Eli Broad Obit: Billionaires Don't Know Everything

Yesterday noted L.A. philanthropist, insurance mogul, and developer Eli Broad, 87, reportedly died after being ill for quite some time.   Born in the Bronx in 1933, he didn't hang around there forever and instead fell in love with the West Coast, especially L.A.  He made billions of dollars in various ventures, and then he wanted to give back to the community who made his obscene wealth possible.  He was noted for his considerable efforts for establishing institutions for the arts.  He was like the late billionaire David Koch who was popular for his arts philanthropy in New York City, but unlike Koch, he wasn't off-his-rocker crazy politically.  He was a Democrat.

The big problem with Broad was the same as with so many of these extremely rich people.  He thought that because he went to school, he knew all there was to know about education, and because he made money in the business world and achieved material "success," he arrogantly thought schools needed "competition" via the failed charter schools model plus school administrators should run schools like businesses.  It wasn't important that superintendents first and foremost should be educators who know something about the field, but MBAs were ideal people for "leadership positions" in education.  Broad and his wife Edythe set up some foundations that sought to create a lot of trouble in public ed, including something formerly called The Broad Superintendents Academy.   As this blog, which hasn't been updated in many years, noted, it was and is an unmitigated failure.  Back a decade or so ago, it didn't matter the Academy was built on the faulty notion schools were businesses and should be run like businesses, for Broad and his Academy had the support of then-President Barack Obama and his idiotic Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan.  The Academy was especially damaging to urban school districts, which had been infested with these "graduates."  There were lots of scandals connected with "graduates" from this "academy."  The Academy was much like the equally disastrous Teach for America outfit.  Just put people out there in education or in educational leadership in these jobs because, after all, teaching is such an "easy job" populated by idiot education graduates who  have terrible SAT scores--a true measure of "intelligence" to these people--and jettison the all-important theory and methods courses, tools you NEED to be able to survive in the classroom.  No, just throw people with no experience in the classroom and no preparation as teachers and have them take classes to become certified while at the same time working alongside people who actually did the work of preparing to be teachers before being in the classroom.  It was disgusting because of the hateful attitude of these operators of the Academy and TFA toward the teaching profession.  Both have been failures.

Not a good legacy to leave, Eli, shitting all over the institution of public education just because you thought you knew it all.