Public Education

ALEC's Efforts to Privatize and "Conservatize" Education The bills on this page represent ALEC corporations' efforts to privatize public education, crush teacher's unions, and push American universities to the right. These Model Acts would make education a commodity rather than a public good, and reverse America’s long history of promoting learning and civic virtue through public schools. These "model bills" are drafted at American Legislative Exchange Council conventions with input from, and approval by, Big Business, then introduced in state legislatures to limit educational opportunities for all Americans. Politicians are elected to represent the people, not corporations; through ALEC, corporations have both a VOICE and a VOTE on specific state laws. Do you?

READ the "Model Bills" HERE Clicking here will send a zip file of all bills on this topic. To read the list of individual bills before opening them, click here. WHO Is Behind ALEC? Corporations and politicians on ALEC's Task Forces(details here) Businesses and legislators on ALEC's leadership boards (details here) Managers, staff, and "experts" of ALEC (details here) Related ALEC Exposed Articles ALEC funding and spending (here) ALEC connections to David and Charles Koch, the oil billionaires (here) Proposals to change the rules for workers, including unions (here) Industry-specific agendas, like oil companies (here) and the health insurance industry (here)

How YOU Can Expose ALEC & Share What You Learn SPREAD THE WORD. Share this information through FACEBOOK, EMAIL, AND TWITTER. Concerned groups and people in every state need this to investigate how ALEC corporations are rewriting laws for their own advantage. EXPOSE ALEC LEGISLATORS. Demand the truth about which politicians in your state are in ALEC. Uncover whether YOUR tax dollars are paying ALEC "dues." Expose politicians who accept “scholarships” from ALEC's corporate-funded coffers for fancy trips. EXPOSE ALEC'S ROLE IN YOUR STATE HOUSE. Read these corporate-backed "model bills" NOW and cross-check them with bills in your state legislature. Ask your local media to report on what you have found and write your local newspaper. SHARE YOUR DISCOVERIES. Tell us what about what you uncovered! Tweet what you learn with the hashtag #ALECExposed or join the "Community Discussion" or email a confidential tip via tipline AT ALECexposed.org. Act today to help your family, friends, and fellow Americans better understand how global corporations are trying to rewrite your rights.

