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This document was prepared by Jeffrey Leverich, WEAC Research Coordinator. October 3, 1998
In the free market of ideas, some interests are able to buy more voices than others. That is their right. But, the public should be aware when a common link exists between seemingly autonomous voices. Otherwise, the "free market" of ideas will be unduly influenced by the richest interests most able to speak.
“I don’t think public funds should be used to support schools at all. Public funds should be used to support the parents’ provision of education for their children.”
--- Michael Joyce, Executive Director, Bradley Foundation, in “New directions for the Bradley Foundation,” Rethinking Schools. Spring, 1994.
“Government is incapable of addressing the deep rooted issues which threaten the health and welfare of children and families.”
--- April Lassiter, Bradley Fellow, testimony before U.S. Congress, May 18, 1998.
“[If a voucher system] is good public policy for the poor, why isn’t it good public policy for middle or high income wage earners?”
--- Michael Joyce, from article by John Judis, The Baltimore Sun. September 13, 1996.
“[In] Milwaukee, a great citizen’s insurrection is underway against the bureaucratic shepards. The name of that insurrection is parental choice in education.”
--- Michael Joyce, address to Heritage Foundation “Leadership for America” lectures, Oak Brook, Illinois. April 23, 1998.
Preface
In his book, Power to the People, Governor Thompson recounts a December 1987 meeting in which school choice first appeared as a policy issue in Wisconsin. Thompson claims attendees included Milwaukee representative Polly Williams, private consultant George Mitchell, and Milwaukee superintendent Howard Fuller. Williams, author of the original school choice legislation in Wisconsin, denied being at the meeting.
Thompson claimed that he stumbled upon choice as a "common sense" option to other reforms proposed at the meeting. Mitchell, in response, stated he recalled Thompson being "receptive" to the idea of vouchers when he and Fuller proposed them to the Governor at an earlier meeting in March of 1987.
Thompson further stated “he did not have an ideological agenda,” and no “conservative" had "pressured" him into Milwaukee choice (Bice and Jones, 1996).
Perhaps the Governor was inclined to make this statement given the connection between George Mitchell, Polly Williams, Howard Fuller, and Bradley Foundation money. All three received funding from the arch-conservative Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The foundation is the nation's leading champion of school privatization and vouchers.
Executive Summary
At their core, the many efforts the Bradley Foundation funds have three major themes: (1) an unremitting attack on government social uplift programs including affirmative action, welfare, and public schooling; (2) a free market ideology which seeks to privatize governmental functions and increase the role of the market in social interactions; and (3) an ideology with strong racial undertones which claims that those not succeeding economically are genetically or culturally predisposed to failure.
The foundation wants to replace the current public school system with a privatized, voucher driven system that uses public tax dollars.
In an effort to promote their educational agenda including vouchers, the Thompson administration has (1) attempted to obliterate the constitutional office of state superintendent; (2) attempted to take away the constitutional right of local districts to elect school boards in Milwaukee; (3) intervened to obstruct the judicial system from hearing the voucher case in proper order; and (4) helped elect two pro-voucher judges to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In both elections, charges of ethical lapses and dirty tricks were filed by the opposing candidates.
The Bradley Foundation, along with a handful of other conservative foundations, has been extremely effective in advancing the message that government programs do not work and that private enterprise should replace them.
Bradley’s ideas are spread by an array of sources including best selling authors, public opinion polling, former governors and secretaries of education, state think tanks, and they have direct contact with the Republican National Committee.
In Wisconsin, the Hudson Institute, supported by the Bradley Foundation, helped develop the W-2 program and newly adopted academic standards for the state.
Bradley has promoted the Milwaukee choice program which allows the use of public money for religious schools. It has (1) funded different pro-voucher citizens groups, (2) made direct payments of support to many choice schools, (3) paid for educational research and public opinion polling, (4) paid millions to help students attend voucher schools, and (5) paid for Ken Starr and others to argue before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Bradley's ultimate agenda, openly admitted, was to sustain a voucher driven system of schooling in Milwaukee until the state could begin to subsidize the system with public tax dollars.
