Updated
Guest Post by Doug Martin, author and contributor at The Common Errant
Doug Martin is doing the heavy lifting in Indiana--the work our Fourth Estate seems to have been hired to ignore. There is one very bright exception (shining much more so because so isolated in the journalistic sky): Karen Francisco who writes "The Learning Curve" at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette.
It
happened in New Orleans, it happened in Denver, it happened in Florida
with the Vice President's brother, and now the mega-rich are buying the
Indianapolis Public School Board race, with many of the same hedge fund
managers and the Walmart family tossing their dirty money into the ring. Local
grassroots education activist John Harris Loflin,
who authored a truly progressive plan for IPS
that the media seldom mentions, breaks the
corporate funding down for us in an email sent out a few days ago, noting the
following candidates for the Indianapolis school board who are being purchased by
the wealthy:
Caitlin Hannon Donations came from
local contributors Many were national: Brooklyn and Armonk, NY; Far Hills, NJ;
Denver; Palo Alto, San Francisco, Whitter, and Atherton, CA; Boston;
Washington, DC (Leadership for Educational Equity; Democracy Engine LLC);
Phoenix; Glenside, PA; and, Omaha.
Sam Odle There are no out of
state contributors reported; yet, how many of those giving live outside the IPS
district?
Gayle Cosby A donation of $5,000.00
from Stand for Children (in-kind: campaign management) $5,000.00 and another of
$3,356.00 from Democrats for Education Reform (in-kind: data management).
Let
me connect some corruption.
CAITLIN HANNON: THE WORST POSSIBLE CHOICE
Caitlin
Hannon is the Network Coordinator for Teach Plus, the Mind Trust/Bill Gates
funded anti-teacher seniority outfit.
As
I’ve written before, the Mind Trust spin-off, Teach Plus, recruits young
teachers, trains them to question seniority in the teaching profession, and
pits them against older, more experienced teachers who, instead of being
criticized, should be looked up to and learned from. Started by Mind Trust
Education Entrepreneur Fellow Celine Coggin (who was nominated by Paul Reville,
Massachusetts Secretary of Education and charter “Innovation Schools”
advancer), Teach Plus hires people to write studies claiming that once the
governor closes down low-performing schools in Indiana, lazy senior teachers
will replace the jobs of younger ones at other public schools in the district,
what they refer to as the “Domino Effect.” In their anti-seniority attack, they
have $4 million from the Gates Foundation to infiltrate six cities over three
years, including Boston. The Teach Plus fellows in Indianapolis also focus on “advancing
a reform agenda based on improving teacher evaluation and staffing policies,”
or to press for an agenda where teachers are based primarily on how well their
students do on the state ISTEP test.
Hannon’s
employer has sold corporate school in the Hoosier state, extensively. Jim
Larson, who now shovels the rich’s coal as a part of Mayor Ballard’s team, was
a Teach Plus Indianapolis Teaching Policy Fellow. Not surprisingly, Larson,
too, has donated to the Hannon cause.
If
this were not enough, Hannon was a member of NYC lawmaker Brian Kavanagh’s
corporate education team. Another member of Kavanagh’s staff, Patrick Van
Keerbergen, who also was a mayor Bloomberg flunky, now is the New York Field
Director for Democrats for Education Reform. During the corporate buyout to
lift the charter school cap across NYC, DFER spent mega-bucks supporting
corporate candidates like Basil Smikle who, Ken Libby found, had gotten $159,065.20
in donations, mostly from corporate school reformers and real estate moguls who
also make money by investing in charter schools.
DFER
has funded Hannon’s campaign, too, as has DFER’s hedge fund star Charles
Ledley, Jr. Ledley runs
Cornwall Capital, headquartered in Berkeley, California. A board member of
Harlem Village Academy and Leadership Village Academy Charter Schools, he has
thrown money into neoliberal candidates and donated to the Black Alliance for
Educational Options, a group dedicated to, in Ralph Ellison's words, "Keep[ing the] Nigger-boy Running." In 2008, along with DFER’s Boykin Curry, John Kirtley, and J.C.
