, we are inclined to see the problems of the present in terms of crises and leaders.

She quotes John Adams, who suggested, in a letter to a friend, that there was something both undemocratic and unwise in the lionization of leadership. The country won't improve, Adams wrote, until the people begin to "consider themselves as the fountain of power."

Plenty to think about here, especially when the two leading candidates for president are campaigning on the promise that they and only they, have the power to "make deals" (Trump) or "get things done" (Clinton). Here in Chicago, we have institutionalized the lionization of leadership by giving the mayor autocratic power over our public schools.

It also brings to mind power philanthropists, like Gates, Broad, and Walton, who hide their wealth in huge tax-exempt foundations and leverage it to erode and override public space and public decision making.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Justice Sonia Sotomayor's brilliant dissent   

“In my colleagues’ view, examining the racial impact of legislation only perpetuates racial discrimination. This refusal to accept the stark reality that race matters is regrettable...The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”  -- Schuette v. BAMN

Civil rights attorney Shanta Driver

“This is a racist decision that takes us back to an era of state’s rights...The old Jim Crow [law] is now the new Jim Crow.” -- FOX News

John Cassidy

Did you see the statement from President Obama criticizing Tuesday’s SCOTUS decision upholding a Michigan ban on race-based college admissions? No, neither did I. (White House spokesman Jay Carney said the President had no immediate comment.) -- New Yorker

Mokoto Rich

In effect, Walton has subsidized an entire charter school system in the nation’s capital, helping to fuel enrollment growth so that close to half of all public school students in the city now attend charters, which receive taxpayer dollars but are privately operated. -- NYT: "A Walmart Fortune, Spreading Charter Schools"

Economist Gordon Lafer

"The fact that what's considered the gold standard for poor students in Milwaukee is considered unacceptable for kids in the suburbs is just wrong."  -- Public School Shakedown

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Quotes are the actual fabric with which the mind weaves: internalizing them, but also turning them inside out, quarreling with them, adding to them, wandering through their architecture as if a single sentence were an expansible labyrinthine space. -- We Are What We Quote, Geoffrey O’Brien

New York Times Editorial

The justices heard oral argument on the Shelby County case last Wednesday. This week’s events in Alabama should remind them of the enormous cost many Americans have paid to win the right to vote, and why that remains under persistent threat and must be defended. -- Bloody Sunday, Revisited

Percy Pittman

Percy Pittman, McComb, Mississippi

Asked what he thought about people’s claims that racially motivated politics were completely a thing of the past in the South, Mr. Pittman hesitated for a moment. “I think they’re full of it,” he said. -- New York Times

Peter Dreier, Author

 If we are serious about the future of our children, we must ask: why are the Waltons, a largely out-of-state family with no ties to Los Angeles’ children and little background in education, intent on turning our communities’ educational choices into a junior version of the cut-throat, profiteering corporate world? -- Bill Moyers' blog

Tom Torlakson, California, Supt. of Public Instruction

 "I do believe we should have fewer tests, and I think the pendulum may be swinging in that direction. There's a frustration I hear from teachers, parents and administrators that there is too much testing and too much time spent preparing for testing." -- L.A. Times

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Where's Cathie Black? Village Academy wants to know.

A fig leaf

"This compromise is not a compromise at all, but a very transparent and flimsy fig leaf that will allow Ms. Black to be in charge despite a complete lack of qualifications for the job." (Mona Davids, President of the New York Charter Parents Association)

FBI raids hedge-fund operators

It's another shadow cast over an industry that despite frequent scandals, bailouts and complicity in the collapse of the credit markets, still has enough credibility on Capitol Hill to avoid a real crackdown. Campaign contributions buy respect where it counts. (Sun-Times business columnist David Roeder)

How DFER got started

Hedge-fund Republicrats like Whitney Tilson hooked up with billionaire right-wing yahoos like Wal-Mart's John Walton. Then they used big bucks to lobby, influence, and win over Democrats and Arne Duncan.

