Brief Audit Shows How Gates Paid to Launch CCSS and Buy Off Potential Opponents (& Part II)

            *Blockbuster Gates-CCSS audit expose *Time for popular revolt vs. Microsoft
            *Installment II of audit at the base of this post

Here is a blockbuster post by the blog deutsch29 that provides details and analyzes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's financial manipulation of civic society to create and launch the Common Core State Standards. This manipulation enabled Bill Gates to engage in an unprecedented hijacking of the constitutional republican process in a cloaked "shadow bureaucracy" fashion outside of political convention that I analyzed earlier this month in "The Common Core and Gates' Education Commercialization Complex".  Last week I spoke to the basis for the left and right to cooperate in fighting the neoliberal new Whigs (Democrats) and the Republicans. In "Common Ground vs. Common Core" I wrote on how the AFT and NEA leaders are on board with the Common Core State Standards, and how the Thomas Fordham Institute is supporting the program.

Deutsch29's audit shows that monetary inducements of millions of dollars per organization (to the AFT, $4.4 million, to the NEA, $6.3 million) that turned the aforementioned potential opponents into lapdog endorsers of the program. This brilliantly thorough research job just misses the P20 Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems aspect which links test performance with potentially interstate student data mining, such as in the pioneering inBloom project. The PARCC and the SBAC tests, along with the SLDS and computation of value-added measures, will need to run on computer servers. The sheer scope will mean that it would be too expensive to run them on Apple Computers, ergo, the grand payoff for Microsoft. Why else would Gates be poring millions to the various actors and institutions documented in this expose? Say, whatever happened to that anti-trust suit against Microsoft in which Joel Klein was the lead prosecutor? The main problem was that it only dealt with Gates' bundling mandates of the Internet Explorer browser in with operating systems. It did not get to his essential Microsoft monopoly in institutional operating systems and office suites. The movement against Common Core must carry corollary popular demand that the government initiate an authentic monopoly case against Microsoft. Regardless of the tech world buzz that it has lost its position to Apple, the fact remains that computers running on Microsoft are cheaper and remain the operating system of choice to institutions and budget-minded individuals. Gates' usurpation of democracy and the educational system should once and for all be the basis for a popular uprising against his power, power that no major Democrat or Republican has challenged.

The sweep of Gates' money is breath-taking. He has managed to build liberal and conservative unity among government actors, interest groups and the media. As discussed elsewhere, the standards amount to a semi-curriculum as they mandate how teachers must teach. The standards/semi-curriculum carry the force of law, so deviance is a professional transgression. School supervisors have been carrying out an intensive re-orientation effort to get staff to at once buy into the idea that they must teach according to the standards [which are content-free, but process-focused] but that the standards do not dictate how to teach. This is not doublethink? (Contrary to the oft repeated lie, teachers were not involved in writing the Standards. None of the authors was a teacher, and only three were involved, and this was at the validation stage.)
Fortunately, the controversial nature of the standards has captured the outrage of the populist right and more recently the populist left, to create what has been dubbed an "unholy alliance." Among education professors, the reaction against the Standards has brought into concert Diane Ravitch on the left --who Jonathan Alter has dubbed the "Whitaker Chambers of education reform"-- and James Milgram on the right.
This is a moment in history that poses to citizens --will we permit this hijacking of democracy and repeat the lie that this was a free creation by the states, and moreover, to educators --will we carry out orders in conducting educational malpractice. Or will we speak truth to power? The time to act and resist is now.

A Brief Audit of Bill Gates’ Common Core Spending

August 27, 2013

This is a post about Bill Gates and his money, a brief audit of his Common Core (CCSS) purchases. Before I delve into Gates accounting, allow me to set the stage with a bit of CCSS background.

It is important to those promoting CCSS that the public believes the idea that CCSS is “state-led.” The CCSS website reports as much and names two organizations as “coordinating” the “state-led” CCSS: The National Governors Association (NGA), and the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Interestingly, the CCSS website makes no mention of CCSS “architect” David Coleman:

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a state-led effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).  The standards were developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts, to provide a clear and consistent framework to prepare our children for college and the workforce.[Emphasis added.]

Nevertheless, if one reviews this 2009 NGA news release on those principally involved in CCSS development, one views a listing of 29 individuals associated with Student Achievement Partners, ACT, College Board, and Achieve. In truth, only 2 out of 29 members are not affiliated with an education company.

CCSS as “state-led” is fiction. Though NGA reports 29 individuals as involved with CCSS creation, it looks to be even fewer:

NGA first directly involved governors in nationalizing education standards in June 2008, when it co-hosted an education forum with the Hunt Institute, a project of former North Carolina Gov. James Hunt Jr. In December 2008, NGA, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), and Achieve Inc. released a report calling for national standards. The report recommended “a strong state-federal partnership” to accomplish this goal.

Those three nonprofits answered their own call the next few months, deciding to commission Common Core. NGA and Hunt’s press releases during that time, and a paper describing NGA’s Common Core process by former NGA education director Dane Linn, provide no endorsement of such activity from more than a handful of elected officials. [Emphasis added.]

Also involved in creation of CCSS is Student Achievement Partners, the company David Coleman started in 2007 in order produce national standards. Student Achievement Partners has no work other than CCSS.

Now to Bill Gates and his money.

The four principal organizations associated with CCSS– NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners– have accepted millions from Bill Gates. In fact, prior to CCSS “completion” in June 2009, Gates had paid millions to NGA, CCSSO, and Achieve. And the millions continued to flow following CCSS completion.

Prior to June 2009, NGA received $23.6 million from the Gates Foundation from 2002 through 2008. $19.7 million was for the highly-disruptive “high school redesign” (i.e.,“small schools”) project, one that Gates abandoned.

After June 2009, NGA received an additional $2.1 million from Gates, the largest payout coming in February 2011,

…to work with state policymakers on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, with special attention to effective resource reallocation to ensure complete execution, as well as rethinking state policies on teacher effectiveness 
Amount: $1,598,477 [Emphasis added.]

Years ago, Gates paid NGA to “rethink policies on teacher effectiveness.”

One man, lots of money, nationally shaping a profession to which he has never belonged.

As for CCSSO: The Gates amounts are even higher than for NGA. Prior to June 2009, the Gates Foundation gave $47.1 million to CCSSO (from 2002 to 2007), with the largest amount focused on data “access” and “data driven decisions”:

March 2007 
Purpose: to support Phase II of the National Education Data Partnership seeking to promote transparency and accessibility of education data and improve public education through data-driven decision making 
Amount: $21,642,317 [Emphasis added.]

