Meet Campbell Brown, union-busting shill for hedge funds that want to eradicate public education

Campbell Brown, once a CNN news reader, is now trying to bust teachers unions and turn public schools over to Wall Street.

Nice.

She recently appeared on The Colbert Report to talk about her new group, 'Partnership for Educational Justice. She pretended the group was just 'helping' New York parents eliminate tenure, something she knows very little about. Her New York legal challenge follows the Vergara decision in California. According to education historian Diane Ravitch,

The plaintiffs argued that poor and minority children suffered because they had ineffective teachers who could not be fired. Lawyers for the teachers unions maintained that the causes of low performance were poverty and inadequate school funding. The plaintiffs prevailed and promised to take their cause to other states with strong teacher job protections, like New Jersey and New York.

The NEA was not pleased:

The lawsuit was brought by deep-pocketed corporate special interests intent on driving a corporate agenda geared toward privatizing public education and attacking educators.

Anyhoo, Campbell Brown had a rough time of it on the Colbert show, refusing to answer Colbert's questions about who was funding her group. She said she couldn’t say because she had to protect them -- perhaps from the moms outside the studio holding handmade signs.

Here's the reason she couldn't say whose backing her, compliments of Charles Pierce at Esquire:

Quite simply, Campbell Brown is not in this for the kids. She's running a con on behalf of some pretty shady people.

(One of those shady people is Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager who profits off poor indebted countries. For example, he bought $400 million in debt from the Congo for $11 million and was repaid $127 million. He did the same in Peru and Argentina. He is not interested in helping poor people.)

Continues Pierce on Campbell Brown's backers:

Here's the Board of Directors. I see a powerhouse lawyer, a private equity cowboy, and three people who are already experienced in the school "reform" movement, one of whom once worked the beat for all-around union-buster Chris Christie. (And Howard Fuller's institute at my alma mater is heavily financed by the Bradley and Walton Foundations, both huge reservoirs of wingnut welfare.) I do not see any actual teachers, unless you count Brown's year of teaching English to the Czechs. One can extrapolate from this that the corporate backers of this latest scheme are even less connected to actual education.

Pierce observes that Brown is stepping into the shoes of disgraced education 'reformer' Michelle Rhee:

She ... spent a year teaching English in Czechoslovakia, which I guess qualifies her for her current job, being a public spokesperson for the latest attempt to privatize American public education, Michelle (Big Grift) Rhee having apparently run her course as the rake in this long con, what with the cheating scandal and the big salary and all that sweet corporate sugar. The make-education-a-business scamsters needed a new face for the operation. Enter Campbell Brown, B.A. in political science, and professional communicator.

