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Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice 2013 (Whole Number 20), pp. 209-223 Hacking Away at the Corporate Octopus Alan J. Singer Hofstra University In January 1961, as he completed his second and final term as president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower gave a farewell address to the nation (Ike’s Warning, 2011). In many ways, it was a remarkable and prescient speech, especially given that Eisenhower was a West Point graduate, a retired five-star general, a military hero during World War II who led the D- Day invasion of Europe, and was essentially a very conservative man. In the speech, Eisenhower warned the American people of the growing power of a “military-industrial complex,” an alliance of the military with defense contractors that he saw as a threat to democracy: In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. (Eisenhower Farewell Address, paras. 21-22) Democracy in the United States is now under a similar assault from what I call the Education-Foundation-Political-Industrial Complex. This Complex takes many forms but its primary goal seems to be to shape state and federal educational policy in a way that maximizes private corporate profits at the expense of public education. What used to be called the not-for-profit sector has been virtually taken over by the Complex. Non-profit no longer really means non-profit. According to an article in Dissent Magazine, “hundreds of private philanthropies together spend almost $4 billion annually to support or transform K–12 education, most of it directed to schools that serve low-income children” (Barkan, 2011, para. 2). The three biggest players are the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Microsoft), the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation (finance, real estate, and insurance), and the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart). The Gates-Broad-Walton triumvirate support a range of what they champion as educational “reform,” but their primary interest in each case appears to me as an effort to undermine the current system of public education by promoting market-based initiatives based on competition, privatization, high-stakes testing, and anti-union activities such as campaigns for “merit pay” (About the Broads, n.d.). Readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and Cultural Logic, it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. More details of this Creative Commons license are available from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. All other uses must be approved by the author(s) or Cultural Logic. Cultural Logic ISSN 1097-3087 210 Singer When a group of Indiana teachers surprisingly spoke out against seniority-based layoff policies, it turned out they were recruited by a group called Teach Plus, which is largely financed by the Gates Foundation. The foundation recruits and pays Harvard-trained data specialists to work in school districts where they promote Gates initiatives. Harvard University received $3.5 million to place “strategic data fellows” who could act as “entrepreneurial change agents” in major urban school districts including Boston and Los Angeles. In 2009, the last year for which tax records were available, the Gates Foundation spent $78 million on educational advocacy, promoting its agenda, and another $300 million funding model Gates programs through 360 educational grants. Gates money is so pervasive that many recipients do not even know the origin of their funds, including the Teach Plus teachers. The American Enterprise Institute received a half a million dollars “to influence the national education debates,” and money went to Education Week and public radio and television stations that cover education policies. Gates money gets Gates opinions into the press, especially Gates opinions on the “common core curriculum” (Common Core State Standards Initiative, n.d.). The Alliance for Excellent Education was paid over half a million dollars “to grow support for the common core standards initiative” (Dillon, 2011). The Center on Education Policy received a million dollars to “track which states adopted the standards.” The Fordham Institute got almost a million dollars to “review common core materials and develop supportive materials.” When Fordham president Chester E. Finn Jr., praised the standards, he was quoted in newspapers across the country. The National Governors Association (NGA) played a key role along with Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in developing the “common core standards.” It presents itself on its website as “the bipartisan organization of the nation’s governors” designed to promote “visionary state leadership,” and “best practices,” yet it is virtually a wholly-owned subsidy of the major edu-corporations. In 2010, it received about a third of its operating budget, $7.5 million, from foundation grants and contracts, corporate fellows, and other contributions. The NGA and CCSSO have received millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation. Its over one hundred corporate partners include: Educational Testing Service, Apple, Pearson, Cisco, College Board, DeVry, Houghton Mifflin, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Scholastic, all companies that stand to benefit from its policy recommendations. Recent corporate award winners include Walmart Intel, and Microsoft (Dillon, 2011). In 2010, David Wakelyn represented the NGA at a series of regional meetings sponsored by the National Association of State Boards of Education to inform members about the Common Core Standards Initiative. At the meetings, he compared the common core standards to the invention of 110-volt electricity: “When you have common standards, the result is you can develop all kinds of appliances, materials, that plug into it…Productivity should increase” (Gerwertz, 2010). Wakelyn sent me an email, objecting, when in a blog I identified him as a “corporate representative” whose appointment as Deputy Secretary for Education “cemented” Pearson’s “ties with the New York State governor and the State Education Department” (Singer, 2012). Either he was unaware of the close ties between the NGA and Pearson and Gates while he was promoting the common core, or he does not see that as a corporate connection. While the National Governors Association wrote his checks, the money came from Pearson and Gates. To quote William Shakespeare, Mr. Wakelyn “doth protest too much.” Curiously, after less than a Cultural Logic 211 year, Wakelyn left the New York State Education Department to become a senior director at Democracy Prep charter schools. According to Reuters, an international news service based in Great Britain, “investors of all stripes are beginning to sense big profit potential in public education. The K-12 market is tantalizingly huge: The U.S. spends more than $500 billion a year to educate kids from ages five through 18. The entire education sector, including college and mid-career training, represents nearly 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, more than the energy or technology sectors” (Simon, 2012). Pearson, a British multinational conglomerate, is one of the largest and most aggressive private companies seeking to profit from what they and others euphemistically call educational reform, but which teachers from groups like Rethinking Schools and FairTest see as an effort to sell, sell, sell substandard remedial education programs seamlessly aligned with the high stakes standardized tests for students and teacher assessments they are also selling. Pearson reported revenues of approximately $9 billion in 2010 and generated approximately $3 billion on digital revenues alone in 2011. According to a report prepared for the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, between 2007 and 2012, Pearson purchased twenty-five education and publishing companies valued at $5 billion. They include Schoolnet, EDI, America’s Choice, eCollege.com, and Harcourt Assessment (Au, 2010; FairTest, n.d.; Gutstein, 2012). If it has its way, Pearson will soon be determining what gets taught in schools across the United States with little or no parental or educational oversight. Pearson standardized exams will assess how well teachers implement Pearson instruction modules and Pearson’s common core standards, but not what students really learn or whether students are actually learning things that are important to know. Pearson is already creating teacher certification exams for eighteen states, organizing staff development workshops to promote Pearson products, and providing school district Pearson assessment tools. In New York, Pearson Education currently has a five-year, $32 million contract to administer state tests and provides other “testing services” to the State Education Department. It also recently received a share of a federal Race to the Top grant to create what the company calls the “next-generation” of online assessments (Hu, 2012). In the United Kingdom, Pearson is launching an on-line for profit “college” that is poised to