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. (DFER Watch)

Frank Rich

Now corporations of all kinds can buy more of Washington than before, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and to the rise of outside “nonprofit groups” that can legally front for those who prefer to donate anonymously. (Still The Best Congress Money Can Buy--NYT)

Bob Herbert 

A stark example of the potential for real conflict is being played out in New York City, where the multibillionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has selected a glittering example of the American aristocracy to be the city’s schools chancellor. Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has a reputation as a crackerjack corporate executive but absolutely no background in education. (Winning the Class War--NYT)

Ariana Huffington

"When we have two-thirds of Americans right now who expect their children to be worse off than they are, when we have America ranked number ten in upward mobility - behind France and Scandinavia countries and Spain - when we have 25 percent of young people out of work and 27 million people unemployed or underemployed, we know there is something fundamentally wrong.  (Public Anger Is Beyond Left or Right--CBS)

OWNERSHIP SOCIETY NEWS

Bill Gates is back on top of the Billionaire Boys Club* this year, with $54 billion in personal wealth. Then there's $30b more (tax free) in his foundation to use for investments in things like BP Oil as well as in school "reform."

According to Forbes, other big school reform players in the BBC include: Warren Buffet, Bill's $30b partner in the Gates Fund, #2; N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, #10; the Walton's, #4,7,8,9, 98, 136 ; ultra, ultra conservative, Philip Anschutz, who bankrolled Waiting for Superman, #34; Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who just bailed out Newark's school system and strengthened mayor control over the city's schools, #35; Eli Broad, whose training academy fellows run most big city school systems, #44; George Lucas, #98; Oprah Winfrey (sign the petition to get Ravitch on her show), #130; Michael Milken, #170; and Meg Whitman, California charter school player and candidate for governor, #332,

I know there are other BBC members who are local school reform players, voucher advocates, union busters, and charter cheerleaders, like DFER's Ravenel Boykin Curry IV (I just like saying his name) and Whitney Tilson. Sorry if I overlooked any of you. But you didn't quite make the Forbes 400 list. Better luck next year.

I also wanted to mention the Koch brothers (no pun intended), who share the #5 position. They aren't players in public school reform. In fact they hate the very idea of public anything. But they do bankroll the Tea Party.

* Yes, I know there are a few women on the list and one African-American. But c'mon. It's still a white, male club. Oh, and yes, this is just the U.S. version of the Boys Club. In fact, Gates still trails Mexican tycoon, Carlos Slim in the international race to the top.

D.C. voters make a statement

 As predicted, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty took a pounding from voters in yesterday's primary election, losing to Vincent Gray who received 53% of the vote to Fenty's 46%.

The vote was as much a rejection of Michelle Rhee's top-down, divisive, anti-teacher school-reform as it was of Fenty himself. It came despite frantic, last-minute campaigning from none other than the Sec. of Ed. Arne Duncan who has spent an inordinate amount of time recently, visiting schools with Rhee and Fenty, handing out obviously politically-motivated awards and grants, looking for photo ops and badly overstating the results of the Rhee reforms.

On the eve of the election Duncan told the press that "by any measure, by every measure, D.C. has made real and substantive progress" even though District schools saw math and reading scores drop in the last year--the very measures that Duncan and Rhee have put at the center of their reform.

But voters weren't buying Duncan's pitch and as a result, the vote represents an embarrassing defeat for Obama and Duncan and a rejection of their own Race To The Top. It should be noted that the president himself never endorsed Fenty and passed up several opportunities to speak out on the mayor's behalf despite Fenty's desperate plea for help.

Rhee's reform was also propped up with millions of dollars from power philanthropists like Walton and Broad who threatened to pull $75 million in foundation funding should Fenty lose the election. Pro-charter, pro-voucher, and anti-union groups like Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) also rallied behind Fenty and an anti-union film bashing the teacher unions and touting Rhee, Waiting for Superman, was released just before the election.

Fenty's only pockets of support were found n predominantly white, wealthier parts of the district where fewer voters send their children to public school. It was in the black precincts where Fenty really took a pounding. Gray even beat Fenty in his home precinct in Crestwood with 56 percent of the vote. According the Post,

...despite the mayor's frenetic, expensive efforts to promote his accomplishments in all eight wards, he was unable to reverse the widespread belief among black Washingtonians that he favored residents of predominantly white, wealthier neighborhoods. 

