E-mails link Bush foundation, corporations and education officials
Source: Washington Post
E-mails link Bush foundation, corporations and education officials
Posted by Valerie Strauss on January 30, 2013 at 4:47 pm
A nonprofit group released thousands of e-mails today and said they show how a foundation begun by Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and national education reform leader, is working with public officials in states to write education laws that could benefit some of its corporate funders.
A call to the foundation has not been returned.
The e-mails are between the Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE) and a group Bush set up called Chiefs for Change, whose members are current and former state education commissioners who support Bushs agenda of school reform, which includes school choice, online education, retention of third-graders who cant read and school accountability systems based on standardized tests. That includes evaluating teachers based on student test scores and grading schools A-F based on test scores. John White of Louisiana is a current member, as is Tony Bennett, the new commissioner of Florida who got the job after Indiana voters rejected his Bush-style reforms last November and tossed him out of office.
Donald Cohen, chair of the nonprofit In the Public Interest, a resource center on privatization and responsible for contracting in the public sector, said the e-mails show how education companies that have been known to contribute to the foundation are using the organization to move an education agenda that may or not be in our interests but are in theirs.
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The e-mails were obtained by Cohens group through public record requests and are available here, complete with a search function. They reveal conclusively, he said that foundation staff members worked to promote the interests of some of their funders in Florida, New Mexico, Maine, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Louisiana.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/30/e-mails-link-bush-foundation-corporations-and-education-officials/
factsarenotfair
(910 posts)And I'm sure that lots of other DUers will, too.
Kingofalldems
(38,454 posts)Response to kpete (Original post)
savebigbird This message was self-deleted by its author.
kitt6
(516 posts)friends or Obama's friends. Prosecute or die.
kitt6
(516 posts)Florida Real Estate as well!
Beowulf
(761 posts)drives policy, just like the Prison Industrial Complex and the Military Industrial Complex.
SaveAmerica
(5,342 posts)at a time
eomer
(3,845 posts)It's our money they are after, they're not buying anything but rather stealing it.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)and their unhealthy control over the textbook industry.
chuckstevens
(1,201 posts)The Bush crime family wrote the No Child Left Behind law in a such a manner that no school in American will meet the mandatory goals. By 2014, 100 % of all American students are supposed to be performing at grade level. Never in the history of American education has that happened, but with none of the promised funding, it should happen or its the teacher's fault. Follow the logic: Public Schools are failing, so let's privatize schools so people like my idiot brothers Marvin and Jeb can make a profit. Only in America.......
By the way, all states have different testing standards to see if schools are performing up to NCLB standards. The ACT corporation was on the verge of bankruptcy when they signed a sweetheart deal with former convicted Illinois governor Rod Blogo in 2002 that all students in Illinois MUST take the ACT test. An aptitude test for college is now being used incorrectly as an exit test. Oh and by the way, Special Education and ESL students also have to take the ACT Test! Gee, why can't all kids get a 30 and go to an Ivy League school? I just don't understand! It must be those dam unionized teacher's fault.
CranialRectaLoopback
(123 posts)Color me shocked.
maindawg
(1,151 posts)Tyrants have always sought to control the population any way they can. They plant moles everywhere. Idealogues who consider themselves some kind of hero or warrior who is fighting for some superstition of misguided ideals such as black people are inferior or Muslims are terrorists. Tyrants are always scheming. They want to control the educational process and frighten children with eternal damnation.And they will always need faithful soldiers to fight their wars because black people are bad and muslims are terroists. We must never tire of fighting back.
blaze
(6,360 posts)glinda
(14,807 posts)Fire Walk With Me
(38,893 posts)Hubert Flottz
(37,726 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Socialize the costs.
Privatize the profits.
Repeat generously.
tanyev
(42,552 posts)Or did his company that sold crappy educational software finally fold?
pscot
(21,024 posts)But I guess they're pretty much interchangeable.
tanyev
(42,552 posts)for the World Trade Center. Neil is the CEO of Ignite Inc. He's also the one who was scheduled to have dinner with the brother of the guy who shot Reagan the next evening after the shooting. I'm sure they had to cancel their dinner plans.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)In February 2012, Patricia Levesque, using her Foundation for Excellence in Education e-mail address, urged state officials to introduce SendHub, a communications tool, into their states schools. News reports indicate that Levesques boss, Jeb Bush, was an investor in the start-up by the fall of 2012.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)There are strong connections between FEE and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), according to the nonprofit Center for Media and Democracy:
Aptly named FEE, Bushs group is backed by many of the same for-profit school corporations that have funded ALEC and vote as equals with its legislators on templates to change laws governing Americas public schools. FEE is also bankrolled by many of the same hard-right foundations bent on privatizing public schools that have funded ALEC. And, they have pushed many of the same changes to the law, which benefit their corporate benefactors and satisfy the free market fundamentalism of the billionaires whose tax-deductible charities underwrite the agenda of these two groups.
And look how the supposed far-right & liberal wings of corporatists are entangled:
FEE provides its donors including for-profit digital education companies access to the chiefs. A draft agenda for the Excellence in Action 2011 Summit blocked off two hours for Chiefs for Change donor meetings. Another draft agenda for the meeting allocated nearly three hours to Chiefs for Change donor meetings. The donors for the summit were the Walton Family Foundation, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Carnegie Corp., Susan and Bill Oberndorf, GlobalScholar, Target, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Microsoft, State Farm, IQity, McGraw-Hill Education, Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, Intel, Pearson Foundation, Apex Learning, ETS, Electronic Arts, Koret Foundation, SMART Technologies, K12, Morgridge Family Foundation, Charter Schools USA and Connections Academy. Demand for donor time was so high that Patricia Levesque wrote that she had to turn down opportunities for the chiefs to meet other representatives from companies.
Berlum
(7,044 posts)so damn Republican, so damn low.