Grotesque School Board Member, Keith Ervin, Sexually Harasses Student During SB Meeting

 And he has not resigned, nor has the Washington County School Board removed him.

IPS and the National School Board Buyout

By Doug Martin

Although the local powers-that-be who funded the members who won the Indianapolis Public School board 2014 election are well known and mentioned in my book Hoosier School Heist (Al Hubbard, David Harris, Bart Peterson, the Chamber, Eli Lilly’s John Lechleiter, Anne Shane, and Christel DeHaan of Tony Bennett scandal fame, to name a few), some of the wealthy outsiders who bought the IPS board in 2014 are relatively new to Indiana.  These new funders last year loaded the campaign chests of IPS candidates LaNier Echols (Carpe Diem charter school’s dean), Mary Ann Sullivan (former lawmaker and present Democrats for Education Reform national board member), and Kelly Bentley (Democrat for Education Reform member), who were all elected. 

But the IPS board race was just one buyout for these newest IPS wealthy funders.  In fact, these same well-to-do out-of-staters have been buying mayors, governors, and school boards all across the US to further the school privatizing agenda. 

Some of these campaign donors, it appears, mean to cement in place Rocketship and KIPP Indy, which are both scheduled to open a dozen charter schools in Indy in the next few years. 

Another wealthy campaign contributor is surely hoping to plant his affiliated charter school francize, Achievement First, in Indianapolis in the near future. 

Many of these wealthy funders, too, are tied to Stand for America, a group which was not required to tell taxpayers the exact cash it dished out to buy the IPS board seats for Sullivan, Echols, and Bentley (see Amos Brown's excellent write-up on this here), although Alternet’s Anna Simonton claims that Stand for Children’s “nonprofit and political arm… together spent over $21 million last year in order to elect 78 state-level and 15 district-level “’education champions.’”

All in all, Simonton traces some of the out-of-state funders behind IPS’ 2014 election as part of a vast movement by the extremely wealthy to recently buy school boards in New Orleans, Denver, and Los Angeles.  Let’s look at a few other cities besides these that the IPS board donors have infiltrated.

BAIN CAPITAL AND THE BLOOMBERGS

Although I mention Bain Capital (started by Mitt Romney) and Stand for Children’s cozy relationship in Hoosier School Heist, it was the recently retired managing director of Bain, Mark Nunnelly, who helped elect school privatizers to the IPS school board and many other public school boards across the country. 

Mark Nunnelly gave $1,000 to Kelly Bentley, $1,000 to LaNier Echols, and $1,500 to Mary Ann Sullivan’s campaigns.  Nunnelly also has supported Stand for Children and funded the Black Alliance for Educational Options/DFER Newark mayor Cory Booker, all mentioned in my book.

Nunnelly is on the board of directors of KIPP charter schools with Emma Bloomberg, the daughter of former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg.  Emma is chairman of the board of Stand for Children’s national outfit.  With Mind Trust help, KIPP Indy is scheduled to open several new schools in Indianapolis. 

Emma Bloomberg played a role in the DC state board of education election, and she chairs the Teach for America-founded Leadership for Educational Equity, the group which gave $5,000 to LaNier Echols, the IPS candidate who also received $650 (see page 3) from TV show princess and major anti-teacher tenure operative Campbell Brown.  And if all of this were not enough, former mayor Michael Bloomberg, upset over lost money to Tony Bennett’s 2012 campaign, pulled through a few days before the IPS board election and gifted Mary Ann Sullivan $2,500.

BIG OIL GIRL TO THE RESCUE

The daughter of a rich Oklahoma oilman, billionaire Stacey Schusterman is the CEO of Samson Energy, a real estate leader, and a supporter of Stand for Children. She gave $500 (page 10) to Mary Ann Sullivan’s IPS campaign last year and $1,500 (page 6) to Bentley’s. 

Along with Walmart’s Carrie Walton Penner (whose husband Greg, as I point out in Hoosier School  Heist, helped buy the IPS board election of 2012), Schusterman sits on the board of the Charter School Growth Fund.  Besides dismantling public education in her own state, along with Achievement First trustee Jonathan Sackler, Schusterman funded Marshall Tuck for the superintendent’s office in California, the young and handsome corporate darling who, despite tons of money, lost the election.

Hedge fund manager Alan Fournier didn’t have to worry about funding the IPS board race last year, as he did in 2012.  Schusterman took his place, and they both worked together to influence the New Jersey school board race last November, too.

Schusterman also gave $25,000 to Stand for Children’s election campaign in Washington state in 2012.

