Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager is a Longtime Corporate Education Reformer

stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Election, Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, National Academic Standards, NCLB, NEA, No Child Left Behind, Obama, Politics, President, Race to the Top, Republican, School Choice, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, standards, Teach for America, Teachers, Toxic Testing, Uncategorized, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM, voting, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Clinton Gives Speech On American Global Leadership At Washington Conference

 

Meet John Podesta.

 

He’s a Washington lobbyist working hard to support high stakes tests, Common Core and charter schools.

 

He’s also Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.

 

That’s right – the 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate who has been endorsed by the leaders of the national teachers unions has a corporate education reformer running her campaign.

 

Here are a few choice quotes from a speech Podesta gave in 2012 to the Foundation for Excellence in Education, a corporate education reform think tank established by Jeb Bush.

 

 

On Competition in Education:

 

“I think this emphasis that President Obama and Secretary Duncan have placed on competition – not just Race to the Top but competition throughout the system of education – is quite a good one, and I think the federal resources can be used to both support the development of new models and can force state experimentation in a way that’s quite healthy.”

 

 

On Using Student Test Scores to Evaluate teachers:

 

“In my view, [education] requires an accountability system that ensures students achieve at the highest levels… It requires a teacher and principal workforce that are rigorously trained, highly skilled and comprehensively evaluated.”

 

 

On Teachers Unions’ Resistance to Corporate Education Reform:

 

“I would argue that while there are clearly still strong rejectionist voices in unions, national union leadership has come a fair distance in recognizing that teacher effectiveness matters, and that evaluation systems need to include student outcomes… The majority of teachers have less than 10 years experience, and younger teachers know what counts. They’re more reform minded… So the question I think for reformers is how do you keep the pressure on unions to change, how do you keep the pressure on to put kids first without demonizing teachers in the process?”

 

On School Vouchers and charter schools:

 

“I think vouchers are an unneeded distraction. We should concentrate on PUBLIC school choice.”

 

On the Bipartisanship of Corporate Education Reform:

 

“In my opinion, the Obama administration has made its key priorities clear. The Republicans are pretty much in the same place…”

 

On the new frontier for Corporate Education Reform:

 

“Early childhood education is ripe for investment and reform.”

 

It’s all there on video. I strongly recommend you put aside 42 minutes and watch Podesta cozy up to Bush and Chester E. Finn, President of the ultra-reformy Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

 

Podesta is probably the single most effective person at destroying public education of which you’ve never heard.

 

You know Arne Duncan – the worst U. S. Secretary of Education of modern times. But did you know that Arne wasn’t President Barack Obama’s first choice?

 

Obama almost picked Linda Darling-Hammond – his education advisor during his 2007 campaign. Hammond is a former teacher turned Stanford education professor. She is also a vocal critic of Teach for America.

 

However, Podesta oversaw the transition committee that helped Obama make cabinet choices. Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the President, but it was Podesta who suggested and lobbied for Duncan, the know-nothing Chicago Schools CEO for U.S. Education Secretary. In fact, Duncan’s selection is an achievement of which Podesta is given gleeful responsibility by the privatization and standardization crowd.

 

And now guess whose ear he is whispering into?

 

Podesta has a long history with the Clintons. He was Bill’s Chief of Staff for three years during which time the President pushed hard for voluntary national standards – a school policy that has become known by another name – Common Core State Standards.

 

Podesta also founded the reform think tank Center for American Progress, a bastion for neoliberal thought. The organization routinely hires the crème de la crème of corporate education reformers who then push for test and punish policies in the media and on Capital Hill.

 

 

Podesta has already helped push Hillary closer to the dark side.

 

Remember when she shocked the neoliberal establishment by suggesting that some charter schools game the system by refusing to accept the most challenging students? (Which, by the way, is 100% factual.)

 

This really turned off some super-wealthy donors. According to the Wall Street Journal, after hearing the comment, one of Clinton’s longtime supporters, Eli Broad, turned off the money faucet.

 

Broad allegedly refused requests for contributions to a Clinton-friendly super PAC until Podesta personally assured him Hillary supports charter schools.

 

Also running interference on this issue was Clinton’s education adviser Ann O’Leary.

 

She wrote an op-ed calming charter fans because Hillary does, in fact, support charter schools – if they’re equitable and accountable.

 

Unfortunately, O’Leary has a strong corporate education reform streak, herself.

 

While an aide to Clinton in the Senate in 2001, O’Leary pushed Hillary to support No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

 

This was the bill that changed the federal role in education from ensuring equity to enacting an endless series of high stakes tests and expanded school privatization more than ever before. By it’s own measures of success, it was a terrible failure.

 

But O’Leary sees it differently.

 

 

“It was a really important moment,” O’Leary says. “When you look back at what happened, this was serious, bipartisan, constructive work. We were committed to high standards and helping states get there.”

 

O’Leary has somewhat stepped back her support of this bill. However, she blames the problems on implementation and not on the basic idea of high stakes testing.

 

She takes the same tack with Common Core. Implementation is the problem, not the policy.

 

And THIS is the woman advising Clinton on education!

 

By the way, she served with Podesta on the same Obama-Biden transition team that helped create our current disastrous U.S. Department of Education, though her focus was early childhood.

