Walton Foundation Funding Scabs, Charter Schools and Writing Education Policy

[Teamster Jeff]

>>>

< A Walton-funded nonprofit helped DC Prep find building space when it moved its first two schools from a chapel basement into former warehouses that now have large classrooms and wide, art-filled hallways.

< One-third of DC Prep’s teachers are alumni of Teach for America, whose largest private donor is Walton. A Walton-funded advocacy group fights for more public funding and autonomy for charter schools in the city. Even the local board that regulates charter schools receives funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

< In 2013, the Walton foundation spent more than $164 million across the country. According to Marc Sternberg, who was appointed director of K-12 education reform at the Walton Family Foundation last September, Walton has given grants to one in every four charter start-ups in the country, for a total of $335 million.

< The size of the Walton foundation’s wallet allows it to exert an outsize influence on education policy as well as on which schools flourish and which are forced to fold. With its many tentacles, it has helped fuel some of the fastest growing, and most divisive, trends in public education — including teacher evaluations based on student test scores and publicly funded vouchers for students to attend private schools.

< Last year, the Walton Family Foundation gave $478,380 to a fund affiliated with the Chicago public schools to help officials conduct community meetings to discuss their plan to close more than 50 schools at a time when charters were expanding in the city.
>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/us/a-walmart-fortune-spreading-charter-schools.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=0

[riversedge]

1. Randi Weingarten has been the hero in this saga....

...........Last year, the foundation announced a two-year, $8 million grant to StudentsFirst, an advocacy group led by Michelle A. Rhee, the former schools chancellor in Washington who oversaw many of the policy changes funded by Walton in the district’s public schools. StudentsFirst now pushes for the extension of many of those same policies in states across the country, contributing to the campaigns of lawmakers who support the group’s agenda.

“What they’re doing in terms of education is they’re trying to create an alternative system and destabilize what has been the anchor of American democracy,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers union.

[Teamster Jeff]

2. Locally we have Karen Lewis and the Chicago Teachers Union

Fighting the good fight against Rahm. 30,000 Teachers walked in 2012.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. I've spent most of the day wading thru the hard copy of this. Most in depth reporting I've seen....

.... re. the Walmartization of public education.

Pretty objective account, given that NYT is essentially in favor of everything that Walmart is doing.


Good resource for people who are taking the time to try and connect the dots.


It is a most elaborate undertaking. ( The corporate takeover of public ed, I mean.)