LINKEDIN WITH FACEBOOK

Billionaire LinkedIn’s CEO Reid Hoffman and his wife Michelle Yee each gave $1,000 to Kelly Bentley (page 6), $1,000 (page 4) a piece to LaNier Echols, and $1,000 each to Mary Ann Sullivan’s IPS board campaign (page 2).

Hoffman and Yee funded Tobias Read’s campaign, an Oregon state representative who was one of the sponsors of a charter school bill which passed in 2011.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg helped Tobias Read, too, for he used to work with her and Larry Summers in Bill Clinton’s Administration.  Summers, if we remember, helped set the rules to deregulate Wall Street which led to the big crash of 2008. 

Sheryl Sandberg is a member of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.  Along with Intel’s Arthur Rock, Sandberg funded a school board member for the Duval County Florida school board race last year.  And Sandberg, Rock, Greg Penner (Carrie Walton’s husband who helped buy the IPS school board in 2012), were behind the school board privatization movement in Atlanta recently, too, supporting four candidates who were elected.  As Alternet’s Anna Simonton writes:

[Arthur] Rock is not the only name on the reports with financial power and a less than obvious connection to Atlanta Public Schools. Greg Penner of the Walmart empire, Dave Goldberg of the Sheryl Sandberg empire (they’re married), and Kent Thiry of the DaVita kidney dialysis empire (it sounds inglorious, but he pulls in $17 million annually), are among the names that had some Atlantans scratching their heads this election season.

Billionaire Arthur Rock (a board member of TFA’s Leadership for Educational Equity), Greg Penner, and Alan Fournier (who gave money to IPS school board candidates in 2012), among others, poured money into a small town school board race in New Jersey recently.  

And Rock and Bain Capital’s Mark Nunnelly also helped buy school privatization during a school board race in California. 

Arthur Rock gave $5,000 to LaNier Echols’ campaign (page 3)

PUTTING SACKLER’S ACHIEVEMENT FIRST FIRST, REGARDLESS OF ZIPCODE

In 2014, investment manager and real estate mogul Jonathan Sackler handed Mary Ann Sullivan $2,500.

Sackler, a board member of the New Schools Venture Fund privatizing outfit, is the trustee at Achievement First, a nationwide charter school managing organization.  He is also a director at 50CAN, a corporate school group funded, in various states, by Bill Gates, the Bush Foundation, Arthur Rock, the Walton Family Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and many others involved in privatizing Indiana schools. 

Along with Arthur Rock and other IPS board donors, Sackler threw money into the Minnesota school board race last year, as well.  Beth Hawkins, at MinnPost, writes that “The Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund has received $100,000 from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, $90,000 from Teach for America board member Arthur Rock and $25,000 from Jon Sackler, who sits on the boards of the education advocacy groups 50CAN and Students for Education Reform”.

Sarah Lahm, from In These Times, gives us a hint at what is going on here.  Keep in mind that Rocketship is set to operate in Indianapolis, and Arthur Rock, Facebook’s Sandberg, and others partner with that charter school company:

What do investors like Bloomberg, Rock and Sackler stand to gain by pouring money into the Minneapolis school board race? While national charter school chains such as Rocketship do not operate here, the city’s school district recently entered into the state’s first-ever “district-charter compact” with local charter school chain Hiawatha Leadership Academies. This compact was borne out of a 2010 District-Charter Collaboration Compact signed by Minneapolis Public School administrators, local politicians and charter school operators. In the future, Minneapolis Public Schools spokesperson Myrle Croasdale tells In These Times, the district is “open to developing partnerships with outside stakeholders.” Perhaps this willingness helps to explain how the Minneapolis Progressive Education Fund has attracted such big-dollar outside support for school board candidates.

Sackler, in fact, even bought the Providence, Rhode Island, Obama-supported mayor, giving over $25,000 to Democratic Jorge Elorza in 2014, who won the election.  Elorza “sat on the board of the Achievement First Mayoral Academy until he entered the race for mayor.” 

Sackler and others actually own Connecticut governor Dan Mallory, as Jonathan Pelto has noted time and time again, and 50CAN influenced the Bridgeport, Conn. Board of education election, too.

For the Austin, Texas, school board race, Sackler helped IPS board funders Schusterman, Nunnelly, Campbell Brown, and the Leadership for Educational Equity. 

As a side-note, Tindley charter school’s Marcus Robinson sits on the board of directors of the Achievement First Charter Network Accelerator.

MORE HEDGE FUND DEMOCRATS

The hedge fund manager front group DFER also played a role in the IPS race.  National board member Mary Ann Sullivan was helped by Democrats for Education Reform, which handed over $1,100 (page 10), and DFER’s Joe Williams (detailed in Hoosier School Heist), gave $250 (page 14).  Education Reform Now, which is closely tied to DFER, gave Bentley $600, and DFER gave her $1,100 (page 6).