Following CCSS completion in June 2009, Gates funded CCSSO an additional $31.9 million, with the largest grants earmarked for CSSS implementation and assessment, and data acquisition and control:

July 2013 
Purpose: to CCSSO, on behalf of the PARCC and SBAC consortia to support the development of high quality assessments to measure the Common Core State Standards 
Amount: $4,000,000

November 2012 
Purpose: to support the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in helping States’ to build their data inoperability capability and IT leadership capacity 
Amount: $1,277,648

October 2012 
Purpose: to support strategic planning for the sustainability of the Common Core State Standards and the two multi-state assessment consortia tasked with designing assessments aligned with those standards 
Amount: $1,100,000

June 2011 
Purpose: to support the Common Core State Standards work 
Amount: $9,388,911

November 2009 
Purpose: to partner with federal, state, public, and private interests to develop common, open, longitudinal data standards 
Amount: $3,185,750

July 2009 
Purpose: to increase the leadership capacity of chiefs by focusing on standards and assessments, data systems, educator development and determining a new system of supports for student learning 
Amount: $9,961,842  [Emphasis added.]

Gates money also flowed to Achieve, Inc.; prior to June 2009, Achieve received $23.5 million in Gates funding. Another $13.2 million followed after CCSS creation, with $9.3 million devoted to “building strategic alliances” for CCSS promotion:

 June 2012 
Purpose: to strengthen and expand the ADP Network, provide
more support to states for CCSS implementation, and build strategic national
and statewide alliances by engaging directly with key stakeholders 
Amount: $9,297,699  [Emphasis added.]

CCSS is not “state led.” It is “Gates led.”

How foolish it is to believe that the man with the checkbook is not calling the CCSS shots.

The “nonprofit” Student Achievement Partners, founded by CCSS “architect” David Coleman, also benefits handsomely via Gates. All that Student Achievement Partners does is CCSS, and for that, in June 2012, Gates granted Coleman’s company $6.5 million.

In total, the four organizations primarily responsible for CCSS– NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners– have taken $147.9 million from Bill Gates.

Common Core Gates Standards.

Let us now consider major education organizations and think tanks that have accepted Gates money for the express purpose of advancing CCSS:

American Enterprise Institute: $1,068,788.

American Federation of Teachers: $5,400,000.

Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development: $3,269,428.

Council of Great City Schools: $5,010,988.

Education Trust: $2,039,526.

National Congress of Parents and Teachers: $499,962.

National Education Association: $3,982,597.

Thomas B. Fordham Institute: $1,961,116.

(For most of the organizations above, Gates has funded other reform-related efforts, including those related to charter schools, small schools, teacher evaluation, and data systems. My comprehensive listing of Gates grants for the organizations above [and then some] can be found here:  Gates Foundation Grants to Select Education and Policy Groups)

From the list of organizations above, I would like to highlight a few particular Gates purchases. First is this one, paid to the Fordham Institute:

Date: January 2011 
Purpose: to track state progress towards implementation of standards and to understand how what students read changes in response to the standards 
Amount: $1,002,000 [Purpose emphasis added.]

Even though CCSS was never piloted, Gates and Fordham want to watch state “progress” in implementing CCSS, and they even want to know how the untested CCSS shifts the curriculum– even though reformers are quick to parrot that CCSS is “not a curriculum.” This “tracking” tacitly acknowledges CCSS is meant to drive curriculum.

Next is this Gates purchase of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI):

Date: June 2012 
Purpose: to support their education policy work in four distinct areas:
Exploring the Challenges of Common Core, Future of American Education Working Groups, Innovations in Financial Aid, and Bridging K-12 and Higher Ed with Technology 
Amount: $1,068,788 [Purpose emphasis added.]

Gates is paying AEI to promote educational policy that bolsters CCSS. And Gates is getting his money’s worth from AEI “scholar” Frederick Hess, who offers these twoarticles advising “Common Core’ites.”

Third is the Gates purchase of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT):

Date: June 2012 
Purpose: to support the AFT Innovation Fund and work on teacher
development and Common Core State Standards 
Amount: $4,400,000

Even though AFT was not invited to the CCSS table until the “standards” had already been drafted by the CCSS Inner Circle noted above, and even though CCSS has not been piloted, AFT only called for a testing moratorium and not for a cease-and-desist of CCSS altogether. It appears that accepting $4.4 million in order to “work on teacher development and Common Core Standards” precludes “just saying no” to what amounts to the CCSS Colossal Education Experiment.

Fourth is the Gates purchase of the National Education Association (NEA). In July 2013, NEA officially endorsed CCSS, and in July 2013, Gates paid NEA for its support in the form of two grants totaling $6.3 million:

Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support the capacity of state NEA affiliates to advance teaching and learning issues and student success in collaboration with local affiliates
Amount: $2,426,500

Date: July 2013
Purpose: to support a cohort of National Education Association Master Teachers in the development of Common Core-aligned lessons in K-5 mathematics and K-12 English Language Arts
Amount: $3,882,600

NEA was not at the CCSS birthing table with NGA, CCSSO, Achieve, and David Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners. However, after the establishment of CCSS without teachers, now Gates is willing to pay a teachers union to create curricula that in the end do not really matter since the CCSS power is in the assessments that are completely out of NEA’s control.

I have saved my favorite CCSS-Gates purchase for last, this one to the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS):

Date: June 2011 
Purpose: to promote and coordinate successful implementation of the new common core standards in major urban public school systems nationwide 
Amount: $4,910,988

Date: March 2010 
Purpose: to support the development of a cross-sector proposal to pilot test the new common core standards in a set of selected cities 
Amount: $100,000  [Purpose emphasis added.]

It seems that Gates paid CGCS $100,000 to propose a pilot study of CCSS in 2010 (not to conduct a pilot study– just to draft the idea for a pilot). Fifteen months later, there is no mention of a “proposal” much less a pilot study materializing; instead, Gates pays CGCS to “just go ahead” and “coordinate successful implementation” of the untested CCSS.

So much Gates cash, and so many hands willing to accept it.

Bill Gates likes Common Core. So, he is purchasing it. In doing so, Gates demonstrates (sadly so) that when one has enough money, one can purchase fundamentally democratic institutions.

I do not have billions to counter Gates. What I do have is this blog and the ability to expose the purchase.

I might be without cash, but I am not without power.

Can Bill Gates buy a foundational democratic institution? Will America allow it? The fate of CCSS will provide crucial answers to those looming questions.

deutsch29, August 27, 2013, A Brief Audit of Bill Gates’ Common Core Spending

POSTSCRIPT:

Gates Money and Common Core: Part II

September 3, 2013

On August 27, 2013, I wrote a post about Bill Gates’ financial involvement in advancing the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Though CCSS promotes itself as “state led,” in my previous post, I showed that all four major organizations responsible for CCSS from inception for its principal development– the National Governors Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners– have received in total $147.9 million from Bill Gates for a variety of purposes, $32.8 million of which is expressly earmarked to advance CCSS.

