From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/02-0
What You Need To Know About ALEC
Since
the 2010 elections, when Republicans took control of many states, there
has been an explosion of legislation advancing privatization of public
schools and stripping teachers of job protections and collective
bargaining rights. Even some Democratic governors, seeing the strong
rightward drift of our politics, have jumped on the right-wing
bandwagon, seeking to remove any protection for academic freedom from
public school teachers.
This outburst of anti-public school,
anti-teacher legislation is no accident. It is the work of a shadowy
group called the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC. Founded
in 1973, ALEC is an organization of nearly 2,000 conservative state
legislators. Its hallmark is promotion of privatization and corporate
interests in every sphere, not only education, but healthcare, the
environment, the economy, voting laws, public safety, etc. It drafts
model legislation that conservative legislators take back to their
states and introduce as their own "reform" ideas. ALEC is the guiding
force behind state-level efforts to privatize public education and to
turn teachers into at-will employees who may be fired for any reason.
The ALEC agenda is today the "reform" agenda for education.
ALEC
operated largely in the dark for years, but gained notoriety because of
the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. It turns out that ALEC crafted the
"Stand Your Ground" legislation that empowered George Zimmerman to kill
an unarmed teenager with the defense that he (the shooter) felt
threatened. When the bright light of publicity was shone on ALEC, a number of corporate sponsors dropped out,
including McDonald's, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Mars, Wendy's, Intuit, Kaplan,
and PepsiCo. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said that it would
not halt its current grant to ALEC, but pledged not to provide new
funding. ALEC has some 300 corporate sponsors, including Walmart, the
Koch Brothers, and AT&T, so there's still quite a lot of corporate
support for its free-market policies. ALEC claimed that it is the victim
of a campaign of intimidation.
The campaign to privatize the
schools and to dismantle the teaching profession is in full swing. Where
is the leadership to oppose it?
Groups like Common Cause and colorofchange.org
have been putting ALEC's model legislation online and printing the
names of its sponsors. They have also published sharp criticism of
ALEC's ideas. This is hardly intimidation. It's the democratic process
at work. A website called alecexposed.org has published ALEC's policy agenda. Common Cause posted the agenda for the meeting of ALEC on May 11
in Charlotte, N.C. The National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards has dropped out of ALEC and also withdrawn from the May 11
conference, where it was originally going to be a presenter.
Continue reading at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/02-0
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