Diane Ravitch calls them the Billionaires Boys Club (BBC) with the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and power philanthropist Bill Gates leading the pack. They know only one way to exercise their power -- from the top down, allowing little if any room for questioning or dissent. They think of themselves as society's new radical change agents, transforming society in their own corporate image. But in many ways, they are throw-backs to the old feudal regimes that surrounded themselves with compliant lackeys and isolated them from the lives and day-to-day conditions faced by the commoners.
Their political machines have long ruled our cities. But only recently has their autocratic rule been extended directly to the public schools, which are now treated no differently than any other enterprise in their portfolio. In times of crisis, the least profitable among these enterprises are sold off or closed. Thousands of experienced, better paid teachers are fired -- their unions neutered -- only to be replaced by cheaper, quickly-trained, Starbucks-style teacher/baristas who are ready to give their all to a bevy of new private management companies for the next three years of their lives.
A new feature of the ownership society is the merger between power philanthropy and a giant public-sector bureaucracy, with a handful of BBC members/philanthropists, like Bill Gates, the Walton family, and Eli Broad buying their way into the education business at its very top level of control. It's a merger that, with help from a growing network of complicit urban mayors, could threaten the very existence of public education.
At times an arrogance of power leads them to overreach. Indeed, this is their Achilles heel. For example, when Mayor Bloomberg ordered the closings of 19 neighborhood schools, his plan was met with fierce resistance from parents and community groups throughout the city. So Bloomberg let his hand-picked Chancellor, Joel Klein, take the heat for his mishandling of that community resistance. Klein was then removed from his leadership post and sent packing off to help run Rupert Murdoch's media plantation. Before he left his job atop the New York Public Schools system however, Klein helped put together a mega-deal for Murdoch to acquire Wireless Generation, a privately-held Brooklyn-based education technology company. Wireless Generation is a key partner to New York City's Department of Education on its Achievement Reporting and Innovation System (ARIS), as well as on the City's School of One initiative. The sheer size of these contracts makes this purchase a guaranteed win -- and they're no-bid contracts, to boot.
Where there was once at least the appearance of a barrier between private and public sectors, there is now a fully permeable membrane through which business executives and organizational managers move back and forth. This movement between the education sector (as they call it) and the giant corporations is another ownership society hallmark. If it sounds reminiscent of the military-industrial complex, you're on the right track.
With Klein gone, Bloomberg has lured away Catherine Black, a top manager of the Hearst Corporation, to become his next schools chancellor -- another purely cynical overreach. Criticism of the appointment and of the autocratic way in which it was made has been swift and thunderous. Black is obviously as unqualified for the job as she is politically loyal to Bloomberg. With neither the necessary experience or credentials in the field of education, she will need a waiver from State Education Commissioner David Steiner. Steiner has appointed a commission to serve as a buffer on the waiver decision, stacking it with Bloomberg loyalists. And so it goes.
Recent polls show that most New Yorkers oppose Black's appointment and even if Bloomberg wins this battle he may not recover enough political credibility to run for president in 2012. This heavy-handed appointment by the mayor, without any input from the community, will also make it near impossible for Black to be successful in her new job.
The question is whether or not the growing opposition will extend beyond Bloomberg and the Black appointment fiasco, to target the ownership society and the Billionaire's Boys Club itself.