 

If Hillary Clinton really wants to forge a new path for U. S. schools, it’s surprising she’s surrounding herself with the same people responsible for the status quo.

 

Funded by wealthy privatizers, advised by standardization true believers, it is difficult to accept a second Clinton Administration would be anything more than a seamless continuation of the Testocracy.

Special thanks to Jake Jacobs who brought much of this to my attention.

 

28 thoughts on “Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager is a Longtime Corporate Education Reformer”

  1. I know a lot a people love Hilary and the idea that she might be the first US female president in history, but she was an early adopter of corporate education reform. That is why the “Hilary Letter” was written to her in 1992. She is clearly an enemy of public schools run by local community members.

    Thank you for sharing who the people around her are. With this team, how can anyone even dream that she will be any better for public education than the last 2 presidents?

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    • i think people are generally enemies of policies that are made, liking local control when they agree with the policies, disliking it when they disagree. I think most would agree that federal court orders to local community members to integrate schools and federal laws to requiring local community members to educate those with learning disabilities were good things even though they ran roughshod over the expressed wishes of the local community.

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      • Wait, our schools are not integrated though…

        Podesta says throughout his promises that equity for underserved communities is a priority. Looking back, we can see the testing failed and the noble intention they based everything on failed too. Podesta’s idea of funding Republicans bit him in the butt when they blocked any policy that would fund schools equitably. So in the end, the standards and accountability were the big things achieved, only to be struck down in late 2015.

        It makes me agree with vastly downsizing the 4,000 member US Dept of Ed.

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      • Indeed our schools are not integrated. School catchment areas reinforce residential segregation rather than working against it. It will take even more efforts by federal and state governments to force the local community members to integrate the schools.

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  2. Reblogged this on Politicians Are Poody Heads and commented:
    Oy!
    “….this emphasis on competition….is quite a good one….”
    Founded the “Center For American Progress (which hires)….education reformers who then push for test and punish policies….”
    We’re done here, folks. We see exactly where Hillary Clinton stands, and we will just get a continuation of the Arne Duncan et al educational-corporate “Testocracy” under her administration.
    Not that any of the Republicans would be better. The Flying Spaghetti Monster only knows what horrors they might come up with (although I have a vision that they would want to dispense with public schools altogether, in favor of total privatization).
    {{Sigh}}. 😦

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  8. The Clinton & Bush families are awash in dark money from education lobbyists and privatization investors. The back stories paint an ugly picture of their tactics to privatize our school system.

    Who’s Who: Edison Lobbyist Heather Podesta
    http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/thisweekineducation/2007/02/whos_who_heather_podesta.html
    Here’s a light profile from the Wall Street Journal of one of the lobbyists who works on education issues on the Hill for clients including Edison Schools, Heather Podesta (New Congress, New Lobbyists). We met at the start of the year. If I recall correctly, she shares a birthday with NCLB. Married to Tony Podesta, flamboyant brother of former Clinton Chief of Staff and current Center On American Progress head John Podesta. They throw good Oscars parties, or used to. Maybe it’s not too late to make friends and get yourself an invitation.

    https://theintercept.com/2015/05/18/hillary-clinton-paid-jeb-bushs-education-company/
    Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year for a speaking engagement on behalf of Academic Partnerships, a for-profit education company in which Jeb Bush held an ownership stake and on whose board he served.

    http://schoolingintheownershipsociety.blogspot.com/2015/10/camp-philos-at-vineyard-my-invite-must.html
    Walton/Broad took their whole crew to Martha’s Vineyard over the weekend to bone-up on marketing tactics for charter/privatization brand. How nice for them. What about me? I like the Vineyard.

    Topics included: Doubling Down on Success or Losing It All: What’s At Stake in 2016;
    How We Win: Strategies and Tactics to Combat an Organized and Vocal Opposition;
    What’s Next in the Edu Political Funding World?; and How to Tell the Pro-Reform Story Successfully.

    The Philos “reform” crowd, mostly Clinton Democrats I’m told, includes the likes of — Rahm Emanuel, Howard Fuller, Peter Cunningham, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senator Mary Landrieu, Eva Moskowitz, Charles Barone (DFER), Ben Austin (Parent Revolution), and so on.

    http://www.thenation.com/article/how-edison-survived/
    “Edison’s collapse would have been a major embarrassment for boosters of educational privatization–that is, if an unlikely white knight hadn’t come to the rescue, purchasing the company for $182 million. Edison’s savior, ironically, was the Florida Retirement System (FRS)–the pension fund for public employees, roughly half of them teachers, whose union has vigorously criticized both Edison and privatization.

    http://www.sptimes.com/2003/09/25/Business/State_fund_buys_schoo.shtml
    Investors who bought Edison stock lost millions of dollars. The company only recently reported the first quarterly profit in its 10-year history, primarily the result of a property sale. The company’s stock, which peaked at $36.75 a share in 2001, fell to as low as 15 cents last year. It closed Wednesday at $1.70. Numerous shareholder lawsuits are pending.

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  15. […] Steinem variety); the continued hostility to organized labor; the unimpeded privatization of public goods; the predominance of military interventionism in our foreign policy; and the continued deep […]

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