A recent post from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) highlights the conflicts of interest surrounding the Los Angeles Times’ initiative “Education Matters.” Announced earlier this month, the goal is to cover educational issues and provide “an ongoing, wide-ranging report card on K-12 education in Los Angeles, California and the nation.”
But writer Molly Knefel looks into who is bankrolling the initiative and reveals many groups with a clear education agenda, jeopardizing the project’s integrity.
While the Times and its publisher/CEO Austin Beutner have gone on the record saying, “These institutions, like the Times are dedicated to independent journalism that engages and informs its readers,” the connections to education reformers are simply too strong, FAIR writes:
The problem with Education Matters’ promise to create “independent journalism,” however, is that several of the organizations funding it have a direct stake in a very specific education reform agenda. Education reform, as a project, is far from value-neutral: Reformers promote specific policies, ranging from firing teachers based on their students’ test scores to replacing public schools with privately run charter schools. Their rhetoric often directly attacks teachers unions and even public education as an institution, in favor of “market-driven” “school choice” solutions. And the organizations funding the LA Times’ new project are no exception.
The desire for a specific outcome is difficult to accept, Knefel explains:
The Broad Foundation, in particular, has a prodigious record. According to its website, Broad currently invests in organizations that invest in charter-school expansion, including Aspire Public Schools (whose goal is to “expand its network of public charter schools in the Los Angeles area”), the California Charter School Association, the Charter School Growth Fund, charter loan provider Excellent Education Development, Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, Green Dot Public Schools (a charter network), the KIPP Foundation, New Schools Venture Fund, Pacific Charter School Development, Silicon Valley-based charter management organization Rocketship Education, Success Charter Network and Uncommon Schools. It funded the popular pro-charter documentary Waiting for Superman. It also invests in the US Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” grant program.
Two of the other three donors that the Times lists have also invested in charter school expansion and an education reform agenda. The Wasserman Foundation, which describes its education-related giving as “focused on transforming our public schools,” has partnered with Broad and the Gates Foundation to fund senior staffer positions in the LA school district. As reported by the LA Times itself (4/7/06), it gave $6 million to a local charter network; it’s also given to Teach for America.
And the Baxter Family foundation says its mission is to “restructure the present system to create effective competition in the market for educational services.” It promises to “sponsor and/or undertake research that will analyze alternative solutions to the problems plaguing our public schools, including private and charter schools.”
Knefel questions how the Times can possible cover the issue neutrally if their hands are tied by their corporate donors. Education reform, the charter school movement, and the state of the American education system are complex topics. There is no room for politics if the endgame damages a future generation of American children. The Los Angeles Times is in danger of becoming the mouthpiece of the charter school movement in Knefel’s eyes:
While it won’t be Broad or Wasserman themselves writing the new stories at the LA Times, it’s dubious that “independent journalism” will be funded, in part, via foundations so powerful in the education reform movement. Just like all journalism, education coverage must be adversarial to those in power–and right now, in education, reformers have a great deal of power.
Read her entire piece here.
