It is very instructive to scan the long list of organizations that are funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Some will surprise you. Some will not. Here is what we know about this foundation. The Walton Family (beneficiaries of Walmart) is the richest family in America. There are many billionaires in the family. Like Betsy DeVos, they don’t like public education. They don’t like regulation. They love the free market. They don’t like unions. Individual family members have spent millions on political campaigns to support charters and vouchers. The Foundation also supports charters and school choice.
In 2015, the Walton Family Foundation spent $179 million on K-12 education grants. They are in the midst of a pledge to spend $1 billion to open more charters, and they have targeted certain cities for their beneficence (Atlanta, Boston, Camden, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, San Antonio and Washington, D.C.) Their goal is to undermine public education by creating a competitive marketplace of choices. They and DeVos are on the same page.
I suggest you scan the list to see which organizations have their hand out for funding from one of the nation’s most anti-public school, anti-union, rightwing foundations.
Here are a few of their grantees:
Black Alliance for Education Options (BAEO), run by Howard Fuller to spread the gospel of school choice: $2.78 million
Brookings Institution (no doubt, to buy the annual report that grades cities on school choice): $242,000
California Charter Schools Association: $5 million
Center for American Progress (theoretically a “centrist Democratic” think tank): $500,000
Charter Fund, Inc. (never heard of this one): $14 million
Chiefs for Change (Jeb Bush’s group): $500,000
College Board (to push Common Core?): $225,000
Colorado League of Charter Schools: $1,050,000
Editorial Projects in Education (Education Week): $70,000
Education Reform Now: $4.2 million
Education Trust, Inc. (supposed a “left-leaning advocacy group”): $359,000
Education Writers Association: $175,000
Educators for Excellence (anti-union teachers, usually from TFA): $925,000
Families for Excellent Schools (hedge fund managers who lobby for charter schools in New York City and Massachusetts): $6.4 million
Foundation for Excellence in Education (Jeb Bush’s organization): $3 million
High Tech High Graduate School of Education (this one stumped me; how can a high school run a graduate school of education?): $780,000
KIPP Foundation: $6.9 million
Leadership for Education Equity Foundation (this is TFA’s political organization that trains TFA to run for office): $5 million
Massachusetts Charter Public School Association (this funding preceded the referendum where the citizens of Massachusetts voted “no mas” to new charters): $850,000
National Public Radio: $1.1 million
National Urban League: $300,000
Pahara Institute: $832,000
Parent Revolution: $500,000
Relay Graduate School of Education (that pseudo-grad school with no professors, just charter teachers): $1 million
Schools That Can Milwaukee (Tough luck, the Working Families Party just swept the school board): $1.6 million
StudentsFirst Institute: $2.8 million
Teach for America (to supply scabs): $8 million
The New York Times: $350,000
Thomas B. Fordham Institute: $700,000
Urban Institute (supposedly an independent think tank in D.C.): $350,000
To be fair, in another part of the grants report, called Special Projects, the Walton Family Foundation donated $112,404 to the Bentonville Public Schools and $25,000 to the Bentonville Public Schools Foundation, in the town where the Waltons are located. Compare that to the $179 million for charters and choice, and you get the picture of what matters most.
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