Friedman Fdn

http://www.alternet.org/education/pbs-runs-three-hour-series-glorifying-anti-public-school-devos-education-agenda

Public education today faces an existential crisis. Over the past two decades, the movement to transfer public money to private organizations has expanded rapidly. The George W. Bush administration first wrote into federal law the proposal that privately managed charter schools were a remedy for low-scoring public schools, even though no such evidence existed. The Obama administration provided hundreds of millions each year to charter schools, under the control of private boards. Now, the Trump administration, under the leadership of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, wants to expand privatization to include vouchers, virtual schools, cyberschools, homeschooling, and every other possible alternative to public education. DeVos has said that public education is a “dead end,” and that “government sucks.”

DeVos’s agenda finds a ready audience in the majority of states now controlled by Republican governors and legislatures. Most states already have some form of voucher program that allow students to use public money to enroll in private and religious schools, even when their own state constitution prohibits it. The Republicans have skirted their own constitutions by asserting that the public money goes to the family, not the private or religious school. The longstanding tradition of separating church and state in K-12 education is crumbling. And Betsy DeVos can testify with a straight face that she will enforce federal law to “schools that receive federal funding,” because voucher schools allegedly do not receive the money, just the family that chooses religious schools.

Advocates of the privatization movement like DeVos claim that nonpublic schools will “save poor children from failing public schools,” but independent researchers have recently concurred that vouchers actually have had a negative effect on students in the District of Columbia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Ohio. Charters, at best, have a mixed record, and many are known for excluding children with disabilities and English language learners and for pushing out students who are troublesome.

This is a time when honest, nonpartisan reporting is needed to inform the American public. But this month the Public Broadcasting System is broadcasting a “documentary” that tells a one-sided story, the story that Betsy DeVos herself would tell, based on the work of free-market advocateAndrew Coulson. Author of “Market Education,” Coulson narrates “School, Inc.,” a three-hour program, which airs this month nationwide in three weekly broadcasts on PBS.

Uninformed viewers who see this slickly produced program will learn about the glories of unregulated schooling, for-profit schools, teachers selling their lessons to students on the Internet. They will learn about the “success” of the free market in schooling in Chile, Sweden, and New Orleans. They will hear about the miraculous charter schools across America, and how public school officials selfishly refuse to encourage the transfer of public funds to private institutions. They will see a glowing portrait of South Korea, where students compete to get the highest possible scores on a college entry test that will define the rest of their lives and where families gladly pay for after-school tutoring programs and online lessons to boost test scores. They will hear that the free market is more innovative than public schools.

What they will not see or hear is the other side of the story.They will not hear scholars discuss the high levels of social segregation in Chile, nor will they learn that the students protesting the free-market schools in the streets are not all “Communists,” as Coulson suggests. They will not hear from scholars who blame Sweden’s choice system for the collapse of its international test scores. They will not see any reference to Finland, which far outperforms any other European nation on international tests yet has neither vouchers nor charter schools. They may not notice the absence of any students in wheelchairs or any other evidence of students with disabilities in the highly regarded KIPP charter schools. They will not learn that the acclaimed American Indian Model Charter Schools in Oakland does not enroll any American Indians, but has a student body that is 60 percent Asian American in a city where that group is 12.8 percent of the student population. Nor will they see any evidence of greater innovation in voucher schools or charter schools than in properly funded public schools.

Coulson has a nifty way of dismissing the fact that the free market system of schooling was imposed by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. He says that Hitler liked the Hollywood movie “It Happened One Night” (with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable); should we stop showing or watching the movie? Is that a fair comparison? Pinochet was directly responsible for the free market system of schooling, including for-profit private schools. Hitler neither produced nor directed “It Happened One Night.” Thus does Coulson refer to criticisms (like Sweden’s collapsing scores on international tests) and dismisses them as irrelevant.

