I asked Doug Martin, my colleague at The Common Errant and a dogged investigator of politico-corporate-educational malfeasance, to help us interpret the misleading graphic presentation offered by Rachel Brown for The Atlantic‘s Reform Pamphlet. Ms Brown seems to responsible for page 87; I don’t think it’s appropriate to say she wrote it as it is primarily a [...]
Cut from the Corporate Kloth–Preferring KIPP Failure Over TPS Success
NOTE: A small section of this article originally mistook the KIPP Indy school with KIPP’s school in Gary. This has been corrected. UPDATE: As this Doug Martin story broke, word came down that a federal judge ruled in favor of the mayor’s decision to close The Project School. Additionally, Jason Kloth is getting a pay-raise. [...]
Buying Mayor Ballard: More Truth About the Project School Closing
In my last piece, The Truth about the Project School Closing: The Indiana Corporate School Complex,” I noted how Indy mayor Greg Ballard was promoting a school privatizing movement full of crony capitalism, propaganda, and lots of money, one at odds with the community-led/social justice Project School. Therefore, the fact that Ballard, last year, accepted tons of [...]
The Truth Behind The Project School Closing: The Indiana Corporate School Complex
(Below is Doug Martin’s in-depth look into the corporate forces in Indianapolis working to keep true community-led charter schools from operating. Please sign the petition to “Save The Project School.”) On July 17, Indianapolis mayor Greg Ballard announced he was closing The Project School, one of the few community-led charter schools in Indiana and the [...]
The Factory Store
or Telling Lies to Children, or Education in America. So, do you remember when you were a child and someone asked you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I don’t either, but let me ask differently, have you asked any child this? This magical, mystical, and ultimately mystifying question was answered [...]
In the City of Corporate Love and Beyond: The Boston Consulting Group, Gates, and the Filthy Rich
When the Michelle Rhee/Betsy Devos-endorsed Pennsylvania governor, Tom Corbett, slashed $1.1 billion in educational funding over the last two years, he was merely continuing the disaster capitalism agenda against Philadelphia schools which began in 1998, when Act 46 passed. As retaliation against Philadelphia Public Schools’ superintendent David Hornbeck for threatening to close down the entire [...]
Teaching as CIA Cover–Gülen Charter Schools, Dan Burton, and State Secrets
The following continues Doug Martin’s look into the Gülen charter school movement, which began with Islam and the Free Market of Privatized Education: “Friending” the Gülen Charter Schools. Besides noting U.S. charter school connections to the Fethullah Gülen Movement during her testimony in the Schmidt v. Krikorian case in Ohio on August 8, 2009,* former [...]
Educating Business Ethics
The population of the US seems to be experiencing a kind of national awakening regarding the harsh and endemic inequalities of our “Us vs Them” economic reality. Though it seems possible that our bail-out and bubble-induced slogans of solidarity will fade into our historical moment to be studied by the future (should there be one [...]








