The Star’s Hank Stephenson has a good front page article in the Sunday paper about the controversial high school course created by UA’s Koch-funded “Freedom Center.” It presents an overview of the course and the districts using it, with all sides getting a chance to have their say. I’m pleased to see the Star getting the story out to a wider audience, most of whom have never heard of the Center or the two year old high school course.
Which makes me wonder. Why didn’t the Freedom Center publicize the high school course when it was first taught in 2016? A call to the Star undoubtedly would have earned the Center some positive press about itself and the course it created. So far as I can tell, my column in a recent issue of the Weekly was the first mention of the course in the local press. The mentions I’ve seen elsewhere are a glowing account on the website of the Templeton Foundation, which gave the Center a $2.9 million grant to create and disseminate the course, and a negative review of the course textbook on another site. Even Tucson Unified’s board members knew nothing about the course’s existence. I first heard about it a month ago from Betts Putnam-Hidalgo, who is a diligent district watchdog and a friend who I disagree with adamantly on some issues and agree with on others. She and some other people have been looking into the course for awhile.
Why is the Freedom Center so publicity shy? My guess is, it prefers to fly under the radar whenever possible. The Center is all about furthering its libertarian agenda in Arizona’s universities and high schools. More public recognition could make it harder to maneuver.
The high school course was the subject of a half hour informational discussion at Tucson Unified’s November 14 board meeting. Two main questions were raised. First, why was the course authorized by the district administration without the knowledge of the board? Second, now that the board knows of the course’s existence, should it officially authorize the course and allow it to continue being taught in the district, or is the curriculum questionable enough that the district should discontinue the course at the end of the school year? The board plans to make some final decisions at its December 5 meeting. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, I want to bring up another issue: the troubling origins of the course.
In my years as a high school teacher and an observer of the national public school scene, I can’t remember hearing of a course which was created out of whole cloth by some agency outside the schools. It certainly isn’t standard procedure for a university department—or in this case, a university “center”—to receive a multimillion dollar grant for the purpose of developing a brand new high school course, complete with curriculum, a new textbook written in house, and training provided by the Center for the people who will teach the course. Nothing is left to chance here. Every aspect of the course is a product of UA’s Freedom Center.
The closest comparison I’ve seen is when corporations create self serving educational materials, usually for elementary school students. I haven’t read about this happening recently, but at one time Colgate put out a collection of children’s stories to be used in school, branded with its logo, and included a sample toothpaste tube for every student. M&M’s created a math textbook with counting exercises using M&M’s. In Oregon where I taught, lumber companies gave elementary schools coloring books filled with corporation-friendly images. Teachers in cash-strapped schools often took the materials gratefully, which were little more than corporate advertising to shape young minds and tastebuds. But none of these corporations created entire courses for teachers to follow.
Freedom Center people will insist they aren’t directly connected with the Koch Brothers, who donated a million dollars in 2011, a small part of the $16 million the Center has received from more than twenty donors. But we only know the name of one donor couple, Ken and Randy Kendrick (Ken owns the Arizona Diamondbacks), who are charter members of the Koch network. Who are the others? Without knowing them, we don’t know what ideological strings are attached to their money. The Center tells us the money earmarked for the course came from a Templeton Foundation grant, not the Kochs or the other donors. That’s true. However, the Templeton Foundation shares basic views about economics and “personal freedom” with the Center and the Koch Brothers. The money wouldn’t have been provided if the course didn’t promote their shared beliefs. It doesn’t matter much if the money for the Center and the high school course came from dozens of different pockets if they’re all on the same political and ideological page. The Center doesn’t need marching orders if everyone, including the Kochs, the Kendricks, the anonymous donors and the Center, agree where it should be marching.
The Koch Brothers are famous for camouflaging their influence. They’re masters of the political dark money game. In education, they use their money to create university centers and departments whose scholarly output is simplified and popularized by others so it can be used to influence politicians and the public. The Freedom Center’s creation of a high school course with no visible Koch Brothers’ fingerprints on it is standard operating procedure.
Tucson Unified and other districts should be wary of selling their education to the highest corporate bidder, either directly or indirectly. They need to look at every aspect of the course very carefully to decide whether it was created in the best interests of the students or the people who paid for it.
This article appears in Nov 16-22, 2017.
Employing stealth to achieve a public policy outcome is a red flag. Like the Kochs, the Freedom Center has worked to cloak their policy objectives. Putting everything on the table for public scrutiny would jeopardize their likelihood of success.
In addition to “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer (which is a must read in my opinion), anyone who is interested in the motivations of the Koch Brothers and their followers should check out the website: unkochmycampus.org
It’s a much bigger reach into our society than one might think at first glance.