The Milwaukee Choice program was never passed as a stand alone policy by the Wisconsin Legislature. Instead, the program was implemented as part of the state’s omnibus budget in 1990. Since then, every expansion of the program, including religious schools, has been part of the state’s budget process.
The Bradley Foundation has funded groups associated with anti-Clinton cases, contracted with Kenneth Starr’s law firm, and reimbursed the state of Wisconsin for Starr’s services. As a result, Senator Torricelli (D-N.J.) has asked Janet Reno to inquire into conflict of interest charges regarding Ken Starr and the foundation.
The above themes are readily endorsed by corporate interests in that they (1) extend market ideology into realms that, traditionally, have been uniquely public; and (2) blame governmental policy and human pathology for social and economic dislocation. This steers political discussion away from issues of tax fairness, low-wage labor, and how corporate policies affect the economic life of average citizens.
Introduction
Preaching the virtues of a “new citizenship,” Michael Joyce, executive director of the Bradley Foundation, believes that governmental policies hurt society and that private groups and charities hold the key to civic renewal (Joyce, 1998). In his opinion, the problems of public schools are symptoms of the failed liberal policies of the “nanny state.” They must be replaced with a new system where parents use tax dollars to shop for the religious, private, or public school of their choice. In Joyce’s world, public-private distinctions of today no longer exist. The society he envisions would be a function of market forces; faith-based groups, volunteer associations, and corporations would usurp government's role in providing social services (Joyce 1998; Lassiter, 1998).
This forthright agenda comes from a man many consider to be the chief force behind the national school choice movement. His market-driven vision of schooling contrasts with those who believe the purpose of Milwaukee choice is to help the poor. In fact, Milwaukee’s school choice program has been extended with every legislative session to include more students and religious schools. It’s not hard to see this is creating a situation voucher proponents want. For them, the current Milwaukee choice program provides a foot in the door towards the ultimate goal of a nation-wide system of vouchers.
This vision was made clear in Joyce’s responses to the temporary court injunction against the use of state funds for religious schools. He stated, “the Bradley Foundation is not backing off. . . . We won’t give up. . . . We can’t just keep doing this as a matter of charity. Getting kids to the schools is a matter for public policy, not charity.” Addressing the pending Supreme Court decision on religious choice, he continued, “there is good reason for us to be optimistic. . . . August of 1998 in Milwaukee may see the beginning of an historic new era in American education” (Williams, 1997).
Joyce has accomplished many of his goals, and his prediction that the Wisconsin Supreme Court would favor religious school choice came to fruition. The Bradley Foundation’s money and organizing efforts have helped to advance many neo-conservative ideas in addition to voucher systems for schooling. Referring to Bradley’s systematic practice of targeted giving, a 1997 report for The National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy stated, “it would be difficult to overstate the influence of the John M. Olin and Bradley foundations on public attitudes and policies. Their practices have succeeded in advancing the basic tenets of modern American conservatism: unregulated markets and limited government” (Schulman, 1997).
i
Ten years ago nobody had heard of vouchers; yet, today, Wisconsin has a full-blown voucher system in Milwaukee and some polls show a majority of the populace favor private school choice. This was no accident. Wisconsin's school choice program and the public opinion that supports it was produced by years of hard work, organizing, and lots of money doled out by a handful of highly influential conservative think tanks.
School vouchers, originally proposed in 1955 by the conservative economist Milton Friedman as a way for whites to use their economic power to avoid desegregation in the South, became, in the mid-1980s, a cause celebre for the resurgent conservative right. By funding everything from academic studies to hatchet jobs and litigation, the school choice "movement" has been extremely successful in its two-pronged strategy of (1) denigrating the current educational system, and (2) creating a working model of the proposed alternative voucher system. This strategy was realized in well orchestrated stages.
First, public schools had to be discredited. If they were not broken there would be no impetus to create alternative systems of schooling. The Bradley Foundation has funded many critiques, especially in higher education, that helped fuel today’s rampant criticism of education.