I watched the documentary twice, preparing to be interviewed by Channel 13, and was repelled by the partisan nature of the presentation. I googled the funders and discovered that the lead funder is the Rose Mary and Jack Anderson Foundation, a very conservative foundation that is a major contributor to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, which advocates for vouchers. The Anderson Foundation is allied with Donors Trust, whose donors make contributions that cannot be traced to them. Mother Jones referred to this foundation as part of “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement.” Other contributors to Donors Trust include the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity and the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation.

The second major funder is the Prometheus Foundation. Its public filings with the IRS show that its largest grant ($2.5 million) went to the Ayn Rand Institute. The third listed funder of  “School Inc.” is the Steve and Lana Hardy Foundation, which contributes to free-market libertarian think tanks.

In other words, this program is paid propaganda. It does not search for the truth. It does not present opposing points of view. It is an advertisement for the demolition of public education and for an unregulated free market in education. PBS might have aired a program that debates these issues, but “School Inc.” does not.

It is puzzling that PBS would accept millions of dollars for this lavish and one-sided production from a group of foundations with a singular devotion to the privatization of public services. The decision to air this series is even stranger when you stop to consider that these kinds of anti-government political foundations are likely to advocate for the elimination of public funding for PBS. After all, in a free market of television, where there are so many choices available, why should the federal government pay for a television channel.

DR

http://conservativetransparency.org/donor/friedman-foundation-for-educational-choice-2/

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srchwatch

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Friedman_Foundation_for_Educational_Choice

Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice is an Indiana-based nonprofit devoted to the privatization of schools through the promotion of an educational voucher system. It was founded by economists Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman in 1996. Milton Friedman is regarded as one of the most influential proponents of neo-liberal market economics. According to the organizations website, the foundation's mission is "amplifying the national call for true education reform through school choice." The organization provides research and marketing services to local and national organizations with similar missions to promote support for the educational voucher system among legislators and the public.^[1]

Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has worked with the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC), along with the Alliance for School Choice to develop model legislation to be introduced into state legislatures across the country.^[2] The organization was one of around 60 organizations represented at the exhibition hall at the ALEC annual meeting in 2011.^[3]

Personnel

Board of Directors

• Board Chair Dr. Patrick Byrne, Chairman and President of Overstock.com
• President and CEO Robert C. Enlow, The Foundation for Educational Choice
• President Emeritus Gordon St. Angelo, The Foundation for Educational Choice
• Vice Chairperson Janet F. Martel, Attorney
• Treasurer Lawrence A. O'Connor, Jr., Executive Director, Butler Business Accelerator
• Secretary J. Scott Enright, Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Emmis Communications Corporation
• Charles H. Brunie, Brunie Associates
• Dr. David D. Friedman, Professor, Santa Clara University
• William J. Hume, Chairman of the Board, Basic American, Inc.
• Samuel H. Husband, Jr., President, Husbands Capital Markets
• Sandra Jordan, Owner & Creative Director, Jordan Winery
• Fred Reams, Reams Asset Management
• Howard S. Rich, Rich & Rich
• Dr. Michael Walker, President, The Fraser Institute Foundation^[4]

Staff

• Gordon St. Angelo, President Emeritus
• Robert C. Enlow, President & CEO
• Chris Atkins, Senior Fiscal Analyst
• Dale Buwalda, State Program & Government Relations Director
• Paul DiPerna, Research Director
• Carey Folco, Vice President of Operations
• Leslie Hiner, Vice President of Programs & State Relations
• Keri Hunter, Special Projects Coordinator
• Mandy L. Kett, Office Coordinator
• Susan L. Meyers, National Media Relations Director
• Shepherd Pittman, State Marketing & Public Relations Director
• Jeff Reed, State Programs & Government Relations Director
• Patrick L. Russell, Development Coordinator
• Cindy Sparks, Vice President of External Relations
• Andrew St. Angelo, Communications Coordinator/ Webmaster
• Michelle Stephens, Controller
• Drew Vessely, Creative Coordinator^[5]