According to Dr. Villarreal-Diaz who was at the time of my research into this course one of a few professors in the Freedom Center, a considerable amount of the money also came from Jim Click. I am a bit suspicious of Dr. V-D’s accuracy, but he did state this to the site council meeting at Tucson High that handled this subject when one of its members raised questions about the course. What I would like to know more about now is how is it that the high school teachers can be trained to give the course through a summer class, while every other high school teacher giving a dual enrollment class has to get a masters and additional credits in the subject of the course. Perhaps this is why not every district offers the courses as dual enrollment, and perhaps this is part of the reason that the course is not ALWAYS deemed eligible to fulfill state requirements for a single economy class in high school.
While you folks babble on about the disgusting world of entrepreneurship, it seems quite odd that the Clinton Global Initiative was able to broker a deal to sell the Russians 20% of the US uranium supply for contributions to Bill and Hill. And you folks said nothing. Or the fact that TUSD had brought in anti American haters to develop curriculum for classrooms.
It seems to the untrained eye that you basically detest success. The socialist utopia, once again.
Betts, according to a conversation I had with David Schmidtz, Jim Click is one of the Tucsonans who gives scholarships to students in the course who want to take it for dual enrollment but can’t afford the UA tuition. That indicates his involvement with the FC, but we still don’t know how much he’s contributed directly to the Center. Until the Center reveals its donors and the amount of donations — though it’s probable they can’t if the donations have been made anonymously — I think it’s fair to assume most of the donors are of one political stripe.
Why don’t you talk about what is in the course instead of its genetic makeup?
Probably understanding supply and demand, double entry accounting, Gross Domestic Product definitions, Personal Income, Judicial and Governmental structure. How to set up a brokerage account, 401ks, stocks, bonds. Maybe a philosopher and an economist or two, Adam Smith and Ricardo.
All the things that would just make your hair stand on end.
Wouldn’t want these poor dears from the hood to be successful and leave our control, would we?
Members of the Tucson group Kochs Off Campus! have read the Freedom Center’s textbook for this high school course. Most of the textbook seems to have been written by libertarian crackpots. Although some high schools use it to fulfill a State economics requirement, it does not give an overview of the field of economics, notably omitting Keynesian economics and the labor movement. It takes potshots at the minimum wage and other favorite libertarian targets. Although it is titled Philosophy 101, it is filled with PR and homilies instead of open ethical questions. It presents several myths as fact, such as: “Homo sapiens became the wisest of primates around forty thousand years ago when we learned to make deals with strangers” (page 2). The original version contained hundreds of typographical errors. (At least some of those were corrected after our group brought them to public attention.) Now the Freedom Center is trying to restrict access to the textbook and the list of schools where the course is being taught. That information used to be available on the publisher’s website (Sagent Labs). The Sagent Labs website was taken down when this whole story went public. The Templeton Foundation did not get its money’s worth on this one.
It’s interesting to note that questions asked in these comment streams about whether TUSD’s Mexican American Studies (MAS) program received Governing Board approval in a proper public process went unanswered. Questions about who funded the impressive legal team arguing that the MAS ban was unconstitutional also went unanswered.
Memo to David Safier and Betts Putnam-Hidalgo: It’s not transparency you’re asking for when you don’t ask for it uniformly. If it’s “transparency-for-my-enemies-and-opacity-for-my-friends,” then what you’re asking for is a political cudgel you can use to abuse people with whom you disagree, not GENUINE transparency, which by definition is required of our friends and our enemies, and for curricula originating from ALL parts of the political spectrum.
John Huppenthal, with your well-documented record of A): discriminating against Mexican-American students; and B): making stupid, vile, racist blog posts, you are the last person who should be talking about “poor dears from the hood.”
Further, your insinuation that concerned, informed citizens like David Safier and Betts Putnam-Hidalgo are motivated to keep lower-income kids from succeeding and under “our control” is just plain wacky. Reasonable people may disagree about this course, but your implication makes no sense.
I guess if you haven’t already learned to check yourself before posting, you never will.
The sort of students who would be attracted to a course on free markets, both as an economic tool and a moral imperative, have no business being in TUSD anyway. Their parents should get them out. Charter, private, open enrollment in Vail or CF16, whatever is required.
Jana Happel – unfortunately for those of us on the progressive side of the political spectrum economically (supporters of labor, unions, living wages, social safety nets, etc.), there are some aspects of the Democratic education policy agenda that dont, in practice, seem geared to serving the best interests of the disadvantaged. One example: public school districts offering much higher quality services in affluent, majority-white neighborhoods while allowing classrooms in lower income majority-minority neighborhoods to be staffed by outsourced, under-qualified subs, while actively seeking to block legislation that allows constituents in these mismanaged, under-professionalized schools to transfer their per pupil funding to schools with open seats that have professionally qualified staff, smaller class sizes, better test scores, and conditions generally more conducive to learning. What has just been described is a local REALITY, as people familiar with TUSD must recognize, and it doesnt reflect well on the political network responsible for A) voting to outsource subs and then voting to maintain that outsourcing contract, B) at the same time, actively running a misleadingly titled Save Our Schools campaign to block legislation that attempts to improve access to high functioning schools for constituents receiving poor services in insufficiently staffed public schools. People looking at the way this only-in-Arizona ongoing public policy train wreck is playing out could be forgiven for wondering whether disadvantaged students receiving the best education possible is indeed what motivates the policies the Democratic Party supports, as the Party frequently tries to persuade us. There are certainly plenty of individual cases where Democratic policy initiatives BLOCK the delivery of better services to underserved constituents, but in general too many Democrats seem more interested in ideological purity (and utopian fantasy) than in real conditions for real people on the ground, in the schools.