Today's Teamster News 04.22.14

Teamster News
Memo: Teamsters urge 'no' vote on YRC compensation package  Kansas City Business Journal   ...Leaders of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are asking YRC shareholders to vote against a number of proposals concerning executive compensation at YRC Worldwide Inc...
Mayor Tom Coyne Seeks Cut In Brook Park's Workforce  Cleveland.com   ...Mayor Tom Coyne is trying to cut his staff's size and pay. Council has given him mixed support, approving a pay freeze on April 15 for non-union workers but rejecting a pact demoting several supervisors represented by the Teamsters...
Trade
Free Trade On Steroids: The Threat Of The Trans-Pacific Partnership  Los Angeles Times   ...Many supporters of the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, trade agreement are arguing that its fate rests on President Obama's bilateral talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Japan this week...
State Battles
Wisconsin Bargaining Law Doesn't Breach Unions' Constitutional Rights, Court Affirms  Bloomberg BNA   ...A controversial law enacted in 2011 that provides that most public employee unions can bargain with state and local government employers over base wages only and eliminates payroll deductions for union dues doesn't violate the unions' First Amendment or 14th Amendment rights, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled April 18...
How The Koch Brothers' Greenback Influences Green Jobs, Clean Energy Debate  Bangor Daily News   ...Just last month the Maine Heritage Policy Center and the Beacon Hill Institute, housed at Suffolk University in Boston, released a new study attacking Maine's efforts to promote public health and mitigate climate change...
ALEC And The Koch Brothers Fight Solar Energy With Surcharges  Digital Journal   ...Citizens across the United States are attempting to break free of the fossil fuel industry and do what state and federal governments are unwilling to do by installing solar panels...
UAW Withdraws Objections To Chattanooga VW Vote  Nashville Business Journal   ...The National Labor Relations Board was to hold its hearing today on February's unionization vote at Volkswagen's Chattanooga plant, but the UAW has instead withdrawn its objections...
War On Workers
Who Are the Koch Brothers and What Do They Want?  Huffington Post   ...For the Koch brothers, spending more than Obama and Romney combined would be a drop in their bucket. They would hardly miss the few billion dollars...
For Many Americans, 'Temp' Work Becomes Permanent Way Of Life  NBC News   ...For Americans who can't find jobs, the booming demand for temp workers has been a path out of unemployment, but now many fear it's a dead-end route...
Union Target: For-Profits  Inside Higher Ed   ...A relatively small group of New York City teachers' announcement that they'd received a collective bargaining agreement with their school might have gone unnoticed last week, but for one significant detail: their employer is Kaplan, Inc, a major player in for-profit higher education...
The Decline Of Labor Unions And The Rise Of The Minimum Wage  Seattle Times   ...In February, a bitterly divided local Machinists union at Boeing, narrowly voted to accept the company's contract extension to build the 777X airplanes...
NCAA Faces Change, Legal Challenges In Months Ahead  CNN   ...When training camps for big-time college football teams open in August, behemoth linemen and other players will get their first taste of how much food Division I schools can provide their athletes. In short, as much as they want...

Wall Street's for-profit "cyber schools" rip off kids and taxpayers

The same anti-worker extremists waging war on the middle class and wringing workers dry are also trying to squeeze profits out of our kids -- and swindle taxpayers in the process.

A new report from PR Watch has the details on Wall Street's latest scheme using for-profit "cyber schools" to cash in on the public education "market":

The data is in and K12 Inc.'s brand of full-time public "cyber school" is garbage. Not surprising for an educational model kicked off with a $10 million investment from junk-bond king Michael Milken.

As the report explains, ex-con Milken formed several "education" companies including Knowledge Universe and Knowledge Learning. With $10 million invested in his K12 Inc. scam, Milken let fellow junk bond dealer Ron Packard in on the action. And together they raked in millions:

The duo prepped to exploit the public education sector, and boy, have they. His various educational ventures have made Milken one of the richest men in America, and Packard raked in over $16 million in compensation from 2008 to 2012 as CEO of K12 Inc. Almost all of that money came from U.S. taxpayers.  

Okay, so they're making a lot of money. At least the kids are getting an education, right? Wrong. Most of the kids don't even exist:

Some full-time charter schools charge state taxpayers big bucks for students who may only spend a few days or a few weeks in front of a computer before they decide that "virtual" education is not for them -- but the schools keep the cash anyway.

Here is the trick. In many states, there is an annual "count date" or dates where heads are counted and state funding is distributed per child. Evidence is mounting that for-profit charters spend a massive amount on advertising to pack in students before the count ("enrollment bursts," one education expert calls it), but once they get the cash, things fall apart.

A teacher at one of these virtual schools said three-quarters of the students in one of her classes never logged on, completed any work or responded to phone calls -- yet they remained on her class roster. The "schools" hold on to the taxpayer money allocated based on student head counts even when a majority of those kids decide to transfer back to standard brick-and-mortar schools.

And as for the students who stuck with Wall Street's cyber-school scheme, they didn't do too well either:

With rare exceptions, kids don’t learn sitting in front of a computer all day.