One man is purchasing his view of what American education should be.

This is not democratic. It is horrific.

And it doesn’t stop there.

I showed also that other key education organizations have taken millions from Gates in order to promote CCSS, not the least of which are both national teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) ($5.4 million) and the National Education Association (NEA) ($4 million).

Gates has spent much more on CCSS than I have indicated in that previous post. Thus, I have decided to write a series on the groups that have decided to sell America’s right to a “free and public” education to this man. The sheer number of states willing to submit to the federal requirement of CCSS inclusion in order to be considered for Obama’s and Duncan’s Race to the Top funding (not legal) bespeaks the cowering of state departments of education to the Almighty Dollar.

Bill has billions of Almighty Dollars.

In this second post of my Gates CCSS funding series, I examine organizations influencing state education departments and local districts and that have accepted Gates money for promoting and implementing CCSS. The complete listing is included here: Gates Common Core Funding for Organizations Influencing State Departments and Local Districts of Education

Here are the organizations in sum, along with the current total of Gates CCSS funding for each as noted on the Gates grant database:

National Association of State Boards of Education:  $2,328,625

Education Commission of the States:  $799,221

Hillsborough County Council of PTA/PTSAs (Florida):  $800,000

Military Child Education Coalition  $419,963

Council of State Governments  $369,623

National Writing Project  $3,095,593

National Council of Teachers of English:  $249,482

For the remainder of this post, I offer discussion that I believe the public will find particularly enlightening.

National Association of State Boards of Education

On its website, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) states that its mission is to “serve and strengthen State Boards of Education in their pursuit of high levels of academic achievement for all students.” None of the Gates grants to NASBE involve a critical examination of CCSS. Instead, all three concern implementation:

Date: June 2013                                                                                                      Purpose:to support a development plan for the organization and to support its efforts to provide training and information to implement Common Core StateStandards                                                                                                                   Amount: $800,000

Date: February 2011                                                                                                Purpose: tobuild the capacity of State Boards of Education to better position them to achieve full implementation of the Common Core standards              Amount:$1,077,960

Date: October 2009                                                                                               Purpose: to convene regional meetings of policymakers and leaders to increase member knowledge around the common core standards                              Amount: $450,675   [Purpose emphasis added.]

The never-piloted CCSS is being promoted via a national association supposed to “strengthen state boards of education in pursuit of levels of high academic achievement.” No one involved with NASBE knows whether or not CCSS does indeed contribute to “high academic achievement.”  Yet NASBE has accepted millions to sell CCSS to state boards of education.

Education Commission of the States

The next organization, the Education Commission of the States (ECS), offers the following information on its history and purpose:

The Education Commission of the States (ECS) is an interstate compact created in 1965 to improve public education by facilitating the exchange of information, ideas and experiences among state policymakers and education leaders. As a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization involving key leaders from all levels of the education system, ECS creates unique opportunities to build partnerships, share information and promote the development of policy based on available research and strategies.  Forty-nine states, three territories and the District of Columbia constitute the commission’s current membership.  [Emphasis added.]

Thus, ECS notes its role as “facilitator of ideas” that is “based upon available research.” Nevertheless, ECS has accepted Gates money in order to promote an untested CCSS, including P-20 implementation– meaning that ECS is helping Gates push CCSS to literally cover the entire possible academic life span of a student– from preschool through college:

Date: October 2010                                                                                               Purpose: to support awareness building among key stakeholders around postsecondary goals and objectives and P-20 rationale for the Common Core State Standards                                                                                                                 Amount: $799,221 [Purpose emphasis added.]

Two observations regarding this “P-20″ CCSS. First, I am wondering when Gates will help finance Common Core In Utero. After all, learning begins in the womb, so why not throw a few million into controlling “pre-birth college readiness,” as well?  Second, if the obsessive goal ends with high school graduation, (i.e., ”college readiness”), why invade postsecondary ed unless the “and career readiness” presumes a career only to follow college? In other words, the CCSS ad nauseam slogan, “college and career ready” really does exclude a career that (May it never be!) does not necessitate a college education.

If a high school graduate opts to not attend college, will this person be classified as a “CCSS dropout”?  Is CCSS the slow and constant drip-drip dulling of student free will over life decisions?

A powerful, well-funded few controlling the educational life of the many. As author and seasoned teacher Susan Ohanian observes:

…The Common Core State (sic) Standards (CCSS)… puts children on a treadmill to becoming scared, obedient workers….

Hillsborough County PTA/PTSAs (Florida)

Gates is also willing to pay parent teacher associations to push CCSS implementation– not to critically examine CCSS. In my first post, I included information on Gates’ funding National PTA $500,000 “to empower leaders to create the changes they need in their school systems for Common Core implementation.” What “empowerment” is there if one cannot critically question, “Should parents accept CCSS in the first place?”

Bill’s money allows for no questions about acceptance. Just “implement,” already. And so it goes with the Hillsborough County PTA/PTSAs (Florida):

Date: June 2013                                                                                                    Purpose: to support a development plan for the organization and to support its effortsto provide training and information to implement Common Core State Standards                                                                                                                Amount: $800,000   [Purpose emphasis added.]

Parental indoctrination.

Military Child Education Coalition

The Gates funding descriptions for the Military Child Education Coalition (MCEC) are both very telling. One of the grants predates official CCSS completion (June 2009):

Date: November 2011                                                                                          Purpose: to develop and execute an advocacy campaign in support of the implementation of Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in multiple states by leveraging the voices and actions of its network of military families and uniform leadership                                                                                                              Amount:$149,965

Date: October 2008 
Purpose: to create an alliance with Achieve and other national
partners to support ADP Common Core Math Standards, identify middle school
supporting content critical for mobile students, and create training modules
accessible to students and educators 
Amount: $269,998  [Purpose emphasis added.]

The 2008 Gates grant description sure reads like, “We want you to be part of the Inner Circle of CCSS creation for math standards, not for all math standards, just for the ones that match the ADP… including creating curriculum to match.”  And the 2011 grant: “Here’s some more money to convince military parents around the nation to buy in.”

Again, no room for the questions, “Is CCSS a good idea to begin with? And how do we know CCSS works?”

Council of State Governments

The remaining three organizations in this post– the Council of State Governments (CSG), the National Writing Project, and the National Council of Teachers of English– all accept Gates money to saturate American education with this “not national though nationally promoted” CCSS.

According to Gates, the job of CSG is to sell legislators, not only on CCSS, but also on the assessments “and the benefits”:

Date: July 2011                                                                                                             Purpose:to hold summits to inform and educate state legislators on the common core standards and assessments and the benefits for implementation in their states                                                                                                                          Amount: $369,623  [Purpose emphasis added.]

