Reprinted from the NJEA Reporter, May 2004
(Ninth of a Series)
The Black Alliance for Educational Options relies on right-wing money to push for vouchers
The ads surfaced without warning in the summer of 2000, appearing in major dailies and community newspapers with predominantly black readership.
They featured young African American students and their parents, saying: “Parental school choice is widespread – unless you’re poor.”
The campaign expanded to radio and TV spots in the Washington, D.C. market after the 2000 election, and exploded the following spring.
The Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) – the new face of the voucher movement – was now a player in the national voucher movement. But when the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that BAEO’s 2001 ads in the D.C. market alone cost $4.33 million, it was clear that something more than a “grassroots movement” was behind the fledgling organization – then headquartered in Milwaukee.
It is now common knowledge that BAEO was launched, and is sustained, by major contributions from two right-wing foundations that fuel the national voucher movement: the Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation, run by Wal-Mart heir John Walton.
Walton provided $900,000 to launch BAEO on August 24, 2000 at a national press conference in Washington, D.C., where former Milwaukee Superintendent of Schools Dr. Howard Fuller, BAEO’s president and founder, said the group would support tax-funded vouchers, private scholarships, tuition tax credits, charter schools, and public/private partnerships.
Since then, Walton, the Bradley Foundation (more than $2 million in support), and other corporate and right-wing backers have kept BAEO afloat – and facilitated its eventual move to Washington so it could gain access to the corridors of power.
$1.1 million from the Bush administration
That access has paid off handsomely. In the past two years, BAEO has received $1.1 million in discretionary grants from the Bush administration’s Department of Education – to “actively support parent choice to empower families and increase education options for black children” – buzzwords for conducting voucher advocacy at taxpayer expense. (A similar organization aimed at the Hispanic community – the Hispanic Council for Reform and Education Options (CREO) – has also been formed, and also receives support from the Bush administration.)
As always, it helps to “follow the money” to identify the forces behind BAEO.
Ironically, the Bradley and Walton foundations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars opposing affirmative action, civil rights, and equal educational opportunity through front organizations, ballot initiatives, and other like-minded foundations. In 1994, the Bradley Foundation paid Charles Murray $1 million to write The Bell Curve (see sidebar), the controversial book that claimed blacks were genetically incapable of learning at high levels, making its subsequent support of BAEO all the more cynical – and all the more deserving of closer scrutiny.
In 2002, President Bush gushed: “The Bradley Foundation has always been willing to seek different solutions. They’ve been willing to challenge the status quo. And the foundation has not only been kind and generous with its donations, the foundation also has been willing to help people think anew.”
Booker and BAEO
One prominent member of BAEO’s board of directors is former Newark City Councilman Cory Booker, who lost a controversial 2002 race for mayor of Newark despite millions of campaign contributions from Walton and other conservative, primarily out-of-state donors. BAEO once had 33 chapters – including one in New Jersey – but a staffer at the organization’s D.C. headquarters said he “wasn’t sure” if it was still operating.
Fuller, who heads the organization, has been a controversial figure in the voucher movement. He left the Milwaukee superintendency in 1995 to found the pro-voucher Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, with the help of $900,000 in Bradley money. His wife, Deborah McGriff – also a BAEO board member – works for the Edison Project, which operates charter schools in several cities. Since 1999, Fuller has served on President Bush’s education policy advisory team.
Only a fraction of BAEO supporters appear to be involved in right-wing politics. Still, despite its appealing name, BAEO owes its very existence to hard-right money – money that seeks to privatize public education at any cost. That makes BAEO a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and an organization worth watching. (For more information on vouchers, go to: www.njea.org/issues/vouchers.asp)
NEXT MONTH: – The answer to vouchers – A look at Milwaukee’s SAGE schools, and what NJEA has been doing to counter the voucher movement in New Jersey.