Huizenga, Ledley helped sponsor the BAEO annual symposium in New Orleans. He
has also filled the campaign chest of Gloria Romero, the DFER crony in
California, and has donated to the Boston Preparatory Charter Public School.
Ledley’s claim to fame is appearing in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, as an example of one of the
few who profited from the 2007 subprime mortgage disaster. Ledley helped fund
the charter school expansion in NYC, too.
The
Fournier family, as well, is donating to Hannon. Alan Fournier is a hedge fund
manager and a New Jersey Republican. As Joanne Barkan has noted, Fournier helped buy
out New Jersey with Michelle Rhee and a few other school corporatists:
In New Jersey, Rhee connected with two
hedge-fund managers—David Tepper, a Democrat, and Alan Fournier, a Republican.
The duo had recently joined the club of no-expertise-in-education billionaires
dedicated to changing public schools. In March 2011, Tepper and Fournier
launched a 501(c)4 called Better Education for Kids, Inc., and a super PAC
called Better Education for New Jersey Kids, Inc. During the summer of 2011,
the super PAC spent about $1 million on TV and radio commercials to promote
Republican Governor Chris Christie’s ed reform program. In the fall, the super
PAC gave $400,000 to support four pro-reform candidates for state Assembly:
two, both Democrats, won; the two Republicans lost. Since then, the 501(c)4 has
been offering New Jersey teachers $100 gift certificates to participate in
private meetings about teacher evaluations. Tepper and Fournier’s super PAC and
501(c)4, it turns out, constitute the New Jersey branch of Rhee’s
StudentsFirst. The ed reform network expands while remaining knit together by
money and the strength of the moral crusade.
Greg
Penner, who is married to Carrie Walton Penner of the Walmart family, has also
handed cash to Hannon. But not every donor is from out of state. The same
Hoosier corporate crew that has been behind the privatization of Indiana
schools is funding Hannon, too.
Al
Hubbard has also purchased Hannon. Tony Bennett praised Hubbard when the
Indiana supt. of corporate schools received the Walmart award last year.
Hubbard used to direct the National Economic Council for George W. Bush and was
old man Bush’s deputy chief of staff. This year, when Mitch Daniels was
flirting with running for the presidency before the little uproar about his
wife surfaced, Hubbard was onboard to help. An Indy CEO of an acquisition
company and many others, Hubbard used to chair the Indiana State Chamber of
Commerce, sits on the Hudson Institutes board, as well as Park Tudor School and
Indiana’s own corporate school outfit, the Educational CHOICE Charitable Trust.
Hubbard has helped raise cash for both Tony Bennett and Mike Pence this year.
In June 2012, Daniels appointed Hubbard to the Bill Gates’ funded Indiana
Education Roundtable.
One
Hoosier, Darrell Gene Zink is the leader of the
Avondale Meadows gentrification project for Strategic Capital
Partners. He has been on the board of directors of a whole slew of
corporations, including Coke and Citizens Gas. When the charter school was
founded, Zink was directing the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce. He has also
been involved with the Park Tudor High School, a private school in
Indianapolis. Gene Zink is heavily invested in other corporate education reform
efforts in Indiana, too, including the front group Educational Choice. A
one-time Fifth Third Bank director, Zink in 2007 loaned $52,000 to the Charles
A. Tindley Accelerated School, a charter run by EdPower, the company the
Indiana Department of Education has chosen to “turnaround” Indianapolis’ “failing”
Arlington Community High School. The interest rate on this loan is unknown.
As
mayor in 2006, Peterson had approved Zink’s Strategic Capital Partners’
proposal to build the Challenge Foundation Academy in Indianapolis’ Avondale Meadows
district. At the Indy charter, which was honored by Tony Bennett in 2010, two
SCP members still sit on the board of directors, Zink and Charles J. Garcia,
who has also directed the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership (CICP) which
with Conexus Indiana offers online degree programs to “prepare Hoosiers for
manufacturing and logistics careers.” Conexus Indiana is led by Indiana
Educational Roundtable member and consultant to the Indiana Department of
Education Carol D’Amico, a former George W. Bush-appointed National Board for
Education Sciences board member. D’Amico also has sat on the board of the
Indiana Public Charter School Association and the rightwing Sagamore Institute
for Policy Research. CICP was also instrumental in advocating the end of social
promotion in early elementary classes in Indiana, an initiative first started
by Jeb Bush in Florida. Among many others, CICP’s board of directors include
members from JP Morgan Chase, Sallie Mae, WellPoint, INC., Duke Energy, the
Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, and Eli Lilly (the last two being big funders
of the Mind Trust).