Do tell: What are the tested and proven “benefits” of CCSS?

Gates paid money in 2011 to push the “benefits” of CCSS assessments.

What assessments?

Gotta sell the legislators.  After all, they control the state coffers, and CCSS is a money-making business– especially for the cost of assessments (see here andhere for examples).

CCSS proponents really want those assessments to happen.

National Writing Project and

National Council of Teachers of English

As to the National Writing Project and National Council of Teachers of English, consider the CCSS sale complete. Now show teachers what they are expected to do:

National Writing Project:                                                                                                 Date: July 2011 Purpose: to increase capacity for professional development opportunities in implementing the Common Core State Standards for literacy Amount:$3,095,593  [Purpose emphasis added.]

National Council of Teachers of English:                                                                  Date: July 2013 Purpose: to support implementation of the Common Core State Standards                                                                                                               Amount: $249,482 [Purpose emphasis added.]

More treadmill.

Stay Tuned: Gates’ Departments of Education Purchase

The organizations examined in this post have been paid by Bill Gates to influence state education departments and local districts– and teachers, and parents– into blind acceptance of a set of so-called standards with no room for reconsideration, adjustment, or rejection. As such, CCSS is glaringly undemocratic and stands as a lesson for what can happen when one man has enough money to enforce his opinion via “checkbook vote.”

In my next post, I will examine the state departments and local districts that have directly received Gates money for CCSS indoctrination as well as these boards’ recently publicized decisions regarding CCSS.

Despite Gates’ obscene funding for CCSS, its survival grows shakier each day.

That though comforts me.

deutsch29 blog, September 3, 2013

Common Ground vs. Common Core: Let Us Reach Across the Partisan Aisle

Common Ground against Common Core:
Reading the CC opponents' similarities, and the bi-partisan CC boosters' similarities.

Support NYS A.7994. Let CCLS equal “Common Cause of Lefties and the State Sovereignty Crowd.” 

Left	Right
Common Core is a Gates Foundation project	Common Core is a Gates Foundation project
The Common Core's dismissal of fiction is an outrage	The Common Core's dismissal of fiction is an outrage
There is too much emphasis on testing	There is too much emphasis on testing
The test emphasis is driving teachers to teach to the test	The test emphasis is driving teachers to teach to the test
Databases on students are creepy	Databases on students are creepy
Shared databases with questionable security guarantees are creepier	Shared databases with questionable security guarantees are creepier

Yes, we should be wary of the tin hats on the right, as this blogpost is concerned, as, among other things, they wish to cut school funding.
But we should not drink the Kool-Aid. Which side are you on? --the privatizers' side or the people's side? This is a tough fight against a massively well-funded bi-partisan coalition that is promoting an untested curriculum that being peddled with a train of mistruths, such as the lie that the standards are internationally benchmarked, a lie disproven here.

Don't get fooled by the privatizers' appeals to professionalism or progressivism.

Language that privatizers use to win liberals' complacency	Reality
We need strong standards	States have had strong standards. Conscientious teachers have matched their teaching to the standards.
The standards are progressive: they promote critical thinking.	Teachers have already practiced this in their classrooms.
	The bottom line: Privatizers and the Common Core writers have not taught in the classroom, so they would not have known the above truths.

Our mutual opponents:

The collaborators on the other side, the Common Core State Standards booster side

Neo-liberal, the 21st Century Whigs	Working both sides	Conservative
Gates Foundation	Broad Foundation, Walton Foundation	ALEC, Dick and Betsy DeVos' Mackinac Center, Koch brothers
Randi Weingarten, Dennis Van Roekel, Michael Mulgrew, Paul Krugman		Chester Finn of Thomas Fordham Institute America's Choice sponsored NCEE (funded by Walton)
Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Andrew Cuomo, Merryl Tisch, John King, Cory Booker, David Coleman (the controversial Common Core architect), Kevin Huffman (Rhee ex, TN Comm. of Education and member of Chiefs for Change), Wendy Kopp (founder of Teach for America) and Democrats for Education Reform	Michelle Rhee, Joanne Weiss (formerly of the NewSchool Venture Fund), senior advisor to Duncan, architect of the Race to the Top, federal E.D. chief of staff	Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Tony Bennett, Chris Christie, Rick Scott, Rick Snyder

Common Core, CCSS-related alums moving into other jobs, suggesting cronyism:

Michael Todd, formerly of McKinsey (of England –leading Common Core architect Coleman got a job there, after college, following his Oxford stint), now overseeing the newly created Office of Strategy Management (understood to translate into the chief of Common Core implementation) at Chicago Public Schools. 

DUNCANIAN DOUBLE-SPEAK DECONSTRUCTED

How Duncan sugar-coated the Common Core, as reported by the New York Times

The reality behind the double-speak

Speaking about the Common Core to the American Society of News Editors in June, Mr. Duncan said: “The federal government didn’t write them, didn’t approve them, and doesn’t mandate them. And we never will. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed or willfully misleading.”

The Obama administration endorsed the National Governors Association's and Council of Chief State School Officers' (Gates Foundation-driven) project of the Common Core. (Private associations, not governmental entities, created the standards.) Duncan's Race to the Top mandates that states implement Common Core and associated testing or jeopardize qualifying for RTTT grants. (Race to the Top is a U.S. Department of Education bureaucratic mandate. It was never passed by Congress.) Judge for yourself: who is misleading whom?

(Read my "The Common Core and Gates' Education Commercialization Complex" for more on the secretive, undemocratic way in which the Common Core was hatched and pushed forward by Gates Foundation proxy organizations. For more on the CCSS relationships, view this video by a United Opt Out activist, and read this transcript, "A Labyrinth of Corporate Interests in Common Core." See this State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz report, by South Orangetown District Superintendent Ken Mitchell, "Federal Mandates on Local Education: Costs and Consequences --Yes, it's a Race, but is it in the Right Direction?" contending that "Without substantive validation of the Common Core, New York and U.S. taxpayers are funding a grand and costly experiment that has the potential to take public education in the wrong direction . . . .")

What many forget is that there is a long undercurrent of anti-corporate, anti-elitism among the conservatives. If one has the patience, the progressive reader of conservative sites (particularly the blogs by parents) will find plenty of common ground with conservative Common Core opponents, particularly in shared resentment at the corporate boondoggle feature of the Common Core plan. Both left and right will be concerned with the tremendous costs merely involved in Common Core implementation, costs that will in large part go to corporations involved in publishing, assessments and professional development. Superintendent Mitchell, in his policy paper, "Federal Mandates on Local Education: Costs and Consequences – Yes, it’s a Race, but is it in the Right Direction?" said that compliance costs could trigger deficits. And he reported that in eighteen Lower Hudson Valley school districts alone Common Core training, curriculum development and materials would in one school year amount to an estimated $4,094,820, far short of the $520,415 Race to the Top funding that the districts would receive. Further, he indicated that the mandates are so far reaching that they compel districts to "revise curriculum, restructure assessment systems, reopen union contracts, adjust ongoing strategic planning, modify long-term budget plans, and fund new mandates."

