Levesque, P

Patricia Levesque, a Bush staffer speaking at the summit and the

former governor’s right hand when it comes to education reform, does not

draw a direct salary from Bush’s nonprofit despite the fact that she is

listed as its executive director, and tax disclosures show that she

spends about fifty hours a week at the organization. Instead, her

lobbying firm, Meridian Strategies, supplies her income. The Foundation

for Florida’s Future, another Bush nonprofit, contracts with Meridian,

as do online technology companies like IQ-ity Innovation, which paid her

up to $20,000 for lobbying services at the beginning of this year. The

unorthodox arrangement allows donors to Bush’s group to avoid

registering actual lobbyists while using operatives like Levesque to

influence legislators and governors on education technology.

Levesque’s contract with IQ-ity raises questions about Bush’s foundation work. As Mother Jones

recently reported, the founder of IQ-ity, William Lager, also founded

an education company with a poor track record. Lager’s other education

firm, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, is the largest provider of

virtual schools in Ohio. ECOT schools have consistently underperformed;

though the company serves more than 10,000 children, its graduation rate

has never broken 40 percent. The company was fined for billing the

state to serve more than 2,000 students in one month, when only seven

children logged on during the same time period. Nevertheless, after

Levesque spent at least two years as a registered lobbyist for Lager’s

firm, Bush traveled to Ohio to give the commencement speech for ECOT.

“ECOT proves a glimpse into what’s possible,” Bush said with pride, “by

harnessing the power of technology.”

Levesque is no ordinary lobbyist. She is credited with encouraging

the type of bare-knuckle politics now common in the wider

education-reform movement. In an audio file obtained by The Nation,

she and infamous anti-union consultant Richard Berman outlined a

strategy in October 2010 for sweeping the nation with education reforms.

The two spoke at the Philanthropy Roundtable, a get-together of major

right-wing foundations. Lori Fey, a representative of the Michael Dell

Foundation, moderated the panel discussion.

Rather than “intellectualize ourselves into the [education reform]

debate…is there a way that we can get into it at an emotional level?”

Berman asked. “Emotions will stay with people longer than concepts.” He

then answered his own question: “We need to hit on fear and anger.

Because fear and anger stays with people longer. And how you get the

fear and anger is by reframing the problem.” Berman’s glossy ads, which

have run in Washington, DC, and New Jersey, portray teachers unions as

schoolyard bullies. One spot even seems to compare teachers to child

abusers. Although Berman does not reveal his donors, he made clear in

his talk that the foundations in the room were supporting his campaign.

Levesque ended the strategy discussion with a larger strategic

question. She pointed to the example of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

donating $100 million to Newark schools. She then asked the crowd to

imagine instead raising $100 million for political races where we “could

sway a couple of seats to have more education reform.” “Just shifting a

little bit of your focus,” she added, noting that new politicians could

have a greater impact.

Levesque’s ask has become reality. According to author Steven Brill,

ex–DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s new group, StudentsFirst, raised

$100 million within a few months of Levesque’s remarks. Rhee’s donors

include Rupert Murdoch, philanthropist Eli Broad and Home Depot founder

Ken Langone. Rhee’s group has pledged to spend more than $1 billion to

bring for-profit schools, including virtual education, to the entire

country by electing reform-friendly candidates and hiring top-notch

state lobbyists.

A day before he opened his education reform conference to the media

recently, Bush hosted another education meeting. This event, a private

affair in the Palace Hotel, was a reconvening of investors and

strategists to plan the next leg of the privatization campaign. Michael

Moe, Susan Patrick, Tom Vander Ark and other major players were invited.

I waited outside the event, trying to get what information I could. I

asked Mayor Fenty how I could get in. “Just crash in, come on in,” he

laughed, adding, “so what company are you with?” When he learned that I

was a reporter, he shook his head. “Oh, nah, you’re not welcome, then.”

An invitation had billed the exclusive gathering as a chance for

“philanthropists and venture capitalists” to figure out how to “leverage

each other’s strengths”—a concise way to describe how for-profit

virtual school companies are using philanthropy as a Trojan horse.

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...

