Hey Gang, It's the Charter Chain!

Massive Charter Giveaways in ESEA Re-Write, Part 1

The NCLB rewrite that was passed last week by the House is a corporate states rights version of ESEA that, as Gary Orfield has noted, will set back education policy by more than a half century if it becomes law. 

If not halted in the Senate, this corporate welfare bill will send billions in federal grants to segregated “no excuses” charter school companies, venture philanthropists, and real estate developers over the next six years.  

With a continuing federal mandate to fix the bottom five percent of schools, the ESEA rewrite will provide at least a billion dollars each year to fund charter school expansion, thus further weakening public education.  The new grant programs will be fashioned to provide minimal oversight and maximum autonomy to charter companies and their corporate support organizations, and for the first time, private non-profit corporations will be classified as “state entities,” thus eligible to apply directly for federal grant programs.

The kind of bribery that Race to the Top made infamous will continue in the ESEA rewrite.  For instance, federal funding favorability will go to states that do not “impose any limitation on the number or percentage of charter schools that may exist or the number or percentage of students that may attend charter schools in the State” (see below). 

 Also, grants will be funneled to states that have established infrastructure to help charter companies in facilities acquisition and/or the handing over of public properties at rock bottom prices.  Federal help in corporate real estate acquisition signals the full maturation of a charter industry that will be worth hundreds of billions if this law passes:

‘‘(2) PRIORITY.—In awarding grants under this section, the Secretary shall give priority to State entities to the extent that they meet the following criteria:

 ‘‘(A) The State entity is located in a State—

‘‘(i) that allows at least one entity that is not a local educational agency to be an authorized public chartering agency for 
developers seeking to open a charter school in the State; or

‘‘(ii) in which local educational agencies are the only authorized public chartering agencies and that has an appeals process for the denial of an application for a charter school;


‘‘(B) The State entity is located in a State that
 does not impose any limitation on the number or percentage of charter schools that may exist or the number or percentage of students that may attend charter schools in the State.

. . . .

 ‘‘(I) The State entity is able to demonstrate that its State provides charter schools one or more of the following:

‘‘(i) Funding for facilities.

‘‘(ii) Assistance with the acquisition of facilities.

‘‘(iii) Access to public facilities.

‘‘(iv) The right of first refusal to purchase public school buildings.

‘‘(v) Low or no cost leasing privileges. (pp. 304-307)

. . . .

SEC. 3104. FACILITIES FINANCING ASSISTANCE.

‘‘(a) GRANTS TO ELIGIBLE ENTITIES.—
‘‘(1) IN GENERAL.—From the amount reserved under section 3102(b)(1), the Secretary shall not use less than 50 percent to award grants to eligible entities that have the highest-quality applications approved under subsection (d), after considering the diversity of such applications, to demonstrate innovative methods of assisting charter schools to address the cost of acquiring, constructing, and renovating facilities by enhancing the availability of loans or bond financing.

‘‘(2) ELIGIBLE ENTITY DEFINED.—For purposes of this section, the term ‘eligible entity’ means—

A) a public entity, such as a State or

local governmental entity;


‘‘(B) a private nonprofit entity; or


‘‘(C) a consortium of entities described in

subparagraphs (A) and (B).
 (pp. 309-310)

Other special favors are in store that will be discussed in Part 2, but one of the most striking stipulations in ESSA requires the Secretary of Education to consult with charter companies before modifying or implementing IDEA provisions:

‘‘SEC. 3107. SOLICITATION OF INPUT FROM CHARTER SCHOOL OPERATORS.

‘‘To the extent practicable, the Secretary shall ensure that administrators, teachers, and other individuals directly involved in the operation of charter schools are consulted in the development of any rules or regulations required to implement this subpart, as well as in the devel
opment of any rules or regulations relevant to charter schools that are required to implement part A of title I, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or any other program administered by the Secretary that provides education funds to charter schools or regulates the activities of charter schools. (p. 328)

Finally, it must be noted that, under the new law, if passed, charter schools will no longer just be for K-12.  In the future, we should get ready for more pre-K charters and, for the first time, charter colleges and universities.

 ‘‘(3) CHARTER SCHOOL.—The term ‘charter

school’ means a public school that—
 . . . .

‘‘(M) may serve prekindergarten or postsecondary students (p. 501).


Clinton Duplicity Bolsters Corporate Colonialism

There was a time when American expansionism around the world was wrapped in the thin rhetorical veil of democratic empowerment, but that was back then, before the Soviets dispensed with their socialist facade to openly embrace the American model of unrestrained greed and corruption.  This move was liberating for both Russian and American oligarchs, in that the pretense could be dropped and worldwide corporate fascism could be fully unleashed under the new banner of "globalisation."

Bill and Hillary Clinton have taken full advantage of the new alignment of world dollar power to stuff their own pockets and to spread their patronizing brand of neoliberal social welfare, whose principal beneficiaries are the oligarchs to whom they owe their public faces.

A week or so back, Bill Clinton showed up unannounced to inspire a hundred of the biggest corporate whales from around the world with more of his dissembling, lip-biting and gravelly emotionalism. The new target for venture philanthropy is the international education market, and this time, instead of textbooks inspired by the US State Department propagandists, this crusade is grounded in the new corporate paternalism aimed to produce passive, well trained drones willing to do whatever their corporate bosses require--even if means the end of human civilization.

The lead organization, it seems, in the new effort to increase corporate "giving" from 7 to 20 percent is Business Backs Education, an outfit ostensibly based in the Middle East with a few brown faces to front for a whole pack of white men running the show.