Using Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) state data, state performance rankings, and graduation rates, the researchers showed that full-time virtual schools lag significantly behind traditional brick-and-mortar schools. In particular, only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc. online schools met AYP in 2010-2011, compared to 52 percent of public schools.

K12 Inc. also specifically targets high-risk students in its recruitment efforts. That's because children who lack homeschool parents with time and motivation tend not to take advantage of the virtual schools or demand more from the service. That means lower costs and more profit for K12 Inc.

This is exactly why education doesn't belong in the hands of greedy corporations. But the education racket has some powerful backers -- namely ALEC:

ALEC approved a "model" Virtual Public Schools Act in 2005 at a time when both K12 Inc. and Connections Academy (the second largest for-profit) were corporate sponsors and helped craft the measure.

K12 Inc. and ALEC have pushed a national agenda to replace brick-and-mortar classrooms and hands-on teaching with computers and "distance learning."  

The anti-worker fanatics trying to disempower and impoverish workers are going after our kids, too. Nothing is sacred.

Whoa! Detroit Free Press slams ALEC-linked skunk works for 'backroom deals'

We wanted to share a tremendous editorial today in the Detroit Free Press about ALEC, the billionaire-funded escort service for corporations and state lawmakers. Titled "Keep backroom dealings out of the classroom," it slams a proposal for education "reform" that involves (a) cutting funding by $2,000 per student and (b) a technology-oriented voucher system.

And what a shock: the proposal was secretly crafted by a group of charter-school employees, technology company workers and a voucher enthusiast.

As the Free Press noted,

It’s fine to take input from across the spectrum, but these are not conversations that should happen behind closed doors. If (Lansing Attorney Richard) McLellan and the others have great ideas for education in Michigan, they ought to put them out on the table with everyone else’s, and entertain a reasonable public discussion about where the state should be headed. 

Doing otherwise makes the whole thing look like a fix — a backroom way for voucher advocates to get their way, no matter what voters and taxpayers think.

The editorial went on to question whether ALEC is involved with the proposal. We're quite certain it is. The proof will come in the actual legislation, which will no doubt be cut and past from ALEC's corporate-written legislation.

And we're delighted the Free Press is on the case:

We’ll be interested to see whether any legislation that emerges from the skunk group mirrors ALEC’s work.

Today's Teamster News 10.05.11

Occupy Wall Street protest drawing thousands of dollars in donations as sit-in enters third week  New York Daily News   ...Approximately $35,000 has been sent to the masses, camped in lower Manhattan since the protest started Sept. 17, protesters say...
Unions endorse, will join Occupy Wall Street protests  CNN   ...In New York City, several unions endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement and plan to join the protesters' street theater on Wednesday, labor leaders said...
Privatization of Michigan public schools called 'very real' possibility  Kalamazoo Gazette   ...Privatization of Michigan's public education system is a "very real" threat, and a change that could make education about the bottom line versus what's best for students, a state lawmaker said Monday at town-hall forum held in Kalamazoo...
'Payback' is motivation for Senate Bill 5 (Opinion)  Crescent-Gazette   ...The motivation for the Republican-backed Senate Bill 5 is simply political revenge. The Republican Party does not receive anything close to the financial contributions the public unions pass along to the Democratic Party...
GOP bills aim at Pa. wage law  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette   ...Six measures voted out of committee seek to undercut law requiring the prevailing wage...
Illinois Arbitrator Stops Quinn’s Plan to Dismiss 1,900 Workers  Bloomberg   ...An arbitrator ruled that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s budget-cutting proposal to dismiss more than 1,900 state workers and close seven facilities violates a collective-bargaining agreement with unions...

Cheating scandal catches up with union-busting education 'reformer'

Michelle Me and someone else.

We know it's wrong to revel in the misfortunes of others, but we just can't help ourselves when it comes to Michelle Rhee.