Lamenting this series of defeats, Patricia Levesque, a top adviser to former Governor Jeb Bush, spoke to fellow reformers at a retreat in October 2010. Levesque noted that reform efforts had failed because the opposition had time to organize. Next year, Levesque advised, reformers should “spread” the unions thin “by playing offense” with decoy legislation. Levesque said she planned to sponsor a series of statewide reforms, like allowing taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools by overturning the so-called Blaine Amendment, “even if it doesn’t pass…to keep them busy on that front.” She also advised paycheck protection, a unionbusting scheme, as well as a state-provided insurance program to encourage teachers to leave the union and a transparency law to force teachers unions to show additional information to the public. Needling the labor unions with all these bills, Levesque said, allows certain charter bills to fly “under the radar.”

If Levesque’s blunt advice sounds like that of a veteran lobbyist, that’s because she is one. Levesque runs a Tallahassee-based firm called Meridian Strategies LLC, which lobbies on behalf of a number of education-technology companies. She is a leader of a coalition of government officials, academics and virtual school sector companies pushing new education laws that could benefit them.

But Levesque wasn’t delivering her hardball advice to her lobbying clients. She was giving it to a group of education philanthropists at a conference sponsored by notable charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation. Indeed, Levesque serves at the helm of two education charities, the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a national organization, and the Foundation for Florida’s Future, a state-specific nonprofit, both of which are chaired by Jeb Bush. A press release from her national group says that it fights to “advance policies that will create a high quality digital learning environment.”

Despite the clear conflict of interest between her lobbying clients and her philanthropic goals, Levesque and her team have led a quiet but astonishing national transformation. Lobbyists like Levesque have made 2011 the year of virtual education reform, at last achieving sweeping legislative success [1] by combining the financial firepower of their corporate clients with the seeming legitimacy of privatization-minded school-reform think tanks and foundations. Thanks to this synergistic pairing, policies designed to boost the bottom lines of education-technology companies are cast as mere attempts to improve education through technological enhancements, prompting little public debate or opposition. In addition to Florida, twelve states have expanded virtual school programs or online course requirements this year. This legislative juggernaut has coincided with a gold rush of investors clamoring to get a piece of the K-12 education market. It’s big business, and getting bigger: One study estimated that revenues from the K-12 online learning industry will grow by 43 percent between 2010 and 2015, with revenues reaching $24.4 billion.

...

Through Bush, education-technology companies have found a shortcut to encourage states to adopt e-learning reforms. Take his yearly National Summit on Education Reform, sponsored by the Foundation for Excellence in Education.

At the most recent summit, held in San Francisco in mid-October, a group of more than 200 state legislators and state education department officials huddled in a ballroom over education-technology strategy. Rich Crandall, a state senator from Arizona, said to hearty applause that he had developed a local think tank to support the virtual school reforms he helped usher into law. Toward the end of the discussion, Vander Ark, acting as an emcee, walked around the room acknowledging lawmakers who had recently passed pro–education tech laws this year. He handed the microphone to Kelli Stargel, a state representative from Florida, who stood up and boasted of creating “virtual charter schools, so we can have innovation in our state.”

Throughout the day, lawmakers mingled with education-technology lobbyists from leading firms, like Apex Learning and K12 Inc. Some of the distance learning reforms were taught in breakout sessions, like one called “Don’t Let a Financial Crisis Go to Waste,” an hourlong event that encouraged lawmakers to use virtual schools as a budget-cutting measure. Mandy Clark, a staffer with Bush’s foundation, walked around handing out business cards, offering to e-mail sample legislation to legislators.

The lobbying was evident to anyone there. But for some of those present, Bush didn’t go far enough. David Byer, a senior manager with Apple in charge of developing education business for the company, groaned and leaned over to another attendee sitting at the edge of the room after a lunch session. “You have this many people together, why can’t you say, ‘Here are the ten elements, here are some sample bills’?” said Byer to David Stevenson, who nodded in agreement. Stevenson is a vice president of News Corporation’s education subsidiary, Wireless Generation, an education-technology firm that specializes in assessment tools. It was just a year ago that News Corp. announced its intention to enter the for-profit K-12 education industry, which Rupert Murdoch called “a $500 billion sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”

As attendees stood up to leave the hall, the phalanx of lobbyists surrounding the room converged, buttonholing legislators and school officials. On a floor above the main hall, an expo center had been set up, with companies like McGraw-Hill, Connections Academy, K12 Inc., proud sponsors of the event, providing information on how to work with politicians to make education technology a reality.

