"Many otherwise well-informed citizens will be astounded to learn of the breadth and depth of the conservative network across
NEA’s report, The Real Story behind Paycheck Protection[30]
If only one word were used to describe the success of the opponents of public education, that word would be “strategy.” But there are other qualities at play as well. In executing their strategies, the Right has been focused, disciplined, and committed to long-term efforts. Further, they have brought together their resources, financial, intellectual, and ideological, to create an effective force; and they have done this over time with patience and determination. Section 2 details the two primary strategies that comprise the overall strategic approach employed by the Right and provides some of the history that answers the questions: Where does this attack come from, who is behind it, and, why are they doing this? Understanding the primary strategies, as well the specific strategies described in Section 3, is fundamental to understanding how they can be countered (as addressed in Section5)
Primary Strategy: Creating a Network of Advocacy Organizations
Conservative foundations fund a wide range of advocacy organizations focused on building an ideological movement. These organizations advance the Right’s agenda. A major emphasis in this effort has been the creation of multi-issue policy organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, at both the national and state levels. In addition, there has been funding of single-issue organizations such as the education-focused Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation, and the American Education Reform Council. The key to the strategy is that together these form a network of organizations. Much of their effort is well-coordinated and they reinforce each other through the consistent use of a common language and a shared ideology. Many of these organizations focus heavily on marketing their ideas to the broad public and to political office holders.
A central strategy of vouchers and privatization, i.e., “school choice,” proponents has been to create and fund numerous seemingly independent advocacy organizations and individuals that advance “school choice” arguments, work to discredit opponents, and use marketing methods to change underlying public attitudes over the long term. These organizations, which variously describe themselves as a corporate/religious right/libertarian “conservative movement” and ideologically advocacy in nature, include those such as the Heartland Institute, Heritage Foundation, and Cato Institute.
The voucher and privatization movement, like other components of the politico-cultural Right, has managed to accomplish much over the last 35 years by building an infrastructure of advocacy/communications organizations that use the latest marketing methods and media to deliver their messages over and over again. These organizations work in a closely linked manner. They follow a long-term strategic plan. Each organization reinforces and amplifies the work of others in the network. Thus, they act as an echo chamber, reinforcing each other's messaging, with the resulting effect that their messages resonate in society far beyond the effect of their numbers alone. They repeat messages through multiple channels until these concepts become "conventional wisdom." At the same time they prepare the public with an underlying unified ideological context (e.g., government can’t do anything right, private enterprise is better) for their messaging.
The nature of funding this network of organizations is part of the strategy. Right-wing organizations in this network all receive major general operating support, project grants and coordinated strategic guidance from a core group of interlocking, ultra-conservative foundations that has been working for nearly thirty years to alter public attitudes and move the national agenda to the right. This core group of right-wing foundations includes the Scaife, Castle Rock (endowed by the Adolph Coors Foundation in 1993), Bradley, Olin, and Koch foundations. (See Appendix 4)
From the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) report, “Axis of Ideology – Conservative Foundations and Public Policy” [31]:
“Conservative foundations have, in part, been so effective not so much due to the size of their grants but rather because they tend to give more to general operating support. This type of unrestricted grant gives their grantees the flexibility they need to build strong institutions, do innovative work without having to attract new donors, and respond in a timely manner to policy issues without have to wait for a project-specific grant.”
The Executive Summary of the NCRP report addresses the issue of long-term funding.[32]
“Conservative foundations are more likely to create new organizations and fund them for the long haul, sometimes for decades, not just years, allowing the organizations to focus on their program work, rather than having to worry about where next year’s (or month’s) budget will come from.”
“Related to long-term funding, conservative foundations generally concentrate on funding a small group of grantees, including individuals, that are all working toward a common goal. Sustaining existing grantees – not trying to find new ones – is their primary goal.”
This sustained support and coordinated strategic approach on the part of the right-wing funders is not only beneficial to their grantees; it also serves to strengthen the overall network. Organizations in the network can operate more efficiently and flexibly, and readily reinforce each others efforts.
At the center of this network are multi-issue – e.g., school privatization, anti-environmentalist, pro-life, tort reform, etc. – think tanks that are simultaneously marketing and communications organizations, oriented aggressively toward media relations and public communications, in addition to acting as scholarly idea generating institutions. Because they address a variety of issues from the same philosophical perspective, the think tanks are able to advance an underlying ideological agenda that undermines progressive positions on a whole range of issues, including public education.