Learn MORE about the "Model Bills" that Are Attempting to Rewrite YOUR Rights The Center for Media and Democracy has annotated the "model legislation" politicians and corporations voted on, and we will be adding our analysis to this page and other publications, such as our sister sites, PRWatch and SourceWatch. Please bookmark this page and check the boxes below for updates on analysis and information. How are corporations attacking K-12 public education in these bills? Corporations, ideologues, and their politician allies VOTED to privatize K-12 education and attack teacher's unions by: Promoting voucher programs that drain public schools of resources by the use of taxpayer dollars for private schools, and specifying that those schools must remain unregulated. Voucher programs have been offered in the following ways: Offering private school vouchers with universal eligibility (2D17), means-tested eligibility (2D16), and universal eligibility with means-tested scholarship amount (2D18) “Punishing” public schools deemed “educationally bankrupt” by offering its students vouchers to use for almost completely unregulated private schools (2E3) Back-dooring privatization by offering vouchers to specific subsets of students, such as foster children (2D10) or children of military families (2D13), or creating tax credits for scholarships to private schools (2D19, 2D11, 2D9) Evading requirements under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by pushing children with special needs into private schools, which are not covered by the IDEA (2D8, 2D21, 2C0). Nearly identical bills have been introduced in Wisconsin and other states. Segregating students with disabilities from non-disabled students by incentivizing the creation of deregulated, private schools catering to students with disabilities Setting up low-income students for failure in college by incentivizing early graduation for the students most in need of a complete high school education (2B9) Taking charter school authorization away from local school boards in favor of a statewide advisory committee (2D1) Promoting climate change denial in education (2E9, 3F1) Certifying individuals with no education background as teachers, a move that could weaken teacher’s unions and fails to recognize there is more to teaching than knowledge of subject matter (2F0, 2F3) These are just a few of the bills that attack public education; to download the full set of ALEC K-12 education bills, click [here] Other Helpful Resources Here are links to reports by reporters and advocates that have been challenging the ALEC corporate agenda: (CMD is not affiliated with these other organizations. If you would like to be listed as a resource, please contact us.) The American Legislative Exchange Council, on the Center for Media and Democracy's SourceWatch.org (wiki) and A CMD Special Report: Who Is the League of American Voters?, by the Center for Media and Democracy's PRWatch.org (March 2011) (PLACEHOLDER) Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America, by the American Association for Justice (May 2010) Corporate America's Trojan Horse in the States: The Untold Story Behind the American Legislative Exchange Council, by the Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council (March 2002) ALEC: The Voice of Corporate Special Interests In State Legislatures, by People for the American Way (May 2011) Wisconsin's Cronon Affair: The Power of a Simple Fact, by The Nation (March 2011) Wolves in Sheep's Clothing, by Common Cause (August 2006) Conservative Corporate Advocacy Group ALEC Behind Voter Disenfranchisement Efforts' by the Center for American Progress and Campus Progress (March 2011) How are corporations attacking higher education in these bills? Corporations, ideologues, and their politician allies VOTED to corporatize higher education by: Promoting right-wing ideology in public universities through the “Academic Bill of Rights,” a document supported by Islamophobe David Horowitz and similar in purpose to the infamous 1971 Powell Memo (2B0, 2B1). ALEC corporations are also promoting this goal by: Requiring universities to annually report to the legislature on “intellectual diversity” (code for “right-wing ideology”), an odd requirement considering ALEC’s opposition to regulation and bureaucracy (2B12) Allowing parents to sue universities if a teacher has an accent (2B6) Giving tax advantages to wealthy families who fund their children’s college education by allowing exemptions from taxation for “college savings accounts” (2B4) Penalizing college students who study for more than four years (2B17) These are just a few of the bills that attack public education; to download the full set of ALEC K-12 education bills, click [here] Did You Know about these Bills------------------------> Did You Know about these Bills? Some of this Corporate Agenda Has Already Become Law (PLACEHOLDER)Controversial Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, an alum of ALEC, proposed changes to the law from the ALEC corporate wish list on tort reform as one of his first acts as governor in January 2011. Those measures, in Wisconsin Bill 2, passed before people woke up to his radical agenda once he tried to force through dramatic changes to limit the rights of workers in the state in February. The changes to personal injury law Walker pushed through include X, Y, and Z (PLACEHOLDER). After Governor Walker changed the rights of injured Wisconsin residents as ALEC corporations had called for, ALEC publicly applauded Walker's actions. To learn more about this story, click here (PLACEHOLDER) (Have any of these bills been introduced or enacted in YOUR state? If so, please add that information to the ALEC Exposed page on your state by searching for your state's name in the search engine at the top of this page.) Limiting Damages for the Loss of Your Child, Spouse, or Parent (PLACEHOLDER)One of the corporate-politician proposals of ALEC would limit the ability of a family to recover for emotional damages due to the death or injury of a loved one. (LINK) This type of legislation basically makes working class or poor people's lives--as well as the elderly--worth less to their families because any damages for pain and suffering due to the death of a child, spouse, or parent would be limited to an amount equal to their loved one's lost earnings and medical expenses. These kind of corporate provisions try to prevent a jury of YOUR peers from awarding you damages for all you have lost or suffered AFTER a jury finds that your loved one's death was the result of corporate negligence, misconduct, or greed. Is a local legislator who was elected to represent YOU actually protecting the profits of global corporate wrongdoers through such legislation instead of YOU and YOUR FAMILY? Barring Corporate Liability for Killing Your Dog or Cat (PLACEHOLDER)In addition to limiting the rights of people injured by corporations, under the guise of limiting "frivolous" litigation in 2006, one of the proposals would make it harder for you to obtain any compensation from a company whose negligence killed your family pet.(LINK) In 2009, Americans learned that many U.S. pet food companies had shipped the production of food for their four-legged companions overseas and that Chinese contractors had contaminated the pet food with melamine in order to increase profit margins, resulting in the death and serious injuries of numerous dogs and cats in the U.S. If passed in your state, ALEC's corporation-backed proposal would make it very difficult for YOU to recover any damages for the loss of your beloved animal companion due to corporate negligence or misconduct in manufacturing food for America's beloved pets. ALEC Exposed is a project of the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). CMD does NOT accept donations from for-profit corporations or government agencies. More information about CMD is available here. You can reach the publisher of ALEC Exposed, CMD's Executive Director, Lisa Graves, via editor AT alecexposed.org. Worker and Consumer Rights · Tort Reform and Injured Americans · Privatizing Schools and Higher Ed Policy · Health, Pharmaceuticals and Safety Net Programs · Environment, Energy and Agriculture · Democracy, Voter Rights and Federal Power · Taxes and Budgets · Guns, Prisons, Crime and Immigration