If Michelle Rhee hasn't registered on your radar screen yet, she's a union-busting education "reformer" backed by for-profit education companies. She made her bones as the tough-on-teachers DC schools chancellor. Now she's running something called "Students First," which seeks to blame teachers for students' poor academic performance.

But this is all you really need to know about Michelle Rhee. According to the New York Times,

Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

Rhee (aka "Michelle Me") is the darling of the Governors Gone Wild.  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder thinks she's great. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Koch whore  Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker shared a speaking platform with her in May. Corporate stooge Ohio Gov. John Kasich aligned himself with her extremist anti-teacher policies. Of course New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tried to cuddle up with her, so to speak. And just last week she joined Florida Gov. Pink Slip Rick Scott at a charter school pep rally that turned out to be not so peppy.

Rhee's attacks on teachers ignore the reality of why kids aren't learning. It's because THEY'RE POOR. One out of every five kids in this country is living in poverty. The official child poverty rate grew 18 percent in the past decade. And 17 million American children go hungry. Parents working two and three jobs don't exactly have enough time to help with the spelling lesson. And they certainly don't have enough money to pay for Junior's math camp or flute lessons.

All that should be pretty damn obvious to everyone, but corporate education interests and loony billionaires prefer to blame teachers unions. It's all part of their quest to kill public education. Their heroine is  Michelle Rhee, who they've embraced because test scores improved in Washington under her leadership.

Only they didn't.

USA Today broke the story a while ago that there was lots of evidence of cheating in our nation's capital. (Cue Claude Rains in Casa Blanca.)

In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its "shining stars.

Standardized test scores improved dramatically...Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

You know what they say about something that sounds too good to be true. Turns out the odds were astronomical that Noyes and other schools were cheating.

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

Noyes is one of 103 public schools here that have had erasure rates that surpassed D.C. averages at least once since 2008. That's more than half of D.C. schools.

At some schools the odds that so many answers had been randomly changed were 100 billlion-to-one.
As Mike DeBonis understates in the Washington Post, 

...the existence of widespread test cheating poses an existential threat to the Rhee brand of school reform.

We predict Michelle Me will be doing a lot less preening for the cameras in the future.

Rhee calls union-busting legislature "courageous"

Michelle Me Rhee, the former D.C. school chancellor and darling of Republican governors, is taking on education reform yet again. Rhee recently spoke in Memphis before the education committee members of the Southern Legislative Conference.

Rhee picked an interesting place to speak about the importance of quality education. Memphis City Schools have laid off 150 teachers in the past month, including 46 teachers recruited last year. The Tennessee Legislature voted earlier this year to end collective bargaining for teachers. They also attempted to pass school vouchers, which passed in the Senate but failed in the House. Rhee praised the legislature for its “aggressive and courageous laws.”

Rhee told the committee that in the past she believed “vouchers weren't good and you shouldn't even discuss them.”

Rhee went on to become a staunch supporter of the school voucher movement, largely funded by wealthy privatization supporters, like the DeVos family, who hide behind astro-turf organizations that attack teachers, unions and public schools.

In her speech, Rhee also said that to turn around education, kids need to stop being rewarded, regardless of their achievement:

“My two girls play soccer. They suck at soccer. But you would never guess that if you went into their rooms. There are trophies and medals everywhere.”

Rhee's daughters, who were in the audience, cringed.

Rhee is currently denying allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests during her watch in D.C. The District's inspector general is currently investigating. Under Rhee's chancellorship, in 2008, more than half of D.C. schools were flagged for high rates of wrong-to-right erasures. USA Today reported in one school, Noyes Education Campus, the number of erasures were so high that the odds of winning the Powerball were greater than the erasures occurring by chance.

A+ effort.

NJ Gov. Gone Wild sells kids' futures to corporate cronies



Why is this man smiling?