Gray did not directly address Rhee's future, saying only: 

"Make no mistake -- school reform will move forward in a Gray administration. And it will be done in a holistic way, with a strong, empowered chancellor who works with parents and teachers."

"The Billionaire Boys Club"

Diane Ravitch, New York Review of Books

My sense is that it has a lot to do with the administration’s connections to the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation. Although both are usually portrayed as liberal or at least Democratic, their funding priorities have merged with those of the very conservative Walton Family Foundation. I explain this curious power elite in a chapter of my book called “The Billionaire Boys Club.” (Read the rest here)

Power philanthropy dominating public policy

This is a case study of a much larger trend. Nationally, it's in the area of education that what Mike Klonsky calls "power philanthropy" (and Diane Ravitch calls "the billionaire boys club"), led by Bill Gates and cheered by Arne Duncan, has really come to dominate public policy. In Washington D.C., foundations are even trying to dictate who can be the city's school superintendent. --Curtis Black on Huffington


Yesterday, I focused on the role of power philanthropists like Broad and Walton, using their power to influence election outcomes in D.C. and to protect the job of their favorite teacher basher, Michelle Rhee.

In that same vein, Chicago writer and musician Curtis Black assesses the disproportionate power of big foundations over an emergent not-for-profit media. Black takes on New York Times digital editor Jim Schachter who Black says, "has gone into full denial mode in response to Jamie Kalven's Columbia Journalism Review article raising concerns about foundation funding for nonprofit news ventures."

He [Schachter]neglects the contretemps over the NYT-CNC story on the "turnaround" of [Chicago's] Marshall High School, which didn't acknowledge the presence of a major turnaround booster, millionaire Martin Koldyke, on CNC's board.

In the coming months I hope the discussion and debate will continue around the role of the giant foundations which exert great influence over public policy, especially school reform and does it relatively free from public accountability.

Also, be sure and read Kalven's CJR piece mentioned above.

The power of power philanthropy

Power philanthropy is co-piloting for a bumbling Michelle Rhee in D.C., writes Mark Schmitt at Politico. A consortium of private foundations and billionaire hedge-funders is likely the only thing keeping her in power.

"...a group of private foundations that had pledged $64.5 million to the District of Columbia Public Schools to provide the funds necessary for Chancellor Michelle Rhee's controversial teacher merit-pay proposal were conditioning their grants on a right to reconsider if there were a change in leadership in the D.C. Schools -- that is, if Rhee goes, so does the money. "

This is the same game being played by muscle foundations like Gates, Broad & Walton (the "Billionaire Boys Club," as Diane Ravitch calls them) around the country, as they move to take the public out of public education and make a mockery of democratic decision making.

Writes Schmitt:

"Shouldn't Rhee's tenure be our decision to make or that of the mayor? (We have a mayoral election this fall, which is likely to be in large part a referendum on Rhee and the mayor who appointed her, Adrian Fenty.) Sixty-four million dollars from foundations based outside of D.C. puts a high price on that decision, especially for a poor city." 

Even the flies are buzzin'

There's no better friend of the ownership society than right-wing think-tanker Checker Finn. But even Finn agrees that the private foundations are snuggling up a little too closely with public education. He points to  a dozen major foundations that have committed some $506 million to “match” federal funding from the i3 “innovation” program.

The problem with Finn is, he claims that it's government and the public that is corrupting the benevolent billionaire philanthropists,  instead of the other way around. 

There’s an affinity here that transcends anything I’ve observed in earlier years—and of course it is heightened by the number of people with foundation (and, generally, nonprofit) backgrounds who occupy key policy roles in the Education Department and other agencies.

Well put, Checker.

But what about the $325 million JP Morgan Chase is "investing" in public charter schools. That doesn't seem to bother Finn or his young acolyte, Andy Smarick who points out that the bank and partners will make use of the federal New Markets Tax Credit program to extend the initiatives reach.

