Wall Street and Walton Money Backing Charter Schools and Cuomo

Privatization and union busting is what it's all about.  There are a lot of well-meaning parents out there who have been co-opted to serve a right-wing agenda orchestrated by grifters, financiers and the ultra-rich. 

Behind the multimillion dollar ad campaign and website is the same group—a nonprofit called Families for Excellent Schools. If their message wasn’t clear, they also helped organize Tuesday’s rally in Albany where thousands of charter school advocates turned out.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has received more than $100,000 in campaign donations from charter-school political action committees in recent years, electrified the crowd. One board member from the non-profit has contributed at least $20,000 to Cuomo in the past few years."

And

Families for Excellent Schools shares an address with the New York arm of StudentsFirst, a national education reform nonprofit led by Michelle Rhee, the former Washington D.C. schools chancellor.

Kittredge declined to discuss his organization’s funding.

….

Records show some of the supporters are the major foundations that have typically backed the charter movement. 

The Walton Family Foundation, of Walmart fame, has given more than $700,000 over the past two years. That foundation recently hired a deputy schools chancellor from the administration of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Another Bloomberg official—the mayor's former spokesman, Stu Loeser—is handling press for Families for Excellent Schools."

When it comes to reporting on the charter school movement, Robert Lewis > Errol Louis.