Meet Craig Barrett. He’s the closest Arizona comes to having its own member of the Billionaire Boys’ Club, that group of high-tech wizards, hedge fund gurus and other ridiculously wealthy people who think, because they’ve figured out how to make billions and know 50 ways to tell their underlings to “Produce or get out,” they also know the best way to teach a first-grader how to read.
Of course, Craig Barrett is no Bill Gates, a man who can spend $100 million to create and promote the national Common Core State Standards—a very questionable concept—then drop another $100 million to fund a database designed to scoop up every bit of information about every schoolchild in the country—a truly bad idea. Barrett, the retired CEO of Intel, is only worth hundreds of millions, so he can’t match Gates’ largesse. Barrett and his wife gave $780,000 to BASIS charter schools over the years. They also gave $230,000 to Republican candidates and the RNC during the 2012 elections. Generous, true, but chump change compared to Gates.
But what Barrett lacks in billions he makes up for in power. Though he’s never been elected to office, when it comes to education funding and policy, he may be the most powerful person in Arizona. And that should concern anyone who cares about the future of public education in the state.
Along with his national prominence in the charter school movement and the Common Core State Standards (more on that later), Barrett heads Gov. Brewer’s Arizona Ready Education Council, a position he uses to steer the state’s education policy. His AREC funding taskforce has come up with a number of recommendations to change how we fund education. The most likely legislator to carry those ideas next session is Sen. Chester Crandell, who agrees with most of the AREC proposals. Here’s the Barrett/AREC/Crandell agenda in a nutshell.
Don’t add a penny to K-12 school funding. Freeze it right where it is, even though we’re spending about 20 percent less than five years ago and we’re near the bottom of the nation in per-student funding.
Send more money to charter schools. That, of course, would mean less for district schools. And districts can forget about trying to pass bonds or budget overrides. Those funding options would be wiped out. But charters would still be able to float bonds to build new schools. So if Arizona’s student population goes up, districts would have no way to handle the overflow, and charters would be more than happy to step in and fill the void.
Set teacher salaries based on student performance, not experience or education. Those lucky teachers in high-performing, high-rent districts could expect their salaries to climb at the expense of teachers in low-income areas. And schools, like teachers, would get performance bonuses, meaning those same high-rent districts would find themselves with extra cash while districts with low-income students who need the most resources would see their allotments shrink. And if any district slips into failing territory, the state would take it over. No extra money would go along with the takeover, just loss of local control.
Barrett’s influence stretches far beyond the Governor’s Office. He’s the president and chairman of the board of BASIS, a chain of charter schools whose stellar reputation is only partially deserved. (It creams off Arizona’s top kids, then claims credit for their academic success.) He’s also a member of the board of directors of K12 Inc., a for-profit corporation that runs a string of online charter schools across the country (Arizona Virtual Academy alone has 4,200 students) and has been reviled in the press for its deceptive recruitment practices and in-the-cellar student achievement. (Anyone see a conflict of interest in Barrett’s push to increase charter funding?) And he’s chairman of the board of Achieve, the nonprofit organization largely responsible for developing the Common Core.
Like most rich guys, Barrett has gotten a pass from the media, which allows him to say pretty much anything he wants without being challenged. Some brave journalist who has done the necessary research needs to question Barrett and make him go public with his schemes to change the face of Arizona education. It won’t be easy. He knows how to say the right things in public and work his agenda behind the scenes. But he’s too powerful and his education agenda is too problematic for him to go unchallenged.
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2013.
Like so many other revered institutions, Americans are allowing their precious public school system to be destroyed, so people like Barrett can get richer. Do I hear the death knell of democracy in the distance?
Excellent article, Mr. Safier. In almost every other state, Mr. Barrett’s multiple conflicts-of-interest would preclude him from playing a direct role in education policy, and he certainly wouldn’t have a primary role in allocating public tax dollars.
Cyber schools, including K-12, have been under fire consistently over the past few years for failing students and families and “fleecing” taxpayers. (See http://truth-out.org/news/item/19204-cyber… for one overview). Why would Arizonans allow one of the biggest proponents of this racket to toy with our limited education tax dollars?
I do commend Mr. Barrett for being involved, but I doubt very much that he would have approved of even the most popular, proven school leader stepping in to direct any of the financial decisions for Intel while he was there. You summed it up nicely: this is “too problematic for him to go unchallenged.”
Jealous much?
Better question: why does a paper catering mostly to childless wannabe hipsters care so much about education? Or claim to have any expertise on the matter?
Bslap: For the record, the editor of the paper “catering mostly to childless wannabe hipsters” has two children in TUSD schools.
Bslap: My children currently attend public schools, and my business thrives only if we can hire enough skilled, educated college graduates. I’m not an ‘expert’ on education, but the current haphazard treatment of our schools in Arizona ultimately impacts my family and colleagues on many levels.
I follow this paper because the Tucson Weekly authors tend to dig deeper than the talking points and press releases that are churned out by the special interest groups and political offices in our state. The Tucson Weekly contributors also often explore the ‘bigger picture’ impact to our community when we allow politicians (of any partisan stripe) to carelessly manage our tax dollars based on flashy trends, ideological mythology or flat-out disregard for the public good.
So there you have it. I can’t speak for the rest of the TW audience, but I am a big fan of my ‘catering’ coming in the form of thoughtful, smart and insightful articles. I don’t always agree with them, but they do tend to make me consider things from a different perspective.
And PS: …no one would ever mistake me for a “hipster”. Wish that much was true.
……everything you say about Barrett, you could say about George Soros.
Frank, exactly what is Soros’ stance on charter schools? It would be nice if you’d read the article before posting.
Soros is on the BASIS board too?
While decidedly not a hipster, I am childless, and the reason I care about public ed and the threat to it from people like Barrett is idiot parents in AZ who mindlessly vote Republican for whatever stupid reason they do and then have the nerve to complain about the lack of funding of K-12 schools and how expensive college is. It’s sad that I care more about their kids than Republican parents do.