ALEC: The People Behind the Lawmakers Out to Destroy Public Education

• 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.
• What You Need To Know About ALEC
• Special Report | American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)

Diane Ravitch, Common Dreams

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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.

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Related:

Special Report | American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Week of February 26, Jeanette Eastman, Associate Editor, Evergreene Digest
ALEC is one of the most successful mechanisms used by the 1% to control state and federal laws...ALEC creates model legislation written to increase the profits of large corporations, and hands it off in secret to lawmakers who then introduce it as their own. ALEC has been responsible for some of the most anti-democratic and repressive legislation to grab headlines in recent history.
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