NJ Gov. Chris Christie announced a pilot program today that will create a "public-private partnership" (translation: corporations looting the government) to run some schools in the state. The governor's cronies have a vested interest in selling off the state’s education system. The Star-Ledger reports:

Christie’s acting education commissioner, Christopher Cerf, has experience in public-private school partnerships. He previously led Edison Schools, a for-profit company that became the largest private-sector manager of public schools.

PammieAnn posted a great comment about the Edison Schools below The Star-Ledger story:

No one thought anyone could run schools worse than the Philadelphia School System.

Then Edison came in.

These won't be charter schools, or parochial schools, or private schools. These will be schools that eat up taxpayer dollars and operate outside the normal rules that public schools follow. And as soon as they rip your community's school apart, they will pull out, saying that it's not "cost effective" for them to continue to teach there, leaving the taxpayers of your town to foot the bill for what they have done to your children's education - if it can be fixed.

Christie himself had ties to the Edison Schools:

From 1999 to 2001, Christie was a registered lobbyist at a law firm that lobbied New Jersey government on behalf of Edison Schools, according to filings with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission. While the firm was representing the multinational education company, Chris Cerf was its general counsel.

The firm, Dughi, Hewit and Palatucci, also represented Mosaica Education, a for-profit charter school operator, and the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online university. At the time, the firm listed two lobbyists, Christie and William Palatucci, a longtime political ally of the governor who is a named partner in the firm.

During the 2009 gubernatorial campaign, then-campaign spokeswoman Maria Comella said the "overwhelming" majority — "over 90 or 95 percent" — of the firm's lobbying was done by Palatucci, who remains a close friend of Christie.

Christie has a history of bad education reform attempts. In March, a New Jersey Supreme Court judge found unconstitutional Christie’s $820 million in cuts to state aid because they disproportionately harmed poor, urban districts.

The governor has also made no bones about his disdain for the teachers unions. He has called union leaders “bullies” while himself threatening to “take a bat” to his opponents. Christie has called the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) a “political thuggery operation” that is “fat, rich and entitled.”

Think the mordibly obese, wealthy gov. is projecting?

We think so.

Young protestor speaks his mind at education rally

Noah Williams-Morrill, a fourth grade student at Wyomissing Hills Elementary School in Wyomissing, Pa., is at the Walker-Corbett-Rhee protest right now. While the trifecta are busy discussing how to gut education, Noah came to D.C. to speak out for public education. This bright young man has already learned to speak his mind and stand up for what he believes in. Here's what he had to say:

"Tom Corbett is making stupid cuts and isn't giving children rights to learn and grow up to be smart adults."

Go Noah!  

Ralliers say "no" to corporate-run education

There are some great signs and chants coming out of the Walker-Corbett-Rhee protest, which has taken over both sides of the street now.

Rally Girl reports:

People are chanting and holding signs that say, "Say 'no' to vouchers." "Save our schools, Corbett is a fool." "Do you want hedge fund managers running our schools? No!"

Rachel Tabachnick, one of the speakers, is explaining the interlocking network of right wing think tanks that are funding efforts to turn education over to corporations. She says go to http://www.keystoneprogress.org/.

About a dozen supporters from Sierra Club are here. Two busloads of folks from Pennsylvania are here. There are also about seven obnoxious Koch whores carrying "Support SB1" signs.

The Twitter is abuzz. Go to: #SavePublicEd.

500 ralliers kick off DC Walker protest

About 500 people are gathered in downtown Washington, D.C. right now to protest Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Chainsaw Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Erasergate star Michelle Rhee. The trifecta are getting together to talk about how to destroy public education.
Rally Girl reports:

The crowd is marching along the narrow pavement on 22nd Street, shouting "Save Our Schools!"

Brett Banditelli from Teamster brother Rick Smith's show is passing out buttons that say, "Blackwater is to the military as vouchers are to education" and "Tom Corbett's Pennsylvania: Open for Business, Closed for Kids." Lots of handmade signs. Reporters are across the street.

More updates to follow.