The "New Philanthropy"

In our book, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society, Susan Klonsky and I document the role of the giant power philanthropists like Gates, Broad and Walton, showing how the rise of the Ownership Society altered the face and function of American Philanthropy, nowhere more so than in the field of education and school reform.

Now, Georgia Levenson Keohane, guest-blogging at the CEP (Center for Effective Philanthropy) Blog, reveals that the era of the new philanthropy, big, strategic, tactical giving – was also one of historic inequality.

In the U.S. the last quarter century proved a gilded age for some – the rich did get much richer – but was a period of stagnation for the middle class and lost ground for those with the lowest incomes... Even in the best of times, less than one-third of American philanthropic dollars goes to help the poor.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Wall Street Journal attacks Ford Foundation

And yet the Ford press release contains not one mention of charter schools, vouchers, merit pay or even Teach for America...One might have hoped that Ford's administrators would have looked at some of the real innovation being done by philanthropies such as Gates or the Walton Foundation and seen how truly far behind the times Ford's ideas are. (OnlineWSJ)

Ford Fund responds

We want communities to have the resources to be at the table and have their voices for change heard. Our belief is that empowering consumers, parents and students will help drive change. One serious disagreement we have with the Journal's editors, however, is their vilification of teachers. (Ford Foundation letter to WSJ)

Bill Moyers warns on Afghan war

And once again, a President pushing for critical change at home is being pressured to stop dithering, be tough, show he's got the guts, by sending young people seven thousand miles from home to fight and die, while their own country is coming apart. And once again, the loudest case for enlarging the war is being made by those who will not have to fight it, who will be safely in their beds while the war grinds on. And once again, a small circle of advisers debates the course of action, but one man will make the decision. (The Nation)

The media campaign against EFCA continues

Wal-Mart "associates" don't need a union, says CEO

A wounded, wimpy Matt Lauer softballs new Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke on this morning's TODAY show. As they stroll down the aisles of the big-box giant discussing which time of the month customers can afford diapers for their kids, the subject of unions comes up. Striking a similar tone to D.C. Mayor Fenty's call for freeing teachers from "the burden" of collective bargaining, Duke won't even call Wal-Mart's largest workforce in the U.S. "workers."

Lauer: With 1.4 million associate employees who earn an average of $10.83 an hour [managers make as much as $11.89, cashiers make between $6.55 and $8.43--mk] Wal-Mart now faces a threat to it's corporate model. There's proposed legislation on Capitol Hill that would make it easier for unions to organize employees--the Employee Free Choice Act...

Duke: Well of course we're opposed to that. We have a unique relationship with our associates.

Duke, who earns a hefty $13 million annually, including stock options, of course, never tells us what it is that's "unique" about his relationship with his minimum-wage "associates" or why their earning a living wage would, in the words of a Home Depot exec, "destroy the American economy."

The Walton Family Foundation is also the biggest funder of privately-managed, non-union charter schools. Maybe we should start calling teachers, "associates" as well.

The power of philanthro-capitalism

Will the super-rich save the world?

There’s no doubt that the budget crunch is forcing schools and other areas of public space to become more reliant on philanthropic good will in order to survive. The SF Chronicle ( ”How Obama Can Partner With Philanthropy”) details the upside of philanthro-capitalism while dutifully omitting any mention of the now, well-known problems associated with giving unfettered power to the world’s richest men.

Taking their cue from the Pollyannaish authors of Philanthro-Capitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World, the Chronicle portrays the lack of democratic decision making, or philanthro-accountability to the community, as strengths rather than areas of concern.

In the case of the social sector, its most important asset may be its independence, not only from governments but from the snap judgments of markets or electoral politics, influenced by the 24-hour news cycle. In a world of complex problems, the social sector - philanthropy and those it supports - may be the only sector able to take risks, withstand criticism and make long-term investments in the public interest.

But these days, the so-called "social sector" isn't very social. Those who still value democratic ideals and who still favor keeping the public in public education will be forgiven for gagging on the notion of leaving decisions about what’s “in the public interest” to power philanthropists Gates, Walton and Broad.