Here in clown world, “raza studies” for high school students is a constitutional right, while libertarianism creates a book burning panic.
Those Libertarians are witches I tell you. Burn them at the stake. More socialist slobbering and pandering please, and pass the tax money. You Libertarians didn’t build these schools.
To: To evaluate policy… I’m sure Huppenthal is heartened to know that after everything he has done, there is still a faction of Pima County Dems that have his back.
Jana Happel: Im sure you can come up with something more intelligent and more fair than that cheap shot.
Are you defending the way TUSD has been managed? If so, lets see what evidence you can muster that it delivers Fruchthendler-or Sabino-quality education to kids on the south and west sides. I once heard an opponent of vouchers admit that while sending their kid to a good Catholic school would undoubtedly be the preference of many of the constituents underserved in those south and west side public schools…still voucher policy needed to be blocked.
So lets be honest about whats at stake here: its a struggle over who gets to use public funds to serve a certain population in Southern Arizona, isnt it? And frankly, those who believe they know better than the parents themselves about which schools parents should be allowed to apply their own tax dollars in have some explaining to do about their real motives and why they believe their preferences for how other people educate their children should prevail. That is especially the case when the schools in question are part of a well established, well funded, non-profit, academically viable school system with a long and distinguished history which in most cases produces excellent results for its students.
Separation of church and state, you say? Give me a break. No one who understands the way those principles and clauses evolved in our nations founding documents believes that public support of students ELECTING to enroll (not being forced or required by the state to enroll) in a school with a religious affiliation violates what the separation of church and state was intended to be and what it was intended to protect against, something that was taking place in England at the time: discrimination against those who refuse to practice a state-sponsored religion. A bowdlerized, misunderstood version of SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!!! is a flag the ignorant like to wave when they run out of excuses for trying to deny fellow citizens their constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of religion, or the right to be free of economic discrimination when educating their children responsibly while passing their religion on to the next generation.
Im no fan of Koch- and Friedman-style free market ideology, but when it comes to why some support vouchers, failures of the public school system to serve some populations as well as it serves others, as well as the ongoing effort to overcome deeply ingrained, longstanding American prejudice against immigrants practicing the Roman Catholic faith have to be granted their place in the public dialogue. The issues are much more complex than simplistic and hysterical ANTI-PRIVATIZATION rhetoric tries to make them out to be.
“John Huppenthal, with your well-documented record of A): discriminating against Mexican-American students; and B): making stupid, vile, racist blog posts, you are the last person who should be talking about “poor dears from the hood.””
Sorry Jana, not a single blog post of mine was racist. Unless you are so racist as to believe that the only people on welfare are Hispanic and Black.
Also, believing that minorities should be saturated in English is not racist. Knowledge of and fluency with English is a better predictor of job success than even a high school or college diploma.
Also, look at our hiring record at the department of education. Long before those accusations, we outstripped Arizona’s demographics in our hiring of minorities. And, not just minorities, Democrats.
Your diatribe is far more bigoted than my posts or actions which were not bigoted in the slightest.
” To evaluate policy, check its actual effects on real people.”
Whoever you are and no matter how liberal you are, amen brother or sister, amen.
One of the all-time great comments.
Consistent with the right wing assault in education is the pure hypocrisy in transparency. They demand it from teacher unions, performance audits and letter grades for school districts and boards, but want to make sure to hide everything they do. Hidden campaign money, hidden donors, hidden organizations, hidden curriculum, non accountability for charters and vouchers.
“notably omitting Keynesian economics “
Maybe omitting Keynesian economics is akin to omitting Marxian economics. Would you want them to include a lesson on Marxian economics? We could have a session on income inequality in North Korea. Some NK’s get 2000 calories a day, others get 200. Some NK’s have running water, others don’t. Some have electricity, most don’t. Some have 12 inch long parasitic gut worms (the guard who was shot while running to freedom), others only 2 inches long.
Maybe we could include Cuba which has a legal maximum on the amount you can earn, a grand $20 per month. The workers paradise.
The left is so intellectually corrupt, that they demand our children be educated in defunct theories of economics, let’s include them all.
Huppenthal sez:
“Your diatribe is far more bigoted than my posts or actions which were not bigoted in the slightest.”
Hahahahahaha. Hahahahahahahahaha!