“Most of us here were, at one time or anoth­er, active in either the O.S.S., the State Depart­ment, or the Euro­pean Eco­nom­ic Admin­is­tra­tion. Dur­ing those times, and with­out excep­tion, we oper­at­ed under direc­tives issued by the White House, the sub­stance of which was to the effect that we should make every effort to so alter life in the Unit­ed States as to make pos­si­ble a com­fort­able merg­er with the Sovi­et Union. We are con­tin­u­ing to be guid­ed by just such directives.”
‑H. Rowan Gaither

Is it too far-fetched to believe that in 1953 the Pres­i­dent of the Ford Foun­da­tion, the late Rowan Gaither, knew that char­ter schools, or some new form of pub­lic school gov­er­nance, would be nec­es­sary to car­ry out the Sovi­et Poly­tech (work­force train­ing) part of the “merg­er with the Sovi­et Union?” Char­ter (con­tract schools) are also in Russia.

THE DAILY PROGRESS (Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia) car­ried Nor­man Dod­d’s obit­u­ary in its Jan­u­ary 30, 1987 edi­tion. The trib­ute read in part:

Mr. Dodd’s ear­li­er sus­pi­cions of a polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­spir­a­cy were con­firmed. Dur­ing his research for this com­mit­tee [the Reece Com­mit­tee], the pres­i­dent of the Ford Foun­da­tion, H. Rowan Gaither, Jr. told him that some of the giant foun­da­tions, includ­ing Ford, were work­ing under direc­tives from the White House to so alter life in Amer­i­ca as to make pos­si­ble a com­fort­able merg­er with the Sovi­et Union.
In light of this piece of fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion, con­nect the fol­low­ing dots…

Char­ter School Mas­ter Minds: Paul Berman and Paul Hill

Both Paul Berman and Paul Hill, long­time researchers for the Rand Cor­po­ra­tion, are two of the most promi­nent mas­ter minds behind char­ter schools with their Com­mu­nist unelect­ed coun­cil form of gov­ern­ment. Note these two key points in the excerpt from Berman paper below:

1.  Ref­er­ence to prepa­ra­tion for dif­fer­ent careers.
2.  Notice the phrase “A pub­licly elect­ed school-lev­el board.” The aver­age read­er may take that to mean tra­di­tion­al­ly elect­ed school board. “Pub­licly-elect­ed school-lev­el board” means boards elect­ed by the par­ents and tax­pay­ers whose chil­dren attend that par­tic­u­lar school. Tra­di­tion­al pub­lic school gov­er­nance is by board mem­bers elect­ed by 100% of the tax­pay­ers of a munic­i­pal­i­ty. The new def­i­n­i­tion of school board does not rep­re­sent ALL munic­i­pal tax­pay­ers, although they are pay­ing tax­es for the oper­a­tion of the char­ter school. So, they have no say in the oper­a­tions of such a school. This is known as tax­a­tion with­out representation.

Paul Berman, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for the Cen­ter for Pol­i­cy Alter­na­tives, and Pres­i­dent of BW Asso­ciates, a con­sult­ing firm spe­cial­iz­ing in pol­i­cy research and analy­sis in Berke­ley, Cal­i­for­nia, authored a key doc­u­ment, “The Next Step: The Min­neso­ta Plan” (Phi Delta Kap­pan: Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Nov. 1985). Excerpts from this Min­neso­ta Plan are con­tained in my book the delib­er­ate dumb­ing down of amer­i­ca, Appen­dix X, p. A‑43:

The chal­lenge for Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion is to pro­vide a com­mon and equiv­a­lent edu­ca­tion­al expe­ri­ence for all stu­dents and to pre­pare them for dif­fer­ent careers. The com­pre­hen­sive high school has not and can­not… meet either goal ade­quate­ly.… The restruc­tur­ing… offers a dif­fer­ent approach to real­iz­ing these dual objec­tives of Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion. All stu­dents would con­cen­trate on a core aca­d­e­m­ic pro­gram in grades 7 through 10 and then, in grades 11 and 12, choose fur­ther edu­ca­tion that match­es their career aspirations.