Bradley, for instance, spent $528,000 between 1990 and 1994 to finance the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a group of conservative professors who critique “liberal bias” on campuses and the alleged “decline” in academic standards. NAS faculty blocked the inclusion of civil rights readings in English curriculum, for instance, and helped defund a Chicano paper at the University of Texas, Austin (Buying a Movement, 1996). In California, the chapter’s director, Thomas Wood, co-authored the successful 1996 “California Civil Rights Initiative,” which eliminated affirmative action in state education and hiring (Wilayto, 1997). Bradley gave a $100,000 donation to a similar faculty group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to defend itself against what it called “political correctness” (Galloway, 1996). In 1996, NAS released a survey which asserted that a decrease in core requirements at the nation’s leading universities threatens “the common frame of reference that . . . has sustained our liberal, democratic society” (Buying a Movement, 1996).
Bradley also funded many individual works including Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education: The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus, an anecdote-filled critique of how political correctness on campuses has supposedly destroyed respect for and knowledge of the traditional canon (Schulman, 1997). D’Souza’s $100,000, however, pales besides the $3.6 million Bradley generated for conservative author Allan Bloom to head a new center for the study of democracy at the University of Chicago. Bloom's best known work, The Closing of the American Mind, a right-wing critique of the decline in academic standards, also received Bradley funding (Buying a Movement, 1996).
Bradley’s investment in academia is not limited to these cases; and some of the work is no doubt credible and contributes to reasonable debate. The underlying agenda, however, is clear. Works like those of D’Souza and Bloom have contributed mightily to an atmosphere of pervasive critique that American academic standards are in decline--the victim of liberal policies run-a-muck.
That schools are failing is now taken for granted by many, including many in the educational community. School administrators, teachers’ unions, the media, and politicians all compete to raise standards, toughen tests, and to improve an allegedly shoddy teaching corps. Any politician or educator who fails to call for higher standards risks political ridicule. Of course, improvements in education can be made. But the first stage of the broad strategy has succeeded, and a strong consensus views the schools as failing despite the fact that much empirical evidence shows public schools are doing well and improving.
For instance, more children, including minorities and young women, are graduating and going on to college than ever before. From a democratic perspective, this represents success. From a standards perspective, however, conservatives argue that traditional knowledge is eroded rather than enriched by new perspectives. The definition of what success means in public education is being contested. This is nothing new in education. The debate about how to balance increased participation in schooling and standards is intrinsic in a democratic system, not evidence of its failure.
Moreover, test results belie allegations of failing schools. The most widely reported scores including the ACT, SAT, and NAEP exams are not declining and in most cases have increased despite the greater number of students taking the exams (Biddle, 1995; Bracey, 1995). Given this evidence of success, one marvels at the rhetorical success of critics who have so thoroughly instilled the idea of failing public schools into political discourse.
While Bradley supported forces achieved this goal, they also helped to define desirable solutions. Neo-conservatives have, to a significant degree, set the terms of debate as to what solutions can be used to “fix” the schools. To do so, they promoted alternatives to known solutions determined through educational research. Countless studies, for instance, emphasize the importance of lower class size and in improving the socioeconomic conditions of children in impoverished neighborhoods. For the neo-conservatives, however, calling for more money for education or social programs is anathema. In the climate they have created, increased social spending is, simply, political death. Bradley’s preferred solutions, supported by polemics more than researchers, invariably turn towards creating private alternatives to the public system of education through vouchers and choice.
Neo-conservatives, to a large degree, have successfully planted the idea that government programs cause social problems. This allows them to ignore how corporate capital works in society. Welfare causes the cycle of poverty, not a lack of decent jobs or education. Public education, because it is public, causes failed schools; problems have nothing to do with the lack of opportunity and investment in poor neighborhoods and their schools. With this circular logic, more money for governmental programs simply perpetuates the problems. The only solution, neo-conservatives maintain, lies in private enterprise.
ii
After instilling in the public’s mind the message that public schools are in decline and defining a privatized solution, the voucher "movement" also had to find a means by which to implement a large scale private school choice system to serve as a model. In Wisconsin, they have done just that.