Other
Indiana corporate schoolers funding Hannon include IN DFER’s Larry Grau, Tina
Bennett (Tony’s wife, if anyone needs to know), William Shrewsberry (the Mind
Trust and Indiana Charter School Board member), and Nancy Meyer Brown of
Indiana Teach for America and Indy Teaching Fellows fame.
GAYLE COSBY’S LAST’S STAND
Stand
for Children is also pimping pamphlets around town (I’ve been told), working
for the rich in the Indy school board takeover. Along with the hedge funders at DFER, Stand for Children
seems to be running Gayle Cosby’s campaign, both giving in-kind service.
In
one of the most outlandish incidences of corporate school reform in recent
history, Stand for Children’s Jonah Edelman was caught on tape speaking bluntly
at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival about buying Illinois Democratic state
politicians to spread a corporate school agenda. Edelman was introduced by
billionaire and trustee of the Aspen Institute, James Schine Crown, who called
the Chicago and Illinois schools “awful” but praised the wealthy scab-workers
at Teach for America for stepping in to help. As George Schmidt points out in a commentary to the
speech’s video which was posted around the internet after the Aspen Institute
deleted it from their website, the Aspen Institute praised Arne Duncan’s “Chicago
Miracle” just two years earlier, then, when the time was ripe to try to
privatize Illinois schools even more, claimed the Chicago schools were in
immediate crisis and students would suffer if politicians didn’t take steps to
pass anti-seniority teacher bills and other laws detrimental to public
education.
At
the speech’s inception during a lunch session on June 28 in the Koch Building
at the Aspen Institute, after speaking of how Advance Illinois, led by Bill
Daly before he joined Obama’s White House, set out to burden Illinois teachers
with new evaluations, Edelman detailed how he and several hedge fund managers
financially supported the 2010 elections of Democrat and speaker of the
Illinois House, Michael Madigan, after the teachers unions had threatened to
give up their support of the leader since he supported a 2010 pension reform
bill, which would affect future teachers. Edelman gave the names of these hedge
fund managers, but didn't mention specifically that they are hedge fund
managers with a drastically different motif than helping children. These hedge
fund managers who helped Stand for Children buy out Madigan and 9 other
politicians, six of them Democrats, were James Schine Crown, Brian Simmons, Ken
Griffin, Matt Hulsizer, and Paul Finnegan. James Schine Crown is president of
the public and private securities and real estate investment company, Henry
Crown and Company, Brian Simmons works for the hedge fund company, Code
Hennessy & Simmons, Ken Griffin is the CEO of another hedge fund managing
company, Citadel LLC, Matt Hulsizer is the CEO of the Peak6 Hedge Fund, and
Paul Finnegan heads Madison Dearborn Partners. These individuals, obviously,
are gearing up to loan money to new charter schools, where they will probably
sit on the board, using the taxpayers’ money to pay back the loan and collect
interest, which will increase their hedge fund money double fold in a matter of
a few years. Edelman bragged that the media never caught on, thinking his group
would support Republicans, since many of the hedge funders were Republicans
themselves and normally give to Republicans during elections.
What
Edelman said next at his Aspen outing is honestly quite sickening, so I quote from it extensively:
After the election, Advance Illinois and Stand
had drafted a very bold proposal we called Performance Counts. It tied tenure
and layoffs to performance. It let principals hire who they choose. It
streamlined dismissal of ineffective tenured teachers substantially, from 2+
years and $200,000 in legal fees, on average, to three to four months, with
very little likelihood of legal recourse, and, most importantly, we called for
the reform of collective bargaining throughout the state. Essentially,
proposing that school boards would be able to decide any disputed issue at
impasse. So a very, very bold proposal for Illinois, and one that six months
earlier would have been unthinkable, undiscussable.
