THE BROAD REPORT: In the news

2011, March 21: "Broad Foundation Endows $40 Million for College Scholarship Prize." NBC LA.

Welcome

THANK YOU for visiting The Broad Report. Yes, I know this website is overdue for its updating (more about the Broad Residency, Brizard's departure from Rochester and transfer to Chicago, Gorman's initiation of extreme amounts of testing, a deeper look into the superintendent search firms being hired by school districts, etc.), but you'll still find a lot of worthwhile information here.

Be sure to check my other blogs:
– THE PERIMETER PRIMATE
– CHARTER SCHOOL SCANDALS

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Some associated sites:
-DFER Watch (Democrats for Education Reform)
-Gates Education Report (as in Bill)

Send tips to perimeterprimate@yahoo.com.

The Master Plan to eliminate urban public school districts

As clearly outlined by Andy Smarick in Wave of the Future (2008):

First, commit to drastically increasing the charter market share in a few select communities until it is the dominant system and the district is reduced to a secondary provider. The target should be 75 percent.

Second, choose the target communities wisely. Each should begin with a solid charter base (at least 5 percent market share), a policy environment that will enable growth (fair funding, nondistrict authorizers, and no legislated caps), and a favorable political environment (friendly elected officials and editorial boards, a positive experience with charters to date, and unorganized opposition). [Smarick's suggests the "potentially fertile districts" of Albany, Buffalo, Denver, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.]

Third, secure proven operators to open new schools. To the greatest extent possible, growth should be driven by replicating successful local charters and recruiting high-performing operators from other areas.

Fourth, engage key allies like Teach For America, New Leaders for New Schools, and national and local foundation to ensure the effort has the human and financial capital needed.

Last, commit to rigorously assessing charter performance in each community and working with authorizers to close the charters that fail to significantly improve student achievement.

If you view Smarick's 2008 article, you will see a chart listing the dominant providers at that time. (Figure 2: Replicating Charter Success"). Just two years later, we now know that the #2 and #4 ranked charter managers, White Hat Management and Imagine Schools, Inc., have been embroiled in lawsuits and scandal. The #1 ranked EMO, Edison Schools, ended up failing. It folded and has re-emerged with a new name and plan (Edison Learning).

So much for a fine and upstanding history of charter school "success."
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PS: Read Jim Horn's June 2010 projection for the future of charters.

On Kaufman and Broad/KB Homes

- Homeowner nightmare: A KB Home Sucks
- Broad defends pal [Bruce Karatz] facing 20 felony charges
- Bruce Karatz found guilty on stock option backdating charges
- Michael Fiorillo's observation:

"It's revealing that Broad earned the first of his many fortunes building gated communities and subdivisions in white flight suburbs of Southern California. Originally named Kaufman and Broad, the company is now known as KB Homes, the stock of which is a major part of his foundation's endowment.

"So, a fortune created by federally subsidized housing inequalities is then channeled into a tax exempt foundation that funds the dismantling of the public schools and creation of a separate and unequal education system. It's almost like a perpetual motion machine, as designed by Mephistopheles."

What is Propaganda?

[Definition #3 in The Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition]

"The systematic propagation of information or ideas by an interested party esp. in a tendentious way in order to encourage or instill a particular attitude or response. Also, the ideas, doctrines, etc., disseminated thus; the vehicle of such propagation."

To be most effective, propaganda must be widely and continuously disseminated. If you have millions and millions of dollars to spend on propaganda for your "cause," you'll be able to persuade people to believe just about anything.

However, not everyone is susceptible.

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