The Manhattan Institute sums up the value of being a “multi-issue” organization:[33]
“For 25 years, the Manhattan Institute has been an important force in shaping American political culture. We have supported and publicized research on our era’s most challenging public policy issues: taxes, welfare, crime, the legal system, urban life, race, education, and many other topics. We have won new respect for market-oriented policies and helped make reform a reality.
“We have cultivated a staff of senior fellows and writers who blend intellectual rigor, sound principles, and strong writing ability. Their provocative books, reviews, interviews, speeches, articles, and op-ed pieces have been the main vehicle for communicating our message.
“[…] The Manhattan Institute's program of luncheon forums, conferences, and publications reach a broad, diverse audience. As a result, our ideas are taken seriously—even by those who disagree with us. And our prescriptions are often put into practice.
“[…] Combining intellectual seriousness and practical wisdom with intelligent marketing and focused advocacy, the Manhattan Institute has achieved a reputation for effectiveness far out of proportion to its resources.”
Several reports, studies and articles have investigated the ties between the school privatization movement and network of organizations of the religious right, the corporate right and the ideological/libertarian right. Studies probing the organizations and funders of the school choice movement, include the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s Anatomy of a Movement[34], the American Association of School Administrators Vouchers: Who's Behind It All?[35], the National PTA’s Privatization – What Are The Issues?[36] and People For the American Way Foundation’s Funding a Movement,[37] which shows that the Bush administration has funded several school privatization organizations.
Education is a significant focus of the right-wing network of advocacy organizations. The NCRP report, Axis of Ideology, shows that of organizations receiving grants from conservative foundations, those working on issues of education received the highest levels of overall issue-related funding (excluding general policy), at somewhat over 19%. Additionally, organizations working on issues of education received the highest proportion of their funding for general operating support, with 60% of all education-related grants being for general support. The report shows that there is also significant funding of nonprofit infrastructure organizations, whose role is to strengthen the network of advocacy organizations. It should be noted that a number of multi-issue organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation, are described in the NCRP report as “policy organizations” and the funding of these organizations was not analyzed for how much went to individual issue areas. For many of these multi-issue advocacy organizations, education is a significant issue area. Thus, the total support for the voucher and privatization movement is substantially greater than the figures cited for education-specific issue organizations.
Primary Strategy: Focus on Ideology
The Right’s success has been greatly enhanced by the fact that they are organized around ideology rather than specific issues. Because they address a wide variety of issues from the same philosophical perspective, the conservative think tanks are able to advance an underlying ideological agenda that undermines progressive positions on a whole range of issues, including public education.
The Right’s messaging advocates for underlying values such as anti-government, anti-regulation, pro-corporate, and individual rather than community responsibility. This is an effective strategy because the same language can be applied to multiple issues and is therefore continually reinforcing the message. For example, the anti-government rhetoric applied to public education is the same as that used to push for privatization of government functions at all levels, from the local to the national.
When the Right seeks to denigrate public education by using the term “government schools”, they are relying on a public that has been conditioned to accept an underlying ideology that portrays government as negative. The audience they reach with this language has been conditioned over time to be anti-government, both through these messages and others. This in turn provides a foundation for the specific-issue messages against public education. The specific education issue is attached to the underlying ideology, as are other issues. It is this context of public attitudes, already formed to view “government” as a pejorative term that makes the right-wing messaging so effective. That is why the oft-used phrase “government schools” by itself conveys a negative idea about public education.
"Last week, Focus on the Family president James C. Dobson urged California parents to abandon the state's government school system."
- Steven Yates in “Abandon Government Schools”[38]
“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.”
- From Wisconsin Education Association's 1998 report, Anatomy of a Movement[39]
Showing the value of connecting the narrower issue with the larger underlying ideology, Heartland Institute’s 1991 document, A Marketing Plan for Educational Choice,[40] makes this point:
“Analogies can drive home the connection between monopoly and poor quality services: the government schools are like the postal service or the state department of motor vehicles; a government monopoly over grocery stores or restaurants would be disastrous, yet we tolerate such a monopoly for the education of our children. John E. Coons painted a vivid image when he used this analogy: Public schools are the quintessential self-serving monopoly. Unlike the local utility, they won't even disconnect and go away. You can rip out the phone, but you can't take your kid out of school. The school is not your servant but your master. It has no incentive to win you because it already has you.”