And after the election, I went back to Madigan
and I confirmed, I reviewed the proposal, and I confirmed his support, and he
was supportive. The next day he created an education reform committee and his
political director called to ask for our suggestions for who should be on it.
And so in Aurora, Illinois, in December, out of nowhere there were hearings on
our proposal.
In addition we hired eleven lobbyists, including
the four best insiders and seven the best minority lobbyists, preventing the
unions from hiring them. We enlisted a statewide public affairs firm. We had
tens of thousands of supporters. And with Jim’s, and many others stepping up,
Paula and Steve, thank you, we raised $3 million for our political action
committee between the election and the end of the year. That’s more money than
either of the unions have in their political action committees.
And so essentially what we did in a very short
period of time was shift the balance of power. I can tell you there was a
palpable sense of concern if not shock on the part of the teachers’ unions in
Illinois that Speaker Madigan had changed allegiance, and that we had clear
political capability to potentially jam this proposal down their throats, the
same way the pension reform had been jammed down their throats six months
earlier. In fact, the pension reform was called Senate Bill 1946 and the unions
took to talking to each other about it like, ”we’re not going to allow
ourselves be 1946ed again,” using it as a verb.
Stand
for Children used $242,300 from the Mind Trust and $150,000 from the Joyce
Foundation to sweep into Indiana and lobby for Senate Bill 1, the legislation
which makes it easier to fire teachers and make annual teacher evaluations
based primarily on student performance, or the ISTEP test.
In
early April 2011, former Indianapolis deputy mayor Karega Rausch was hired to
head Stand for Children in Indy. Rausch had been a big player in Bart
Peterson’s quest to privatize the Indianapolis schools, and Stand for America
was recruited into Indiana by Peterson’s Mind Trust, so it was a perfect fit.
Rausch was chosen in September 2011 by Republican Brian Bosma to sit on the
newly formed Indiana Charter School Board. Around the day of this appointment,
Indy mayor Greg Ballard announced his five-point plan to bring even more
charter schools to the city by giving the so-called nonprofit fake boards who
run the schools generous tax breaks. As Scott Elliott reported in the Indianapolis Star, Ballard would work with
the Mind Trust to “incubate quality charters, using up to $2 million from his
Rebuild Indy program as startup funds to help attract five high-quality charter
school organizations to open schools.”
A
few weeks earlier, Rausch had spoken at the Mind Trust’s "Grow What
Works" dinner at the Indiana Landmarks Center, a program to help raise
over $18 million in new corporate school funding for the city. Later that
night, along with Teach Plus, Teach for America, and the New Teacher Project,
Stand for Children was given even more funding from the Mind Trust, as was
College Summitt, run by former Mind Trust fellow Earl Martin Phalen, money
which came from the $100,000 the Indiana University Health had donated to the
Mind Trust for the event. Sitting down to breakfast with Tully in April, Rausch had the nerve to say
(and Tully had the nerve to print it) that the voices of parents, teachers, and
students "are too often drowned out by the special interests,” by which he
means the teachers unions. The billionaire boys club of Stand for Children is
about as “special interests” as we can get.
SON OF SAM
Sam
Odle has donations from John Mutz (Lumina Foundation/Lilly, Al Hubbard, Anne
Shane (the Mind Trust), Gene Zink (as does Cosby), and to name a few. All have
a very corporate agenda.
Update
[Editor's Note: The piece originally had a section "who to vote for" which suggested that candidates who receive the least amounts of "interested" cash would be preferable and there were named candidates. However this was not intended as an endorsement and the author has asked that we delete this to avoid that implication.]
Update II
Valerie Strauss at The WaPo's Answer Sheet has linked to Mr. Martin's piece about how the Indiana DOE has been stalling an FOIA request for a release of communications and travel expenses detailing State Super Tony Bennett's deep involvement with lobby groups for corporate education "reform."
