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As I previously posted in Stand for Children Stands for the Rich and Powerful, Stand for Children (SFC) has proudly declared by way of its' co-founder  and Chief Executive Officer, Jonah Edelman, that he was successful in busting the teachers' union in Chicago and he plans to do that again in the state of Washington. He has led the fight in other states by his own admonition in a video taped session during a seminar at the Aspen Institute, for "pension reform", meaning cutting back on pensions or eliminating them altogether, and a teacher's evaluation based on a student's test scores.

How ALEC, the Koch brothers and their corporate allies plan to privatize government.

I did a bit of digging to find out more about the role Teach Plus played supporting Senate Bill 1, passed this spring in Indiana. I found out that Stand For Children was responsible for active support of the law, including sponsoring polls that showed public support for the idea of basing teacher pay and layoffs primarily on "student academic growth."

In the world according to ALEC, competing firms in free markets are the only real source of social efficiency and wealth. Government contributes nothing but security. Outside of this function, it should be demonized, starved or privatized. Any force in civil society, especially labor, that contests the right of business to grab all social surplus for itself, and to treat people like roadkill and the earth like a sewer, should be crushed.

In the 2010 midterm election, Republicans won complete legislative control of twenty-one states and the American Legislative Exchange Council was right there with model legislation to help them push through a radical right-wing agenda. Funded by billionaires like the Koch brothers, ALEC has provided the template for more than 800 bills aimed at undermining environmental protection, privatizing education, busting unions and curbing government regulation.

Today, President Obama hosts a meeting at the White House with CEOs to try to raise private cash for K-12 education.

My interest was sparked by a June, 2011 notice on Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's website of a $500,000 grant to the Future Is Now Schools, (FIN) a charter schools management organization founded by Steve Barr. FIN has been recently re-branded (some say divorced) from the LA-based Green Dot Public Schools, founded by Barr, and from Green Dot America, an effort by Barr to open charter schools nationally. The purpose of the grant is "to provide national support for the use of a scaled-down collective bargaining contract and to amplify the voice of reform-minded teachers in select cities by sharing organizing expertise."

This article will investigate the fix-the-teachers campaign of today's "education reformers." It's not their only project. They also want public schools run with the top-down, data-driven, accountability methods used in private businesses; they aim to replace as many regular public schools as possible with publicly funded, privately managed charter schools; some are trying to expand voucher programs to allow parents to take their per-child public-education funding to private schools.

Susan Barrett was a volunteer for an education reform organization called Stand for Children, which is based in Portland. In this post she explains why she stepped down.

One of every three dollars of private money spent so far in Newark's bid to reform its schools has gone to consultants and contractors, many with ties to Mayor Cory Booker and acting state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, records show.