Who’s Funding the Latest Conservative Assault on Public Education?
/
“Are you trying to scare people?”
This was the question an education scholar asked Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire after reading an early draft of their book, “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School.”
“In a word, yes,” was the authors’ reply. As they write in their conclusion: “The threat to public education, as we’ve laid out in the preceding chapters, is grave. A radical vision for unmaking the very idea of public schools has moved from the realm of ideological pipe dream to legitimate policy.”
Schneider and Berkshire’s thesis is frightening.
“A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door” extends the analysis in Jane Mayer’s book “Dark Money,” a deep dive into efforts by conservative billionaires to shape public policy, and argues that many of the same players are working to privatize education in the U.S.
“Put simply, the overarching vision is unmaking public education as an institution,” they write. Schneider is an education historian and assistant professor of education at the University of Massachusetts Lowell; Jennifer Berkshire is a journalist. Together, they host the education podcast “Have You Heard.”
The authors explain that after charter schools first emerged 30 years ago, they won support from a broad, bipartisan coalition. Democratic President Bill Clinton authorized the federal Charter Schools Program, for example; later, the Walton Family Foundation, as well as Silicon Valley philanthropists like Reed Hastings and newer funders like John Arnold, came to believe charter schools could transform the education landscape. Conservative groups also endorsed charters. “On both sides, the money was all going in the same direction,” Berkshire said, “The goal was to expand the footprint of high-performing urban charter schools.”
But Berkshire and Schneider believe the long-term goal for conservatives like Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos, the Heritage Foundation and others has always been to privatize education altogether, and in recent years, they have moved beyond charters to support that ambition. One of the movement’s primary tools is school vouchers (sometimes referred to as education savings accounts), an old and unpopular concept that conservative funders, think tanks and legislators have refurbished and reintroduced as a new and inspired idea—an effort that has ramped up in the wake of pandemic school closures. Education Week reported, for example, that as of January of this year, “34 bills to expand private education options in some way had been introduced in 15 states.”
In a recent op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle, Schneider and Berkshire call the new wave of voucher programs “the most successful assault on public education ever waged.” They also link the push for school privatization to the conservative hysteria about critical race theory. They believe conservatives, backed by conservative funders, are using the specter of CRT to undermine support for public schools and “alienate aggrieved GOP voters from the one public institution they still hold dear.”
It’s difficult to know who is funding the rash of anti-CRT efforts, as in the case of other controversial issues, as foundations and donors will often support the conservative groups working on them with unrestricted support. Funds also frequently go toward 501(c)(4) work, which has fewer disclosure requirements. For example, Heritage Action for America (a c4) recently declined to identify CRT donors to Politico, but a representative said there is “huge donor interest in this.” Judd Legum’s Popular Information did report recently that the little-known Thomas W. Smith Foundation is supporting many of the organizations that publicly attack critical race theory.
IP caught up with Jennifer Berkshire recently to talk about the book, the role of conservative philanthropists in the attack on public education, and what’s behind the K-12 culture wars.
Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of “A Wolf at the schoolhouse door”
What prompted you and Jack Schneider to write this book?
As you know, Jack is an education historian, and my specialty is traveling around talking to people on the ground in battleground states. As I was visiting these states, it was clear that the issue of education was exploding. In red states around the country, legislators are introducing school voucher bills. Vouchers are an idea that Reagan introduced during his presidency, to great controversy. We were fascinated to see that vouchers were back, only this time, they are being sold as a disruptive innovation. So that was the key question that motivated the book: Why have vouchers, this conservative policy idea that had never won popular support, come back?
You’ve talked about Charles Koch and the Koch network’s push to privatize education. Who are some of the other funders behind this effort?
[Former Education Secretary] Betsy DeVos and her family’s organization, the American Federation for Children, are playing a role. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is also pushing privatization.
I think it’s helpful to think in terms of core billionaire families. You can go state by state, and virtually all of the states in the middle of the country have their own billionaire, and it’s often somebody you’ve never heard of. So in Missouri, [investor and libertarian] Rex Sinquefield has had a lot of influence on this movement. What are his priorities? He wants two things: He wants school choice, and he wants to get rid of Missouri’s income tax. And you can watch over the years as slowly and steadily, the state politics is remade in the image of this enormously wealthy person.
In your book, you point out that support for public schools among Americans remains strong. Yet you argue that the push for school privatization is having an impact, even if it doesn’t have popular support.
Jack Schneider, co-author of “A Wolf at the schoolhouse door”
Oh absolutely, because that’s the theme of our politics right now. The fact that these measures are unpopular really makes little difference to the people who support them. The goal is to entrench a kind of minoritarianism, and education is really where you see that playing out. People always want more money for schools, they want smaller class sizes. So in Arizona, in 2020, for example, people voted to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to increase investment in the public schools. But the Arizona legislature just overturned that and instituted a flat tax instead.
If you look at states that are really far down this road—Arizona and Indiana, for example—they are paying a huge price now for trying to keep taxes as low as they can and divesting from public schools. Their educational attainment levels have dropped.
As we were wrapping up the book and going to press, it was very clear that there were these conservative foundations that saw the pandemic as a major opportunity to really push this agenda forward. And so we end the book with a quote from the Heritage Foundation encouraging lawmakers in every state to use this opportunity to restructure their school finance systems and just give money directly to the parents. And that has ended up happening in a lot of states.
What do you think is the goal of the widespread attacks on anti-racism and critical race theory?
I see people responding to these [state laws banning critical race theory and anti-racism curriculum] and they say things like, “Oh, you’re never going to be able to enforce that!” And of course, that really is not the point. The point is the constant drumbeat and reminding your aggrieved base that they’re paying for something that they find abhorrent—whether or not it actually exists. And at the same time that is happening, they are also expanding private school choice. They are expanding the terrain that lets parents opt out of the public system, and encouraging them to opt out of the public system.
Can you talk a little about the funders behind this movement?
We don’t know the names of all the donors, but I’ve looked into it some, and it’s messy. The Walton Foundation, for example. Their 2025 strategy is very explicit: They are supporting equity, diversity and inclusion. Then you look at who they’re funding, and their money is going to some of the groups that are driving the CRT culture war stuff.
They are still funding charter school groups and the ecosystem around charter schools, but they also gave a big grant to the Independent Women’s Forum, which is involved in the anti-CRT push. Walton also supports the State Policy Network and EdChoice, which are both pushing school-voucher efforts at the state level.
I know that in your reporting you talk to a lot of teachers. Are they feeling intimidated by these anti-CRT campaigns?
Yes, absolutely. If you start talking to teachers, especially teachers who are in places that are extremely polarized, they know that they have students who are basically being encouraged to rat them out. That is a terrible feeling. I’ve interviewed teachers who told me that, even in Massachusetts. In many of these places, what started out as parents angry over school closures and mask mandates has morphed into anti-CRT and anti-equity stuff. You hear from teachers that they are just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