At the heart of this national movement is Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation. The foundation has almost a half-billion dollars in assets derived from the sale of the Allen Bradley electronic and radio company to Rockwell International. The company’s founder, Lynde Bradley, was a member of the John Birch Society and contributed to conservative publications like National Review. With the company’s sale, and with Michael Joyce’s appointment as Executive Director in 1985, the foundation became one of the richest and most influential right-wing foundations in the nation. Ironically, Bradley, which incessantly bashes government and lauds the virtues of private effort, made its riches from government contracts producing electronic components for armaments (Gurda, 1992).
In 1978, Joyce went to work for the Institute for Educational Affairs, founded by right-wing pundit Irving Kristol and former secretary of the treasury under Presidents Nixon and Ford, William Simon. Shortly thereafter, Simon asked Joyce to run the John M. Olin Foundation, a major supporter of key conservative institutions like the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. Joyce served on numerous Reagan-Bush advisory boards, including the well-known Grace Commission, which sought to reduce the size of government by cutting social programs. With his connections, Joyce is alleged to have helped former secretary of education William Bennet secure the post. Clearly, the Bradley Foundation has played an integral role in the conservative-right resurgence (Teltsch, 1988).
The Heritage Foundation, widely recognized as the architect of Reagan’s conservative agenda, was founded by Joseph Coors and John Mellon Scaife in 1973. It received $537,000 from Olin in 1994, and $2.7 million from Joyce and the Bradley Foundation between 1990-1992. Another leading conservative think tank, The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), received $653,000 from Olin in 1994, and $2.38 million from Bradley between 1990-1992 (Buying a Movement, 1996). AEI is now home to The Bell Curve author and Bradley Fellow Charles Murray, who received $100,000 in annual funding from Bradley for his controversial book (Buying a Movement, 1996).
Murray’s book, dismissed as shoddy research in non-political journals such as Scientific America, argued that genetics relate to a lack of intelligence, and that a lack of intelligence is related to economic status. The political message was that the poor are themselves to blame and that little can be done to assist them. In a 1994 interview, Michael Joyce called Murray “one of the foremost social thinkers in the country” (Buying a Movement, 1996). In an earlier book, Losing Ground, Murray argued in favor of ending welfare on the grounds that it did more harm than good; that study can be seen as the beginning of neo-conservative attacks on social programs. Other conservative notables like Robert Bork and pundit William Kristol (Irving’s son) reside at the institute. In 1995, Bradley endowed AEI with $740,000, and Heritage with $875,000 (Schuman, 1997).
Bradley also supports the Indianapolis based Hudson Institute which houses Chester Finn, a notable voucher proponent. It received $600,000 in 1994, and $395,000 in 1995 from the foundation (Schuman, 1997; Buying a Movement, 1996). Finn is also associated with Chris Whittle’s Edison Project, a for-profit schooling enterprise. Bradley funneled $780,000 through Hudson’s Educational Excellence Network headed by Finn between 1990 and 1992. The network helped to fund voucher programs in Indianapolis and Michigan (Buying a Movement, 1996).
In recent testimony before Congress, Finn lauded the major themes of his “new educational strategy.” Educational resources, he continued, “should be entrusted to families . . . rather than to school systems.” To achieve this, “Uncle Sam should replace . . . categorical programs with block grants or voucher style programs. . . . Any school that is open to the public will be considered a public school, no matter who runs it. All public schools will be schools of choice” (Finn, 1998). Finn’s vision of schooling, which would replace the current public system with a new hybrid system of private schools, strongly resembles Michael Joyce’s plans for education.
The Hudson Institute has a number of connections with Wisconsin. The model academic standards proposed by Tommy Thompson in his state of the state address, for instance, were developed by the institute. William Bennett helped to draft the school standards while in residency at Hudson (Hudson Institute, 1997). Bennett received a $100,000 grant through the Hudson Institute in 1993, where he wrote his Book of Virtues.
