Billionaires Target Teachers—and Take the Gloves Off in Illinois

[Omaha Steve]

http://labornotes.org/blogs/2010/12/billionaires-target-teachers%E2%80%94and-take-gloves-illinois

by Howard Ryan | Tue, 12/21/2010 - 3:34pm

A billionaire gang headed by Bill Gates and Eli Broad wants to convert America’s public schools, with its $600 billion in annual public expenditures according to the Department of Education, into a corporate-owned test-score factory. Their plan faces teacher resistance, and nowhere more so than in Chicago, where a feisty new leadership is making the Chicago Teachers Union among the most effective in the country.

The billionaires have decided to go toe to toe with CTU and with Illinois’s 200,000 unionized teachers. The battleground is the state legislature and a draft bill called the Performance Counts Act. The bill would gut teachers unions, maximize the firing of teachers at will, and ensure that no organized voice remains to advocate for quality public schools. The repercussions for all public employees—and all of organized labor—are clear.


Chicago Teachers President Karen Lewis speaks out against the "Performance Counts Act" at a hearing of Illinois' Special Committee on Education Reform. On her right is Daniel Montgomery, Illinois Federation of Teachers president. Photo: CTU.

Mysterious Group Arrives

Last October, journalists noticed that candidates for Illinois legislative seats were receiving unusually large checks. “It’s not every day that a group almost nobody has ever heard of gives $175,000 to a single state legislative candidate,” remarked an Illinois Times contributor. Another reporter observed that “a national education reform group has quietly dumped more than $600,000 into key Illinois legislative races.” He added that “the source of much of that money is a mystery,” because of the unusual path it took to arrive in Illinois.

The mysterious political action group is called Stand for Children. Based in Portland, Oregon, and with affiliates in seven states, SFC is an enormously well-funded and sophisticated “grassroots” organization whose largest single funder is Bill Gates: he gave the group nearly $3.5 million in 2010.

Originally, SFC did have a strong grassroots orientation, and its focus was demanding better funding for public schools. The organization grew out of a “Stand for Children Day,” a big 1996 rally in Washington, D.C., headed up by Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund. Civil rights icon Rosa Parks addressed that rally: “If I can sit down for justice, you can stand up for children.”

FULL story at link.

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[mike_c]

1. the battle lines in the class war are becoming increasingly well defined....

Odd that so many attacks on organized labor and on public employee unions are the work of millionaire-funded "grassroots organizations," isn't it?

[Riley18]

2. $600 billion taken from us and handed over to Gates.

Does their greed have no end? How do we even fight back when they have all the politicians under their control?

[defendandprotect]

8. And how many still think Gates is actually trying to help public education???!!!

It's frightening --

Many still think that John D. Rockefeller's philanthropy was a good thing!!

We have a political crime wave -- and we have to address it as such !!

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. I never thought I would see the day when education would be a profit making industry

And it absolutely disgusts me.

[texshelters]

4. Thanks for posting this. Schools have become a profit center for test makers

and it is disgusting.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[GKirk]

5. Is the Chicago school system

a shining example of what schools across the
country should emulate?

[defendandprotect]

9. Agree...and as officials began to point this out to the public, the attack grew ...

instead of getting rid of these ridiculous tests, the testing has now

become a way of life!!

It is truly disgusting -- a political crime wave -- and who to trust?

[BrklynLiberal]

6. The corporatists will try to find a way to make EVERYTHING a profit center.

Fascist state, oligarchy, corporatocracy....what we are becoming...Leaving Democracy far behind us.

[botchan]

7. Funny thing about all this privatization...

Funny thing about all this privatization is that the countries that are supposedly producing better students than the USA are almost exclusively public. Common sense, as in the health care debate, will once again fall on deaf ears...

[defendandprotect]

10. K/R ... indeed -- success doesn't come from privatized exploitation of students...

[Omaha Steve]

11. Kick