Dive Brief:

• Demos fellow and former New York Times opinion columnist Bob Herbert examines in Politico how the influence of billionaires and millionaires is, in his view, ruining public education.  
• Among the wealthy he says have too much influence: Bill Gates, Ronald Packard, Jeb Bush, Rupert Murdoch, Joel Klein, and Michael Bloomberg.  
• Herbert's article ultimately poses two questions: How long will school systems continue "market-based" ed reform despite evidence of failure, and why are education decisions in the hands of just a few wealthy people and their foundations?  

Dive Insight:

A big point for Herbert is the failure of charter schools to live up to their promise. As he sees it, charter schools have been a continuous thread among all of the wealthy education reformers. And while charters were supposed to prove that poverty can be trumped, Herbert suggests this has not happened. "After several years of experimentation and the expenditure of billions of dollars, charter schools and their teachers proved, on the whole, to be no more effective than traditional schools," he writers. "In many cases, the charters produced worse outcomes. And the levels of racial segregation and isolation in charter schools were often scandalous."

While there has reportedly been questionable activity by "for-profit" charter programs, what Herbert is discussing is something bigger than just a few corrupt charter schools (which are not indicative of all charter schools). He is describing entire policies being dictated by something of an oligarchy, run by people with no professional background in education. It's not necessarily individual charter schools that are the problem (there are some great networks), it's the overall system touting and supporting them regardless of the results that raises some questions.  

Recommended Reading

Politico : The Plot Against Public Education