Patricia Levesque, a Bush staffer speaking at the summit and the former governor’s right hand when it comes to education reform, does not draw a direct salary from Bush’s nonprofit despite the fact that she is listed as its executive director, and tax disclosures show that she spends about fifty hours a week at the organization. Instead, her lobbying firm, Meridian Strategies, supplies her income. The Foundation for Florida’s Future, another Bush nonprofit, contracts with Meridian, as do online technology companies like IQ-ity Innovation, which paid her up to $20,000 for lobbying services at the beginning of this year. The unorthodox arrangement allows donors to Bush’s group to avoid registering actual lobbyists while using operatives like Levesque to influence legislators and governors on education technology.

Levesque’s contract with IQ-ity raises questions about Bush’s foundation work. As Mother Jones recently reported, the founder of IQ-ity, William Lager, also founded an education company with a poor track record. Lager’s other education firm, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, is the largest provider of virtual schools in Ohio. ECOT schools have consistently underperformed; though the company serves more than 10,000 children, its graduation rate has never broken 40 percent. The company was fined for billing the state to serve more than 2,000 students in one month, when only seven children logged on during the same time period. Nevertheless, after Levesque spent at least two years as a registered lobbyist for Lager’s firm, Bush traveled to Ohio to give the commencement speech for ECOT. “ECOT proves a glimpse into what’s possible,” Bush said with pride, “by harnessing the power of technology.”

Levesque is no ordinary lobbyist. She is credited with encouraging the type of bare-knuckle politics now common in the wider education-reform movement. In an audio file obtained by The Nation, she and infamous anti-union consultant Richard Berman outlined a strategy in October 2010 for sweeping the nation with education reforms. The two spoke at the Philanthropy Roundtable, a get-together of major right-wing foundations. Lori Fey, a representative of the Michael Dell Foundation, moderated the panel discussion.

Rather than “intellectualize ourselves into the [education reform] debate…is there a way that we can get into it at an emotional level?” Berman asked. “Emotions will stay with people longer than concepts.” He then answered his own question: “We need to hit on fear and anger. Because fear and anger stays with people longer. And how you get the fear and anger is by reframing the problem.” Berman’s glossy ads, which have run in Washington, DC, and New Jersey, portray teachers unions as schoolyard bullies. One spot even seems to compare teachers to child abusers. Although Berman does not reveal his donors, he made clear in his talk that the foundations in the room were supporting his campaign.

Levesque ended the strategy discussion with a larger strategic question. She pointed to the example of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg donating $100 million to Newark schools. She then asked the crowd to imagine instead raising $100 million for political races where we “could sway a couple of seats to have more education reform.” “Just shifting a little bit of your focus,” she added, noting that new politicians could have a greater impact.

Levesque’s ask has become reality. According to author Steven Brill, ex–DC school chancellor Michelle Rhee’s new group, StudentsFirst, raised $100 million within a few months of Levesque’s remarks. Rhee’s donors include Rupert Murdoch, philanthropist Eli Broad and Home Depot founder Ken Langone. Rhee’s group has pledged to spend more than $1 billion to bring for-profit schools, including virtual education, to the entire country by electing reform-friendly candidates and hiring top-notch state lobbyists.

A day before he opened his education reform conference to the media recently, Bush hosted another education meeting. This event, a private affair in the Palace Hotel, was a reconvening of investors and strategists to plan the next leg of the privatization campaign. Michael Moe, Susan Patrick, Tom Vander Ark and other major players were invited. I waited outside the event, trying to get what information I could. I asked Mayor Fenty how I could get in. “Just crash in, come on in,” he laughed, adding, “so what company are you with?” When he learned that I was a reporter, he shook his head. “Oh, nah, you’re not welcome, then.”

An invitation had billed the exclusive gathering as a chance for “philanthropists and venture capitalists” to figure out how to “leverage each other’s strengths”—a concise way to describe how for-profit virtual school companies are using philanthropy as a Trojan horse.

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