In the last last week a thousand blogposts on the left have bloomed, arguing against the Common Core or reporting on grassroots protests against the Common Core and associated tests. Perdido Street School blog wrote of a CCSS promoter's trembling at the "terrifying prospect" of left and right uniting against the Common Core. Well, in the wake of the disastrous New York State test results, that alliance is beginning to take form.  NYC Educator linked the Republican sponsored NY assembly bill A.7994 to withdraw New York State from the Common Core and the Race to the Top. (Here is the language of the bill, introduced, June 13, 2013.) More than 1,500 teachers, parents and students rallied at a football field in Port Jefferson, Long Island, New York, protesting the new Common Core tests. (Press report photos here.) 
Remember that Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Merryl Tisch, John King and Michael Mulgrew have all enthusiastically endorsed the new standards and praised the Race to the Top obligations. See here and here. Now that you have looked more closely at the Common Core what do you really think of their "leadership" now? 
[Postscript: This insensitive policy is what happens when corporate developers of assessments who have no experience teaching in classrooms with real students are allowed to have full, unvetted control of the testing regimen. A thoughtful counter-argument of the math standards was offered back in April when a blogger on Common Core math critique at the CCSSI Mathematics site warned, "Good Luck, New York's Children."]
Nationally, the House passed a resolution to strike the testing and teacher evaluation requirements out of No Child Left Behind, leaving that authority to states and localities. But the bill locked in $1.2 billion in sequestration cuts. Unsurprisingly, no Democrats voted for the bill. This hints at a rocky road ahead for bipartisan push-back against the Common Core.

If the Common Core is so good, then why is there a need for a multi-million dollar propaganda campaign to push for compliance? Exxon Mobil is running ads pushing it. An anonymous donor contributed toward the Fund for Public Schools for a $240,000 two language ad blitz campaign in New York City. The boosters are seeming a little desperate. Why is E.D. Secretary Arne Duncan setting up an operation trying to "monitor" Diane Ravitch? See here and here. Any wonder people are creating mash-up pictures of Presidents Barack Obama and Richard Nixon?

There have been plenty of instances of cooperation between people that are otherwise deeply divided. Many atheists made deep common cause with religious activists in the long fight for civil rights. Many civil liberties-minded progressives expressed appreciation over libertarian-minded Georgia Congressman Bob Barr's opposition to the Patriot Act. Many anti-intervention leftists have crowed with agreement when Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has denounced drone strikes of civilians in Pakistan. As the Perdido Street School blogger noted, Dennis Kucinich worked with Ron Paul to push for an audit of the Federal Reserve Bank. This cooperation led to an act requiring more transparency at the bank.

Two professors, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, in a New York Times op-ed column found themselves agreeing with some central Tea Party criticisms of the Common Core:

“The anxiety that drives this criticism comes from the fact that a radical curriculum — one that has the potential to affect more than 50 million children and their parents — was introduced with hardly any public discussion.”

Their recitation of the Kentucky example presaged the calamitous New York State test scores released this month: “Students in Kentucky were the first to undergo the Common Core’s testing regimen; the state adopted the standards in 2010. One year later, its students’ scores fell across the board by roughly a third in reading and math.” Kentucky's 2012 and 2013 test news was full of more technical and contractual glitches.

This column earlier spoke to the potential boon to Republicans in the 2014 elections, in the wake of popular reaction against the Common Core, this year and next. Teachers unions should also be mindful that if they wish to be in good graces with parents they would do well to part from the Common Core cheerleading they have heard from Dennis Van Roekel and Randi Weingarten. As I warned in my blogpost on the Common Core August 8, with all the Democrats and unions behind the Common Core, they are handing a great selling card to the Republicans in 2014. 

THE CORE IS TEETERING
Note the states where the opposition to the Common Core is underway. The movement began in red states, but it is spreading to purple and even blue states. New York teachers looking to leave the insanity of the current New York State dictates might eventually find solace in Pennsylvania, as CCSS resistance gained headway there earlier than here. Virginia is the nearest state to the Northeast to have rejected the Common Core from the start. But if we compare the latest map of the Common Core getting rejected to the previous one, from just two months prior, we see that North Carolina and Pennsylvania are added to the states considering rejecting the Common Core. 

Let us reach across the partisan divide to the conservatives that oppose the Common Core. The most impoverished sections of the country are also some of the “reddest” parts of the country. Sectionally, they are suffering the most from the current economic policies. The deep discussions about power, government and the economy should happen eventually with our countrywomen and countrymen in those sections. Let us take this opportunity to discuss the corporate usurpation of political power and the moneyed manipulation of policy.

Cory Booker, Senate stand-in for Rhee / Update: Newark '12 contract came with strings attached to accountability to Facebook gift

Booker a danger to teacher, The  necessity of  progressives to oppose his senate bid - Coziness with Christie & hedge-funders - Lautenberg Family endorses opponent - Update: Newark teachers contract came with strings attached, 'Accountability' or Facebook gift is rescinded

Newark, New Jersey mayor Cory Booker is one of THE media darlings, constantly a Democrat that David Gregory calls onto his Meet the Press program, Sunday mornings on NBC. But his senate victory would be risky for teachers, for he would be able to propagate his Michelle Rhee-like perspective on how to "fix education." Moreover, as numerous writers have suggested, Booker is more of a show-boater, a grand-stander that has raked in speaking fees and has allowed the material status of Newarkers to stagnate or worsen.

CORY BOOKER AND CHRIS CHRISTIE 
The city and state executives (Newark mayor and N.J. governor) are close cousins in two fractured parties. Booker represents the increasingly dominant and aggressive financial sector-friendly business class wing of the party, to the detriment of the traditional economic liberals. Christie is aloof to the Tea Party, keeping the libertarian or paleo-conservative Brett Schundler and Steve Lonegan politicians at an arm's length.

Christie and Booker can be the dear friends that they are, but it becomes problematic when it gets wrapped up in Booker compromising liberal principles. Booker is too keen on coasting into the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate to assume the late Frank Lautenberg's seat. --So eager, that he raised millions just in the first quarter of this year. The whole matter of ego-centric Booker's senate candidacy is a good occasion for us to look at how negative Booker has been for public education and at how he has been a weak champion of economic-liberal causes in Newark and in New Jersey in general, and how a divergent figure he is from Lautenberg's liberal legacy.

