Guest Opinion–Get to Know the New Power in Delaware Education
Jan 15th, 2010 by David Anderson
The Opinions expressed are those of the author. In the past the adminstration had an unedited posting on its educational strategy.
Eli Broad is #42 on the 2009 Forbes list of the richest Americans and one of the richest people in the world. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, he was born in the Bronx and raised in Detroit. He borrowed money to start his first business (KB Homes) which he built into one of the nation’s largest home builders. He went on to purchase Sun Life Insurance which he sold to AIG for $18 billion in cash and stocks. After making his billions Eli Broad and his wife Edyth began to “invest” in education and the arts. His net worth has taken a hit since the AIG collapse claimed $1.5 billion in stock values but that hasn’t stopped his philanthropy. Mr. and Mrs. Broad’s educational pursuits include The Broad Center, whose mission “is to raise student achievement by recruiting, training and supporting executive leadership talent from across America to become the next generation of urban school district leaders. Established in 2001, The Center identifies talented leaders from education, business, the military, nonprofit organizations and government who have the passion, knowledge and skill to take on executive leadership roles in urban education. The center operates two executive development programs: The Broad Superintendents Academy and The Broad Residency in Urban Education.” In 2008, some of the guest speakers to the BSA graduates were Arne Duncan (then Chicago Public Schools chief), Kevin Hall (COO Broad Foundations & Vision 2015 Steering Committee member) and Adam Urbanski (Vice President of the American Federation of Teachers (second largest teachers union in the U.S.)).
Before you start talking about how Mr. Broad is a political moderate who just cares about children, take a look at the following transcription taken from an interview on the Huffington Post WAY back in February of 2008:
“WB: How do you and Edythe do this together?
EB: We’re partners. She and I are the trustees of the foundation, and we’ve got a great governing board of people that are very accomplished, including Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, Andy Stern, the progressive labor leader, and Henry Cisneros.”
Since 2003 Eli Broad has been installing superintendents, trained in his programs into the Delaware public school system. The first of the Broad Academy Superintendents was Dr. Joseph Wise in the Christina School District who is best known for his “questionable purchases”. After Dr. Wise left for Jacksonville, Florida another Broad Superintendents Academy graduate, Dr. Lillian Lowery was brought in to “clean up the mess” left by Dr. Wise. When Dr. Lowery had “saved” the Christina School District she was the immediate candidate for the new Secretary of Education by Gov. Jack Markell in January of this year. Immediately, another BSA graduate Dr. Marcia Lyles stepped right into the Christina School District position. In fact, according to a 2006 article on Slate, Eli Broad planned “to virtually take over the Delaware school system in 2007, pending approval from that state’s legislature.” He backed the winning slate of candidates for the local board of education in 1999 and helped hire the new superintendent[Lowery].” It’s taken a couple more years than he expected but Broad has a BSA graduate as head of DEDOE, another as the Superintendent of the state’s largest school district and Mr. Broad is also one of the architects of President Obama’s education plan. In fact, not only was Arne Duncan, United States Education Secretary a guest speaker for the Broad Superintendants Academy but Joanne Weiss, Director of the Race to the Top program (RttT) is also linked to Eli Broad through many of his philanthropic pursuits. Perhaps that is why Dr. Lowery sounded so sure that Delaware would receive the supposedly competitive RttT money. Maybe that is also why she recanted a story of Joe Biden seemed to know about the coming money a year ago when he told Dr. Lowery and others at a DSEA retreat that they should be able to turn the schools around with all the money they were going to get.
Eli Broad’s hands aren’t the only ones in the pot here in Delaware. Dr. Lowery laid out a plan that includes creating career ladders within our vocational schools and working with department of labor statistics and community colleges to focus learning on sustainable career paths. It also includes mandating that districts create a merit based pay system of some kind that can be agreed to by the local unions and creating an early childhood office within DEDOE that will help to bring children up to speed earlier in life. DEDOE will set up “Partnership Zones” to help measure progress and schools that fail to turn around low performance would be converted into private charters. Dr. Lowery also told us that 48 state education departments (including Delaware’s) have already agreed to consider adopting national standards for its curriculum and the majority of student and teacher improvement would be in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. In fact, it seems to me like the rather long video found here became Jack Markell’s education plan.
Evan Queitsch
Communications Director
Founders Values
www.foundersvalues.com
FYI:
Larry Summers – former Clinton Treasury Secretary, current director of President Obama’s National Economic Council and the White House economic team and resigned as Harvard’s president in the wake of a conflict with Cornel West, conflict of interest questions regarding his relationship with Andrei Shleifer, and a 2005 speech in which he suggested that the under-representation of women in the top levels of academia is due to a “different availability of aptitude at the high end.”
Andy Stern – Loveable SEIU thug leader – I don’t think I need to cite his LENGTHY history of anti-capitalist and anti-democracy sentiment. You should probably watch the video at the bottom if you have any questions about Stern’s roots.
Henry Cisneros – left his HUD Secretary position under Clinton, and did not serve a second term, was overshadowed as a result of controversy involving payments to his former mistress, in which he pleaded guilty to making false statements to federal officials. He also joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial — two companies that rode the housing boom, drawing criticism along the way for abusive business practices.
Cisneros serves as Executive Chairman for CityView, which he formed in 2000 and originally had its start as American City Vista, a joint venture with KB Home intent on the purpose of building homes in central areas of major metropolitan areas. Today, CityView is headquartered in Los Angeles, California and is a national institutional urban development investor, providing financing to housing and commercial real estate developers. In 2006, Builder Magazine named Cisneros #18 out of the top 50 most influential people in the real estate industry.
Broad is a ‘diversity is our strength’ multiculturist. Sure, he got rich through capitalism; so did the moneychanger and Socialist-Democrat sugar-daddy George Soros.
Bottom line; nothing can help failing ‘urban’ schools until 14-year-olds stop having babies and smoking crack, and most young children would love to have some idea who their father is.
“Black Americans, look at all we’ve done for you!”..your friendly neighborhood Socialist-Democrat overseer.
Rick,
Agreed on all points! That said, I’m not sure Broad doesn’t see his progressive takeover of the edicational system as a good “investment” because remember, he’s making money through financial investments in these educational organizations whose stock is going up. KIPP, Mass. Insight (contracted by Lillian Lowery to help “turn around” our schools) and any number of charter schools.
The sad reality is the potential for Delaware Students is huge but we are harnessed to a dead weight called the education establishment.
School Principals are left with little control. Teachers are being taught too much ideology and not hard subject matter and we ignore our paraprofessionals who work so hard.
In the end Markell will make little difference.
Mike Protack
last year a retired senior administrator told me all of out superintendants were picked by the “Broad Foundation”. We were discussing “why we give Superintendants contracts”. At the time, the statement didn’t mean a lot to me… know I know the rest of the story. Thanks.
all of our supers…
[...] Guest Opinion–Get to Know the New Power in Delaware Education (delawarepolitics.net) – January 14, 2010Eli Broad is #42 on the 2009 Forbes list of the richest Americans and one of the richest people in the world. The son of Lithuanian immigrants, he was born in the Bronx and raised in Detroit. He borro… [...]
Annoni – it’s not just that all of the admins have been picked by Broad (only Lyles, Wise and Lowery have direct ties to the BSA) but with Broad having ties to KIPP (Inner city teacher provider under contract with DEDOE), Mass Insight (School turn around who has worked with DEDOE) and the Obama Education Administration, the state education system really ought to rename itself the Eli Broad State Controlled Education System.