In “Personal Responsibility: A Brief Survey,”[41] David Duff ties “personal responsibility” ideology to standard conservative issues as an argument for advocating the elimination of public schools:
(“When parents began to delegate educational responsibilities to the government, a decline soon followed.”); government assistance for health care and welfare (“As with other services, health care and social welfare programs are most effectively provided by the private sector”); government regulation of business (“Government intervention or redistribution, in whatever form, hampers the accurate measure of a businessman's effectiveness in these areas”); unemployment benefits (“allowing people to live off the state while taking an excessive amount of time to find employment”); and taxation itself (“Taxation makes it difficult for many citizens to meet their responsibilities. As time passes, more and more families adopt an attitude of resignation, and fall back on government aid.”)
The following quotation shows how the Religious Right, by preaching the virtues of privatization ideology, is accomplishing their religious ideological agenda without having to address it overtly.
“For the Religious Right and others who are looking for the combination that would unlock public funds for religious schools, the voucher campaign may be for many an end in itself. After years of trying to force schools to accept creation theology into biology classrooms, purge classes and libraries of the ideas they object to, Religious Right leaders can, with vouchers, obtain tax dollars to fund the teaching of the movement’s beliefs in classrooms. [. . .] CEO America’s [founded by John Walton] and CSF’s (Children’s Scholarship Fund) activities are probably not calculated just to lay the groundwork for legislative action to provide public funding for religious schools. For at least some in the CEO and CSF power hierarchy, the ultimate goal is privatization more generally – the opening up of a vast new market for venture capital and investor return.”
- Privatization of Public Education: A Joint Venture of Charity and Power[42]
Some History of the Modern Right-Wing Movement
Understanding the history of the right-wing movement is central to developing strategies that can counter that movement
In the early 1960s, the Far Right, characterized by organizations like the John Birch Society, felt alienated by the “liberal establishment.” Entrenched institutions such as the Brookings Institution conducted numerous studies of social ills such as poverty, on the basis of which liberal government policies were developed. Perhaps the Right had reason to feel victimized, as many depicted them as unbalanced “kooks”– they were even the model for some of the characters in the movie Dr. Strangelove
Meanwhile, the Right felt this “liberal establishment” was “anti-business,” and, compared to them at least, “leftist.” They saw this establishment as their enemy and the enemy of
Liberal organizations did not develop in a hostile environment and therefore did not develop skills for responding to hostile attacks.
This introduces an evolutionary argument. Because the organizations of the Right were founded in the context of the “liberal establishment,” and grew up prepared to combat the establishment, they developed methods of attack from the outset. Meanwhile the “liberal establishment” paid little attention to the growing right-wing organizations and failed to develop responses to their activities. Instead, moderate and liberal organizations developed structures and ways of operating in an environment they perceived as accepting and supportive of their goals and philosophy. Only now, when the Right has gained the dominant position in our society’s attitudinal and political arena, has this failure of the liberal establishment to evolve become apparent. As in nature, once you adapt to or thrive in an environment you depend on the constancy of that environment. If the environment changes in a way that is hostile to your existence, YOU must evolve to cope with that environment, or you die.
In a recent Salon Magazine interview,[43] David Brock says,
“You mention the proliferation of conservative think tanks. Why did the left mostly ignore the think tank game?”
“One aspect is that the conservative organizations were themselves organized in response to what they saw as threats from various liberal movements, like the consumer movement and the women's movement. But all those liberal movements were organized as single issue; there really wasn't an effort to bring them together into a broader ideological stance in the way the right has done …”
In 1971, the National Chamber of Commerce circulated a memo to business leaders that was written by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell.[44] Powell’s memo claimed that "the American economic system" of business and free markets was "under broad attack" by "Communists, New Leftists and other revolutionaries who would destroy the entire system, both political and economic." Powell argued that those engaged in this attack came from "the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians."
According to the Powell memo, the key to solving this problem was to get business people to "confront this problem as a primary responsibility of corporate management" by building organizations that will use "careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing only available in joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations." It helped immeasurably, Powell noted, that the boards of trustees of universities "overwhelmingly are composed of men and women who are leaders in the system," and that most of the media "are owned and theoretically controlled by corporations which depend upon profits, and the free enterprise system to survive."
