Wal-Mart money drives the charter school movement

NY Times: Walton Family Foundation Funds Charter Movement

By Diane Ravitch

Readers of the Diane Ravitch's blog have long known that the Billionaires Boys Club has pledged its allegiance to the privatization of American public education. 

Among the Billionaires Boys Club, we include the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and hedge fund managers. 

They are allied with ALEC and other rightwing “think” tanks, all of which are in love with charters and vouchers.

Motoko Rich wrote in the April 26 New York Times about the dedication of the vastly wealthy Walton Family Foundation. The Waltons do not like public education. They do not like unions. They like charters and vouchers. They spend $160 million every year to spread the gospel of privatization and to destroy the public schools that are the heart of most communities.

With their support, the US is recreating a dual school system: one that chooses its students and the other that accepts all. Further, they have got the media cheering for segregated schools, determined as the Waltons are to establish the success of all-black schools.

They use their vast wealth not to pay their workers a living wage but to destroy their communities, killing off mom and pop stores, and destroying their local public school, replacing it with a corporate chain school.

Altogether a great triumph for the cold and mean face of American capitalism, which cares not at all for family, community, tradition, or humane values.