by David Safier
How do you get voters to pass legislation supporting vouchers, for-profit online charter schools and a raft of other education privatization measures? You create truly heinous decoy legislation to keep the opposition, especially unions, busy, then slide the desired bills in when no one is looking.
Patricia Levesque, a top adviser to former Governor Jeb Bush, spoke to fellow reformers at a retreat in October 2010. Levesque noted that reform efforts had failed because the opposition had time to organize. Next year, Levesque advised, reformers should “spread” the unions thin “by playing offense” with decoy legislation. Levesque said she planned to sponsor a series of statewide reforms, like allowing taxpayer dollars to go to religious schools by overturning the so-called Blaine Amendment, “even if it doesn’t pass…to keep them busy on that front.” She also advised paycheck protection, a unionbusting scheme, as well as a state-provided insurance program to encourage teachers to leave the union and a transparency law to force teachers unions to show additional information to the public. Needling the labor unions with all these bills, Levesque said, allows certain charter bills to fly “under the radar.”
Patricia Levesque, by the way, gave this advice on how to pass legislation in spite of popular opposition to education philanthropists -- deep pocketed millionaires and billionaires who have decided the free market is the pathway to Better Education Through Corporatization.
Levesque is the executive director of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education (for people who have been following my education-related posts, that's the organization Matthew Ladner, formerly of the Goldwater Institute, is employed by). She doesn't get a salary for the position. She makes her living from her lobbying firm, Meridian Strategies, which has contracts with Bush's nonprofit organizations. Levesque epitomizes what Jeb Bush & Co. do: strategize and lobby for legislation to take the "public" out of public education.
The information in this post comes from an excellent, lengthy article in the Nation: How Online Learning Companies Bought America's Schools. Reading it showed me that, try as I might to stay informed, there are privatization wheels within wheels I know little about.
The privatization campaign is a well organized, extremely well funded effort which is gaining ground, especially since the 2010 elections gave Republicans majorities in so many state legislatures. Even the people pushing the "education reform" agenda are surprised how fast it's taking hold.
A BIT OF RELATED ARIZONA EDUCATION HISTORY: The original Arizona charter school legislation passed in 1994 when its Republican proponents said, We have enough votes to pass voucher legislation, unless you give us everything we want on charters. Democrats and even the Arizona Education Association were scared enough to give the bill their support. The result: our anything-goes, Wild West charter school laws.
Recent Comments