N.J. VOTERS HAVE A BETTER CHOICE
The widow of Frank Lautenberg and the couple's children have endorsed Congressman Frank Pallone for the August 13 special primary and October 16 general election. They have endorsed Pallone as continuing Lautenberg's liberal legacy. Along with the endorsement they slammed Booker as a "showhorse," implying that he's an empty suit. Pallone also comes with the endorsement of several mid-state politicians. He and the other Booker challengers, Rush Holt and Sheila Oliver are distinct from Booker, as each of them has a history of at least nine years as a legislator, an important consideration as the U.S. senate is a legislative body. Holt and Pallone in the Congress and Oliver in New Jersey's state assembly. (Oliver is currently speaker.) Josh Lautenberg wrote an email, sent out by the Pallone campaign Tuesday, "the person my father would've wanted to succeed him," Huffington Post reported earlier this week.
Booker served a mere four years in the Newark City Council. (The media-obsessed mayor announced his campaign intentions a mere five days after the senator's passing.) Has anyone spelt out how Booker has better leadership or issue position credentials than any of these candidates? No. Cory Booker is no Frank Lautenberg. As Jason Farago noted his myth-busting gem in June 11's UK "Guardian," "Cory Booker: the inexorable rise of Newark's neoliberal egomaniac", the senator was a venerable liberal, championing unions, the working class and progressive taxation. Booker, on the other hand, lives in a fantasy world in which there are no systemic problems or class interests, only inefficiencies to fixed by data-driven approaches. And don't wait for the fall for a progressive alternative. No Green Party candidate has come forward yet.

As a CNN blogger noted, there is little love between the Lautenberg family and Cory Booker, as the latter announced his intention to challenge Lautenberg in the 2014 primary.
The Lautenberg family endorsement statement read:

"Pallone knows that gimmicks and celebrity status won't get you very far in the real battles that Democrats face in the future," the statement read. "While it may not always attract glamorous headlines, Frank knows that to be effective you must put New Jersey and your principles first, not your own glory."

GRAND DEBT TO CHRISTIE
Booker's history with Christie and his grand debt: he alleged the Newark mayoral election irregularities allegations in his earlier unsuccessful race, and the appeal to then federal attorney Christie to investigate, and Christie cooperated.
The closeness leads to a problem for Booker's inherent obligation to be party stalwart for the Democratic challenger to Christie.
The apparently limited progressive credentials of Booker: stand-out positions of distinction from Christie and mainstream (as opposed to Tea Party) Republicans are his positions of yes on gay marriage and minimum wage. He should have spoken more aggressively in public on these issues, confronting his friend, governor Christie. But beyond this he has never distinguished himself as being on the progressive wing of the Democratic party on economic issues.
And being "tight with Christie" can be a problem. As Taylor noted, Christie's built his support with business by "hurling rhetorical grenades at labor unions whenever the opportunity presents itself." Failing to stand up his friend, Christie, to defend organized labor amidst these attacks, Booker hints at how little he would stand by organized labor once in Washington.
BLOGGERS ON HIS FOOD STAMPS STUNT
Bloggers have criticized his sampling of life on food stamps as exploitative. This comes in awkward taste, given his background of privilege (raised in a posh Bergen County suburb and his Stanford and Oxford college histories). Here's one critique of living on food stamps for a stint, calling it a shameless appriation of the poor. The Feminist Griote wrote:

The same way appropriating someone else’s culture, religion, or spiritual artifact isn’t okay, neither is appropriating their narrative. If you want to help the poor, Mr. Booker, do so by lobbying for them and championing their cause the same way you did when you were on Meet The Press defending Bain Capital and private equity firms. The dubious honor of the negro please award goes to Cory Booker for appropriating poverty!

The blogger at Colorlines called his time on food stamps a "potentially regrettable stunt."
Another blog gave a quote that suggested that he was concerned with how he'd look.

I should try it, because do you know how fabulous I’d look? I’d be so skinny. I mean, the camera adds ten pounds, it really does. I would be looking great.

Where were the speeches of empathy with the desperately poor after his food stamps stint? None.
These issues mirror his overall record in Newark: plenty of emphasis on glitzy development in downtown, but little effort to bring living wage jobs for working class Newarkers.
This mood was tapped into in Linn Washington, Jr.'s article, February 7, 2013, "Media Mayor Cory Booker Bombs in Home Town of Newark." in the "This Can't Be Happening" blog. He noted that Newark's current unemployment rate of 15 percent, much higher than the state average, is five points higher than when Booker entered the mayor's office in 2006. [The state's unemployment rate was last reported at 8.7 percent.] Carjackings remain remarkably high.
Washington cited a Newark Star-Ledger July 2012 report that in an 18 month period Booker spent one-fourth of his time out of town.

While Booker boosted Newark during many of those trips (some of them day-trips), he also boosted his personal bank account with speaking fees estimated between $250,000-to-$500,000, that article stated.

Thus, the New York Times reported on May 17, 2013, "Newark Mayor Discloses $1.3 Million in Speaking Fees" in the prior four and a half years.
Fittingly a New York Times article last December wrote, "A growing number of Newark residents say Cory A. Booker is a better marketer than mayor." The article, "Promise vs. Reality in Newark on Mayor’s Watch."

COZY WITH BUSINESS, FROM EDUCATION PRIVATIZERS TO HEALTH INDUSTRY TO FINANCIAL INDUSTRY TO MEDIA TO REAL ESTATE
Further, this is an election year at the gubernatorial level in New Jersey. Booker has given a weak effort into supporting state senator Barbara Buono, Christie's Democratic challenger to the governor's office. Indeed, as Farago notes, it is public knowledge that there is good will between Booker and economic conservatives of Democratic and Republican stripes: George Will spoke favorably of him in a column. Michelle Rhee, disgraced former chancellor of D.C. schools is one that Booker calls "a friend of mine." Akin to Rhee's test score scandals, news broke last fall that three Newark charter school officials breached test security. Philadelphia publisher George Norcross III, a business and political bully, a figure of William Randolph Hearst/Citizen Kane proportions and major Democratic Party fund-raiser that Philly mag called "The Man Who Destroyed Democracy," is a Booker fan. Farago wrote of Booker's corporate-beholden politics made-over in post-ideological garb and added:

That helped him win the support this weekend of the most powerful man in New Jersey: George Norcross III, the feared political boss and owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who said he liked Booker because he was "a Democrat that's fiscally conservative yet socially progressive."

Norcross' heavy investments in the health industry are troubling. Salon's Taylor described him as "the notorious and influential insurance and hospital magnate who runs South Jersey Democratic politics and is easily the most feared power broker in the state." If Booker is beholden to him, how can he take on the health care crisis? This is the same power figure that Christie is afraid to take on:

[Norcross is] the owner of several local news organizations, he was caught on tape making what appeared to be illegal threats in 2005, with the state attorney general widely criticized for not developing a case against him. The incriminating information would later be passed on to Christie, who also declined to prosecute, blaming the attorney general for allegedly mishandling the case. Politically, Norcross is also known for guiding his allies in the Legislature to help Christie push through his major legislative agenda, including a controversial pension overhaul.

