Walmart heirs pour more than $1 billion into reshaping American education ... and not for the better

Walmart isn't just reshaping work in America. The company's largest shareholders, members of the Walton family, are also pouring money into reshaping how future American workers are educated, promoting and funding everything from individual charter schools to charter-friendly policies, voucher policies and legislative attacks on teachers:

    In addition to giving grants to right-leaning think tanks like the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, the Walton foundation hired an education program officer who had worked at the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative business-backed group. Walton has also given to centrist organizations such as New Leaders for New Schools, a group co-founded by Jon Schnur, a former senior adviser to President Obama's transition team and to Arne Duncan, the secretary of education.
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    In 2013, the Walton foundation spent more than $164 million across the country. According to Marc Sternberg, who was appointed director of K-12 education reform at the Walton Family Foundation last September, Walton has given grants to one in every four charter start-ups in the country, for a total of $335 million. [...]
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    Although the foundation's leaders say they are focused on helping children in poverty or stuck in low-performing schools, some of their actions support concepts regardless of whether poor children benefit. In 2012, for example, Walton gave $300,000 to the Douglas County School District in Colorado to help it fight a lawsuit brought by opponents of a voucher program. The median income of families in the district, where the public schools are high performing, is more than $99,000, according to census data.

Walton money has been behind the drive to close Chicago public schools while the city expanded charter schools, and has gone to attacking New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for having the nerve to turn down a handful of applications by charter schools to take over space in public school buildings.

American education now being sold to the lowest bidder