If there was ever and example of the ruling class dictating educational policy and then crowing about it, the recent Aspen Institute session on SB 7 and the work of Stand for Children during the past nine months in Illinois is it. The Aspen Institute, which has been exposed by many analysts (most notably for Substance readers, Susan Ohanian) as one of the key players in corporate rule, held a conference recently at which James Crown (one of the billionaires from the billionaire family that helped bankroll Stand for Children) and Jonah Edelman provided an hour of detail on how they foisted SB 7 on Illinois.
All of the speakers and participants in the panel agree now: SB7 and how "Stand" brought it to Illinois is now a model that the ruling class is going to follow in the future to forge legislation based on the bipartisan consensus they are parading out as a key to the next phase of corporate "school reform." Substance is working on getting a complete transcript of the Aspen Institute session, as well as interviewing leaders of the Illinois Education Association (IEA) about their personal and organizational role in creating and maintaining the Jim Crow "separate and not equal status" of the largest (mostly minority) school district in Illinois, Chicago, at the back of the bud legislatively. This story is just beginning to be told, and the role of the wealthy men and women who are creating phony "grass roots" organizations like "Stand for Children" and "Advance Illinois" will be studied and exposed as well.
On July 9, 2011, the direct link to the Aspen Institute site that contained the video became unavailable, but the link through the Chicago Tribune blog (district 299.com) was still up. The Tribune blog link, for those who cannot get a hotlink, is
http://www.chicagonow.com/...
OR
http://vodpod.com/...
CROSSPOSTED @
http://www.substancenews.net/...
by George N. Schmidt
The narrative can't be sustained if the public learns that a bunch of Chicago billionaires were buying grass rootsy types by the dozen to push a legislative agenda to privatize public education, bust unions, and prove that with a few hundred thousand dollars you can buy the love and affection of any politician in Illinois and with a few more bucks than that you can buy the undying love and affection of the father of the Illinois Attorney General.
Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (above left at podium) speaking at the June 13, 2011 signing of Senate Bill 7, which continued the attack on Chicago's public schools and the Chicago Teachers Union after a billionaires' financed attack by Stand for Children, Advance Illinois, and the Business Roundtable against unionized Chicago teachers succeeded. At the signing above, the bipartisan group that pushed through SB7 was hailed. Only Karen Lewis, the President of the Chicago Teachers Union, did not attend the signing. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
Robin Steans, the millionaire heiress who runs the astro turf group called "Advance Illinois," had just finished speaking at the June 13, 2011 signing of SB7 when the above photograph was taken. A few weeks later, her multi-millionaire father took the family on a safari in Africa to cap her triumphant season in Illinois politics as the person who sheparded the union-busting "SB7" through the Illinois General Assembly on behalf of Chicago billionaires. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
Among those celebrating the triumph of SB7 and the latest legislative attack on the Chicago Teachers Union in Illinois were (left to right), Illinois Federation of Teachers President Dan Montgomery (second from left), Robin Steans of Advance Illinois (third from left), Ken Swanson of the Illinois Education Association (fourth from left), State Senator Kimberly Lightford (fifth from left), Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel (third from right), State Rep Linda Chapa La Cia (second from right) and former Chicago Board of Education President Gery Chico (right). Behind Chapa La Via is Stand for Children's Jonah Edelman, who was not asked to speak about the group's triumphant purchase of Illinois politicians in late 2010 and early 2011 at the SB7 signing. It should be noted that at this point the Chicago Teachers Union understood what had happened to them and stayed away from this signing. Substance photo by George N. Schmidt.
It is recommended every teacher in Chicago and Union member across the nation view the Stand video. Anyway, in the photo earlier in this article, you can see, literally, every person who arranged to continue the Jim Crow version of Illinois law that became SB7.
They're all there, from Kimberly Lightford to Charlie Rose, and from Jo Anderson to Robin Steans. The only person who didn't appear at that event was Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, and as history unfolds, her reputation will grow while each of the others (in that photo) will be answering the question of why they did that? Sort of like during the old days of Jim Crow. It took a lot of people (and a lot of money) to create systems that kept black children (and their teachers) in "separate but equal." And that's really what Pat Quinn, Rahm Emanuel, Kimberly Lightford, Linda Chapa La Via, and the rest of that crew were bragging about when I [George Schmidt] covered the signing of SB7 last month.
(Then) Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan (left) with University of Chicago President John Michael Randle (center) and billionaire James Crown (right) at a March 6, 2003 press conference. Duncan's lack of qualification in public school teaching, experience, or training were actually considered a plus by Chicago's billionaires and rulers, of which the University of Chicago is one, in their choice of Duncan to head the public schools under Mayor Richard M. Daley from July 1, 2001, through December 31, 2008. The same lack of qualifications in public education made Duncan President Barack Obama's logical choice to head the U.S. Department of Education in 2009, since Duncan's job was to destroy as much of public education in the USA as possible, while engaging in massive teacher bashing, union busting, and privatization.
For those who cannot get the hotlink above, the URL is: http://aifestival.org/... POSTED AS A COMMENT AND ADDED HERE AS WELL ON JULY 9, 2011... Some time during the past 12 hours, between July 8 and July 9, 2011, the hotlink from which we were getting the Jonah Edelman video (with his master, billionaire Jim Crown) went dead. If you try the direct link to Aspen, you get "PAGE NOT FOUND. The requested page could not be found.
NEW LINK
http://vodpod.com/...
CROSSPOSTED @
http://www.substancenews.net/...
