Will Arizona be among the [un]lucky five states to be part of the new Koch Network education initiative? The states have yet to be named, but I suspect Arizona is on the radar, given the Koch Network and Governor Ducey’s mutual admiration society. We know KN loves Ducey’s vociferous support of vouchers, and Ducey loves KN’s money in equal measure.
The Koch Network announced its decision to put money into education — until recently, it has deferred to other right wing, privatization/”education reform” groups — during its latest summit at Indian Wells, California (about 5 hours down the road from here), where all it takes to get in the door is a commitment to pledge at least $100,000 to the cause.
The announcement came a day after one of the Koch folks’ rare kumbaya moments, a celebration of the bipartisan support for the First Step Act, signed into law by President Trump in December to reform the criminal justice system. Friend-of-Obama Van Jones was on board, and he praised the Koch Network’s support of the legislation. So was First Son-in-law Jared Kushner (whose interest in the subject was probably spurred by his father’s stay in prison [put there by Chris Christie, but that’s a whole ‘nuther story]).
Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a signal KN is planning to make nice with progressives in the future. Lower incarceration rates, along with fewer laws restricting drug use, have long been part of the libertarian platform. On a number of social issues, libertarians’ “less regulation, more freedom” agenda coincides with the progressive viewpoint.
However, the Koch Network is trying to sell its new education initiative as another attempt to join hands with people on the other side of the aisle. Some of its spokespeople went out of their way to praise teachers, who they usually lump together with evil unions and failing schools. The elevator pitch for their new initiative sounds kinda not bad, until you get into the details.
According to the Washington Post article:
The still-unnamed entity purportedly plans to focus on three buckets: changing public policy to address “the root causes” of failing schools, developing new technologies to promote individualized learning, and investing in teachers and classrooms.
Sounds pretty not bad. Except . . .
From the Koch perspective, the root causes of failing schools boil down to lousy public schools and the corrupt unions which keep them that way. The solution: more charters and even more vouchers.
New technologies and individualized learning refer to what’s often called “personalized learning,” a euphemism for the de-personalized learning systems where students sit in front of computers loaded with flawed educational software which is supposed to modify its teaching strategies based on students’ individual needs (while sending gigabytes of data on young children back to the company’s mother ship, which can be exploited for the rest of the students’ lives).
Here’s a way to put “personalized learning” into perspective. It’s where Facebook multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is putting his education foundation money.
As for investing in teachers and classrooms, you can bet that translates to boosting the budgets of charters and private schools.
The Koch agenda emphasizes “educational pluralism,” which means using government money to fund all kinds of schools, including, of course, private religious schools. In other words, vouchers in all shapes and sizes.
Their notion of “educational pluralism” doesn’t extend to what’s being taught. One of Koch Network’s stated reasons for getting into the education game is to encourage the teaching of their brand of conservative capitalism. They’re certain that socialism is being crammed down the throats of unwitting students. Why else would so many young people be trending progressive?
“The younger generation is less sympathetic and less understanding of limited government conservatism,” said Art Pope of North Carolina, a fixture of Koch meetings. “They’re more sympathetic or more willing to give not just social justice but outright socialism a chance. … It used to be you didn’t have to have a serious conversation about socialism in American politics. Now you do. So what is the appeal of that? How do you message?”’
This article appears in Jan 24-30, 2019.
That’s Communist “Friend-of-Obama Van Jones was on board…,”thank you.
This is a good thing that the younger generation is “more willing to give…outright socialism a chance?” Why? Where has outright socialism ever truly helped the people? Where has it not spawned despots and the “disappearance” of thousands, if not millions, of its country’s citizens . Where has “outright socialism” ever worked?
And why is the younger generation less sympathetic and understanding of limited government conservatism? Could it all go back to the teachers, the public education system and (dare I mention it?) indoctrination? Du-u-u-u-h.
wasa the younger generation has had a gut full of your limited government extremism which has been tried in public and found guilty of destroying this country. alexandra ocasio-cortez not ayn rand is america’s future. by the way ayn rand took medicare when she couldn’t get health insurance because of her pre-existing condition.
“The younger generation is less sympathetic and less understanding of limited government conservatism, ………Theyre more sympathetic or more willing to give not just social justice but outright socialism a chance. …” YES!!!!!!
The Constitutional Democracy of the United State, is based upon private property rights, a market economy, and the unfettered accumulation of wealth. These are the tools that our society uses through which individual and national ambitions for freedom and happiness may be reached. Could this be an illusion and productive of neither, and, in fact, destructive of both when pursued in contradiction to community interests and achieved on the miseries or credulity of others? Can we look at our own enormous wealth and see, at the same time, our own decadence; the untrammeled pursuit of individual wealth and luxury that has been destructive of both community and individual interests as evidenced by a decaying system of Public Education, Public Health Care, and, in fact, the decay of the very health of our Citizens?—- all related to the centrifugal focus of our Society.
The primary focus of Government is the development of Citizens primarily through Public Education and Health Care; both should be provided at Public Expense and NOT through a “Free Market, Profit Based Economic System” where maximizing Profit and Salaries are the primary motivations and not First Rate Systems of Public Education and Health Care for ALL US Citizens; understanding that the very Nature of Human Society involves an Inherent Relatedness, Commonality, and Mutual Dependence; Domestically and Internationally.
This will NOT change until Arizona Voters DEMAND Change.
Wake Up Arizona Voters and change our Political/Social to Representative Social Democracy.
You are right David, human beings weren’t meant to be isolated, learning with little or no human attachment. The human brain was designed to learn in a team framework with real-time feedback as to how the whole endeavor is proceeding.
That’s why our classical education system so badly victimizes the poor and minorities. It denies them a sense of community and the ability to put points on the board for the team.
I’ve spent four years watching these most at-risk students, kneeling down next to them to help them do math and simply observing them for hours a day. It was a perfect experience in a class with a teacher who had won an award as a teacher of the year.
These students came into this class with the mission of taking down that teacher and disrupting the class every day, every minute. Yet, when you put them into a teamwork environment and give them work that they can be successful at, they respond exactly as other students. I was able to get these students to do over 600 math problems a day, on average. Some of them peaked out at over 3,000 math problems a day.
You have blood on your hands David. The speed of light in education is an extra 30% per year. These at-risk kids need a lot more than that and are capable of giving it.
You are like those coal fired train guys who could never make the cultural shift to trains. You’ll drive that train, as a way of life, no matter how much damage it is doing.
Tucson Unified gets a lot of grief, much of it rightly so. But, you all ahve short memories. In the days before school choice, Tucson High School was the scene of a race-riot. Black and Hispanic students out throwing bricks at each other. And, it wasn’t in the 60s or 70s.
Because we are improving at a percent or half of a percent a year, people don’t notice that 26 years have gone by and a lot of change has already taken place.