Finally! Ed Reform Gets An Ally! [Update]

Readers: if you didn't realize that the education reform movement was on the brink of extinction, don't feel bad. Neither did we. The narrative that ed reform needs saving is just what Commentary Magazine and Peter Wehner would like people to believe based on the recent headline, "Education Reform Gains An Organizational Ally." The ally is former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, and the knowing gaze in her eyes comes from calculating all of the many dollars she can direct into the pockets of charter operators and choice profiteers everywhere.

Let's quickly examine existing ed reform allies to see if Peter Wehner's claim that ed reform needs "a shot in the arm," is true. A revealing article from 2011 provides the following information:

The Bill and Melinda Gates education endowment: $33,000,000,000. (With an additional $30,000,000,000 on tap from Warren Buffet).
Vacuous mi$$ion: High quality education for all and innovative solutions to education problems. We ask again, what about small brains?

The Walton Family Foundation education endowment: $2,000,000,000.00
Vague mi$$ion: Choice, access, and more public charter options.

The Broad Foundation education endowment: $1,400,000,000.00
Scary mi$$ion: infiltrate urban school districts everywhere.

Yes, those are all figures in the billions of dollars. There's enough money to balance the budget of CPS many times over, and yet it's reform movement that's faltering. Last we checked charter operators and profiteers were not being called swine, greedy pigs, or thugs in any comment section of any newspaper anywhere. Instead, readers of the Tribune were being chastised for not welcoming a charter school into their neighborhood because they did not want to reduce enrollment at neighborhood schools.

But yes, let's breathe a sigh of relief that someone is finally here to save ed reform.

Update:

A June 30th article reveals the Federal government may just be the charter movement's biggest supporter, at least in Colorado. The government has awarded Colorado charter operators $46,000,000 in federal funds because Colorado charters are free to hire and fire unlicensed, unqualified teachers. That must be a real, "shot in the arm," to all of those licensed teachers working at public schools.

CPS Waste, Exhibit A: The Talent Office

While the media's solution to everything CPS revolves around: 1) declaring bankruptcy or 2) massive layoffs of the teaching and support staff in schools, we humbly suggest all reporters examine the CPS Talent Office (Newspeak for HR) for some possible places to save money.

According to their own website they have no accomplishments to date.

For a department that doesn't hide their uselessness, they are certainly well staffed. 

We took a "deep dive into the data," as our Thought Partners are wont to say and discovered the following:

• 4 Broad Center residents on staff at $95,000 each. The Broad Center bills itself as tran$formative by pushing for charter expansion and merit pay. Broadies actively perpetuate the notion that urban school systems can only succeed by removing the teaching staff and replacing them with disruptive leaders from outside the education field.

• An Orwellian Education Pioneer Analyst fellow apparently on staff to explore the uncharted territory of data as a profiteering mechanism. The Education Pioneers have investors from the plutocrat hall-of-fame including: the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation and a donor from Chicago named Anonymous (Bruce Rauner or Ken Griffin is that you?)

• Numerous Talent Generalists, Talent Specialists, and Executive Directors who collect 6-figure salaries.

• Managers of managers of managers who oversee the up-and-coming profiteers earning close to 6 figures.

Potential candidates report months long waits for returned calls, convoluted steps in the hiring process, and no answers to questions.  Clearly, the Talent Office is hard at work ignoring qualified candidates and soliciting those who only see teaching as a stepping stone on the way to something better. This tidily continues the urban district-as-failure myth (No qualified candidates, better privatize!) whilst lining the pockets of numerous profiteers.

Hey Educational Plutocrats -- we're on to you!

As urban public school teachers, we aren't the cleverest when it comes to the business world.  If we were business-savvy, we wouldn't be driving 10-year old cars, clipping coupons, shopping at Kohl's and coloring our own hair.  But we do like to read, and we've been reading about rich people.  We've learned a lot!