Some critics familiar with public education chastised Governor Thompson for proposing the “Modern Red Schoolhouse” standards, noting the top-down nature of the policy (Mayers, 1997). In an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, Thompson had stated standards should be created “from the ground up--by parents, teachers, administrators, businesses, and local taxpayers” (Allen, 1997). It seemed inconsistent for the governor to then reject standards developed in such fashion by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, in conjunction with educators and citizens around the state, and to replace them with his own (i.e., The Hudson Institute’s) version.
The institute also is known for developing Wisconsin’s W-2 welfare program, a national model recently adopted by Republican Mayor Giuliani of New York. The Welfare Policy Center of Hudson, with support of the Bradley Foundation, set up an auxiliary office in Madison to develop the state’s welfare plan (Eckert, 1996). According to the Governor’s spokesman, Rod Hise, Hudson approached the Thompson administration “fairly quickly after we began to develop the replacement for AFDC [welfare].” Hise acknowledged “the director of Hudson’s Welfare Policy Center, Andrew Bush, was an integral part of crafting some parts of the [W-2] plan” (Eckert, 1996).
In addition to these direct policy connections, Governor Thompson is friends with Lamar Alexander, former governor of Tennessee and U.S. secretary of education, currently a fellow at the Hudson Institute. Alexander and Thompson each served as chairman of the National Governors’ Association. Together, they established The Republican Neighborhood Meeting, a national satellite television network which broadcasts Republican gatherings (Wichman, 1997).
Lamar Alexander chairs the National Commission on Philanthropy and Civic Renewal which also is supported by the Bradley Foundation. He recently released a report calling for a new kind of charity where “civic entrepreneur[s]” view charity as a “strategic activity.” Alexander stated, “the chief difficulty in aiding the poor is . . . more moral than material. Government is ill suited to provide or even supervise that type of support” (Detroit News, 1997). This statement is well in accord with Bradley’s theme that government programs are defunct and need to be replaced with new, privatized ones.
There is yet another connection between Bradley and the Thompson administration in the personage of Michael Grebe. A prominent Milwaukee attorney and leader within Wisconsin’s Republican party, Grebe sits on Bradley’s board of directors. Grebe was appointed by Thompson to the Board of Regents at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and currently resides as president. Recently named general counsel to the Republican National Committee (RNC), Grebe’s duties include assisting the campaign finance investigations of Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), who recently publicized allegations about fundraising activities involving the Clinton administration and China (Aukofer, 1997).
Locally, Grebe represented the Brewers in an effort to secure funding for the new Milwaukee stadium. He was instrumental in securing a $20 million loan from the Bradley Foundation that helped finalize the deal. Called the “consummate political insider,” Grebe is considered to be a “confidant” of the governor (National Law Journal, 1997).
None of these facts suggest that Grebe was involved in Milwaukee’s voucher program. However, they do further establish a pattern of connections between Bradley and the Thompson administration.
iii
In addition to massive funding of key conservative think tanks, Joyce founded the Philanthropy Roundtable, the goal of which is to coordinate conservative strategies nationally. In November of 1992, the Roundtable cosponsored an Indianapolis conference on school choice. Participants called for the establishment of 25 privately funded voucher plans by 1994 “to provide the requisite momentum to the national debate on educational choice” (Miner, 1993). In attendance was Milwaukee representative and choice advocate Polly Williams, whose Milwaukee Assistance Parental Center received $180,000 in Bradley support between 1990-1992. Williams stated to attendees “as a Black single mother, I can say and do a lot of things [regarding choice] you can’t do” (Miner, 1993). In addition to funding Williams’ group, which opposed a major referendum to improve facilities in Milwaukee schools and assisted parents seeking to enroll in choice schools, Bradley also made direct grants to many private schools participating in the choice program in an effort to keep the program viable (Minor, 1994).
Williams advocated choice schools, in part, because she saw them as a means to Black empowerment. Williams recently ended her close relationship with Bradley maintaining they are more concerned with creating a system of privatized, religious schooling than they are about helping minority children (Thomas-Lynn, 1998).