Fellows

• Greg Forster, Senior Fellow
• Brian Gottlob, Senior Fellow & Principal, PolEcon Research
• Matthew Ladner, Senior Fellow & Vice President of Research, Goldwater Institute
• Benjamin Scafidi, Fellow & Associate Professor, Georgia College & State University^[6]

References

1. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. What We Do. Organizational website. Accessed August 15, 2011.
2. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Model Legislation. Organizational website. Accessed August 15, 2011.
3. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ American Legislative Exchange Council, "Solutions for the States," 38th Annual Meeting agenda, on file with CMD, August 3-6, 2011
4. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ The Friedman Foundation for Educational choice. Board of Directors. Organizational website. Accessed August 15, 2011.
5. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Staff. Organizational website. Accessed August 15, 2011.
6. :{Jump up:(style="top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important;-webkit-user-select:none"):}:↑ The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. Fellows. Organizational website. Accessed August 15, 2011.

This is a list of groups or individuals associated in some capacity with the American Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC).

Categories: 

• ALEC Exposed
• Stubs

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bs

Board of Directors

Dr. Patrick Byrne, Chairman

CEO, Overstock.com

Robert C. Enlow, President and CEO

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice

Janet F. Martel, Vice Chairperson

Attorney

Lawrence A. O'Connor, Jr., Treasurer

Executive Director, Butler Business Accelerator

J. Scott Enright, Secretary

Executive Vice President and General Counsel, Emmis Communications Corp.

Charles H. Brunie

Brunie Associates

Greg Gianforte

Founder, RightNow Technologies

Dr. David D. Friedman

Professor, Santa Clara University

William J. Hume

Chairman of the Board, Basic American, Inc.

Fred Klipsch

Chairman, Hoosiers for Quality Education

Fred Reams

Reams Asset Management

Virginia Walden Ford

Education Activist

Dr. Michael Walker

President, The Fraser Institute Foundation

Founding Directors

Milton Friedman

Nobel Laureate

Rose D. Friedman

Noted Economist

Gordon St. Angelo

President Emeritus, Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice

Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr.

Former Governor, Indiana

John Mutz

Former Lieutenant Governor, Indiana

J. Patrick Rooney

Founder, Educational CHOICE Charitable Trust

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rentatom?

Virginia F. Walden-Ford

Education Activist, Friedman Foundation Board Member

Schedule a Speaking Engagement With Virginia F. Walden-Ford

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Virginia Walden-Ford was raised by William Harry Fowler and Marion Virginia Fowler Armstrong, both public school educators. Her father was a principal and the first black assistant superintendent of the Little Rock school district. Her mother was one of the first black teachers to work at an all-white elementary school there. Walden-Ford and her twin sister were among a group of about 130 black students who were handpicked to desegregate the Little Rock’s high schools in the mid-1960s.

Walden-Ford has served as Community Outreach Director/Media Specialist for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS), as a volunteer with the Center for Education Reform in their 1997 parent outreach campaign, and as a Parent Outreach Coordinator with the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in their 1998 effort to organize parents to support school choice and the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Act. 

She is a National Board Member and a founding member of the Black Alliance for Educational Options and is President of the organization’s Washington, D.C. chapter. Walden-Ford also serves as a Board Member of the Booker T. Washington Public Charter School and as Executive Director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, Inc, a clearinghouse designed to organize and educate parents to empower them to make appropriate educational decisions for their children. 

Walden-Ford was the recipient of the Heritage Foundation's prestigious 2004 Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship, the Black Alliance for Educational Options’ 2004 Vision Award, and the 2005 Leonard F. DeFiore Parental Choice Advocate Award from the National Catholic Education Association. She is the author of "Voices, Choices, and Second Chances: How to Win the Battle to Bring Opportunity Scholarships to Your State."

TOPICS

• Parent Outreach
• Bipartisan Support

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Founded in 1998 by Virginia Walden Ford,DC Parents for School Choice is a clearinghouse organization for parents in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to organize and educate parents in order to empower them to make the appropriate educational decisions for their children. If parents understand school choice, they can advocate for badly needed educational reform.

