Thread by @SolidaritySLPS

🚨MUST READ 🚨

"Educators Beware: The City Fund and Its Many Tentacles of Privatization"

Thank you to Dr. @traceemiller, her co-authors, & the renowned @DianeRavitch for this piece exposing The City Fund & groups like Opportunity Trust.

Read on🧵

bit.ly/2Z3jRTV (1/)

"The City Fund is led by experienced privatizeers who have tried their hand in places like TN & New Orleans, where the PR was great but the results were not. They are undermining public schools & democracy at the same time. They should hang their heads in shame. They won’t"

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"A new education reform movement has made its way across the country whose goal is not reform, but privatization. That coalition is led by billionaires forcing their extreme market bias onto our school system."

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"The movement manifests in the expansion of charter schools and their enrollment, division of public districts into factions, incubation of community advocacy groups, promotion of anti-public school legislation, and influencing of state and local campaigns."

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"To say that the proponents of this model engage in deceptive tactics would be a gross understatement. Aside from disguising their approach with buzzwords...they funnel money through PACs, then through individuals and groups, to make their funding difficult to trace."

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"The City Fund distributes money from corporate school reform philanthropists, such as John Arnold & Reed Hastings, to local city organizations to accomplish the goals listed above. Its PAC Public School Allies, makes campaign contributions to local school board candidates"

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Recent articles about The City Fund and its influence in St. Louis and in local school board races inspired us to contact each other. What we discovered is unsettling. The organizations funded by The City Fund present themselves as local grassroots organizations..."

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"...when nothing could be further from the truth.

A few examples of umbrella groups sponsored by The City Fund include The Mind Trust in Indianapolis, the Camden Education Fund in Camden,...,The Opportunity Trust in St. Louis..."

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"In most locations they have created a school-finder tool and promoted a common application for traditional and charter schools. These groups host community events or support the publishing of reports where skewed data imply the deterioration of public education..."

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"...and often push the idea that charters are the only solution.

The uniformity across cities is so striking that on several of our joint calls there was audible relief when one of us realized we weren’t the sole target of this deception."

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"The City Fund does not make it clear when it is investing in a city; fortunately, we have the opportunity to learn from each other and to stop the corruption before it becomes so deeply embedded in our systems that it can’t be reversed."

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"The individuals peddling their agenda under the guise of education equity will continue to steer public dollars toward their private programs and gain financial and political capital until we decide public education is too important to jeopardize for a scheme."

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"We are all complicit in the perpetuation of inequity if we choose to let this continue now that we know the truth."

These are just some of our favorite lines from an excellent piece that you should read in full. We cannot let the privateers win. Join us #StandWithSLPS

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