. . . This campaign, Business Backs Education, is intended to help close a $26bn (£16bn) annual funding gap needed to provide a school place for all primary-age children.

It wants businesses to spend 20% of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) budgets on education by 2020.

"Business can and should play a much greater role," in both the developed and developing world, says Vikas Pota, convener of the Global Education and Skills Forum and chief executive of the Varkey Gems Foundation. . . .

 Here is the kind of dissembling bullshit that Clinton brought to inspire the oligarchs:

"If you're going to get into education, I think it's really important that you invest in what works," Clinton said. "For example, New Orleans has better schools than it had before Hurricane Katrina, and it's the only public school [district] in America where 100 percent of the schools are charter schools."

I suppose it would be good to know how "better" is better.  Right, Bill? Is it better for 4,500 public school teachers to unlawfully lose their jobs?  Is it better that NOLA schools resemble prisons more than schools?  Is it better that New Orleans citizens can't even choose mustard or mayo on their fast-food chain store education for their children?  Is it better that state and federal dollars are funding unregulated testing factories that brutalize children?

If you want to know the real story of New Orleans, have a look here at a Buras article from 2011.  Below is a chart (click to enlarge) from that piece that depicts the interwoven clustering of corporate profiteers, corporate welfare kings and queens, and the corrupt political machine that keeps it afloat.

Workforce Investment Act Becomes $3 Billion Handout to Predatory "Colleges"

No bills get through Congress these days without an overwhelming amount of money to be made by both sides of the corporate aisle.  Such a bill sailed through last month without so much as racial slur at the President, something quite unheard of in the age of an ostensibly-black Commander in Chief.

The legislation is called the Workforce Investment Act, and it's worth $3.1 billion to corporate higher ed profiteers who convert government retraining assistance to building corporate empires that offer nothing in return except tens of thousands in additional debt to the unemployed people who can least afford it.

Congress has been on this fool's errand of retraining for jobs that don't exist since the 1960s, when policy elites decided that job creation programs were too expensive and too divisive, in that most white folks preferred to keep minorities dependent on handouts, rather than to allow them into the middle class with real job opportunities.  Such a policy allows for black folks to be contained and castigated at the same time for being lazy louts.  A win-win for both race and class supremacy.

A clip from the NYTimes article:

". . . .Millions of unemployed Americans like Mr. DeGrella have trained for new careers as part of the Workforce Investment Act, a $3.1 billion federal program that, in an unusual act of bipartisanship, was reauthorized by Congress last month with little public discussion about its effectiveness. Like Mr. DeGrella, many have not found the promised new career.

Instead, an extensive analysis of the program by The New York Times shows, many graduates wind up significantly worse off than when they started — mired in unemployment and debt from training for positions that do not exist, and they end up working elsewhere for minimum wage.

Split between federal and state governments — federal officials dispense the money and states license the training — the initiative lacks rigorous oversight by either. It includes institutions that require thousands of hours of instruction and charge more than the most elite private colleges. Some courses are offered at for-profit colleges that have committed fraud in their search for federal funding. This includes Corinthian Colleges Inc., which reached an agreement last month with the federal Education Department to shut down or sell many of its campuses. . . ."

America's Top Corporate Education Welfare Queen, Joanne Weiss

Joanne Weiss is an active exemplar for corporate welfare exploitation in education.  Just a few years ago, she moved from a tech firm to become COO for the New Schools Venture Fund, which grew to be a massive slush fund for vulture philanthropists, following Bill Clinton's undercover operation that made it possible to earn really big bucks by backing charter schools and other ed industry bad ideas:

Thanks to a little discussed law passed in 2000, at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, banks and equity funds that invest in charter schools and other projects in underserved areas can take advantage of a very generous tax credit — as much as 39 percent — to help offset their expenditure in such projects. In essence, that credit amounts to doubling the amount of money they have invested within just seven years. Moreover, they are allowed to combine that tax credit with job creation credits and other types of credit, as well collect interest payments on the money they are lending out — all of which can add up to far more than double in returns. This is, no doubt, why many big banks and equity funds are so invested in the expansion of charter schools. There is big money being made here — because investment is nearly a sure thing.

Then in 2009 Weiss was named to oversee Team Obama/Gates Race to the Top, a REALLY big slush fund used to bribe states to adopt corporate education reform's agenda, which demanded state commitments to bigger data collection capacity and teacher evaluation schemes that be impossible to maintain without more tech toys to manage the the flood of surveillance data on kids and teachers.

And now with the path cleared away for a high tech assault on the weakened body of public education, Joanne has pivoted to take on a number of projects that will use her connections in and out of government to help corporate welfare investors find new prey, acting always as that great "vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" (Taibbi, 2009).

One of Joanne's new projects will be with a new total surveillance educational data management startup, BloomBoard, where she will smooth the way for 1) Cloud based data collection and storage [all you need is PC and a Web connection], 2) professional development pieces and evaluation rubrics for charter CEOs who don't know what those words mean, and 3) lesson plans for corporate missionaries who have never taught.  And at BloomBoard they are hiring!:

If you want to invent what’s possible in the rapidly-growing EdTech sphere and be part of a transformative industry, we’d love to get to know you already. Scale systems and build a product that millions of educators the world over could benefit from. Work with a diverse team in a fast-paced environment, collaborating with colleagues who are professionals and thought leaders in the education, technology, and business spaces. We also have the support of premier education investors, including Learn Capital, Imagine K12, and Birchmere.