For more insight and campaign funding details on the IPS board race of 2014, see Gary Welsh’s excellent blog post here.

 

Odds and Ends, first week of August 2014

The main difference between the Gates Foundation funded Common Core and Dr. Maria Montessori's method is this: Montessori did not create educational theories and then try them out on children. She did the opposite. — Jeffrey Katz

It's been a very busy summer. Here in Los Angeles we're faced with a Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) school board special election to replace my dear friend, the late Marguerite Poindexter LaMotte. I've been super busy working on the campaign to elect Dr. George McKenna, working on projects around the house, and preparing for my first semester of law school — which starts in a couple of weeks. The LAUSD race is critical, the billionaires have spent millions and brought in Michelle Rhee to support neoliberal corporate reform candidate Alex Johnson.

Labeled a few hundred mailers and cranked out a dozen pages of calls for Dr. George McKenna for #LAUSD @ElectMcKenna pic.twitter.com/NHJVDxF3Ro

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) August 5, 2014

Feedback on SAS VAM piece

Got a great email from a reader on the Value-Added Modeling (VAM) is pseudoscience, but profitable pseudosciences persist piece. They asked to remain anonymous:

Dear Mr. Skeels,

I enjoyed your post on VAM and SAS. You might want to refute this bogus claim from SAS you quoted:

Another way to see this is that the most important factor of "current" test scores is prior tests scores and, once enough prior test scores are included in the model, the socioeconomic/demographic factors become relatively small or even non-significant, despite enormous sample sizes.

Bruce Baker does a good job of debunking this claim. I've found the same is true for [REDACTED] version of EVAAS.

ed®eformers confused as to why there aren't more teachers

Paul Bruno is a big neoliberal corporate reform cheerleader. In a post trying to scold the AFT for not supporting the reactionary edTPA test initiative, he ponders why teaching should be more, or less, professional than that of fields like medicine or law. He decries things that "complicate any efforts to reduce the profession's attractiveness or to throw up additional barriers to entry" without any sense of irony.

I let Mr. Bruno know what I saw as barriers to entry:

Last spring I had to decide between pursuing a teaching credential versus attending law school. For the former, the idea of having to complete nearly the same amount of coursework as a masters degree for a job that pays considerably less was still palatable, but Common Core and Vergara made the decision easy for me.

At least as an attorney I can go after corrupt charter school chains that discriminate against special needs students.

Yes @MrPABruno "We Need MANY More Teachers than Doctors or Lawyers", but #edreform, Inc. makes teaching unappealing. http://t.co/mzzve2LK1P

— Robert D. Skeels (@rdsathene) July 29, 2014

Corporate reformers dominating university discourse

When I found out that UCLA was hosting an event featuring poverty pimps from Green Dot Charter Corporation and their spinoff Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC), Parent Revolution, I was appalled.

I'm so angry my Alma Mater is allowing these poverty pimps from Green Dot Corporation and their hideous pRev spin off do a ‪#‎NPIC‬ cheer-leading event. You too can use your degree to help privatize the remainder of the public school system at the behest of Eli Broad and Bill Gates. We can do better ‪#‎UCLA‬ https://www.facebook.com/UCLAYoungAlumni/posts/10152340023341288

I wrote on the page itself.

I'm a Life UCLA Alumni member (UCLA 2014), who has spent two decades documenting how many of these so-called nonprofits carry out the agenda of their funders. To wit, this event features two members of the school privatization project. Progressive minded Bruins might want to read this before attending the event: The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

I have a prior commitment, so I won't be able to attend the event. If I could, I would pass out this FAQ on Parent Revolution, and the privately managed charter corporation they were spun off from—Green Dot.

Parent Revolution, Parent Trigger, and School Privatization FAQ by Robert D. Skeels

Stacking Boards: Seating the "Reform Majority"

Guest Post by John Harris Loflin of the Education-Community Action Team, Indianapolis

 National agenda to seat "reform majority" school boards in key cities 

“Lead the effort to seat ‘reform majority’ school boards in several key cities.” 

~ Democrats for Education Reform, “A Year of Impact” 2012 DfER accomplishment

It looks like the January 7, 2013 Stand for Children (SfC) “celebration” for their 3 endorsed IPS school board commissioners (Arnold, Cosby, and Hannon) is one more of many this national lobbyist group conducts. 