Also attending the Indianapolis conference was Kevin Teasley, head of California’s 1994 voucher initiative, who pushed for public subsidies for vouchers. Teasley argued that privately funded voucher programs are limited by their reliance on corporate largesse. Others called corporate sponsored voucher systems “pump primers,” and maintained with Teasley that long-term strategy should focus on publicly funded, universal voucher systems. These sentiments were acted on in Milwaukee where the private organization Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE) received $3.7 million in Bradley Foundation money through 1995 to pay for students to attend choice schools in the Milwaukee voucher program. Bradley has donated a total of $8 million to the group (Williams, 8/29/97).
Out of the 1992 choice conference sponsored by Joyce and the Roundtable, a strategy was mapped which would (1) pressure state legislatures to pass publicly funded voucher systems, (2) conduct statewide referenda on vouchers such as the California and Colorado initiatives, and (3) initiate legal strategies such as suing states to allow vouchers on the grounds that “failing schools violate the constitutional right to educational opportunity” (Miner, 1993). Although the state-wide referenda for vouchers and initial legal strategies proposed at the conference failed, voucher proponents have succeeded in the Wisconsin Legislature, and have found new effective legal strategies to promote vouchers to religious schools via the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
One conference attendee who advanced various legal ideas to promote vouchers was Clint Bolick. Bolick had previously penned the attacks on “quota queen” Lani Guinier, Clinton’s failed nominee to head the Civil Rights Division. Bradley has funded many anti-affirmative action efforts including the ballot initiative in California, The Bell Curve, and D’Souza’s The End of Racism, which argues that poverty is created by the cultural pathologies of the poor rather than racism or a lack of economic opportunity. While employed under Clarence Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Bolick penned legislation to end affirmative action at the federal level (Wilayto, 1997). The Institute for Justice co-founded by Bolick in 1992 also received funding from Bradley.
Bolick, also associated with the Landmark Legal Foundation, and Kenneth Starr, special prosecutor in the Whitewater investigation, argued before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in favor of religious school vouchers. They argued on behalf of the state of Wisconsin. Recently, the Court upheld the constitutionality of religious vouchers. It argued, in part, that religious choice has a “legitimate secular purpose” to provide low-income families with educational opportunities “outside the embattled Milwaukee public school system” (Smith, 1998). The argumentation reflects sentiments earlier expressed by Bolick in testimony before Congress. Defending religious choice, Bolick stated “choice is not a means to subsidize religious schools. It is a means to expand educational opportunity for families. . .” (Bolick, 1995).
In a strange mix of private money and state policy, the Bradley Foundation reimbursed the state of Wisconsin $350,000 for legal services to argue in favor of religious choice (Schultze, 1997). Starr and his firm of Kirkland & Ellis were paid a total of $395,000 by the state of Wisconsin, of which Starr received $51,000 (Skiba, 1998). Starr had a previous connection with Bradley when his partner from Kirkland & Ellis was retained by the foundation to provide legal advice about school choice and other issues (Conason and Waas, 1996).
Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) asked Attorney General Janet Reno to look into the propriety of having Kenneth Starr investigate the president, given Starr’s connections to the Bradley Foundation, known to have associations with some of the cases against the president that Starr was investigating. The cases include the Paula Jones suit and “trooper gate” (Skiba, 1998). The outcome of Torricelli’s query is still pending.
In an interview, Michael Joyce denied funding Clinton-bashing efforts, saying the foundation has turned down many requests for such funding, and that Bradley has no control over the editorial content of the publications to which they donate (Skiba, 1998).
Still, the association between Starr, his firm, Bradley, and school choice is real and thoroughly documented. As noted, Bolick’s Institute for Justice received monies from Bradley, as did the Landmark Legal Foundation for its voucher efforts. According to People for the American Way, “Bolick led the defense for the first Wisconsin voucher law, while working for the Landmark Legal Foundation. The foundation received $310,000 from the Bradley foundation between 1990 and 1992.”
