Let's have a big shout-out to the cowards at the American Education Reform Council!

After all, I know that those Milwaukee-based pro-voucher people read the blog, so let's give them a virtual wave. How do I know they read me? The magic of the internet!

A couple of Thursdays ago, I got comments on two posts from commenters whose names I did not recognize. It's always nice to get new readers, of course, and with steadily rising hit counts over the last several months and some mentions in high-profile places like NEA Today, I have been looking forward to new names in the comments. But these comments were interesting.

First, there was "mike" responding to this post about Jonathan Kozol's scheduled appearance at the 20th anniversary fundraiser for Rethinking Schools. The comment from "mike" was an odd dis of Kozol:

I don't get Kozol. Everything I read by him points out that there are problems in education. obviously. Where are his solutions? Then always seem to be so vague.

And so on. I didn't think much of it, except that then I noticed a comment on an older thread from a "Tom," taking issue with my commentary on a Journal Sentinel story noting that Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction was withholding voucher checks from some choice schools that failed to file paperwork on time. He actually made some cogent points, and I even started looking at some research to debate him, but then I noticed something about the comments from "mike" and "Tom": Both comments, posted about ten minutes apart, had come from the same IP address. So I figured I was dealing with some kind of troll and ignored him.

But "mike"/ "Tom" showed up again last Friday, this time calling himself "Bill" as he commented in my post about DPI cracking down for the first time ever in fifteen years of Milwaukee Choice on schools that did not offer enough instruction time or a complete curriculum as defined by Wisconsin's constitution. This comment from "Bill" called me out specifically as a liar:

Note that three of these schools are in trouble for not meeting academic standards. You make some good points on voucher schools, but your repeated statements about no academic standards at voucher schools is false.

Okay, so "Bill" didn't use the word liar, exactly, but it raised my hackles. And if you've been here long enough, you know that my hackles often override my better judgment. So I started responding in the comments without thinking.

When I did start thinking, I thought to myself that the argument "Bill" used was similar to what "Tom" had said the week before. So I checked the IP address from the comment by "Bill" and, as you may have guessed, it was the same as the other two suspicious comments. So I made sure to add that to my response.

The IP address thing reinforced my notion that "mike"/ "Tom"/ "Bill" was trolling, or at least engaging in classic HaloScan troll behavior by posting under different names, perhaps not knowing that HaloScan shows account owners the IP addresses of commenters. But the comments--save the dig at Kozol--were smarter than your average troll comments. So I figured I should at least see what I could learn about "mike"/ "Tom"/ "Bill."

Turns out that the IP address "mike"/ "Tom"/ "Bill" was using belongs to the American Education Reform Council, an organization that should be familiar to anyone who has spent any time studying the national school voucher debate. They are, as I said at the top, based in Milwaukee, but their reach extends well beyond ground zero for vouchers and into pretty much any school choice debate anywhere in the country. I'll let the good folks at People for the American Way describe them, from an article they did called "Community Voice or Captive of the Right?: A Closer Look at the Black Alliance for Educational Options":

AERC poured $185,000--a whopping 65% of its grant money--into BAEO in 2001. AERC, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3), is affiliated with the American Education Reform Foundation (AERF), which serves as AERC’s lobbying arm. The two groups share office space and Susan Mitchell heads both groups.

AERC is intimately connected to BAEO in both staffing and funding. John Walton not only funds AERC--giving almost one million dollars via the Walton Foundation between 1999 and 2000--but was also AERF’s previous president and provided its initial grant. The Bradley Foundation also supports AERC, providing $300,000 grants in 1998 and 2000. It is clear that the Bradley and Walton Foundations have a key role in both directly and indirectly funding BAEO.

In addition, Howard Fuller himself sits on the AERC board alongside John Walton. Kaleem Caire stepped down from his position as executive director of BAEO to become Project Director for AERC’s national effort to expand parent options.

As a 501(c)(3), AERC’s political advocacy is restricted. It cannot endorse political candidates and may only do a minimal amount of lobbying on legislation. However, AERC ran “informational” advertisements during the Colorado and Michigan voucher campaigns in 1998 and 2000, respectively. AERC spent $500,000 on the Michigan initiative, in addition to the $2 million Walton spent out of his own pocket.

AERC activities apparently extend beyond advertising to organizing local grassroots organizations. A Friedman Foundation newsletter credits AERC and the Institute for Justice for working together to start Pensacola Parents For School Choice in May 2000.

Without the restrictions of a 501(c)(3), AERF can participate in more overtly political activities. It was a major force behind failed efforts to get a voucher referendum on the California ballot in 1996 and 1998. Walton and AERF then teamed up with a combined $410,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to pass Proposition 226, so-called “paycheck protection,” in California to limit the use of union money being spent in political campaigns. The organizers of the anti-union measure all worked together on the state’s failed 1993 voucher initiative and saw the measure as payback for money the teacher’s union spent to “cream the measure.”

AERF drew public criticism in 1997 when it hired Sterling Tucker, a community activist and former D.C. City Councilman, to organize support for a DC voucher program designed by House Majority Leader Richard Armey (R-TX). Local officials opposed this congressional effort to impose a voucher program in the District of Columbia. Several black ministers, who had initially supported the program, later withdrew their support, accusing Tucker of misleading them about the program and not disclosing his connection with AERF.

