Billionaires Target Teachers—and Take the Gloves Off in Illinois

[Better Believe It]

Billionaires Target Teachers—and Take the Gloves Off in Illinois
by Howard Ryan
December 21, 2010

A billionaire gang headed by Bill Gates and Eli Broad wants to convert America’s public schools, with its $600 billion in annual public expenditures according to the Department of Education, into a corporate-owned test-score factory. Their plan faces teacher resistance, and nowhere more so than in Chicago, where a feisty new leadership is making the Chicago Teachers Union among the most effective in the country.

The billionaires have decided to go toe to toe with CTU and with Illinois’s 200,000 unionized teachers. The battleground is the state legislature and a draft bill called the Performance Counts Act. The bill would gut teachers unions, maximize the firing of teachers at will, and ensure that no organized voice remains to advocate for quality public schools. The repercussions for all public employees—and all of organized labor—are clear.

Mysterious Group Arrives

Last October, journalists noticed that candidates for Illinois legislative seats were receiving unusually large checks. “It’s not every day that a group almost nobody has ever heard of gives $175,000 to a single state legislative candidate,” remarked an Illinois Times contributor. Another reporter observed that “a national education reform group has quietly dumped more than $600,000 into key Illinois legislative races.” He added that “the source of much of that money is a mystery,” because of the unusual path it took to arrive in Illinois.

The mysterious political action group is called Stand for Children. Based in Portland, Oregon, and with affiliates in seven states, SFC is an enormously well-funded and sophisticated “grassroots” organization whose largest single funder is Bill Gates: he gave the group nearly $3.5 million in 2010.

Read the full article at:

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2010/12/billionaires-target-teachers%E2%80%94and-take-gloves-illinois

[Democrats_win]

1. These "new" schools will look like something out of Dickens.

In Dickens, the schools existed to make profits rather than to educate the kids. Instead, they exploited the kids to make even more money.

[Donnachaidh]

2. kicked and try this link

http://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2010/12/billionaires-target-teachers%E2%80%94and-take-gloves-illinois

link in the op didn't work.

[Better Believe It]

3. Thanks. I corrected it and the link works now.

[Starry Messenger]

4. There are people here who are perfectly fine with this.

They think it's great the monied Death Star is coming to blow up our little planet.

[xchrom]

5. recommend

[goddess40]

6. Bill Gates is no hero

His money gives him too much power. He has to learn to listen to the teachers and become their backer and not their enemy.

[Better Believe It]

7. Gates believe he's more intelligent than teachers because he's a billionaire and they aren't.

He's above them .... in class and not the classroom.