(Norcross had been caught on tape, discussing his influence with Jim McGreevey and Jon Corzine. This is the case that Christie sloughed off as mishandled by the A.G.; Christie Republican rival Doug Forrester said of the Norcross case, "This reeks of Watergate-like corruption.") Dick Codey (Democrat), the interim governor between McGreevey and Christie, said of Norcross (Democratic funder, remember),

[“It’s very upsetting to think in the year 2013 you have a private citizen with more influence in state government than anybody except the governor,” but Norcross does. “He’s almost a co-governor.”

The Times has noted Booker's coziness with Christie as a liability. Booker’s Opponents May Use His Friendship With Christie Against Him.
Perhaps Christie's controversial moving the Senatorial election earlier than the general election was intended to aid Booker: with a snap election there would be less time for the opposition research to do damage to Booker's substanceless Emperor's New Clothes candidacy.

EARLY RIGHT WING TIES, PARALLELING HIS RECENT NEO-LIBERAL EDUCATION AND FINANCE POLICIES
Back in 2000 Cory Booker gave a speech at the economic libertarian Manhattan Institute, which the foundation published as "School Choice and Government Reform: Pillars of an Urban Renaissance." In the speech he declared his support for charter schools and public funds for religious and private schools (vouchers). As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2007, "In 1999 he helped found E3, a prominent education-reform group in New Jersey that pushes for charter schools and vouchers for inner-city communities." WSJ's glowing portrait of Booker was reprinted by E3, which stands for "Excellent Education for Everyone."
And so this kind of thinking has continued on his career as Newark mayor. He has clearly aligned himself with the dominant neo-liberal pro-corporate faction of the Democrats, now firmly in control of the Democratic Party. He privatized the sanitation department and attempted to do the same with the water department.
Mayor Booker also secured support for a teachers' 3-year contract that would include merit-based bonuses.
The local education reform handlers saluted the school system for this change.
Booker, with this merit based contract, curiously has the backing of Newark Teachers Union president Joseph Del Grasso, who just survived a challenge by a nine vote margin from a new democratic-minded dissident caucus, the Newark Education Workers (NEW) Caucus; yet the new caucus won a majority of 18 of 29 seats (Samantha Winslow at Labor Notes). Even Booker supporters are drawing parallels between Booker and mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago. (Speaking hostile Democratic executives, I discuss the anti-teacher parallels of Emanuel and Andrew Cuomo in yesterday's post on Chicago's mass layoffs and their larger ramifications.) Like Emanuel, Booker claimed that the path to "reform" was to get mayoral control of the school board. He clearly stated his opposition to educational democracy: “Elected school boards often hit the lowest common denominator . . . they are not the way to get courageous, driven change.” He flew to Seattle to hob-knob with the charter school chain, KIPP. Back in 2007 he bemoaned that without mayoral control it would be hard to get charter foundations or the Broad Foundation into Newark. (2007 WSJ article in E3.)

New York City's United Federation of Teachers website ran this accurate caption below the above picture, characterizing mayor Booker's teacher-bashing 2011 'Morning Joe' (MSNBC) appearance: Former Florida governor Jeb Bush (second from right) and Newark Mayor Cory Booker (far right) scapegoat teachers' unions on the MSNBC "Morning Joe" show on Sept 27. Check it out soon, in case the UFT pulls this embarrassing (to its Democratic Party owners, whoops, I mean partners) from its archive of "OCTOBER 13, 2011 NEW YORK TEACHER ISSUE."
See this March 2013 'Mother Jones' article on Booker's secretiveness around accounting issues related to Facebook Founder's $100 million donation to Newark public schools. Farago demolished the Facebook myth succinctly, "The [Facebook] cash didn't go into the Newark school system; it's controlled by a non-governmental fund, with Booker on the board, and has been so unaccountable that the ACLU had to sue the city to learn what was going on."
The Daily Kos blog reported that Booker appeared with Governors Christie and Bobby Jindal (Louisiana) at a two-day Alliance for School Choice conference advocating school privatization/school choice. (Read on Louisiana's union-free school environment in recent years.) The Newark Star-Ledger reported,

The two day conference is hosted by the Alliance for School Choice and is sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange council or ALEC, a right leaning think tank that drafts legislation, as well as the Walton Family foundation and Excellent Education for Everyone.

(The Kock brothers' Koch Industries reportedly fund the American Legislative Exchange Council.) Bloggers Perdido Street School and Big Education Ape have also reported recently on Booker's ties to hedge-funders. Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report has given other quite informative links on Booker's financial sector and education privatizer personalities and institutions. Ford cites a hedge-funder Whitney Tilson (co-founder of Democrats for Education Reform) saying of Booker, "He'll be our second [black president]." Does Tilson mean financiers' president or America's president?
Aside from local issues of education and construction, there are these other issues that put Booker outside of the progressive consensus: his advocacy for a "middle ground" on gun control and his adamant attack on the Obama campaign, staunchly defending Bain Capital and private equity. Here's a video clip from that appearance on his chum Gregory's Meet the Press.

PLAYING LIBERAL GAME, FREE OF ECONOMIC LIBERAL COMMITMENTS
Matt Taylor at Salon:

“Cory’s definitely no Democrat but he plays the liberal game,” says Ronald Rice, the longtime Newark state senator whom Booker defeated in 2006. “His whole life is Wall Street and Silicon Valley. We picked that up when he first came here. He was always a part of the privatization movement.”

“We just had the worst financial decline in my lifetime, and there were really, really bad actors involved in it,” Taylor quoted him. But the Salon writer pointed out: "You’ll notice Booker didn’t include 'banks' on that list."

BOOKER'S HEDGE FUND CASH COWS
No wonder Congressman Pallone cited this as evidence that Booker is “too close to Wall Street.” Further evidence comes from Republic Report, which chronicles how cash in politics corrupts democracy, which detailed numerous rich relationships between Booker and his hedge-fund billionaire and other Wall Street friends ["Celebrity cash fueling Cory Booker's Senate dreams"], "Cory Booker's Political Career Guided by Top Wall St Donors to Romney's Super PAC," May 21, 2012.
Hedge-funder Lee Ainslie, who gave $100,000 to Mitt Romney's presidential bid, maxed out his donation to Booker. ("Booker’s Wall Street Fundraising Past – and Obama’s")

[Tiger Management LLC’s Julian] Robertson, the prominent Booker campaign supporter who helped finance a Newark Charter program on behalf of Booker, is a close ally to Mitt Romney.