Currently, Bolick’s Institute for Justice is championing vouchers nation-wide, sometimes on a pro bono basis. He is involved in litigation in Delaware, Ohio, Vermont, Arizona, and Maine. Bolick has commented that the Wisconsin voucher case, expected to be heard on appeal, will be a “slam-dunk” before the U.S. Supreme Court. On the court incidently, sits a justice who is the God-father of Bolick’s son, Clarence Thomas. (Smith, 1998; Wilayto, 1997).
In addition to Bolick, the Thompson administration has vigorously pursued educational “reform” in Wisconsin. The administration has (1) attempted to obliterate the constitutional office of state superintendent, and (2) take away the constitutional right of local districts to elect school boards in Milwaukee (Williams, 1998); (3) intervened to obstruct the judicial system from hearing the religious voucher case in proper order (Segall, 1996); and (4) helped elect two pro-religious voucher judges to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. In both elections, charges of ethical lapses and dirty tricks were filed by the opposing candidates (Foster, 1997; WSJ, 1996).
The charges involve Thompson’s former chief of staff and current Republican Assembly Majority Leader, Scott Jensen’s support of Supreme Court candidate Patrick Crooks. While an elected official, Jensen had a public relations company that received $12,398 from Crook’s campaign for consulting services (WSJ, 1996).
Crooks also was endorsed by Tommy Thompson and disbursed campaign literature stating he was in favor of school vouchers. This lead ACLU attorney Jeffrey Kassel, involved in the voucher litigation, to charge the governor with “judge shopping” (Daily Report Card, 1996). The Supreme Court had sent the voucher case back to lower court, but Thompson’s attorney, Ed Marion, asked the Court to re-hear the case after retiring Chief Justice Roland Day was replaced by the newly elected Justice Crooks.
In the April 1997 Supreme Court election between Republican-backed Jon Wilcox and Walt Kelly, a group headed by Ray Taffora, former legal counsel to Tommy Thompson, sent out a massive mailing that attacked Kelly, but failed to disclose funding sources with the State Elections Board as required by law. The group, Wisconsin Coalition for Voter Participation, has filed a lawsuit to prevent the Elections Board from investigating its records (WSJ, 1997). Republican caucus staffers also were involved in the pro-Wilcox mailing; and Scott Jensen, who supplied the campaign with issues-information, was forced to apologize after releasing false accusations that Kelly had defended a drug king-pin (Jones, 1997, Foster, 1997). Despite these shenanigans, Wilcox won the election.
When the religious voucher case appeared the second time before the Wisconsin Supreme Court in June of 1998, the newly elected justice was seated. Unlike the previous 3-3 split decision, the court voted 4-2 in favor of religious school vouchers.
iv
In addition to the Roundtable, Joyce founded a series of state-level think tanks to promote conservative ideas. One such entity, the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI), received $2.4 million in Bradley donations between 1990 and 1995 (Buying a Movement, 1996). It received an additional $460,000 in 1996 (Schulman, 1997). The WPRI promotes privatization, notably for prisons and K-12 education. WPRI "research" is often quoted in Wisconsin papers. A search of the major news database, NEXIS, revealed 130 articles in regional papers since 1990 citing WPRI research and positions, fifty of which appeared in the last two years. The WPRI also publishes Wisconsin Interest, a magazine which covers politics and education.
Many of the institute’s studies discredit public education or promote school choice. In August 1998, for instance, the WPRI released a survey purporting to prove public support for school vouchers. The survey asked respondents if they favored allowing parents to send their children to religious schools, but failed to mention that tax dollars for the program are taken from public schools. Despite the deceptive simplicity of the question, the story was covered in Madison and Milwaukee papers as evidence of popular support for vouchers.
WPRI personnel also sit on state committees. George Mitchell, for instance, is on the governor's task force for corrections. Along with former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and voucher advocate Howard Fuller, Mitchell received a grant from Bradley to study the MPS system. Their first project was an examination of the MPS teacher contract which, they claim, inhibits innovation and educational improvement. The WPRI has also released "studies" purporting to document inflated teacher pay and the perils of "tenure."
The institute also criticized former Superintendent of Public Instruction, Herbert Grover, for his failure to support vouchers, an attack picked up by Education Week (Viadero, 1992). WPRI reports also attacked research conducted by University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, John Witte, which concluded that there was no improvement in academic outcome for choice students (Viadero, 1992).