Called to action in January of 2003 to help lead the effort to get School Choice legislation passed in the District, Virginia organized parents for a successful grassroots effort. DC Parents for School Choice joined a coalition of organizations who had worked tirelessly to make sure that the children of the District and their families would be the beneficiaries of the opportunity to choose schools that best served their children’s educational needs with the passage of the DC School Choice Incentive Act.

Virginia's community involvement began as a result of her own personal experiences. As a single parent, she raised three children in Washington, D.C. Two of her children finished high schools in the District successfully, but with her third child she was faced with deteriorating public schools and violent times. After obtaining a private scholarship for her son to attend Archbishop Carroll HS, she became an outspoken advocate for school choice. She believes passionately that all children should have the chance to obtain a quality education and that parents should be able to choose and send their children to the schools that best meet their needs.

Specialties:Virginia worked as a volunteer with the Center for Education Reform in their parent outreach campaign in l997and worked with the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise as Parent Outreach Coordinator and organized parents to support school choice and the D.C. Scholarship Act in 1998.

Experience

Consultant/Education Advocate

Arkansas Parent Network

August 2011 – Present (4 years)State of Arkansas

Working to make more educational choices available to Arkansas parents by providing them with information about traditional, public charter, private and parochial schools.

Board of Directors

Education Breakthrough Network

May 2010 – Present (5 years 3 months)

Board of Directors

BAEO

1999 – August 2011 (12 years)

Member

DC Advisory Committee US Commission on Civil Rights

May 2008 – July 2011 (3 years 3 months)

Executive Director

DC Parents For School Choice

September 1998 – July 2011 (12 years 11 months)

(Open)2 recommendations

James L. Yarrison

James L. Yarrison

Principal, Clio Historical Services, LLC, provide historical program services to public and private clients

Virginia Ford is an intelligent, personable, caring advocate for children and the educational choices their parents can make...View

Ruby Shaw

Ruby Shaw

Lawyer

Extremely knowledgeable about policy concerning children and families.View

Outreach Coordinator

Friends of Choice In Urban Schools

May 1997 – August 1998 (1 year 4 months)

Asst. to EVP/Finance Director

Sister Cities International

June 1977 – December 1990 (13 years 7 months)

Publications

Voices, Choices and Second Chances(Link)

Washington, DC

September 5, 2005

Based on the Dramatic Story and Ultimately Successful Campaign of DC Parents for School Choice.

Skills

Top Skills

99+Community Outreach

58Grassroots Organizing

40Public Policy

34Public Speaking

34Nonprofits

34Policy

32Legislation

24Fundraising

20Politics

19Education Policy

Virginia also knows about...

16Policy Analysis

15Legislative Relations

13Grant Writing

13Economic Development

12Education Reform

11Grants

10Speech Writing

9School Choice

9Public Relations

8Non-profits

8Staff Development

7Strategic Planning

7Political Consulting

6Editing

6Volunteer Management

See 25+

Education

Hampton University

Hampton University

1969 – 1973

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From *The People's Business*by Lee Drutman and Charlie Cray

...corporations have also established a stronghold in both education and the media. Today, corporate ties to universities run deep, and their designs on our system of public education are growing daily." (p.6)

When corporations begin to control the delivery of essential services like water, education, and health care, we can find ourselves in a troubling situation where making money becomes more important than providing reliable and affordable service, and where corporations--largely accountable only to their shareholders--are granted control over captive markets with dependent customers. (p. 136)

The idea of turning public schools over to the private sector goes back at least a half-century to an article written by Milton Friedman in 1955, which called for the privatization of public schools. Privatization of public schools is becoming increasingly popular with a variety of groups, including libertarians interested in shrinking the government, religious groups that denounce secular liberalism of public education, anf for-profit educational corporations looking to boost their bottom line. (p. 163)

Drutman, Lee, and Charlie Cray. The people's business: controlling corporations and restoring democracy. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2004.