Notable donors donating the maximum $10,400 to the Booker campaign: Michael Bloomberg, Ivanka Trump, Mark Zuckerberg.

Other donors giving the maximum $10,400 include Maria Cuomo Cole, the daughter of New York’s former governor and sister of the current governor; Wal-Mart billionaire Christy Walton and writer/producer Jeffrey Abrams.
Venture capitalist and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, gave $10,400 each.

Christy Walton, the Texan wife of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton is another billionaire who gave $10,400. ("Cory Booker Cashing In On National Name Recognition," the Howell Patch.) According to that site and this one, Hollywood titans and the major soccer commissioner are among the millionaires dumping acres of cash into Booker's campaign bag. Note that these were part of $4.6 million in donations between April and June, mainly prior to Sen. Lautenberg's passing, and during a period when Booker planned to challenge Lautenberg from the right in 2014. Buzzfeed's Ruby Cramer report that Trump will hold a fundraiser on Jul 24 at her Park Avenue residence. The site also reports that the businesswoman and her husband, Jared Kushner, real estate holding company co-owner and 'New York Observer' owner, together gave more than $41,000 to Booker's senatorial campaign in the first quarter of 2013. The two real estate hiers' suggested donation for Wednesday's party is $5,200 per attendee.
Cramer earlier reported in Buzzfeed, in "The Plan To Take Down Cory Booker: “America’s favorite mayor” may be favored to win the New Jersey Senate race, but his opponents are working overtime to stop his momentum" noted Booker's controversial education stances and how this relates to the support he has received campaign contributions over the years from donors the financial sector.

Rival candidates could also seize on Booker’s strained relationship with state teachers unions, as well as his support for charter schools, which are championed by the same hedge fund and Wall Street communities that have financed Booker for years.
“That’s what makes us least comfortable,” said Steve Phillips, a progressive fundraiser whose political action committee has vowed to raise $1 to $2 million for Booker. “I understand the complexities of trying to do something for lower-income kids in a political bureaucracy, but if I could wave my magic wand, I wouldn’t want him as close to the hedge fund folks as he is.”

To boot, Booker has another opportunity to keep up his connections with his finance sector pals. He sits as the only elected official on the Board of Advisors of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). The rest are wealthy one-percenters, or as Diane Ravitch says, “the billionaire boys club.” DFER is the group run by Joe Williams, who said that said that charter schools should use public funds to do lobbying work:

“I think charter schools should be paying advocacy organizations for their advocacy work out of their per pupil dollars. If you think of running a school as running a business, any sound business is going to allocate right off the bat a certain percentage of their funding towards lobbying, advocacy work.”

Taylor summed this up well, Booker packages a sales pitch of "progressivism that centers on financial capitalism and charity instead of social rights. Or as one Democratic operative who has worked in New Jersey put it, 'He’s a good politician for the Obama Democratic Party.'"

So, the Booker record and relationships are in clear sight. It is only now up to the real progressives, the economic liberals in the race --and their supporters-- to seize on these issues on the campaign hustings. UPDATE:
John Mooney in NJ Spotlight reported, June 25, "TEACHER CONTRACT DEAL IN NEWARK CAME WITH STRINGS ATTACHED: Facebook founder’s group required accountability, reserved right to take back money."

Note how there's a Facebook created educational policy foundation -- Shades of Stand for Children of Chicago (dubbed Stand on Children by activists)?

When Newark’s landmark teacher contract was agreed upon this winter, a key factor in pulling off the deal was that a big chunk of retroactive salaries would be paid with $31 million out of the $100 million gift made to the city’s schools by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Now, documents released by the district show the trade-offs and conditions the school district chose to accept in its agreement with the Zuckerberg-funded Foundation for Newark’s Future.
According to a copy of the December 2012 grant agreement obtained by the Education Law Center through an Open Public Records Act request, the district and FNF agreed that the district would have to account for how the money was spent well into the future.

[Ed.: the Education Law Center was founded in 1993 to pursue the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case in New York City.]

In one of the more notable provisions, FNF also reserved the right to “suspend payments” if current school-district leadership was replaced by individuals FNF didn’t support. The provision specifically named positions now held by Superintendent Cami Anderson, state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf and Paymon Rouhanifard, the district’s chief strategy officer.
“FNF reserves the right to suspend payments under this agreement or any other grant until it, in its sole discretion, is satisfied that the successor of any key personnel has comparable quality and commitment and is likely to be effective,” read the document released.
Given the bulk of the retroactive payments have already been disbursed, how much this provision will play is uncertain. The first disbursement of 90 percent of the $31 million has been paid, officials said.
The agreement also only briefly mentions the additional $18 million that FNF agreed to provide for the more notable piece of the new labor contract -- the state’s first large-scale performance bonuses for teachers.
But the leverage built into the agreement has nonetheless sparked complaints by some critical of the school district’s management under the Christie administration -- and Anderson, in particular. Some of them say it’s another example of a private group influencing public policy.
Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson, chair of the district’s advisory board, which has seeking to regain local control of the district, said the board was never apprised of the agreement and that she saw it only after the ELC’s OPRA request.
“I found a number of things questionable and in some cases extremely disturbing,” she said yesterday. “This gives an unprecedented amount of leverage to an independent organization. That’s the most egregious thing to me.”
Baskerville-Richardson was also critical of provisions that had Anderson making more regular reports to the foundation than to the local board. “It seems unethical to me that this group has information when the local board doesn’t,” she said.
David Sciarra, executive director of the ELC, the Newark-based advocacy group, added: “This is another example of a foundation seeking to promote preferred education reforms by giving money to state and local education agencies, without any public disclosure.
“These secret transactions erode public confidence in our public schools and the state education department,” he wrote in an email. “We need new laws to rein in this practice.”
Efforts to reach Anderson and officers of the foundation were unsuccessful yesterday. The agreement was crafted under FNF’s former executive director Greg Taylor, who left the post this spring.

Read the rest of the story, TEACHER CONTRACT DEAL IN NEWARK CAME WITH STRINGS ATTACHED and visit the site for more links (namely, Zuckerberg's Foundation for Newark's Future, FNF's Grant agreement with Newark State-opearted School district). Note how Newark citizens lost control of their educational process to the state, yet a private individual from outside New Jersey is able to dictate policy terms upon the city.

Also, see JerseyJazzman blog for an important post on how the Newark Teachers Union is sabotaging itself with its support for the "Teachers Village" project, "How the Newark Teachers Union Shot Itself In the Foot." UPDATE #2: Lois Weiner and some other New Jersey editors get to the core of teaching issues in this op-ed better than do brothers-at-heart Christie or Booker:

When teachers reach kids whose families are drowning in social and economic problems, we are like emergency room doctors. There’s no either/or here. We need to recruit, educate, and support good teachers AND tackle the social crises outside school walls that are undercut learning.