Today's Teamster News 05.09.11

Teamsters, safety groups open campaign against extra-large trucks  Workday Minnesota   ...Their drive is fueled by a combination of economics – the big rigs rip up roads, which are expensive to repair – and personal tragedies:..
Capitol Chaos: Big Ad Money for Recall Elections  TMJ4   ..."We'll not only see huge amounts of spending by the candidates themselves but we'll also see outside interest groups on both sides come in with a lot of outside money,"...
Sheriff ties retirees 
to SB 5  Springfield News-Sun   ...11 deputies retired Friday, taking years of experience off the county force...
Option changes education landscape  Detroit News   ...The state's failing schools are likely to lose more students, pressuring struggling districts...
Florida Cuts Unemployment Benefits to Pay for Corporate Tax Cut  ThinkProgress   ...A bill that would establish some of the deepest and most far-reaching cuts in unemployment benefits in the nation is heading for the desk of Gov. Rick Scott...
Bill Try to Curb Reach of Unions  Wall Street Journal   ...Lawmakers in New Hampshire and Missouri are advancing so-called right-to-work bills that would allow private-sector workers to opt out of joining unions, the latest such efforts to curb labor unions in the legislative season that in many states is now entering the home stretch...

The wages of inequality: crappy schools

Half the population of Rochester, N.Y., lives in poverty. It didn't used to be that way. Xerox and Kodak once provided tens of thousands of good middle-class jobs in Rochester. Now half of Xerox's workforce is overseas. Kodak employed 60,000 people in Rochester 30 years ago; today it employs about 9,000.

Rochester's schools are now terrible. Half the schools failed the academic standards set by the federal government. The city's latest school superintendent found a convenient scapegoat: the teachers' unions.

Balloon Juice offers these scathing comments from Rochester:

Last week, we lost the latest in a list of mediocre scam artist superintendents in our urban school district. This one’s name is Jean-Claude Brizard, who ditched his contract to go run Chicago’s schools. Chicago apparently wasn’t fazed about the Rochester teacher’s union 95% vote of no confidence. As the top-notch local reporter Rachel Barnhart documents, Brizard’s tenure was full of bureaucratic waste, bullshitting about graduation rates, and no real improvement in the school district’s status.

The previous full-time superintendent before Brizard, Clifford Janey, went on to become Michelle Rhee’s predecessor. Janey recently quit his $280K/year post in Newark, a job he got after being fired in DC. Janey’s tenure at Rochester was similar to his experience in DC and Newark: a lot of empty promises about change as graduation rates fell.

I can’t really blame these grifters for running their cons in Rochester, Chicago, Newark and DC, because those places were on a quest for Superintendent Chocolate Jesus. Instead of addressing or even acknowledging the underlying reasons for school failure (structural poverty, no job opportunities, crime, drugs, teen pregancy and neglectful parenting), they put all their hopes into an out-of-town savior who can dream up unrealistic programs with the help of overpaid consultants, giving them asinine names like “Great Expectations”.

Balloon Juice points us to Bill Cala, the former interim superintendent of Rochester City Schools. He gave a terrific speech last year that laid out the real problem facing the schools: inequality. Cala cited research that shows:

Unequal, wealthy countries experienced significantly higher levels of the following problems in their societies:

• Level of trust
• Mental Illness (Including drug and alcohol addiction)
• Life expectancy and infant mortality
• Obesity
• Children's educational performance
• Teenage births
• Homicides
• Imprisonment rates
• Social mobility

Cala points out that the Rochester Metropolitan area is one of the most unequal in the country -- and America is the most unequal of all rich nations. Those statistics, he said,

...represent the significant and essential root causes of the failure of children to succeed in school.

So this begs the question:What on earth does school governance have to do with this social morass? How will a power grab and mythical cost savings through consolidation attack the sickness and devastation in our society fed by national corporate greed that is destroying our children, our families, and the middle class? 