Powell wrote that these organizations should employ a "faculty of scholars" to publish in journals, write "books, paperbacks and pamphlets," with speakers and a speaker's bureau, as well as develop organizations to evaluate textbooks, and engage in a "long range effort" to correct the purported imbalances in campus faculties. "The television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance." Powell said that this effort must also target the judicial system.
In his memo, Powell addressed the cost of his suggested program.
“The type of program described above (which includes a broadly based combination of education and political action), if undertaken long term and adequately staffed, would require far more generous financial support from American corporations than the Chamber has ever received in the past. High level management participation in Chamber affairs also would be required.
“The staff . . . would have to be significantly increased, with the highest quality established and maintained. Salaries would have to be at levels fully comparable to those paid key business executives and the most prestigious faculty members. Professionals of the great skill in advertising and in working with the media, speakers, lawyers and other specialists would have to be recruited. ”
In 1973, in response to the Powell memo, Joseph Coors and Christian-right leader Paul Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation. Coors told Lee Edwards, historian of the Heritage Foundation, that the Powell memo persuaded him that American business was "ignoring a crisis." In response, Coors decided to help provide the seed funding for the creation of what was to become the Heritage Foundation, giving a generous $250,000 (approximately $1,070,000 in today’s dollars, based on the Consumer Price Index).
Subsequently, the Olin Foundation, under the direction of its president, former Treasury Secretary William Simon[45] (author of the influential 1979 book A Time for Truth), began funding similar organizations in concert with "the Four Sisters" – Richard Mellon Scaife's various foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation[46] along with Coors' foundations, foundations associated with the Koch oil family, and a group of large corporations. The organization Philanthropy Roundtable[47] was founded to coordinate this funding.
“Five foundations stand out from the rest: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Koch Family foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Family foundations and the Adolph Coors Foundation. Each has helped fund a range of far-right programs, including some of the most politically charged work of the last several years. ”
- “Buying a Movement,” People for the American Way Foundation[48]
These foundations are associated with the extreme right of the political spectrum. The Bradley Foundation's money comes from Lynde Bradley, a member of the John Birch Society.[49] The Coors Foundation previously financed the John Birch Society.[50] The Koch Foundations were founded by Charles and David Koch, sons of Fred Koch, co-founder of the John Birch Society. David Koch, the 1980 Libertarian Party Vice Presidential candidate, funds many libertarian organizations, and is co-founder of the libertarian Cato Institute.[51]William Simon of the Olin Foundation was a member of the secretive Christian-Right Council for National Policy, and chairman of an organization set up by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church .[52] Richard Mellon Scaife and his foundations were the pri–mary funders of the anti-Clinton efforts of the 1990s, which included funding the vitriolic magazine, Ameri–can Spectator.[53] As for today’s John Birch Society, it is currently engaged in a “Get US Out!” (of the UN) campaign, a philosophy reflected across the right-wing movement.[54]
There are now over 500 organizations, of which Heritage Foundation is the most influen–tial, all receiving funding from this core group. A 1999 study, $1 Billion for Ideas: Conservative Think Tanks in the 1990s,[55] shows how well-funded these organizations are. The study found that the top 20 of these organizations spent over $1 billion on their ideological campaign in the 1990s, not only on school privatization, but on a number of other issues they are advancing.
The more recent 2004 NRCP study, Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Public Policy, revealed that “from 1999 through 2001, the 79 conservative foundations made more than $252 million in grants to nonprofit public policy organizations. (NCRP’s 1997 study profiled only 12 conservative foundation grantmakers.)”[56]
Quoting from the Powell memo:
“… independent and uncoordinated activity by individual corporations, as important as this is, will not be sufficient. Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action over an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.”
Powell was correct, and the accomplishments of the resulting ideological campaign bear out his vision. Now, 33 years later, the far-right is firmly in control of all branches of the government, and is closing in on completely controlling the courts as well. And public schools are under serious attack; threatened with total privatization.
The Wisconsin Education Association's 1998 report, Anatomy of a Movement includes a good summary of the history and strategy of attacks on public education:
“School vouchers, originally proposed in 1955 by the conservative economist Milton Freeman 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.
“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. ”
- From Wisconsin Education Association's 1998 report, Anatomy of a Movement[57]