SfC also “celebrated” the August 2012 election of 4 of the 7 candidates they endorsed in the Memphis, TN school board race. Two from the newly selected board are SfC members and 2 appointees were directly supported by SfC due to their alignment with SfC’s “core values.” 

According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal reporter Jane Roberts, SfC raised more than $300,000: $200,000 from a single out-of-town source and including $30,000 from local sources. SfC spent $154,000 on the seven school board races, including $60,000 in direct mail. The bigger expense ($90,000) was for training and dispatching hundreds of students that SfC paid $10/hour for a door-to-door campaign. 

Memphis reporter John Branston (The City Magazine) in his article “Stand for Something” pointed out that although the various media were confused as how to describe the SfC organization, he noted the, “One thing we [the Memphis media] agreed on is that Stand For Children is unusually well funded and spent more than $150,000 on the school board races, which is a huge amount.” 

SfC and DfER franchises are electing school boards elsewhere 

Evidently what happened in Memphis and Indianapolis is part of the national SfC/DfER organization efforts to control local school boards via national agendas to seat "reform majority" school boards in key cities--especially in places where they know they have the political support or can and will win via lots and lots of cash. 

A review of other school board races, past and present, will help show what happened with IPS is not special and just another school district SfC’s/DfER’s national offices are trying to run. 

2010-2011 

SfC helped elect 19 school board members: 

TN (Memphis and Nashville) 

CO (Denver) 

OR (Portland, Reynolds, Salem-Keizer, Lane County, Hillsboro, Central Coast) 

WA (Issaquah, Tacoma) 

TX (Houston) 

Denver During the November 8, 2011 election, candidates vied for the 3 of 7 Denver Public Schools (DPS) Board of Education seats. National attention was paid to the race. Campaign contributions were said to be some of the most significant in DPS history. An ad hoc group of 3 candidates (Haynes, Rowe, and Carson) made up an unofficial “pro-reform” slate backing privatization. Many contributions to the group came from oil/gas industries and investment bankers--causing speculation that Denver's “high rollers” were pushing a market direction for DPS.

Haynes raised $230,037 ($31,000 from SfC). The 4 opponents of Haynes combined raised only $27,532. Rowe raised $196,845 ($15,477 from SfC). Her opponent Emily Sirota raised $87.293. Carson (who lost) raised $177,440. Winner Arturo Jimenez, raised $68,073. This is a lot of money just to win a school board seat! 

Oregon On Tuesday May 18, 2011, 21 SfC-endorsed school board members in Hillsboro, Medford, Eugene, Reynolds, Portland Public, and other districts were elected. 

2012 

Indiana SfC Oregon gave IPS Commissioner Cosby $15, 451. DfER’s Indiana “franchise” gave her $43, 867. DfER Indiana gave Commissioner Hannon $5,542. Besides the IPS candidates, SfC endorsed Dr. Bennett for state superintendent. See IPS candidate’s financial reports: Indianapolis Public School 

Colorado For the November 2012 state of Colorado Board of Education race, SfC supported Angelika Schroeder, who easily won. 

Louisiana As was the case with IPS Commissioners Hannon and Cosby, outside cash flooded the Orleans Parrish race. Though 5 other board seats were also open, the contest in District 3 stands out. More than $110,000 in campaign funds were raised by winner Ms. Usdin from education activists living out of state who favor market-based reforms. Former NYC Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein and Boykin Curry, a New York City hedge-fund manager gave. Fundraising on behalf of Usdin dwarfs rivals Mr. Bonin ($24,000) and Ms. Royal ($5,500).

SfC endorsed 5 candidates for the 2012 state of Louisiana School Board race. 

Also see: "Why Do Some of America's Wealthiest Individuals Have Fingers in Louisiana's Education System?"

Arizona Last November, SfC endorsed candidates won 2 seats on Roosevelt School District School Board and 2 seats on the Murphy School District School Board. Both districts are in Phoenix. 

Nationally, DfER backed 3 board candidates: Caitlin Hannon for IPS, Bill Ponder for San Diego Schools, and Sarah Usdin Orleans LA Parrish Schools. Ponder lost. 

2013 

“Certain members of the Indianapolis Board of School Commissioners were strategically placed there by the powers that be to weaken Indianapolis Public Schools and prime it for takeover.” 

~ Diane Ravitch, “The corporate takeover of Indianapolis Public Schools” 

Articles of support: Money and outside district groups such as SfC, StudentsFirst, DfER, Education Reform Now, and the Gates, Walton and Broad Foundations are controlling local school board elections and policies. 

Foundation Cash Boosts Education Advocacy Groups: Money underwrites activities that often touch on sensitive areas of policy. Go to www.vorcreatex.com. Look for “Education” under Misc. or click here:  Foundation Cash.