There's a huge irony here, as we watch with horror as Governors Gone Wild attack teachers unions while promoting charter schools and vouchers -- all the while raising taxes on the poor and cutting them for millionaires.

These loony billionaires want to destroy public education

The charming DeVoses.

Many Americans despise the Koch brothers because of their tireless efforts to destroy the middle class. But there are other rich families that deserve our derision for the same reason -- the Coors heirs, the Walton heirs, the Mellon heirs. And Michgan's own DeVos family.

Richard DeVos made his billions on a pyramid scheme -- Amway. Now his son Dick and daughter-in-law Betsy are trying to eradicate public education. She is the former chair of Michigan's Republican Party; Dick ran for governor of Michigan in 2006.

According to People for the American Way,

Dick DeVos has used his family's fortune and status to create an intricate national network of non-profits, political action committees and federal groups known as 527's that effectively fund the political arm of the school voucher movement...Nowhere is the impact of the DeVos family fortune greater, though, than in the movement to privatize public education.

Dick DeVos lost the 2006 campaign for governor, in which he said nothing about his support of school vouchers (kind of like Scott Walker saying nothing about destroying unions when he ran for governor of Wisconsin).

DailyKos speculates the DeVoses

...realize that they are better off hiding behind their astro-turf organizations in states where they aren't so well-known...

And so we can just barely see their fingerprints in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington, D.C. and Wisconsin.

Talk to Action exposes their phony grass-roots efforts to "improve" education by -- well, attacking teachers, unions and public schools. Reports Talk to Action:

A new wave of school voucher bills is sweeping the nation...these new bills are largely promoted and funded by the billionaire DeVos family and a core group of wealthy pro-privatization supporters. They include Pennsylvania SB-1, soon coming to a vote in the PA Senate, and the "Vouchers-for-All" bill approved by the Florida Senate Education Committee on April 14. Betsy DeVos is at the helm of organizations that have set the stage for both bills, but you would never know it based on the propaganda being marketed to Pennsylvanians.

Betsy DeVos hid one of her anti-public education groups behind the neutral-sounding name, "All Children Matter" -- until it was fined $5.2 million for illegal campaign funding in Ohio and fined for misconduct in Wisconsin.

"All Children Matter" became "American Federation for Children," which (no surprise here) gets Koch money. And "American Federation for Children" campaigned against recall efforts for the eight GOP senators who supported Koch whore  Gov. Scott Walker's attacks on workers.

In Pennsylvania, the DeVoses and fellow Koch whores put vast sums of money behind candidates who support school privatization. Now, Gov. Tom Corbett proposes huge cuts in the state's education budget. The Senate will be voting on SB1, which gives vouchers to poor kids and costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars. Corbett won't tax gas drilling in Pennsylvania, though, because it would be unpatriotic.

In Indiana, "All Children Matter" put $700,000 into political campaigns, and now they're reaping the rewards. Reports the Journal and Courier,

Legislation to cut tens of millions of dollars from Indiana's public schools over the next two years -- giving it instead to private schools and home-schooled "virtual" students -- was only slightly weakened as a result the Democrats' walkout. Legislation to spend tens of millions more to expand charter schools remains intact as well, even though 80 percent of those schools are currently performing in the bottom 33 percent of all Indiana public schools.

In Florida, school choice is moving through the Legislature with the help of American Federation for Children.  The DeVos's got their tentacles into the Washington, D.C., schools with the recent expansion of a voucher program.

In Ohio, "All Children Matter" still hasn't paid its $5.2 million fine, but TribToday reports

Ohio Gov. John Kasich pushes a $55.5 billion budget proposal that would continue to expand school choice, doubling the number of school vouchers in the state and lifting a cap on community schools.

And just so we're all clear on this, the privatization folks' darling is former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Rhee is now mired in a cheating scandal. (We're not the teensiest bit surprised.)

Oh, and Dick DeVos has a Faceook page. You might want to comment on it.