So it seems that there is, and always has been, a class of people called plutocrats who dominate society through their great wealth.  Filthy rich Roman plutocrats smashed their dishes after dinner parties to celebrate. When we think of American 20th century plutocrats, we think of Uncle Pennybags from Monopoly:  top hat, monocle, mustachio.  We think of Rockefeller and Carnegie.  Back in the day, the benefit of being filthy rich was that you got to be filthy rich!  Sure, you might found a university or an orphanage, but you also got to enjoy -- conspicuously -- your homes, your boats, your furs, your jewels and your bespoke clothing.

But then things changed during the 1960s.  A lot of people started having new ideas about things like treating minorities and women fairly, preserving the environment, and butting out of foreign wars.  This was the beginning of the idea that it's uncool to be filthy rich.

Uncle Pennybags resurfaced during the Reagan/Thatcher years, when Wall Street brokering and the Preppy Handbook were briefly fashionable, and yet the election of our first self-professed black president, Bill Clinton, marked the transition back into some 1960s thinking.

The bohemian bourgeois of the 1990s (the rich people for whom a $40,000 speedboat is unspeakably vulgar but a $40,000 zen bathroom is an absolute must-have) have evolved and increased their wealth. Some of them were thought to represent the 1% against whose power the other 99% ineffectively demonstrated in the Occupy movement.  The Occupy folks got it wrong -- they were demonstrating against only MINOR plutocrats, not the big hogs.  And these big hogs wear very different clothes than Uncle Pennybags.

These NEW filthy rich folks, like Bill Gates and Eli Broad,  wear a cloak that makes them irreproachable.  This cloak is very different from the top hats, furs and bespoke clothing of historical filthy rich people.  THIS cloak is constructed from bohemian bourgeois attitudes gleaned from the 90s woven into a very au courant and savvy philanthro-capitalism: the organizations and federal-policy-shaping endeavors which purport to tran$form, amongst other things, urban schools. This cloak is a win-win garment:  it permits trickle-down profit to educational profiteers everywhere, while maintaining the wearer's status as hog-with-the-big-nuts who has a social conscience, PLUS, admiration from a lot of the 99%.  If these guys were medieval royalty, they would DEFINITELY have purchased a choice spot in Heaven -- maybe not seated at the right hand of the Father, but close. We can't blame them completely for wearing this cloak, though, because it's the required uniform for contemporary American plutocrats.  Kind of like top hats 100 years ago.

We would really admire Bill Gates and his ilk if they made one of two choices:

1. To donate most of their wealth, Peter Singer-style, to actually solving American poverty.  Eli Broad, seeder of American urban districts with Broad Institute $uperintendants, has a net worth of 6.3 BILLION dollars.  If he gave away 90% of his dough, he would STILL have 630 MILLION dollars. A few ways to actually chip away at poverty might involve providing a complete remodel to inner-city areas of devastation, establishing a nation-wide system of full-day child enrichment and health programs for poor children from birth to five, and supporting humane and dignified ways to give people reason and opportunity to regulate their own fertility until they are in the position to adequately raise children.

OR

2. To enjoy their wealth in Uncle Pennybags-style, as is the wont of plutocrats.

What are we missing here

We are CPS high school teachers, meaning that we spend a lot of time creating lessons for teenagers. Many of our teenagers are quite behind. We also spend a lot of time figuring out how our students are doing with their learning.  Some of our students are even getting close to being ready for college.  Maybe not Northwestern, but still.  Teaching is our thing. If we were into the business world, we probably wouldn't be driving ten-year-old cars.

Nevertheless, even we can smell something fishy.  Basic knowledge and some research yields the following facts:

1. Barbara Byrd Bennett is the CEO of CPS

2. Barbara Byrd Bennett has a side job:  "Executive Coach in the Broad Superintendent Academy"

3. The Broad Foundation wants to tran$form public schools

4. On the Broad Foundation's Board of Governors are two President/CEOs of AIG

5. In 2008, AIG was the recipient of the biggest corporate bailout in American history. No citation needed for this one, readers.  Urban Dictionary puts it best: "One of those heinously corrupt organizations that takes money-grubbing scum to new levels!  These bastards took more than $160 billion in government bailout money and then gave top executives more than $160 million in bonuses."

Broad Institute + AIG = better schools for low-income city kids?? What are we missing here?