Meet The New School Board

For those of you who do not know, ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council. It provides conservative legislators with model legislation in support of conservative priorities. Educationally speaking this means charters, online schools, Right To Work, testing, no tenure, evaluations tied to student test scores, etc. These reforms do not stand on their own as good ideas, but have the incentives of providing profit and/or power to their proponents.

David and Charles Koch fund this assault on public education out of their 50+ billion dollars in assets. Their foundations spend $200 million dollars annually promoting their agenda. This is less than one half of one percent, by the way.

The reason I bring this up now is an article that reveals the following:

They have also collaborated on the annual ALEC education “report card” that grades states’ allegiance to their policy agenda higher than actual student performance. That distorted report card also rewards states that push ALEC’s beloved union-busting measures while giving low grades to states with students who actually perform best on standardized knowledge tests.

They reward legislators who adhere to their agenda with funding and threaten them with more conservative primary challengers if they don't regardless of how students actually perform. This is about power. They don't need the money.