The Globe Puffs Up Another Dubious “Science of Reading” Program

Last week in This teacher has a super power to help her young students learn to read the Boston Globe introduced us to a new  “superpower” a “research backed practice” endorsed by “experts” based on the “science of reading, or scientifically based research on how to teaching (sic) reading.” Relax. It’s just the Globe promoting a for-profit corporation named Ignite Reading which is based in the K-12 privatization industry.

When last we visited the Globe’s “science of reading” campaign we saw the Globe palpitating over a “useless at best and completely false at worst” poll conducted about SOR by the Barr Foundation-funded MassInc Polling Group for the Barr Foundation-funded interest group Education Trust and reported by the Barr Foundation-funded Boston Globe. As I pointed out at the time much peer reviewed research finds SOR dubious, but it is a money maker. Let’s look at the Globe’s latest advert for this magic elixir.

This is what caught my eye: the “superpower program” is in schools “through grant funding from the Boston-based One8 Foundation” and the magnificent results of One8’s program are “according to preliminary results from a study by Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University funded by the (One8) foundation.”

The Globe doesn’t tell us what the One8 Foundation is but Boy Scout-helpful as I always am, let me fill in the blanks. One8 is the foundation of Massachusetts oligarchs Jonathon and Joanna Jacobson. Joanna Jacobson used to run another foundation that pooled resources of local oligarchs, named Strategic Grant Partners. SGP was at the center of the 2016 pro-charters anti-union ballot campaign. I was writing about that consistently in 2016 and in 2017 the Office of Campaign and Political Finance confirmed many of my insights when it ordered Great Schools Massachusetts ballot committee’s top contributor Families for Excellent Schools Advocacy Inc. to disclose the dark money donors it was hiding from the public. For those who have yet to memorize Table 2.2 from my book Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, here it is:

Klarman, the Beckensteins, and the Jacobson were all members of Strategic Grant Partners. Hostetter is the money behind the Barr Foundation.

Looking at the top dark money donors in Table 2.3, SGP members gave $9,450,000 in dark money to push Q2. Total raised was about $25 million, of which about $20 million was dark money.

Tables 2.2 and 2.3 reflect campaign money. The path to the campaign was set by the related non-profit called Families for Excellent Schools, Inc. that operated in Massachusetts from 2014-2017. Unlike ballot committee donations, funds given to an IRS 501(c)(3 ) non-profit corporation like FESI are tax deductible. It’s good to be rich. Here are donations to FESI from SGP and Boston philanthropies The Boston Foundation, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and Fidelity Investment Charitable Gift Fund. Passing money through these vehicles means we will never know who the real check writers were.

But wait! There’s more! In 2009-10 and 2011-2012 a non-profit named Stand for Children filled the role of FESI in preparing the road for anti-union ballot questions. And guess what entity was funding SFC? Right! It was Strategic Grant Partners! And can you guess which individuals put their money behind the ballot committees that were formed to advance the anti-union measures? Right! It was the members of SGP; again, headed by Joanna Jacobson.

So when I see One8 funding a study that finds a One8 funded reading program doing all hunky-dory, I have my suspicions. I also wonder who is invested in Ignite Reading, which is a for-profit corporation.

(Reminder: “peer-reviewed” research is the gold standard. Other forms of research certainly have their uses but you wouldn’t make any big decisions without a peer-reviewed study (I hope). And as we shall see, the findings of non-peer reviewed papers funded by the interest groups hoping for a good outcome are well . . . you see the good outcome or you don’t see the research. Caveat: oligarchic funding has so infiltrated some university institutes that their research has to be considered with discretion. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.)

The Globe included links so I followed “a research-backed practice requiring small groupings and highly trained tutors, and which experts nationally say is key to pandemic recovery.” The Globe’s “research-backed practice” is a nine-page non-peer reviewed white paper with some academic involvement. To be fair it appears to be based upon some peer reviewed work (not all of it seems to be relevant, but I’m not going to read all those links unless the Globe reporter does first). Here’s the key: “Funding for this research was provided by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” Gates is also a major funder of school privatization initiatives. Tim Schwab in The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire takes a searching look at the foundation’s education program:

Of course, the Gates Foundation’s entire modus operandi is precisely what Gates disclaims: to carefully and selectively fund groups that will reliably support its agenda, flooding every possible influential actor with money to encourage them to support its work or at least to not publicly criticize it.

Or as I wrote in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization:

Megan E. Tompkins-Stange recounted a Gates Foundation official remarking that when a study is commissioned “you pretty much know what the report is going to say before you go through the exercise.” Even worse, the same Gates official complained of “The willingness on our part to make stuff up.”

(This is a critique of Gates, not any researcher).

Now let’s move on to “experts nationally say is key to pandemic recovery.” This is another non-peer reviewed white paper, this one from the neo-liberal Center for American Progress. CAP’s “expert” Paige Shoemaker DeMio does not have any advanced degree in education. Presented as a “senior policy analyst for K-12 Education Policy at American Progress” she had four years in the classroom in Cleveland, two with Teach for America.

Teach for America is also aligned with school privatization interests, including the Walton family. TFA promotes putting young graduates of elite colleges into classrooms as teachers for two years. It is a tool of anti-union and privatization interests. As I suggested in Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, the program’s strength is in advancing individuals into think tanks, political careers, staff positions, and yes, the media. The Globe’s Poll and Superpower reporter Mandy McLaren is a TFA alum as well as a charter school veteran.

Speaking of charter schools, Ignite Reading’s CEO Jessica Sliwerski “served as assistant principal of Success Academy Charter Schools.”

In addition to The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire, some excellent recent academic work urges caution when considering findings from oligarchic foundation funding of research. See Josh Cowen, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, and Neil Kraus, The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement.

For a last word in Superpower, the Globe’s McLaren went to Ed Lambert, executive director for the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. She failed to disclose that MBAE and the Globe’s Great Divide education team are both funded by the Barr Foundation.

Money never sleeps. Follow the money.

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Three notes: First, if you found this post through a Twitter link, I will be closing my Twitter account. I hope you will follow me on Bluesky, @masspolprofmo.bsky.social. Second, if you see articles like Superpower that involve oligarchic philanthropic shaping of the education debate I’d appreciate your calling them to my attention. I have unsubscribed from the Globe. Third, after continuing on a few years after its smashing 2016 defeat, it appears that Strategic Grant Partners has dissolved. You are welcome.

Imagine movie critics who either did not know, or did not care to know, that movies have producers, script writers, directors, financiers, or casting directors, and so based their reviews on the premise that it was the actors alone who created the storyline, dialogue and mise en scene, and that the most successful actors were those who best understood the audience. That is essentially how all politics is covered in 21st century America.—Michael Podhorzer.

 

[Full disclosure: as a (now retired) educator in the UMass system, I am a union member. I write about dark money, democracy, and oligarchy. My book, Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, is available.]