Aspen Institute Session on SB7... How the Ruling Class works against public schools and teacher unions...
http://www.substancenews.net/...
by Susan Ohanian
I've been following the public school deformation work at the Aspen Institute for quite some time, starting with a 2003 roster of an American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy (AEI) get-together titled Nation at Risk: Twenty Years Later. Panelists included: Lynne V. Cheney, AEI
Michael Cohen, Achieve, Inc.
Chester E. Finn Jr., Fordham Foundation
Marc Tucker, National Center on Education and the Economy
Frederick M. Hess, AEI, moderated the event.
Achieve President Michael Cohen reminded his fellow panelists that before going to Achieve he was a senior fellow at the the Aspen Institute, working on aligning high school exit standards with admissions and placement standards for post secondary institutions.
In October 2005, I noted that Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute and chair of the national board of Teach For America, stood by Wendy Kopp's side to welcome people to the Teach for America 15th reunion. I don't know what Isaacson said there. It's just important to keep track of bedfellows. And this becomes impossible if one relies on institutional records. Note that the url for the Teach for America Reunion Program is now dead.
In August 2006,the Tampa Tribune used this quote from what Eugene Hickock, former U.S. deputy secretary of education and an architect of No Child Left Behind, said at a meeting of the Aspen Institute's Leave No Child Behind Commission, to justify test prep in 90 degree weather for the FCAT--looming six months ahead:
"Accountability is, all too often, in the eye of the beholder."
In February 2007, the Aspen Institute released a report, paid for in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, calling for increased regulation and standardization of American classrooms.
In August 2008, Senator Barack Obama announced his Campaign Education Advisers, including:
Christopher F. Edley-- Dean of the University of California, Berkeley, law school since 2004. He served as a special counsel to President Clinton, working on affirmative action issues, and was a member of the Aspen Institute's Commission on No Child Left Behind, which issued 75 recommendations for overhauling the federal education law. Those included tying teacher quality to student-achievement data and calling on the National Assessment Governing Board to craft voluntary national standards and tests.
In September 2008, the Aspen Institute held an Education Summit, with a roster of people to announce a crisis. McKenzie & Company , fierce cheerleaders for globalization, hold hands with Aspen. McKenzie issues a paper; Aspen holds a summit. And Jon Schnur will be around appearing on panels. Of late, he's showed up in connection with Aspen's paper on union-district collaboration.
Do you need a reminder of the institutional investors in the New School Venture Fund?
Don't miss the press release for
Wireless Generation Develops New Technology
That Matches Curriculum to Students' Learning Needs Throughout the School Year. Remember: Wireless Generation partners with DIBELS [Wireless software allowing teachers to score the test on a handheld computer is ubiquitous in schools receiving NCLB funds]. Wireless CEO and founder Larry Berger was 2007 inaugural Fellow for the Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Program, created by The Aspen Institute and the New Schools Venture Fund.
Connect more dots here.
It's a small world among these cronies.
2009 brought the National Action Network Connection: Warning: following all the links on this page will make you dizzy.
Reminder: Rupert Murdoch bought 90% of Wireless Generation in 2009. And now he's put former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein in charge of overseeing the phone hacking scandal. Here's the Daily News headline when Klein went to work for Murdoch: Joel Klein's job with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. a sellout of everything he supposedly stood for">.
Joanne Weiss sounded more like an employee of Wireless Generation than part of the tax-payer funded U. S. Department of education in this outrageous Harvard Business Review piece.
AND the sickening Teachers as Human Capital project. Again, Aspen is right there promoting the corporate agenda.
In 2009 alone, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation alone the Aspen Institute $3,878,680.
Purpose: to continue support for Human Capital Framework, Senior Congressional Staff Network, and the Urban Superintendents Network to address common issues of teacher effectiveness, standards, and assessments
On the Gates website, AFT President Randi Weingarten offered the AFT congratulations for the Hillsborough, Memphis, Pittsburgh seduction: "These Gates Intensive Partnership grants will show that when dedicated adults engage in true collaboration, the real winners are the students."
Real, winners, indeed.
Of course Thomas Friedman shows up at Aspen. Harder to figure which is a more perfect spot for him: Davos or Aspen.
Russlyn Ali: Selected by Pres. Barack Obama as Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Ali was previously founding director Education Trust West. Before that Ali, an attorney, was employed by The Children's Defense Fund and before that as assistant director of policy and research at the Broad Foundation, for which she was also on loan as chief of staff to the president of the Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education. She has served on the Review Board for The Broad Prize for Urban Education. She was a fellow of the Aspen Institute's New Schools Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Fellowship. Here are a couple of her notable remarks.
John Deasy is, of course an Aspen fellow. His title is Aspen-New School Fellow.
Early in 2011 the Tampa Tribune announced Hillsborough as the place where Common U.S. school standards debut. Give the reporter credit for mentioning that Hillsborough is one 15 districts operating under this plan--Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Denver, District of Columbia, Hillsborough County FL, Houston, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Memphis, Pittsburgh, Prince George’s County, Rochester, and Seattle. They operate under the aegis of the Gates-funded Aspen Urban Superintendents Network, which has been made possible by generous grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation.
And then there are the Education Pioneers, an Oakland-based non-profit headed by Scott Morgan, who was a Fellow of the Aspen Institute-NewSchools Venture Fund Entrepreneurial Leaders for Public Education Class of 2010. Jean-Claude Brizard, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's pick to be new CEO of Chicago Schools, was a classmate, as was Tia Elena Martinez, Strategic Advisor, Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education. In the Small World of Financial and Influence-Peddling Incest, please note that the Office of Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education is also a partner in Education Pioneers.
Sun Jul 10, 2011 at 9:19 AM PT: Diary has been edited and updated. thanks for the comments.
