School Choice: Philanthropy or Predatory Capitalism

John Handley High School in Winchester Virginia is an endowed public high school. Endowed by a judge.

The billionaires, De Vos, Koch, Walton, Gates, and others each have the money to endow many schools. Yet, they have been spending vast sums of money to dictate the structure of public schools and how communities run them.

If what they wanted was to provide educational opportunities, they could have created their own string of free schools in key locations -- based on their own fortunes, not tax dollars. Their endowed schools could have been the laboratories for innovation they claim to want. Their endowments could have offered free education to those students they claim to want to save. They could have trained the employees they now want to train students to be in lieu of giving students electives or enrichment. Their added money could have improved the economies of the poor communities they claim to want to help.

None of them have done so. Instead they have spent billions of dollars creating thinly veiled PR firms to malign public schools and purchasing public officials, all in an attempt to lay claim to tax dollars others have paid. Instead of paying tax dollars that could fund those public schools they so viciously criticize, they have tried to take the tax dollars working people pay to educate the community's children.

This latest push for "School Choice" is just another round in their ongoing fight to access other people's money for their global empires. Even more damning is that if billionaire "investors" pulled their dollars from non-profit astroturf groups, one issue think tanks, and legislator purchases-- the entire "School Choice" movement would collapse. There would be No huge push for deconstructing our local school systems. There would be no wholesale ad campaigns like School Choice Week to convince parents they should have designer schools. There would be some individual districts trying to provide better opportunities for their own children. (Another place our billionaire philanthropic community could have helped and hasn't).

At some point it becomes impossible to credit any of the funders or politicos who enable them with ethical motivations. Their behavior tells us they are only interested in having access to opening a new market for profit, and long-term profits for businesses they already own. (Something Bill Gates actually said on PBS, that he started his public school interventions for long-term profits).

Worse, their choices tell us that they want to dominate other people's choices. Rather than offering real options to neighborhoods, families, or children, they attempt to force whole communities, districts, and states into pouring hard-earned money into the billionaires' coffers.

It's time to say to profiteers-- IF you want your own schools, go fund them. Leave ours alone. And it's time the philanthropic community reigned in their own. It's not philanthropy if it's just tax sheltered R&D or thinly veiled market takeover. We give the wealthy class tax breaks to give back to the community, not to ravage and pillage our best and greatest community services.