Research and prac­tice in thou­sands of class­rooms both in the U.S. and abroad indi­cate that instruc­tion­al strate­gies using this assump­tion, such as mas­tery learn­ing or coop­er­a­tive learn­ing tech­niques, can result in more stu­dents learn­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly more in both basic and high­er-order skills. The Min­neso­ta Plan calls for these approach­es to be taught to senior teach­ers who can then train oth­er teach­ers to shift their expec­ta­tions and instruc­tion to enable all stu­dents to learn. Mas­tery learn­ing [B.F. Skin­ner’s oper­ant con­di­tion­ing, ed note] is con­tro­ver­sial. How­ev­er, the bulk of the evi­dence shows that large gains in stu­dent learn­ing occur if teach­ers have the train­ing and sup­port to imple­ment mas­tery learn­ing effec­tive­ly. Too often, mas­tery learn­ing has been intro­duced as a “top down” inno­va­tion. The Min­neso­ta Plan, by con­trast, pro­pos­es a grass­roots approach to implementation….

A pub­licly elect­ed school-lev­el board, oper­at­ing in con­cert with a school-site man­age­ment coun­cil, would decide which cours­es to offer at the school and which cours­es might be offered by oth­er pub­lic schools or by oth­er pub­lic or pri­vate providers. Schools would have the author­i­ty to “con­tract out” or “con­tract in” for teach­ing ser­vices.… This restruc­tur­ing would take advan­tage of strength in the best Euro­pean sys­tems.… Dereg­u­late cur­ricu­lum and instruc­tion. Edu­ca­tors should be free to design cur­ricu­lum and instruc­tion that they feel meets state stan­dards and com­mu­ni­ty needs. States should set basic goals; edu­ca­tors should be respon­si­ble to the com­mu­ni­ty for help­ing stu­dents to meet these goals.

A restruc­tur­ing of school­ing could not real­ize its full promise with­out jet­ti­son­ing the anachro­nis­tic sys­tem of employ­ing course-unit/seat-time require­ments as the cri­te­ri­on for stu­dent pro­mo­tion and grad­u­a­tion. Advance­ment should be based on demon­strat­ed achieve­ment.… State-man­dat­ed course and grad­u­a­tion require­ments would be elim­i­nat­ed in favor of a state­ment by the state of the com­pe­ten­cies stu­dents are expect­ed to mas­ter and two state tests, which would be required of all stu­dents before they leave the sixth and tenth grades. [emphases added] 

Paul Hill’s bio appears on the Cen­ter on Rein­vent­ing Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion web­site, where we learn of his involve­ment with RAND:
Before join­ing the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton fac­ul­ty, Dr. Hill worked for 17 years as a Senior Social Sci­en­tist in RAND’s Wash­ing­ton office, where he served as Direc­tor of Wash­ing­ton Oper­a­tions (1981–87) and Direc­tor of the Edu­ca­tion and Human Resources pro­gram (1979–80). He con­duct­ed stud­ies of site-based man­age­ment, gov­er­nance of decen­tral­ized school sys­tems, effec­tive high schools, busi­ness-led edu­ca­tion reforms, and immi­grant edu­ca­tion, and con­tributed to stud­ies of defense research, devel­op­ment, and acqui­si­tion pol­i­cy. (Source)[emphasis added] 

From the RAND Cor­po­ra­tion web­site we learn:
H. Rowan Gaither, Jr., a promi­nent San Fran­cis­co attor­ney who lat­er served as pres­i­dent and then as chair­man of the board of the Ford Foun­da­tion, was retained as legal coun­sel to deter­mine the best means of set­ting up an inde­pen­dent RAND.

On May 14, 1948, RAND was incor­po­rat­ed as a non­prof­it cor­po­ra­tion under the laws of the State of Cal­i­for­nia. The arti­cles of incor­po­ra­tion set forth RAND’s pur­pose in lan­guage that was both remark­ably brief and breath­tak­ing­ly broad:

To fur­ther and pro­mote sci­en­tif­ic, edu­ca­tion­al, and char­i­ta­ble pur­pos­es, all for the pub­lic wel­fare and secu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States of America.
The three signatories—Collbohm, Gaither, and L. J. Hen­der­son, Jr. (RAND’s asso­ciate director)—together with eight oth­er promi­nent indi­vid­u­als from acad­eme and indus­try, con­sti­tut­ed RAND’s orig­i­nal Board of Trustees. The oth­er eight mem­bers were Charles Dol­lard, pres­i­dent, Carnegie Cor­po­ra­tion of New York.… (Source) [empha­sis added]