Business-Managed Democracy

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When Sam Walton, founder of the Wal-Mart empire, died in 1992 he left a fortune to his family – currently estimated at some $90 billion (“equivalent to the GDP of Singapore”) – making them the richest family in the world and putting five of them in the top ten wealthiest individuals list.

Wal-Mart, one of the lowest paying employers in the US, has received over a billion dollars in tax subsidies. It also campaigns for tax breaks, and against estate tax. The Waltons prefer philanthropy to taxation because it enables them to determine how their surplus money is spent and to use if for public relations and political purposes of its own choosing. The Walton Family Foundation (WFF) “gives a staggering number of gifts, apparently in order to buy goodwill in as many communities as possible”.

Education ‘reform’ is a particularly favoured target for their PR spending and between 1998 and 2003 the Waltons donated more than $700 million to educational ‘reform’ charities. The WFF funds groups that advocate a market approach to education, including vouchers and privatisation of schools.

John Walton

Sam’s second son, John, “reputedly the world’s 11th richest man”, was the force behind the Walton’s donations to market-oriented education reforms before he died in the crash of a light plane he was flying in 2005. He saw these reforms as a way of getting poor young people off the streets: “They’re choosing the streets over a school that apparently doesn’t work for them”.

John Walton held various positions on school reform advocacy groups to achieve his ends including:

• Co-chair, co-founder, Children’s Scholarhip Fund, a private voucher programme.
• Board, Children's Educational Opportunity Fund (CEO America), which promotes school choice and provides funds for children to attend private schools.
• Director, TesseracT Group, which operated private and public charter schools.
• Founder, Schools Research Foundation
• Board, American Education Reform Council (AERC)
• Past president, American Education Reform Foundation (AERF)

John Walton was a great champion of charter schools. Charter schools are publicly-funded schools that are run by private organizations, often companies seeking to profit from them. Rather than having to comply with the regulations that are applied to normal public schools, they are bound by a charter, which is a contract that includes the “school’s mission, academic goals and accountability procedures”. The freedom from public school regulations and bureaucracy is supposed to enable the charter schools to innovate; to introduce different curricula and teaching methods – including online classes – so as to offer choice in the type of school available to parents.

Funding Advocacy Groups

Whilst vouchers are a way of providing public funds to private schools, charter schools are privately-run schools that are government funded. As such they are a step closer to the goal of a privatised school system that many business leaders seek. The WFF has this goal and is “the single largest source of funding for the voucher and charter school movement”. Groups funded by John Walton and the Walton Family Foundation include:

• All Children Matter (AMC), which recruits, trains, and funds candidates for election throughout America who are committed to school choice and publicly-funded vouchers to attend private schools.
• Building Excellent Schools ($9.6 million to 2007)
• Brighter Choice Foundation ($6.3 million to 2007)
• Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation (CEO America) ($55.8 million to 2007)
• Friedman Foundation
• Center for Education Reform ($5.3 million to 2007)
• School Futures Research Foundation
• Excellent Education for Everyone
• American Education Reform Council (AERC)
• Institute for Transformational Learning
• Black Alliance for Educational Options ($4.7 million to 2007)
• Children First America
• Greater Educational Opportunities Foundation
• Kids First! Yes! which sponsored a voucher/tax credit ballot measure in Michigan in 2000
• Partners Advancing Values in Education, a private voucher program
• Washington Scholarship Fund, a private voucher program
• Children's Scholarship Fund, a private voucher program

Between 2000 and 2005, for example, the Foundation donated over $47 million to the Children's Educational Opportunity Foundation (CEO America), "a lobbying organization devoted to weakening the public school system in America by 'providing research and publications to school choice groups and submitting amicus curie briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on voucher issues.'"

Other groups the Foundation funds include those that

• "build support for public policies that provide school choice"
• "manage and strengthen publicly funded scholarship programs"
• increase "accountability for school and student performance"
• align "incentives such as teacher pay with improved student achievement"

The Foundation also donates money to think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute and the Heartland Institute.

Funding Charter Schools

Although they are supposed to promote competition between public schools as a way for the market to provide incentives for reform, Walton family money enables charter schools to be better resourced (per student) than neighbouring public schools, ensuring that they have an advantage in the competition. They gave $3 million to KIPP charter schools in 2003 alone “and millions more to other schools using the KIPP curriculum”.

The Foundation funds charter schools in 30 urban school districts and in Arkansas. It also supports charter school groups that develop "state and national associations that serve, protect and cultivate the public charter school movement". Donations to charter schools by the Foundation between 1998 and 2006 are shown below, reaching almost $50 million in 2006.

Source: 'The Walton family agenda', Walmart Watch, 2010.

Links

• 'The Walton Family's Influence', Walmart Watch
• 'Walton Family Foundation', MediaMatters Action Network

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See also: Foundations | Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation |
Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation

References

 

© 2009 Sharon Beder
http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/education/campaigns/WFF.html