Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Yesterday I got an email from someone named Anna Chaney that landed in my junk file. The message line read: “Take action: Stand for quality public education”. I decided to pull it out of the junk bin and read it. The message resonated. Underneath a logo for an organization called “Stand for Children” and surrounding a picture of a mother helping her daughter with schoolwork It read:

Wayne,

When my family was homeless, school was a haven for my daughter, Tara. It offered her stability and a chance to just be a kid during a difficult and uncertain time.

Once we found a place to live, I had time to become more involved with her school. That’s when I learned it had an F-rating. I was devastated. I knew Tara needed an excellent education if she was going to excel in the future (she wants to be President one day), so I teamed up with other frustrated parents to take action.

Thanks to the determination of families, my daughter’s school now has new leadership and more educational resources in the classroom.

All children deserve to attend a public school that unlocks their potential and lets them thrive.

It had a link to click on where you could sign a petition if you believed “every child deserves access to a high-quality public education” and another link where you could “join the fight for quality public education today” and at the very bottom one of those bright boxes that invited you click on if you wanted to TAKE ACTION.

I clicked on none of the links… but “Stand for Children” sounded vaguely familiar and I seemed to recall that it was one of those many organizations with appealing names and appalling track records. A quick Wikipedia check confirmed my recall. After giving a generally positive overview of Stand for Children, Wikipedia had a section about the organization headed “Criticism” that included the following:

Critics of the group assert that it represents business interests.^[16][17]—major funders include the Walton Family and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundations. Education policy analyst Diane Ravitch criticized the group for opposing teacher’s unions and seeking to impose standardized testing on public schools.^[18]Susan Barrett, former volunteer co-leader of a Stand for Children team in Portland, Oregon, left the organization due to concerns that corporate donors and wealthy board members influence reforms.^[19] In 2009, Stand for Children volunteers in Massachusetts witnessed an organizational change in favor of promoting charter schools. The former volunteers organized to protest a ballot initiative filed by Stand for Children. Former Stand for Children volunteers said the ballot measure puts the careers of teachers at the mercy of a rating system while doing nothing to improve teaching in schools.^[20]

Regarding Stand For Children’s success in Illinois, Edelman stated: “They essentially gave away every single provision related to teacher effectiveness that we had proposed — everything we had fought for in Colorado. We hired 11 lobbyists, including four of the absolute best insiders and seven of the best minority lobbyists, preventing the unions from hiring them.” He further stated, “There was a palpable sense of concern if not shock on the part of the teachers’ unions of Illinois that Speaker [of the House Mike] Madigan had changed allegiance and that we had clear political capability to potentially jam this proposal down their throats the same way that pension reform had been jammed down their throats six months earlier.”^[21] The Chicago Tribune called Stand for Children “a new force in Illinois politics.”^[22] In all, two Chicago newspapers published editorials in favor of Performance Counts.^[23][24][25]

Some journalists^[who?] questioned the $2.9 million raised by Stand for Children’s Illinois PAC due to the affiliate’s recent^[when?] formation and fundraising in the months before a new Illinois law capped campaign contributions for individuals and corporations.^[26] These funds, donated by a small number of businesspeople giving hundreds of thousands of dollars each, led detractors question the organization’s grassroots support in the state.^[27]

So… here’s my general guidance to people who want to help improve their school… beware of national organizations with catchy titles and bold missions. They all tend to be funded by billionaires whose agenda is NOT the advancement of public education but the advancement of privatization. In a world where President Trump can claim to be a supporter of the environment, it is not surprising to find that an organization seeking privatization of public schools can call itself “Stand for Children”.