"..bigger right-wing funder than the Kochs. And one of the group's biggest causes is school choice."
Madison's "Isthmus" take on the Bradley Foundation and their attack on public education in America.
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=39869&sid=7260dbbcf73f06dc015292b891020c33
But even as all that impassioned debate rages, the big forces that are changing our schools are not local at all. Wisconsin is at the center of a national school-choice movement that seeks to unmake public education and exchange it for a system of private-school vouchers and unaccountable private charter schools.
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign released a report in April showing that "wealthy campaign contributors and shadowy electioneering groups that back school voucher programs have spent nearly $10 million in 10 years in Wisconsin" — mostly to keep Gov. Scott Walker in office as he tries to dramatically expand school vouchers.
...
Then there's the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation. Bradley is "the most powerful organization in America that no one seems to know about," says Scot Ross of One Wisconsin Now, whose group just published a detailed report (PDF) on Bradley. A lot of people have heard of the billionaire Koch brothers and their support for right-wing causes around the nation. But few realize that Bradley is actually a bigger right-wing funder than the Kochs. And one of the group's biggest causes is school choice.
Headed by Gov. Walker's campaign co-chair Michael Grebe, Bradley has underwritten what One Wisconsin Now calls "a massive, pro-privatization propaganda campaign," including "a systematic campaign to turn public opinion against the public school system." Thus, we have all the rhetoric about "failing schools," including here in Madison. Grebe and Walker have hit on an issue that brings lots of money and national political attention to our state — even if it's unpopular in local communities.
The One Wisconsin Now report "P IS FOR PAYOOFF- INSIDE THE BRADLEY FOUNDATION’S CAMPAIGN TO
PRIVATIZE EDUCATION IN WISCONSIN" is available here:
http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/p-is-for-payoff.pdf
The private school voucher program that gives qualifying parents a taxpayer funded voucher to send their children to participating private or religious schools, is a cornerstone of an elite cabal of big-money, right-wing ideologues’ effort to transform American society through the radical privatization of public institutions.
There is no bigger player in this campaign than the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, headed by Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign co-chair, Michael Grebe, that has spent over $31 million since 2001 to support organizations, think tanks, journalists and right-wing academics engaged in a comprehensive propaganda and lobbying campaign promoting the privatization of public education.
In return for their investment, by 2014-15 pro-voucher politicians will have forked over $1.8 billion in tax dollars from the people of Wisconsin to private schools since the inception of the voucher program in 1990-91.
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