Some research from WPRI, especially their attacks on light-rail public transit systems, has been critiqued by the mainstream press. However, the Bradley funded institute continues to have a large voice in public policy debates in Wisconsin, continually promoting school vouchers and attacking public education.
v
Bradley is one of the "Four Sisters" of the conservative right which includes the Scaife, Heritage, and Smith Richardson foundations. Together, they have committed hundreds of millions of dollars over the last decade shaping legislation and public opinion to reflect conservative positions that government programs inhibit individual success and that private enterprise is the best solution to social problems. One estimate is that the 12 largest conservative foundations spent over $200 million to influence opinion between 1992-1994 (Shuman, 1997). EXTRA! magazine, which examines the media, documented $2.7 million in donations to four leading conservative magazines in one year alone--tenfold the budget of a number of leading journals on the Left.
This partial list of the myriad of projects, academics, and think tanks supported by Bradley alone offers an important context for understanding their promotion of school choice. Consistent efforts to roll back affirmative action, end welfare, and to supplant governmental roles with private ones raise questions concerning claims that vouchers are simply being promoted to help poor children. In fact, Michael Joyce and Chester Finn both call for national voucher systems including all students, rich and poor alike. Vouchers appear as part of a larger vision in which private enterprise gains more control over the public realm.
To use a corporate analogy, Bradley has achieved a vertical integration into public policy debates and issues. They have developed an infrastructure in which many voices, ideas, and opinions that promote Bradley’s causes do not bear the name. From promoting think tanks, to funding research, books, pundits, speakers, lawsuits, legal strategies, politicians, citizen’s groups, programs, and legislation, Bradley has built a world of influence.
Privatization of education complements Bradley’s larger agenda of allowing market dynamics to dominate public life in ways that serve corporate interests. Teachers’ unions are one of the strongest unions nationally. A national system of non-union private schooling would erode unionism in the public sector, following the trend of diminished unionism in the private sector. Additionally, Bradley’s ideology paves the way for privatization in schooling where there is money to be made. With an estimated $311 billion spent annually on public education, the ability to siphon a mere 10% of education funding would represent a $31 billion annual industry.
There are other ways corporations can profit from public schools. Schools represent a contained setting in which to reach students, and money can be made through direct advertising, the basis of Channel One’s income. Also, private companies can seek exclusive contracts for products with school districts in exchange for money, and provide text and curricular material to budget-crunched districts as well.
If, following Wisconsin’s lead (the state imposed revenue controls on public schools in 1993), more states cap school spending, budget pressures on districts will continue to increase, forcing them to seek private instead of public capital. As this trend continues, distinctions between public and private spheres will erode and corporate interests will increasingly permeate the realm of public schooling.
vi
In Wisconsin, Bradley promoted vouchers by funding (1) Milwaukee citizens’ groups, (2) private schools involved in choice, (3) state-level research that promotes vouchers and attacks its opponents, and (4) pro-voucher litigation before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Bradley activities also included securing William Bennet to stump on behalf of Linda Cross who supported vouchers as a candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction, funding a presentation in Milwaukee on behalf of the Edison Project, and creating another legal “dream team” to assist parents participating in the Milwaukee choice program.
Also documented were connections between Wisconsin and Bradley funding in welfare reform, the state’s model academic standards, and in the appointment of WPRI members to state committees. Given the many connections between the Bradley Foundation, the governor’s office, and state policy, the public needs to be informed about the full nature of the connections and the ultimate policy goals Bradley promotes.
Regarding education, Joyce and other neo-conservatives want to replace the current public school system with a privatized, voucher driven system that uses public tax dollars. Given that this is a dramatic departure from the principles upon which our country was founded, the public needs to be informed of the neo-conservative agenda to enable an informed public debate. A democracy and the public deserves no less.
Prepared by: Jeffrey Leverich
Research Coordinator
Wisconsin Education Association Council
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Posted November 16, 1998