That's quite a history, though for those of you in the audience who support vouchers, it probably doesn't bother you at all. However, PFAW does remind us of an important Wisconsin case involving, indirectly, the AERC and AERF. Barbara Miner tells the story in Rethinking Schools:

Voucher Backers Illegally Funnel Money

A suit by the State Elections Board of Wisconsin has accused voucher supporters of illegally funneling money into the Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign of Justice Jon Wilcox.

The Wisconsin State Journal newspaper has called the illegal donations "one of the largest political-corruption cases in state history."

Wilcox was elected in the spring of 1997 and in the summer of 1998 voted with the majority to uphold the Milwaukee voucher program providing public dollars to private schools. During the election campaign, Wilcox's vote was considered crucial to the outcome of the voucher case. His opponent, Walt Kelly, was known as a strong supporter of public schools and of the separation of church and state.

Days before the election, a group known as the Wisconsin Coalition for Voter Participation engaged in a massive, $200,000 pro-Wilcox postcard and phone-calling campaign. In order to not violate state campaign finance laws, the group denied it had any ties to the Wilcox campaign. Following an extensive investigation, this spring the State Elections Board filed suit accusing the Wilcox campaign and the Coalition with illegally coordinating their activities to circumvent state election laws.

The Wisconsin State Journal noted in an April 20 [2000] story that Wilcox "probably would have had to withdraw from the case if the contributions from school-choice supporters had been made public."

Only two of the donors to the postcard and phone-calling campaign came from Wisconsin. The others were described by The Wisconsin State Journal as a "nationwide collection of Republican school-choice supporters." Donors included nationally known voucher advocates such as John Walton of WalMart and Patrick Rooney of Golden Rule Insurance in Indiana, who each kicked in $25,000 to the campaign. [. . .]

Out-of-state donations accounted for 85% of the cash used to finance 345,000 postcards and 250,000 phone calls on the Supreme Court election. The single largest contribution, $34,500, came from the American Education Reform Foundation, a nationwide pro-voucher group based in Milwaukee. [Several individuals connected to AERC and AERF also contributed.]

PFAW does let us know that "AERF was not found in violation of election law." Wilcox was, though, as this third-hand reprinting of a dead-pixel Shepherd Express article notes, paying $10,000 in fines. Sadly, Wilcox never recused himself from the lawsuit involving Milwaukee's vouchers, despite the massive contributions from voucher backers. He ruled in favor of continuing the program.

The PFAW article I quoted above mentions in passing both the Black Alliance for Educational Options and Howard Fuller. BAEO is a wholly-owned creation of the conservative white wealth of the Bradley Foundation, no matter what their letterhead says, with new recent funding by the Bush Administration. (See the Black Commentator, for example, here, here, and here.) Howard Fuller is on AERC's board and has been (if I remember right) president of BAEO. Fuller was a former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent (before my time in the district) and helped to create the unaccountable shadow system that undermines and sucks tax dollars from the public schools he headed. Fuller admitted, in last spring's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel series on voucher schools that the biggest lie they used to sell us vouchers--that the "marketplace" would keep bad schools out of the program--was, in fact, a big lie (more on that here). Fuller now makes a good living promoting vouchers from inside Marquette University.

Anyway, this all brings us back to the American Education Reform Council: This is a nation-wide organization with millions of dollars in right-wing cash behind it, instrumental in pushing voucher programs in Milwaukee and plenty of other places, with the ear even of pocketed politicians like Wisconsin's indicted Scooter Jensen. Why would they bother with li'l ol' me? More importantly, why would an organization whose stated objectives explicitly say they "seek[] to ensure an honest debate about school choice" send an anonymous coward to comment on my blog? I think it's clear that they are afraid of the truth about voucher schools getting out. Look again at the comment from "Tom":

All voucher schools must also qualify as private schools, which have academic requirements such as 875 hours of instruction and a sequentiall curriculum in Math, Science, Language, Reading, and Health. DPI can, and has, examined schools for this. If a school cannot prove it is meeting these academic requirements, DPI can pull their status as a private school and hence kick them out of the choice program. [. . .]

To call the voucher program a black hole is misleading and harmfull to the ultimate goal of lifting up all Milwaukee children so a voucher program doesn't even need to exist.

So less than a week before DPI came down--for the first time ever in 15 years--on schools who didn't meet the 875 hour or curriculum requirements, "Tom" is trying to pre-emptively defend the quality of voucher schools by saying, "Hey, at least they meet these minimum requirements!" It's clear now that not all voucher schools do meet those requirements, and the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars we've already paid to the suspect schools is lost forever. The hundreds of students who have passed through those schools have lost forever years of schooling--years of schooling MPS has to make up for. And of course the voucher program is a black hole--there is not one academic performance datum required to be made public by any voucher school. Not one. Zero. Zilch. Even the worst-performing MPS schools make public the data that show how poorly they perform, allowing parents to make a truly informed choice, and not a leap into the unknown.

As DPI keeps cracking down--and I hope they do!--I'm sure more schools like the ones currently targeted will come to light. And, yes, let me throw in my standard disclaimer: There are plenty of voucher schools doing a fine job educating Milwaukee students, and who will never face challenges or penalties from the DPI. (Which schools they are, we can't be 100% sure, because of non-existent accountability procedures.) What worries me is that there are those like "mike"/ "Tom"/ "Bill" and his allies at AERC, BAEO, AERF, the Bradley Foundation, and beyond who want to keep the curtains closed, who want to keep expanding the program to involve more untested, unaccountable schools eating up your taxpayer dollars without any quality control or transparency.

They are so opposed to transparency, apparently, that they won't even use their real names.