New Advocacy Groups Shaking Up Education Field: Their sway over policy and politics appears to be growing, especially at the state and local levels. 

Billionaire donors drive anti-teacher pro-testing education reform agenda 

Standing for Corporate America Addendum 

The corporate takeover of Indianapolis Public Schools 

How to Buy a School Board Race 3000 Miles Away: Why would California multi-millionaires be interested in a school board race in the small city of Perth Amboy, NJ? 

© 2013 Education-Community Action Team 

johnharrisloflin@yahhoo.com 

Indianapolis 

Duncan Favors Shutting Down Elected School Boards

I remember ten years ago when state education officials in Louisiana were going around the state to brief education faculties on the new testing system called LEAP. Accustomed to being the last in education or just above Guam and Mississippi, Louisiana was going to be the first to use the "no excuses" excuse to punish poor children for being poor, i. e., to use a single test to determine if elementary age children would move to the next grade.

And having just come from Long Island U. where I had done work in the Roosevelt Schools that New York's Department of Ed had taken over in hopes of boosting academic performance, I assumed that the State of Louisiana would soon be in the business of taking over bunches of elementary schools across the state, because all of us in the room knew there would be widespread failures--and we even knew where the failures were going to occur. Drive through any city and you can tell with 90+% certainty where the failing schools are by casting a casual eye on the level of poverty reflected in the neighborhood. So when I piped up with my question, What is the state going to do with all the schools that are going to have large number of failures, I remember the response exactly: The State doesn't want them.

By the time that NCLB was being put together two years later, it had become obvious what the State was wanting to do with the schools that it didn't want: it wanted to offer vouchers to parents for a marginal private school education, or it wanted to turn schools into charter schools that would be run by private companies. That hasn't changed, even though it has taken hundreds of thousands of 4th grade and 8th grade failures and a Category 5 hurricane to finally bring that political aspiration to the brink of fruition. Soon after Katrina when it became obvious that the hurricane had wiped out the public school system, Orleans Parish School Board President Phyllis Landrieu expressed the sentiments of those in the State who had been waiting for God, or George Bush, or both, to put their privatization plans into high gear: "I say, Thank you, Katrina' all the time."

So now we have Paul Vallas as overseer of the charterization of NOLA Schools, and the Vallas protege, Arne Duncan, as the Secretary of Eduction. My, my. And the young Mr. Duncan has $5 billion in his pocket to make sure the privatization job that was only wishful thinking ten years ago gets finished, in New Orleans and elsewhere in the state where there are high concentrations of poor kids. Not only that, but we have a Secretary who wants to make sure that the big business model of schooling gets instituted and that public governance through the election of school board members becomes a thing of the past. So that without torches and pitchforks, there will little recourse to accepting what ignorant businessmen offer through their "no excuses" schoolhouse chain gangs that are built on the abuse model of KIPP. Download SUCCESS AT SCALE IN CHARTER SCHOOLING to see the future that Arne and Paul and Phyllis see. And let's not forget to give credit to slick Paul Pastorek, the State Superintendent for Louisiana.

Here is a clip from the Times-Picayune coverage of the Duncan visit to New Orleans yesterday:

Duncan said New Orleans schools benefit from a "set of adults that are pushing a very strong reform agenda" in concert with one another.

"I am a huge fan of Paul Pastorek, " he said of the state superintendent of education.

Along with Vallas, Pastorek has governed the lion's share of the city's public schools with unprecedented power and money during the past two years. The Recovery School District operates 33 schools directly and oversees another 33 charter schools.

Since a state takeover of the city's lower-performing schools, the Orleans Parish School Board has operated five schools directly and has overseen 12 charter schools.

The teachers union lost its collective-bargaining rights after Hurricane Katrina. So, politically, Pastorek and Vallas answer only to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, with members who come from across the state and have varying degrees of familiarity with the school issues and landscape in New Orleans.

Duncan came down squarely against local elected boards as the governance structure for large, urban districts. He said he favors mayoral control, appointed school boards or some type of top-down authority of the type Pastorek exerts.

"You need leadership from the top, " he said.

He argues that elected school boards in urban districts lead to a perpetual churn of superintendents, leadership and policies. . . .

Notice that democratically-elected school boards are not in question here for the leafy suburbs--it is only for the large urban districts, you see. Yes, yes, that dangerous churning of democratic action among the black and the brown--the same kind of action that allowed this fool, Arne Duncan, to be appointed to his present position, through an election that was all about restoring our democracy, we all thought. Now that hope, that last hope, is on life support, and the oligarchs are smiling all the way to the Treasury once again.